"Therefore, Abortion Must Remain Legal"

[Angel4Truth]

If you lot have now ditched the OT then I will think again, have you? :sherlock:

Ditched, no, but they were under the law and a theocracy, Christianity is not a theocracy, and salvation is available to all.

Tell me what my chances are of sharing the gospel with the dead?

Also show one example where christians are ordered to kill non beleivers in the New Testament.

You do know what New Testament means also don't you?

 

[Alate_One]

And yet plenty of mothers would be devastated to learn they had conceived and subsequently lost their baby. And don't pull the nasty "they could never know" rubbish again. You can clearly read the conditional.

"Devastated" over a zygote? Not unless you'd been going for IVF treatment and it was your last hope to have a child. But then you might be equally devastated to learn your eggs were useless for childbearing.

You're a heartless cow.

You're a pig headed moron who thinks people should empathize with single cells. You need to learn to empathize with actual people, like, women.

Skin cells and zygotes are "not really" worlds apart in your mind because you're dedicated to the idea that women should be allowed to terminate their unborn children.

I'm not dedicated to that idea at all, as my previous point says. I am, however, convinced that taking a woman's reproductive rights away over a single cell is moronic.

You endorse this even for babies you concede are people.

I don't endorse it. I do, however, recognize there's likely to be compromise on the subject. Most Americans are FOR more restrictions on abortion. They are not for the radical changes declaring single cells to be people would bring.

Whose DNA? The first is the DNA of an adult. Whose DNA is the other?

Actually the DNA of the skin cell will be ever so slightly different than that of other cells. And do you think identical twins aren't individual people? They share the same DNA. A zygote can even be split into multiple people using current technology.

One already is a new human being. Or perhaps you can tell us what needs to be added in order to turn a zygote into a person. All that needs to be added is nutrition and time.

And making sure it actually is capable of doing so. Not just nutrition, waste removal, homeostatic support, hormonal support etc.

Alate can't tell the difference between cancer cells and newly conceived babies.

You can't tell the difference between what you call a "baby" and what has no chance of ever becoming anything resembling a baby. Yes you can read URLs but apparently you don't know what the word "triploid" means (it means 69 chromosomes instead of 46).

One of those photos is an egg that was fertilized by two sperm (the triploid one). Oops. That one isn't going anywhere, though you CAN actually tell that by looking, at least at the stage I posted. But you'll stand up and tell everyone on this forum that's a person.

And you kill those that you confess are babies.

*I* don't kill anything that could be considered, even by you, a baby. And I don't recommend women have abortions at any stage. I recommend they use birth control in the first place. Even types of birth control you want to ban.

 

[mighty_duck]

Why should it prior to the 24th week if it is irrelevant after?

Special pleading perhaps?
- You accept that all women should not be forced to carry a fetus full term without their consent.

- Although she does not want to consent to carry her fetus full term, you feel that a woman in the 25th week of pregnancy should be forced to carry her fetus to term without consent.

I have explained this in my previous post and throughout this thread.
I am using a reasonable standard - not an absolute, vacuum sealed, damn-the-circumstances-and-the-consequences standard.

As such, there is no special pleading.

The idea of consent to use a person's body is important.
The idea of life, even of a single cell, is important.

Balancing them is not an easy or automatic decision. Defaulting to absolute rules (which are themselves mostly unsupported) is a bad way to seek justice - here and anywhere else.

See above. If a woman doesn't discover that she is pregnant until 24 weeks after engaging in consensual sex, can she refuse to give others access to her body?

Admittedly, the dilemma is harder here. However, it is reasonable to expect a woman to know if she is 6 months pregnant. At this stage, the fetus has a working cerebral cortex, and the loss with abortion is much greater than it was at conception.
At some point the pendulum swings.

This is needlessly vague. We have discussed the circumstances of the 96% versus the 4%.
When are the 96% of cases justified after week 24?

90% of abortions happen before the 13th week. If you are consistent with your stated goal of not using the extreme 4% to govern how we deal with the other 96%, you’d apply it in this case as well.
Same thing for the extreme 0.001% who don’t know they are pregnant at 6 months.

Feel free to define "personhood". But, when the next individual disagrees with your assessment, then what?

The same thing that will happen when you have someone disagree with your assessment that “all humans have a right to life, and by humans I also mean a single celled zygote”.

