The Only Logical Answer is Conception
Here’s the point: It doesn’t matter what anybody—and this includes the courts—thinks or believes about when life begins, because each and every position on the question is merely somebody’s opinion. This is why the only logical answer to the question must be that life begins at conception, since, in the case of abortion, any other conclusion risks killing a human life. If it’s true that nobody knows, then the standard must be one that cannot fail to guarantee justice. You need no recourse to religious teaching to support it. Simple logic is sufficient. With due respect to Justice Blackmun, no speculation is required if one accepts the prudential assumption. You say you can’t say? Okay then, the only sensible rule has to be one that is the most biologically and legally generous—the one that protects every life whenever that life may actually begin. You don’t have to be right about the question; you do need to eliminate the possibility of being wrong.
And so I say again: Life begins at the beginning.
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The egg is alive. The sperm is alive. The two merge...and life continues. Nothing ever died so that life had to 'begin' again from a biological point of view. So it is true that there is a regression, again, from the biological point of view, though not infinite. There was a time at which Homo Sapiens sapiens did not exist.
How is it that conception is not a sufficient condition? Certainly one can argue that many fertilized eggs (zygotes) die, but there is no known case of a non-fertilized egg developing into a human being. Of course there must be some way to provide nutrients to the fertilized egg and since eggs have been successfully fertilized outside the human body, we are missing the womb. Has any fertilized egg grown into a baby without being inside a mothers womb for some period of time?
About being human: Many wish to define when life starts as they please so that they can either further their own social agenda or stop somebody elses. But if life (biologically) never stopped, then the question becomes when is it 'right' to interfere with such life? For that matter, when is it 'right' to interfere with any life? And who determines 'right', and how dow we know that their definition of 'right' is right?
Using Christianity as the answer, let's look at the Bible:
Genesis 2:7: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Genesis 6:17: "And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die."
Genesis 7:22: "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."
Job 33:4:"The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life."
Psalm 33:6: "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth."
Psalm 150:6: "Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD."
Genesis 25:8: "Then Abraham breathed his last and died . . ."
These are only a few examples of this symbolism.
Against all this, the proponents of conception as the divider will trot out Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
The biblical concept is human being becomes alive when the soul enters the body upon birth and the taking of the first breath. This Christian belief was the basis for the English common law of inheritance, for example, noted by the SCOTUS in Roe v. Wade.
Biblical references to death refer to "breathing his last."
Now add the symbolic essence of the Sacrament of Baptism. Not the pouring of water version symbolizing cleansing the soul of Original Sin, but the original (and still common) form by immersion.
Immersion of the individual in water symbolizes a return to the womb, and when brought back up, there isa rebirth in Christ Jesus, symbolized by the taking of a new "first breath."
Christian teaching in the 13th Century approved of abortion until "quickening" or a more formalistic (and different) number of weeks of gestation for male and female fetuses. This can be found in papal writings as well as in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae.
Current Catholic teaching sets conception as the start. It's clear to me that such a standard should only be imposed on those who believe in such a faith formulation in opposition to the Bible-based truth spanning the human life from first breath to last breath.
Creating a legal standard based on beginning human life at conception would be to define the end of human life as the termination of the process of decay. we could expect:
a. funeral rites where there is a spontaneous abortion or even an unusually heavy flow after being late with their menses
b. changes in the laws of descent and distribution
c. a de-emphasis on "birthday" celebrations and a new emphasis on celebrating approximate "conception day" anniversaries(with my four children , I know an exact date my daughter was conceived, or at least the exact time of the romantic interlude - actual conception could have been a day or even two later. With the other three, all I can do is count back a couple of weeks or so from "missing.")
d. a reformulation of the sacrament of baptism to perhaps eliminate immersion in favor of the "cleansing the soul" motif engendered by pouring water
e. all sorts of issues in automobile negligence and other tort lawsuits.
It's one thing to respect the process of construction - and quite another to call the structure a house from the time the plans are drawn by the architect and the building permit is issued. Of course, people don't tend to build houses by accident, while pregnancy is often enough an unintended consequence.
Human life in the abstract is a continuum - the egg that provided half my genetic blueprint was formed in my mother 's mother's womb some time in 1927 or 1928, while the sperm that contained the other half was generated some time in the week or two before my conception in the early 1950's. And there was a point in those early 1950's when the eggs that would ultimately "become" my four children were formed, while the sperm that prvided the other half of their nuclear genetic inheritance were formed in the span from 1980 to the very early 1990's.
