I like the way that R. M. worded this: He has written some amazing stuff on how humanity can shift over to a whole new way of looking at the connection between Spirituality and how to apply it in our daily lives: The Way of Holiness and the Sacred Hoop by Robert Mendelson
Nothing. But some Anti-Choicers think that in abortion fetuses are tortured, they feel pain when aborted and they really don't.
There is nothing "Brilliant" about a fallacious argument. Full Stop. (the assumed premise that a single human cell - the mighty zygote in this case - is a living human.)
Just like Africans were considered subhuman during the slave days. Man, the arguments you folks come up with to justify such atrocities.....
Abortion is selfish and immoral. That being said, Laws ought not be made in the interest of promoting morality. That is the path to Theocracy. Laws should (and in the US have predominantly) be made to promote a minimum level of order necessary for society to function. Abortion doesnt destabilize social order like other other forms of unnecessary killing of humans would. Additionally, if we were to force a woman to accept an outside definition of 'necessary' in regards to her own health and well-being, we undermine the concept of self-determination that forms the foundation of individual choice western civilization is founded upon. If we're not free to be selfish and immoral, then we're not free. If you hate abortion, promote its alternatives. Banning it is, quite simply, collectivist and unamerican.
FoxHastings said: ↑ Electrical impulses can be found in jello. How serious is jello? Children/people/adults/teenagers/the elderly have the same value they've always had and that's only whatever other's place on them. . A fetus has only the value the person it's in gives it...as it should be since that life affects only them.. Wouldn't it be better to place more value on actual people? Why not fight to end wars....we wouldn't have any if men were more responsible. BTW, does Tecoyah know you are quoting his post????? Yes, Anti-Choicers DO seem to think women are "subhuman" by wanting to take away their right to their own bodies... Man, the arguments you folks come up with to justify such an atrocity as taking away women's rights to their own bodies ….
Nice to see that opinion from someone who doesn't like abortion... I wonder, though, why people think being "selfish" is so bad or wrong....humans are born selfish, that's how they survived. thousands of years ago, whoever got the most food for themselves and family survived. When food was in short supply selfishness saved your family's life . Even now, isn't looking out for ourselves a form of selfishness? Have we given everything we own away so we don't appear selfish? If we decide to bring children into the world because WE love children and we don't get their opinion or consent isn't that rather selfish? Thinking of our own feelings about having kids and foisting that off on the kids? Ya, that's very selfish. See, doing what we want to do is selfish. The End....why is that "bad" ?? Not sharing your toys is the kindergarten "selfish" but doesn't have much meaning in real life. We should outgrow the kindergarten standard...
Worth noting everything else where being "selfish" applies such as obstructing voting rights to minorities, denying asylum to immigrants, denying healthcare, etc, etc, can be seen as motivated by selfishness. And in the case of abortion the fundamentalist theists who want to deny women their reproductive rights are doing so for their own selfish religious beliefs.
Funny how Anti-Choicers think women being selfish is bad but it's OK if everyone else is....but they swear they aren't misogynists, no sirree…
And? Whats so special about having thoughts? Why do you think we get to extinguish a life just because it doesn't have thoughts (yet!)
Just because something is not a living human - does not make it a "human that is dead" nor does it make it a dog. It is a zygote - a single human cell. There is a reason we call it "a zygote" and not a living human. Just because a heart cell - which is "human life" - is not a dog or a dead human, does not make it a living human. What is the significant difference between a heart cell, and the single human cell at conception, that makes the zygote a human and the heart cell not a human ?
" Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus. By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm. By the end of the fourth week, it's about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception. By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs. By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be. By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike. By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation. By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month. By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later. So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli--again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air? The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human. Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are. Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month. By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think. Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible. It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973--although for completely different reasons. Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there's a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves" http://www.2think.org/science_abortion.shtml
It is a Zygote, To be precise, zygote is the term used to refer to the cell as a result of the fusion of two haploid nuclei during fertilization until the first cleavage. When the zygote starts to divide and multiply, it is called an embryo.
A heart cell is not human life. But the zygote is. It is an organism (albeit single-celled) that 1. contains human DNA and 2. is alive. Therefore, the zygote is a live human. It's just not a person yet. But a live human it is.
A heart cell 1) contains human DNA and 2) is alive. So again this leaves us with the question "what is the significant difference" that we should accord the zygote with the same status as a living human.