It’s the exact same problem, redefined. My definition of the problem brings some clarity – it explains who we value and why.

Perhaps without realizing it, your definition uses a linguistic trick - the ambiguity of the term “humans”. While it is tightly defined in biological terms, it is not tightly defined in the ethical world where it is actually being used in this case.

Ask a 100 people if it is true that ““all humans have a right to life”, and you’ll get 90 that agree.
Aks a 100 people if it is true that “all humans have a right to life, and by humans I also mean a single celled zygote”. and you’ll get significantly less agreement.

By discussing “personhood”, we are diving at the heart of the disagreement – who we value and why. By using the biological “human” we are cloaking the real issue.

 

[Alate_One]

You're a biologist. Why the disbelief? You don't consider a zygote an organism? :think:

My point was more that you're declaring a zygote an organism and a skin cell not.

A skin cell can divide and respond to stimuli. And if you don't accept a skin cell itself, there are immortal cell lines from human cells. HeLa is the most famous but there are many others. They would certainly also be considered organisms and they have human DNA.

Thus being an organism and having human DNA, does not a person make.

I was simply showing you why your cut and paste was not applicable to the discussion.

It was and is still part of the discussion. A zygote is not a human body.

Also not applicable to the discussion. A zygote isn't dead. It is very much a living human organism.

A recently dead person's cells aren't all dead. A brain dead person's cells aren't dead at all, yet they're generally considered a person no longer.

A skin cell is still a piece of a whole, regardless of what science can do with it. Again, composition. A zygote is the underdeveloped whole. A skin cell is a piece of the whole.

But a skin cell can develop into a whole, so can some zygotes that are properly formed and placed into an appropriate environment. I can also take a cell from the early cell divisions of a zygote (100 cell embryo) and grow an entirely new embryo from it. That's the same mechanism of natural twinning. That cell was a part of a whole too. All multicellular organisms are capable of reproducing either naturally or through scientific manipulation through "pieces of a whole" because EVERY cell contains the same whole a zygote does. EVERY cell contains the complete genome of a person.

Exactly! Stop trying to equate a skin cell with a zygote. If you put a skin cell into the womb what could possibly occur? Now, if you place a zygote in a womb, what could possibly occur?

The only difference in result is a handful of genetic switches. Flip those and your skin cell will act as if it were a zygote. It has ALL of the same instructions for doing so.

A zygote is a A) new organism B) a whole organism
A skin cell is neither of the above.

It's NOT a whole organism. A whole organism for human beings is a human body. It is a new genetic combination.

The following works for me:

A zygote or a zygocyte is the original cell that comes to creation when a new organism is formed through sexual reproduction. A zygote is formed from the synthesis resulting out of the union of the two distinctive gametes. On the other hand the embryo is the mutlicellular diploid eukaryote in one of the early stages of development. The eukaryote is termed as the embryo, in humans, 8 weeks past the fertilization.

While still fairly arbitrary (7 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, and 59 seconds vs. 8 weeks) let's conduct another red herring test.

Would you support legislation outlawing all abortion after the 8th week? If not, debating what a zygote is or isn't is a distraction. We should start with why you think an embryo is not worthy of legal protection from elective abortion.

It's probably the best policy. I'm not sure it would fly with the public, but it would be worth a try.

 

[Yorzhik]

I realize that, and understand your position.

But did you understand my point?

I do understand your position. But I disagree. The correct position would be to regard all humans as persons to, at least, have the most happiness for the most people.

Yes. People have rights.
Cells are not people.

The consequences of calling certain humans "not people" are grave. In fact, the majority agrees with you - After the 2nd trimester, support for abortion falls to minority support for largely the same reasons you cite. Yet, abortion is legal throughout all trimesters despite that. Why? Because when you start saying some humans aren't people, then it's easy to allow more humans to be treated like they aren't people.

Yes. Many laws which determine a clear but arbitrary line in the sand have a blurry principle behind them.

The principle behind legal age of voting is cognitive development. When exactly a person is developed enough to be able to vote is blurry. We address that by using a reasonable standard, and drawing an arbitrary line in the sand at 18 years of age.

We do the same for drinking and driving (not at the same time, mind you).

I need to fight the urge to make a comment here about why arbitrary law is almost always bad for a society. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.