In one regard, human life is a continuum without a real ending or beginning, and in another, the span of the life of a human being is between first and last breath.
I believe in respecting life, even that of pre-born babies who are not yet legally human beings. But I cannot in good conscience impose my own belief on someone else who does not believe the same way.
I need to find out what day my parents had sex and use that as my new birthday! Changing all my personal documentation may get expensive, but it must be done! Anyhoo, my birthdays parties will now be 9 months earlier! Yea!
We can all agree that a fertilized egg is alive. But so also is an unfertilized egg or a sperm. They're not dead, and they're not inanimate objects like a stone. Almost every cell in my body is alive. Life began eons ago, and continues uninterrupted from one generation to the next. So we're not talking about the beginning of life, but the beginning of a particular living individual.
Genetically, we could say that a new individual begins when a new combination of genes emerges. This happens whenever an egg or a sperm is formed, and it happens again when an egg combines with a sperm. The latter combination usually lasts longer than the former, but does that make it the only beginning of an individual?
And when a fertilized egg divides into two identical twins with no change in genetic profile, are they both still the same individual as was the original cell? If not -- if identical twins are different individuals, then unique genetics must not be the definition of a unique individual. So what is the significance of the fertilization of an egg? Maybe a fertilzed egg is just a potential human being, or dog, or whatever, in the same way that a sperm or unfertilized egg is. Maybe it's the development of a functioning, thinking brain with a unique mind that constitutes the beginning of an individual. That seems to make sense.
The religious, of course, substitute the word "soul" for "mind," and they speculate blindly about when the soul is assigned to the body, having absolutely no information on the subject. Interestingly, as well, I believe they tend to conceive of the soul as much more mature than the rudimentary single-cell body it supposedly inhabits, capable from the beginning of self-awareness and thought and probably a love of God. That's why killing a brainless single cell is repulsive to them. It really is just a religious issue.
Brad Miner's argument on the one hand approach the issue from a legal/question of abortion point of view to avoid scientific or philosophical arguments, but then goes to the scientific/philosophical arguments to avoid legal issues. Essentially, his argument is that we don't know, so for legality's sake we should say it's at conception, except this ignores other legal issues such as a woman's rights. He needs to either deal completely with the legal issues, or actually tackle the philosophical issues. He's trying to have it both ways.
You were doing so well up until here. You are being wrenchingly absolute. The issue of aborting a pregnancy involves painful issues of moral uncertainty.
I propose that there is a fundamental error in your 'beginning of life' argument. You take as given that there actually exists a definitive point at which a fetus becomes human (gets rights). You appear to be saying that abortion before this point is fine and afterwords in an enormous crime (murder). I think this is the wrong way to view the development of a baby.
What if, instead, the moral 'crime' of abortion increases continuously throughout the process of development? What if it is wrong to abort any fetus, but at the very beginning of a pregnancy it is wrong to a degree similar to that of truancy or libel and sometime later it is wrong to the same degree as accidentally causing grievous bodily injury, and somewhere near the end an abortion is truly wrong to the degree of murder? I think this progression is much more in keeping with society's view of abortion. This allows for a compassionate comparison between the medical needs and rights of a pregnant woman and the gradually increasing realization of the human potential of a fetus.
My conclusions.
There is no magical point in development where a fetus transitions from worthless to human.
A ball of cells can not have the same rights as a post-birth baby.
No abortion is as morally inconsequential as having a mole removed.
"becomes human" = "gets rights" (?!?)
Let's try an analogy:
Suppose I asked, when does life begin... for butterflies and moths?
1>Female lays egg
2>Fertilization of the egg
3>Egg hatches
4>Larva's first moulting
5>Wing disks develop
6>Chrysalis forms
7>Adult emerges
I can't see where it would make any sense to argue for step #1. The cell is haploid and (I believe) cannot (without fertilization) grow or metabolize. One could argue for #'s 3-7, I suppose, but to what end? If you start talking about gradually becoming a lepidopteran (or 'fully lepidopteran' or a 'lepidopteran being') despite being lepidopteran life, then you just seem goofy. You can argue that the ordinary referents to 'moth' and 'butterfly' are the adults, but that doesn't have anything to do with the fact that from a scientific point of view, the term should be applied not merely to the adults.
Maybe you already disagree.