The line you use is blurry because defining which humans are persons is tricky business. And with death on the line a lot of people will have an opinion. Their opinion, unfortunately, is just as valid as yours when it comes to deciding which humans are persons and they've already decided to make that line far enough beyond yours that you have to conclude murder has been legalized in the US. And seeing as respected people have proposed killing an innocent child after it is born without repercussion, and gov't officials have proposed that old people should hurry up and die without repercussion, I hope you realize that the blurry line wasn't worth it to begin with.

Not quite. Your line is clear, but I disagree with the principle behind choosing it. And it leads to similar results as any arbitrary line - ie an ovum that has a sperm enter it but has not yet fully fused its DNA is not a person, while a second later it is a person.

Yikes, one second? Have you ever heard the joke about the engineer and the scientist vying for a girls love? You would totally lose the girl with this kind of attitude.

Telling a woman she no longer has the right to determine who or what can access her body is something we shouldn't take lightly. I don't feel that saving the life of a brainless zygote is a justifiable reason to violate that right.

I don't think we should take it lightly. I just don't think it is heavy enough to start getting into the game of deciding which humans are persons. We have a clear line with small consequences so it would be better to use it.

 

[Yorzhik]

A zygote isn't complete any more than a set of instructions to build a car is a complete car. It's a completely illogical conclusion. A dead body/brain dead person IS actually a complete person, why shouldn't it get the same rights?

If you took a set of instructions that made a car by adding water to them, when you went to buy a new car you would buy that device. You'd even say "I'm going to buy a new car" and end up with a little pill. And when you showed your new car to friends they'd ask what kind it was. You'd tell them the brand and style. You wouldn't say it was just a set of instructions.

Your analogy is totally wrong. A zygote isn't just a set of instructions.

Actually the female body doesn't "know" anything.

Yes, it knows there is a fertilized egg before it implants.

Despite the failure of drug prohibition, there would not be a huge black market for these chemicals because women don't want to take them *now* when they are easy to get and relatively cheap.

Huh? What are you talking about? Huge numbers of women are on "the pill". It is the number one source of contraception.

You missed the point. There are over 1 million abortions a year because women would rather not take a relatively simple pill all the time. They'd rather take chances and pay the bigger price later. Therefore, if killing their innocent child was not an option, then they would either have the child or not take the chance.

It was clear you didn't understand the point when your graph showed a small minority of things that would be banned to stop the killing of innocent humans; IUD's and emergency contraception.

Not true. Huge numbers of people are using the morning after pill.

This was reported just a few days ago. I guess you don't pay attention.

A study by researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics found that 11 percent of "sexually experienced" women between the ages of 15 and 44 said they had used one of the four brands of emergency contraceptive pills approved by the FDA between 2006 and 2010. In 2002, only four percent said they had. The survey, which is the first of its kind to look specifically at use of the pills, also found that most women aren't using them as a substitute for regular birth control. Of those who reported having used emergency contraception between 2006 and 2010, 59 percent said they had used it only once, and 24 percent twice. Only 17 percent said they had used it three or more times.

This is nowhere near the number of people requited to sustain a black market the size of our current illegal drug culture.

Just what we need, another reason to throw people in jail. The pill isn't an abortifacient, neither are most of the other forms of hormonal contraception. they *may* have a slight chance of causing an embryo to fail to implant.

I know, which is why your fears would not be realized. RU-486, Plan B, IUD's, and there are a couple others called emergency contraception. That's why the black market will be small.

Letting women die in the streets and having tons of abortions regardless. If you're not going to police it appropriately, why bother?

So women will go and seek a way to die in the streets? I call BS.

Besides that, the compassion shown by current pro-lifers will continue. I suppose this is your chance to say there is no compassion shown by current pro-lifers. But that's only because you ignore all the help every woman that decides to keep her baby gets when she turns away from an abortion clinic. Every single one gets help, and we would find help for every last one if the millions that got abortions had changed their mind in the same way.

 

[mighty_duck]

I do understand your position. But I disagree. The correct position would be to regard all humans as persons to, at least, have the most happiness for the most people.

But there's the rub. Cells aren't capable of happiness, or suffering for that matter. You need a working nervous system for that.

The mother is capable of both, so she should be our main concern.

The consequences of calling certain humans "not people" are grave. In fact, the majority agrees with you - After the 2nd trimester, support for abortion falls to minority support for largely the same reasons you cite. Yet, abortion is legal throughout all trimesters despite that. Why? Because when you start saying some humans aren't people, then it's easy to allow more humans to be treated like they aren't people.

3rd trimester abortions are exceedingly rare, difficult and in many cases unlawful.

The slope is not as slippery as you imagine.

I need to fight the urge to make a comment here about why arbitrary law is almost always bad for a society. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.

Might make an interesting thread!

The line you use is blurry because defining which humans are persons is tricky business. And with death on the line a lot of people will have an opinion. Their opinion, unfortunately, is just as valid as yours when it comes to deciding which humans are persons and they've already decided to make that line far enough beyond yours that you have to conclude murder has been legalized in the US. And seeing as respected people have proposed killing an innocent child after it is born without repercussion, and gov't officials have proposed that old people should hurry up and die without repercussion, I hope you realize that the blurry line wasn't worth it to begin with.

Abortion has been legal for over 40 years, and we're still not offing babies and the elderly at will.

The slope is not as slippery as you imagine.

Yikes, one second? Have you ever heard the joke about the engineer and the scientist vying for a girls love? You would totally lose the girl with this kind of attitude.

I'm not sure I've heard this one, but usually the scientist is butt of the joke. Which works out just fine for us engineers.

I don't think we should take it lightly. I just don't think it is heavy enough to start getting into the game of deciding which humans are persons. We have a clear line with small consequences so it would be better to use it.

That is a reasonable position which I can respect.

I've all but given up hope to ever convince anyone in an abortion debate. The best we can hope for is to understand each other, and hopefully agree that despite our different conclusions, we have good intentions coming in. From there, we can find things we do agree on and work to make things better.

The alternative is the caricature of the anti-Women self righteous puritans vs the baby-murdering pro-orgy satanists.

 

[Alate_One]

If you took a set of instructions that made a car by adding water to them, when you went to buy a new car you would buy that device. You'd even say "I'm going to buy a new car" and end up with a little pill. And when you showed your new car to friends they'd ask what kind it was. You'd tell them the brand and style. You wouldn't say it was just a set of instructions.

I think the analogy is totally lost on you.

Your analogy is totally wrong. A zygote isn't just a set of instructions.

That's essentially what it is. It has a complete human genome (just like every other cell) the difference is, it's ready to execute those instructions. Of course when dealing with any living organism, it can self-replicate and follow its own instructions, unlike a car.

Yes, it knows there is a fertilized egg before it implants.

No, it doesn't. Show me scientific evidence otherwise.

You missed the point. There are over 1 million abortions a year because women would rather not take a relatively simple pill all the time. They'd rather take chances and pay the bigger price later. Therefore, if killing their innocent child was not an option, then they would either have the child or not take the chance.

No, YOU missed the point. Many women are already taking advantage of birth control. You really think the reason for abortion is women are lazy and *want* to go through abortions rather than simply taking contraception?

It was clear you didn't understand the point when your graph showed a small minority of things that would be banned to stop the killing of innocent humans; IUD's and emergency contraception.

Actually, research shows most types of IUD and emergency contraception don't prevent implantation. It's technically possible for that to occur, but the same is true of the pill. You'd have to ban everything but condoms and diaphragms to be *sure*.

I know, which is why your fears would not be realized. RU-486, Plan B, IUD's, and there are a couple others called emergency contraception. That's why the black market will be small.

No. You've lumped things together that are NOT at all the same. RU-486 is actually an abortifacient, plan B and other types of emergency contraception are not abortifacients.

You need to get your facts straight before continuing.

 

[mighty_duck]

Ooh, can I play the hypotheticals game too?

A person might grab a bag full of a million dollars rather than the bag full of $999,999. Therefore the second bag is worthless and should be discarded?

Not a fair hypothetical. One person declares a nugget of gold and a stick of gum have the same value, and yet would save the gold nugget but not 100 sticks of gum.

That means their first declaration was false.

If the hyptothetical holds, then the declarations that zygotes and babies are the same or have the same value is similiarly false.

If it holds, we have also established an "upper bound" for the worth of 100 zygotes.

Would you save the zygotes if the building was otherwise empty and no harm would come to you during your attempt?

Sure, but I would also save a pack of gum in that scenario. That just means the zygote has a value greater than 0.

If the hypothetical holds, we need to establish a lower bound.