If you don't, then consider that (IMO) the only reason to advocate for #'s 3-7 as when life begins for a butterfly or moth is that there is a concern regarding value or emphasis being given to one portion of the life cycle. For obvious reasons this happens when the question is put to ordinary people about human life. Ordinary people are not trying to limit themselves to empirically based determinations. Scientists (qua scientists) are required to do just that. They have every right to assess value, as ordinary people, but not from the standpoint of "doing science".
Value and emphasis (and especially the attribution of rights) are normative and arguably subjective. Science is supposed to be empirical and objective.
This business about human life with the potential to be fully human or to be a human being seems from my POV to be strictly applicable to one species. If that is so- then how is it justified as being something other than normative and non-scientific?
Mr Hammond: With holometabolic life (a word I definitely did not know an hour ago!), I think that your gradual approach would have even more justification- and yet it would still seem to me that it is merely continuously developing toward adulthood, not continuously developing toward becoming a full member of its species. Absent the problem of a 'rights/no_rights' or 'worthless/important' dichotomy, would you not also grant that there is no basis for trying to distinguish (for any species, X) between being 'X life with the potential to be fully X' and just 'a live X'?
I have read your responses in various places. Thank you for being so thoughtful regarding this subject. If the question was precisely defined we might come to terms. They talk about the issue of abortion and then ask a nonsensical question, which needs to be interpreted in a context before it can be answered. My various posts, which you have responded to, have been themselves responses. The context has varied somewhat between philosophical, scientific, and legal.
The theme to my thoughts is that I deny that there is a singularly important event in the life cycle of humans. We are Homo sapiens at every point and alive at every point. The parts of us that are new and unique appear at several different places in the cycle.
In moral terms, I argue that it is morally wrong to purposefully destroy a fetus at any stage. However, I deny that a fetus is equal at every stage. The wrongness increases as we acquire the parts that make us unique, complex, and eventually sentient.
If I was arguing for conception as THE start, I would begin with a nasty question: What is the first stage of human development called, and when does that stage begin? Many people will answer zygote and you will have them.
However, the correct answer is gamete - beginning at meiosis. We have a brief haploid period in our life cycle, which occurs at the very beginning of human reproduction. Gametes are as independent from their parent as a fetus is, so there is still the question about whether they are really distinct or just a part of the parent. Random events in meiosis lead to a unique genetic make up for each gamete. Another random event (which egg and sperm join) leads to a zygote with a unique make up. Zygote is the first diploid stage. So, if the question at the top was, "When does the first diploid stage of human life begin?" the answer would be, at conception.
Aside: Now I could be belligerent and mention that when a human begins to burn resources on reproductive structures that is really the beginning - the point where a human starts preparing the next generation. This illustrates the nature of a cycle, there is always something before.
This discussion of beginnings simply does not help with the broader question of abortion. The ideologues on both sides of the abortion issue want an answer that leads to a legal result. They both want to create the binary situation that I argue against - the worthless/important dichotomy as you aptly describe it. In the absence of people trying to make this dichotomy you and I would never have had this discussion. The minor distinctions between being a sperm with the potential to be human and simply being a live human would be an esoteric subject.
Aside: "Now I could be belligerent and mention that when a human begins to burn resources on reproductive structures that is really the beginning - the point where a human starts preparing the next generation. This illustrates the nature of a cycle, there is always something before."
I'm a bit unclear about what that means. Does 'burning resources' mean using energy? What do you mean when you say 'reproductive structure'? Are you talking about puberty or the development of genitals in utero?
"This discussion of beginnings simply does not help with the broader question of abortion ."
I agree to an extent. The abortion question is about ascribing rights. What sort of rights do women have over their reproduction? How extensive can these rights be before we reach the point of absurdity? (Unless you're [famous and controversial bioeticist] Peter Singer, you'd have to admit that it would be absurd to try to justify an elective abortion once ex utero viability has been attained.) What sort of rights do humans have prior to birth? How extensive can these rights be when they conflict with the wishes of the mother?
The questions are philosophical, not scientific. The reason that I think it is significant to establish that science does establish that human life begins at conception is that it shows people that the issue is not one that can be resolved through science. If you accept that there is a human life involved other than that of the mother, then you accept that you are dealing with how to ascribe rights. If you reject that there is another human life, then you can reject as absurd the notion that you would be giving rights to a such a thing- they compare it to giving rights to a tumor. Some (but not all) pro-choicers use this strategy.
"The ideologues on both sides of the abortion issue want an answer that leads to a legal result. They both want to create the binary situation that I argue against - the worthless/important dichotomy as you aptly describe it."