Let's try: If the burning building held a puppy, squealing horribly from the flames, and a zygote in a dish. Which would you save?

If you're a cat person, replace the "puppy" with "kitten"

You have two women in a burning building and both of equal physical ability.
One just found out she was pregnant
You only have time to save one.

Which would you save and why?

All things being equal, probably the pregnant one.
Again, if the hypothetical holds, this only establishes that a zygote is more valuable than nothing.

My answer would be the same thing if there were two equal men, but one of them was holding a puppy.

DISCLAIMER: hypotheticals are not a good way to determine value decisions, for either side.

 

[WizardofOz]

Quick question. After the zygote has split several times, and is made up of 8 or 16 undifferentiated cells, are each of these cells a person/organism?

:think: You and Alate are asking good questions and bringing up good points. Obviously these issues have to be dealt with; ethically, legally, etc.

Is each cell a:
"Person" - :shut:
"Organism" - This should be easy for anyone to define objectively. First, is a zygote an organism?

If you remove one of them, it can grow in to an identical twin. If a removed cell reattaches to the blastocyst (or whatever it is called at that point), it can grow as part of the original organism.

Here is a drawing of the "first stages of segmentation of a fertilized mammalian ovum." Semidiagrammatic. z.p. Zona pellucida. p.gl. Polar bodies. a. Two-cell stage. b. Four-cell stage. c. Eight-cell stage. d, e. Morula stage.

As you can see, from zygote to morula, the cells split inside a membrane.

A morula is an embryo at an early stage of embryonic development, consisting of cells (called blastomeres) in a solid ball contained within the zona pellucida.

Since the cell division occurs inside the same membrane (zona pellecuida) I am confident that, in a technical sense, all the cells contained within are a part of the same organism.

This is really not very different than Alate's skin cell question. If you remove an individual cell, the miracles of modern science could conceivably turn that cell into a duplicate human.

I don't consider the piece of skin anything more than just that but if it were to become a duplicate human, obviously that human would have a right to life. Where along the line of duplication do you feel that being should be protected from being killed?

I thought determining personhood based on location was a big no-no. No?

:chuckle:

 

[Stripe]

"Devastated" over a zygote? Not unless you'd been going for IVF treatment and it was your last hope to have a child. But then you might be equally devastated to learn your eggs were useless for childbearing.

It seems your capacity to understand is about level with your capacity for compassion.

You're a heartless witch.

A zygote can even be split into multiple people using current technology.

Yip.

*I* don't kill anything that could be considered, even by you, a baby. And I don't recommend women have abortions at any stage. I recommend they use birth control in the first place. Even types of birth control you want to ban.

And you're a liar to boot. The supposed "right" to abortion trumps personhood for you.

 

[Stripe]

A zygote is not a human body.

Yes, he is.

A recently dead person's cells aren't all dead. A brain dead person's cells aren't dead at all, yet they're generally considered a person no longer.

That's because brain and skin cells aren't people. :duh:

But a skin cell can develop into a whole

...and therefore your conclusion is that the murder of babies that even you grant personhood to is justified.

You have no rationality as well as no soul.

 

[quip]

What exactly is the point then? The hero saves a person from a burning building instead of a Petri dish full of zygotes, therefore, what?

In a nutshell:
Humans beings tend to instinctively value undeniable persons over Petri dishes full of zygotes. There is a natural tendency to value the infant simply because of the hero's compassion and empathy it holds for the infant's imminent suffering. No such emotion is expressed for the zygotes.

A person might grab a bag full of a million dollars rather than the bag full of $999,999. Therefore the second bag is worthless and should be discarded?

You're equivocating 'value' here. The hypothetical expresses instictive and perceptible moral worth....not tangible worth.

The hypothetical fails because it does nothing to determine the actual worth of what got left behind other than in (subjective) relation to what was saved.

They are both human beings. The pro-life crowd proclaims (quite loudly) that both sets here are unequivocally equal. Obviously they are not. It's a failed point of pro-life ideology.

It really has nothing to do with abortion or defining the value of a zygote/embryo/fetus.

The perception of value for the zygote differs than that of the infant. Even you confessed to this obvious fact. So why you keep asserting otherwise just leaves me confused. :dead:

Under what context are you referring to?

A third party harming the fetus.

Yet, not everyone shares the same intuition and the hypothetical does nothing to define what it sets out to.

Really? Run this scenario one-thousand times and tell me how many would intuitively choose the multiple zygotes over the infant? (Given no other vested interest in either one.)

The hypothetical does nothing to determine value. That's my point.

You stated: "I am not stating that a zygote is necessarily equal to a newborn as far as worth, just as I would save a child before I would save an old man, even one with less physical ability."

Where did you gather that value judgment? intuition? common-sense? All I'm saying is that the hypothetical mirrors this exact judgment.

I countered by offering a hypothetical that would be quite applicable to abortion (the topic of the thread) and you conveniently declare that I am "losing focus".

Would you save the zygotes if the building was otherwise empty and no harm would come to you during your attempt?

No, I wouldn't ..simply because they hold no extrinsic nor intrinsic value to me.

:sigh:

I guess you're only here to discuss your hypothetical despite me offering you two of my own that seem to apply to the actual topic of abortion.

They're there if you want to give them a shot. But again, I understand your hesitation.

You're still fishing. I told you if i could only save one I'd save the one based on external circumstances. you didn't like that answer so apparently I was wrong. :mmph:

 

[WizardofOz]

I have explained this in my previous post and throughout this thread.
I am using a reasonable standard - not an absolute, vacuum sealed, damn-the-circumstances-and-the-consequences standard.

As such, there is no special pleading.

My apologies. I view a lot of the more generic pro-choice arguments fallacious in this regard, not your arguments specifically.

You may view your position as a reasonable standard. However, that is something you undoubtedly have in common with every person with an opinion on the matter.

The idea of consent to use a person's body is important.
The idea of life, even of a single cell, is important.

I agree with both but when the individual's own action resulted in the pregnancy, they are directly responsible for the pregnancy.

Liberty should not be tilted fully in favor of the party responsible especially when that scale ends with the death of the party not responsible.

For justice to prevail equitably for both parties, adoption. The responsible party can thereafter shirk all responsibility and the party not responsible gets to live.

This is an equitable act of justice.

Balancing them is not an easy or automatic decision. Defaulting to absolute rules (which are themselves mostly unsupported) is a bad way to seek justice - here and anywhere else.

Yes, I too feel that I am using a reasonable standard. My standard preserves the life and liberty of both parties. When the party not responsible is killed, how can that said to be "balancing" anything especially in regard to an equitable search of justice? :idunno:

See above. If a woman doesn't discover that she is pregnant until 24 weeks after engaging in consensual sex, can she refuse to give others access to her body?

Admittedly, the dilemma is harder here. However, it is reasonable to expect a woman to know if she is 6 months pregnant. At this stage, the fetus has a working cerebral cortex, and the loss with abortion is much greater than it was at conception.
At some point the pendulum swings.

Why is the loss greater? You may not accept the comparison, but I don't see a loss lesser or greater when a woman miscarries compared to when a child is stillborn.

Society cannot argue that emotional investment determines worth or value otherwise killing a homeless person with no family or friends would be legal.

There is no pendulum. At least there should not be. Human life should be the most basic of liberties worthy of protection and not based on an arbitrary "pendulum view" of when human life is valued enough not to be electively killed.

90% of abortions happen before the 13th week. If you are consistent with your stated goal of not using the extreme 4% to govern how we deal with the other 96%, you’d apply it in this case as well.
Same thing for the extreme 0.001% who don’t know they are pregnant at 6 months.

Would you support legislation outlawing abortion after the 13th week?

The same thing that will happen when you have someone disagree with your assessment that “all humans have a right to life, and by humans I also mean a single celled zygote”.

A human zygote is human, is it not? There is nothing ambiguous about it. There is no reason to twist logic, accept something and then oppose the same something after crossing an arbitrary line drawn in the sand, etc.

All humans have a fundamental right to life. It should be an easy statement to find agreement.

It’s the exact same problem, redefined. My definition of the problem brings some clarity – it explains who we value and why.

It's naive to assume there is a "we" in the collective sense. That is one of the points I have repeated. There is no collective in this regard. That is why attempting to establish "personhood" objectively is a fool's errand.

Perhaps without realizing it, your definition uses a linguistic trick - the ambiguity of the term “humans”. While it is tightly defined in biological terms, it is not tightly defined in the ethical world where it is actually being used in this case.

It's no trick; it's objective, unambiguous and technical. All of which are the complete opposite of throwing about terms and phrases like "person", "personhood" and or "human-being".