Hmmm. Perhaps. I'm not sure if I agree with that. Most pro-choicers allow that a certain level of development entails restricting abortion. Roe has different criteria for the trimesters. The current law can be interpreted as taking a 'spectrum' approach rather than a binary approach. The problem is that the law has to be reasonably simple, and so rather than a continuous gradual change, you end up with 'quantum leaps' from one trimester to the next.
As a pro-lifer, I am willing to admit that I do have a worthless/important approach as regards gametes versus zygotes. I don't think that that is philosophically problematic. I believe that there is a dichotomy of human/non-human and that being pro-life is an outgrowth of that for me.
I do have a spectrum approach if you expand your parameters far enough. Some non-humans (non-mammals) have (in my view) no rights. Most mammals have a right to humane treatment. Some mammals (great apes and some cetaceans) have rights even beyond that. All humans have a right not to be injured or executed (especially without due process) but nothing more than that. Only as you mature to you accrue additional rights.
As far as value (as opposed to right attribution) is concerned, that would come up in 'life boat' dilemmas. If only X people can survive and there are X + N people, then how do you decide who lives and who dies? Relative worth of human life (in my view) is only appropriate to discuss in such situations, but they are rare. That's also the reason that I have no problem with exceptions for the life of the mother.
"In the absence of people trying to make this dichotomy you and I would never have had this discussion. The minor distinctions between being a sperm with the potential to be human and simply being a live human would be an esoteric subject."
I like esoteric subjects. I'd probably have been interested in this topic anyway
No one is battling over the status of viruses, and I've had discussions about that just for fun.
My tastes aren't typical. :)
Many interesting thoughts. Do you mean really an atheist, or pretty sure. Absolutely certain atheism seems like another religious belief to me.
The definition of what is alive is fun. I threw my hands up a while ago and have just decided that anything that has both the potential to use environmental energy to combat entropy and has evolved counts as alive. I throw out the consideration of the potential for future reproduction. If it evolved to get where it is, then that is good enough for me. Viruses encode proteins that combat entropy. So do some plasmids. Prions do not*. Lizard tails and sperm are both definitely alive - until they run out of ATP and die.
*Prions are always tough. There are some yeast prions where the normal (non-prion) state of the protein is an enzyme that would qualify as alive. As far as I know, the prion form always loses this quality.
TWO
"If I was arguing for conception as THE start, I would begin with a nasty question: What is the first stage of human development called, and when does that stage begin? Many people will answer zygote and you will have them. However, the correct answer is gamete - beginning at meiosis."
Well, that is kind of funny to me in a way. I'm pro-life but an atheist, and pro-life atheists get annoyed when they're arbitrarily lumped together with religious fundamentalists. Someone asked me (around the time of the election when Palin caused talk of abortion to spike) how I could be an atheist and be opposed to contraception. I said that that was a stupid question because "I don't care what people do with their gametes". I told him that the government could put condom dispensers on every street corner and I'd mostly be concerned about it leading to more littering.
Gametes aren't humans. They are human cells, but I'm sure you'll agree that's saying a different thing. A fertilized egg is a human cell too, of course, but with a difference: that single cell grows until it is indisputably a human being. No gamete ever does. That is why a human life begins (starts to grow into an adult human) immediately after conception.
In the abortion debate, pro-choicers like to say that a fetus isn't a person, but merely a _potential_ person. (Of course, they reserve the right to define "person" to themselves!) Two gametes are a potential human if one is a sperm and the other is an egg. If they're both sperm or both, then you don't have any potential humans. You've just got human parts.
A chlorine atom isn't (table) salt, and neither is a sodium atom. You need both, and you need them to bond before you have salt. A sperm and an egg are analogous to the chlorine and the sodium. Until you get both, you only have pieces. Until the two fuse, you may have a full set of pieces, but that's _all_ you have. When I was younger I took apart a calculator once. I still had all of the parts, but I didn't have a calculator anymore :)
Gametes may not even be alive. I don't know if scientists use a significantly different approach, but in philosophy we occasionally discuss what is alive and what is inanimate, and I'm not sure that gametes qualify.
We talk about "live sperm" sometimes but electricians talk about wires being "live" too. Sperm are motile for a period of time, but so is a lizard's tail. It might be "live" in some sense of being active, but it isn't alive.
A sperm cannot make another sperm. (Can eggs ever make other eggs? I don't know. I know that they don't usually, but I don't know if some weird mutant eggs do occasionally.) If a thing isn't the type of thing that can make another of its type, then it is not supposed to be considered a form of life.
A sperm cell might be considered to have a form of metabolism- I'm not sure. I know that sperm are affected by outside chemicals which can cause them to speed up. I don't know how that works or what the process is called. An egg doesn't have a metabolism (as far as I know). Having a metabolism is a necessary condition for life.
The cases that we found especially interesting when we discussed this topic were seeds and viruses.
Seeds' dormancy made it hard to decide if they stopped being alive for a time or not. Frozen cells which can be revived have the same problem. This can affect the debate over the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. If their being frozen means that they are not alive (even if they can potentially be brought back to life), then can they be killed?
Viruses are interesting too, because they don't grow, they lack a metabolism, and they can't reproduce themselves. New viruses can only be made if they inject their DNA (or I guess RNA) into a living non-virus. (Later I learned that prions raise the same issues. I'd actually never heard of them until I was reading about BSE.) Plasmids are something I learned about because of this discussion. It seems to me that whatever category you put viruses, plasmids, and prions into is probably the category you should use for gametes.
ONE:
You wrote, "I deny that there is a singularly important event in the life cycle of humans. We are Homo sapiens at every point and alive at every point. The parts of us that are new and unique appear at several different places in the cycle."
I wonder if it is within the purview of science to identify a "singularly important" event. Wouldn't ascribing importance require the abandonment of science's claims to objectivity and detachment? If we are homo sapiens at every point, then shouldn't science merely identify the earliest point as the beginning?
If a neurologist assigns importance to when neural activity begins, then that is appropriate given his field- for that is what is important _in_his_context_. Life without neural activity is not particularly significant (except as it affects life that does) in his field. Nonetheless, a scientific determination of when something begins shouldn't deal with what is important. It should deal a beginning in terms of what is earliest. Do you disagree?
Do scientists find it hard to come to a consensus about when life begins for fruit flies? I think that you said that you were a biologist. I'm sure that you said that you were a scientist. If you say that there isn't a consensus on fruit flies, then I'd like to hear more.
If they don't, then it seems that humans are probably treated differently as a result of importing philosophy (my chosen field) into science (yours)? Fruit flies are hard to invest with much importance. We talk about "humanity" being a quality in a way that is not equivalent to the quality of being "a member of the species homo sapiens sapiens". There is no equivalent quality of "fruitfly-ity".
Sexual reproduction seems to have a pretty clear starting point. Eukaryotes get kind of hazy- where does the parent cell leave off and the daughter cell start?
Assigning a beginning is trivial from a distance and gets harder the closer you look. In some ways it is even more complex with fruit flies than with humans, since nurse cells with maternal genetics govern the development of the early embryo for quite a while before the genetics of the embryo take over.
There is no scientific need to define the beginning of something more broadly than for the experiment that you are conducting. When wildlife biologists count gazelles they choose a definition that works for them. When neurobiologists study neural development they wait until some point in development when a particular event happens.
This question (when does life start?) is not a scientific one. I am a scientist, but I am not claiming to have authority regarding the issue, except where others make a false claim of scientific conclusion.
With regards to the simple firsts, meiosis is the first event that gives rise to a unique genetic combination that will become part of a new person. Conception is another later event that can be described the same way. Conception is special, because pregnancy is special. All pregnancies have emotional importance to the people involved and should be viewed as having a moral 'worth.' That is why we should work to reduce abortions. This is an issue of law and society, not science.
The claim that this is the only "logical answer" is positively absurd. If it's logical at the stage of a fertilized egg, why not at the sperm and ovum production? But those events can't happen without their host bodies first being born, so maybe it should be the grandparents' conception of the earliest parent. But then you run into the same issue and it regresses infinitely.
Conception is certainly a choice and a point in time, but to claim that it is the only logical answer is utter inanity. Just as a fertilized egg is a component of a human finally being born, so are millions of other factors, many including the internal environment, incubation and nourishment of a fetus inside of a woman. To say that a fertilized egg *is* life would to be say that an engine *is* a vehicle. It simply isn't sufficient to produce a human.
As long as we're talking about logic, we may as well examine actual logical constructs. A fertilized egg at the point of conception is a *necessary* condition for human life, but not a *sufficient* condition. As any logician knows, a consequence cannot come about without *all* necessary conditions (and at least one of them or an additional one being sufficient). Under this model, life could be defined as the point at which all necessary conditions (and at least one sufficient condition) have been fulfilled. Logically, that probably puts the event at the point at which a fetus can survive outside of the mother.