Ask a 100 people if it is true that ““all humans have a right to life”, and you’ll get 90 that agree.
Aks a 100 people if it is true that “all humans have a right to life, and by humans I also mean a single celled zygote”. and you’ll get significantly less agreement.

This doesn't make a human zygote any less human. People need a way to rationalize being ok with killing the unborn so they use all kinds including but not limited to: saying the human zygote isn't a person or doesn't look like a person or have all the traits and/or characteristics of people as they understand them to possess.

They'll agree that all humans have a right to life but as soon as you assert that this includes the unborn, the rationalizations begin.

By discussing “personhood”, we are diving at the heart of the disagreement – who we value and why. By using the biological “human” we are cloaking the real issue.

What is the "real issue" if not what rationalizations sound good enough to justify abortion?

 

[Alate_One]

It seems your capacity to understand is about level with your capacity for compassion.

An average woman doesn't pine every month when she loses zygotes (maybe). Some women even breathe a sigh of relief. But really Stripe, you're not a woman. I'm assuming you're not married or in a relationship. Why do you think you have the slightest clue how "women" as a whole feel or should feel?

You want compassion for single cells and then show none for a woman who finds out she's pregnant and doesn't want to be or a woman who is suffering medically from her pregnancy or one who finds out her unborn child has a terrible abnormality.

You're a heartless witch.

And you're a name calling waste of time.

And you're a liar to boot. The supposed "right" to abortion trumps personhood for you.

I am? You have some kind of mind reading ability?

I'm done with you till you stop name calling and (incorrectly) tell me what I believe. :wave2:

 

[Lighthouse]

You are very entitled to hold that opinion because that's all it is, but you are not entitled to force others to comply who honestly don't see it your way.

In the case of murder your argument falls flat.

 

[WizardofOz]

My point was more that you're declaring a zygote an organism and a skin cell not.

A skin cell can divide and respond to stimuli. And if you don't accept a skin cell itself, there are immortal cell lines from human cells. HeLa is the most famous but there are many others. They would certainly also be considered organisms and they have human DNA.

Thus being an organism and having human DNA, does not a person make.

While the skin cell may be alive, it is part of a human being. The proof is that it performs some smaller function in the functioning of a larger organism. The human body is made up of a number of systems: the cardio-vascular system, the digestive system, and so forth. A skin cell may have human DNA, but only the DNA involved in performing the cell's function is activated. A skin cell can't do anything else but be a skin cell. A zygote however has all its DNA active. The DNA is working towards creating all the systems the baby will need to function as a mature human being. This makes him an independent organism, whereas a cell only exists to perform one function of an organism. Another major difference between a zygote and a skin cell is that when a skin cell divides, the two divisions split to become new cells. When a zygote divides, the cells do not split, but become part of a greater whole. The only possible exception to this is the creation of twins. But even then, after a certain number of cell divisions, it becomes impossible to create twins. The divisions normally lead to a greater complexity of the zygote organism, not to a carbon-copy clone of a single cell.

It was and is still part of the discussion. A zygote is not a human body.

What is the first stage of the human body? If you feel I am wrong, provide an alternative starting point.

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Also not applicable to the discussion. A zygote isn't dead. It is very much a living human organism.

A recently dead person's cells aren't all dead. A brain dead person's cells aren't dead at all, yet they're generally considered a person no longer.

Again, a zygote is a living human organism. A dead person is not a living organism regardless of the status of their individual cells.

What are you disputing?

The only difference in result is a handful of genetic switches. Flip those and your skin cell will act as if it were a zygote. It has ALL of the same instructions for doing so.

Both abortion and cloning involve human intervention. If you turn a skin cell into a person, can that person be arbitrarily killed? When would you grant the clone legal protection? What will the skin cell become, stage by stage? Explain the process and indicate the stage at which you would grant legal protection.

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A zygote is a A) new organism B) a whole organism
A skin cell is neither of the above.

It's NOT a whole organism. A whole organism for human beings is a human body. It is a new genetic combination.

If a zygote is not a whole organism, where is the rest of it? It may not be fully developed (incomplete) but it is certainly whole given its current state of development.

It's probably the best policy. I'm not sure it would fly with the public, but it would be worth a try.

I won't agree that it's the ideal but :cheers: to you for being open to sliding the scale.

 

[Alate_One]

:think: You and Alate are asking good questions and bringing up good points. Obviously these issues have to be dealt with; ethically, legally, etc.

Here is a drawing of the "first stages of segmentation of a fertilized mammalian ovum." Semidiagrammatic. z.p. Zona pellucida. p.gl. Polar bodies. a. Two-cell stage. b. Four-cell stage. c. Eight-cell stage. d, e. Morula stage.

As you can see, from zygote to morula, the cells split inside a membrane.

A morula is an embryo at an early stage of embryonic development, consisting of cells (called blastomeres) in a solid ball contained within the zona pellucida.

Since the cell division occurs inside the same membrane (zona pellecuida) I am confident that, in a technical sense, all the cells contained within are a part of the same organism.

This is really not very different than Alate's skin cell question. If you remove an individual cell, the miracles of modern science could conceivably turn that cell into a duplicate human.

You don't just need a "miracle of modern science", it can happen naturally. It's called twinning.

I don't consider the piece of skin anything more than just that but if it were to become a duplicate human, obviously that human would have a right to life. Where along the line of duplication do you feel that being should be protected from being killed?

The same place I'd draw the line with a normal pregnancy.

 

[Alate_One]

A skin cell may have human DNA, but only the DNA involved in performing the cell's function is activated. A skin cell can't do anything else but be a skin cell.

Indeed but most simple organisms only reproduce themselves. And yes there is the "activation" question - the cell is differentiated, but all of the instructions are there. A zygote however has all its DNA active. The DNA is working towards creating all the systems the baby will need to function as a mature human being. This makes him an independent organism, whereas a cell only exists to perform one function of an organism. Not all actually, it's still a small subset, just the parts focused on developing a human body. If it had ALL of the DNA active it would be some horrible monstrous combination of specialized, heart, bone, eye, skin and other types of cells all at once. That's not what a zygote is. It's undifferentiated, a blank slate. Another major difference between a zygote and a skin cell is that when a skin cell divides, the two divisions split to become new cells. When a zygote divides, the cells do not split, but become part of a greater whole. No, the cells split fully, just like a skin cell. If you're trying to say they don't float away from one another, of course not, even skin cells don't do that. The cells of a multicellular organism generally stick to one another, that's what it means to be multicellular. If you're talking about the zona pellucida - that's a temporary membrane - embryos have to "hatch" from it to implant into the uterine wall. The only possible exception to this is the creation of twins. But even then, after a certain number of cell divisions, it becomes impossible to create twins. The divisions normally lead to a greater complexity of the zygote organism, not to a carbon-copy clone of a single cell. Most simple organisms do reproduce by making a carbon copy of themselves. The zygote does have the capacity to undergo development when placed in the correct environment. But as you note with the twins - making them is possible early on but at some point that becomes impossible - when they become separate *individuals* maybe? What is the first stage of the human body? If you feel I am wrong, provide an alternative starting point. I'd say you have something approaching a body when you've at least got the beginnings of tissues. Perhaps gastrulation, the formation of the neural tube etc. Some of the cells from the blastocyst will form the placenta - I doubt you consider that part of the human body. Just so that we're clear about how human reproduction actually works. Human Reproduction I won't agree that it's the ideal but :cheers: to you for being open to sliding the scale. I think the current situation with abortion policy in the USA isn't good, but I don't think you're going to get zygote protection ever. You're going to have to draw a semi-arbitrary line somewhere and fight for it to get any change, imo. I'll have to answer the other points later.

 

[Stripe]

An average woman doesn't pine every month when she loses zygotes (maybe). Some women even breathe a sigh of relief. But really Stripe, you're not a woman. I'm assuming you're not married or in a relationship. Why do you think you have the slightest clue how "women" as a whole feel or should feel?

It's called empathy you heartless pig.

You want compassion for single cells and then show none for a woman who finds out she's pregnant and doesn't want to be or a woman who is suffering medically from her pregnancy or one who finds out her unborn child has a terrible abnormality.

No, liar. Nothing you say has any substance or rationality.

And you're a name calling waste of time.

It accurately described who you are.

I am? You have some kind of mind reading ability?

Just read your words.

I'm done with you till you stop name calling

Great! Bye bye. :wave2:

tell me what I believe.

Easy. You condone the murder of unborn children even after you confess them to be persons.