Obviously that's not the only possibility for when "life" begins because the question is terribly broad—after all, sperm are most certainly alive. This is also not the best criteria for drawing a line for abortion , but it's indisputably more logical than the original author's weak and baseless claim.
There are more pertinent questions to be asked in the abortion debate beyond this one, such as "When does a fetus achieve independent brain function?". On those topics there can certainly be fruitful and interesting debate, but this question is too broad and this "expert" is tragically naïve.
You haven't given any reason to rule out conception as being sufficient, and you have allowed that it is necessary. Miner's point was not that it was logically necessary that conception be considered the starting point- rather that it is 'logical' to err on the side of caution when potentially taking human life. This is a non-technical use of 'logical', and he might have been better off to say 'rational'. If you get past that point, then he is certainly right that if you wish to choose the most 'cautious' interpretation, then it would mean that you'd have to pick conception. (Your suggestion of haploid gametes is just silly.)
Of course conception is a necessary condition for a new human life—to argue otherwise or even bring it into doubt would simply be a waste of time. That is, assuming we have the same definition of conception.
With equal certainty, conception is not a sufficient condition for new life—at least, if you define life as independent life. Without a mother to incubate a zygote into a fetus and eventually an infant, there is no independent new life. Simply remove the mother from the equation after conception to deduce that result.
As for those who think that the zygote is already a new life, (not requiring that the life be independent, in other words), considering things like warts, moles and tumors each as new lives should lend to a different perspective. This isn't a completely absurd position to hold, but it is certainly eccentric and not one I feel compelled by.
Then there are those who say that the zygote is a new life because it will eventually be an independent life. To me this seems no more convincing than arguing that a chunk of metal is a new car because it will eventually be used in the manufacturing of a car. There is a large emotional component to many peoples' positions on this issue that I am less affected by. When looking at the issue logically, I haven't seen a single convincing argument that the new life begins at conception.
My original point was that on the nec/suf issue, you granted the former but made no positive argument for the latter, whereas the article was arguing that if the latter is not excluded it would be 'rational' not to err on the side of possibly taking a human life.
If you just want to consider life as equivalent to independent life, then you're attempting to bypass the problem entirely by redefining 'life'. People who are uncontroversially alive can be incapable of surviving independent of life support. Unless people on respirators are "un-alive", that would eliminate independence as a necessary condition.
Warts, moles, and tumors are not germane. They are just body tissue which may not be functioning normally. A zygotes is not a part of the woman's body.
A chunk of metal, if left alone, will remain a chunk of metal (or deteriorate). A zygote, if left alone, will begin the process of developing into a person. The argument that because something is not in a state now entails that we should treat it no differently than something which is not particularly likely to enter that state is irrational. If a boulder were rolling down a hillside toward my car and I regarded it is merely another rock on a hill, then I would be foolish.
Logic can point out that an argument is invalid, but it can't speak to the merit of a definition. Logic won't help the post-conception side any more than the pre-conception side.
A zygote, if left totally alone, will die. However, if left to it's own devices as an implant in the mother's uterine lining, it may develop into a human being, it may not. A tumor, if left to its own devices on a person's body may develop into cancer and metastasize or may simply get larger and larger. The point is, there is no guarantee for any given outcome, only possibilities, given a set of probabilities and conditions . Zygotes are not like plant seeds where if you put them in the ground and give them a minimum of care, they'll sprout into fully living systems. If a mother gives her self no prenatal care she greatly reduces her chances of giving birth to a healthy or even live birth. Definitions in each argument must be clear and must have logical merit based on clear points and evidence. Therein logic can help one side or the other. A zygote cannot survive outside of the mother. It requires nutrients and other conditions (which at the present level of technology ) that only a mother can provide. The fact that a zygote is implanted in a mother's uterus and survives off of the mother's nutritional supply, is affected by the mother's internal milieu and homeostatic status, and does not possess a brain or consciousness and mind of its own makes it part of the mother, not a life unto its own, therefore subject to the mother's wishes for her body. At present, no technology on Earth can deliver a zygote of any placental mammalian species and keep it viable so that it develops into a live being. If the mother dies, there is a very, very small window (as in minutes) where doctors theoretically can find and prepare a suitable surrogate who can carry that zygote to term, but, outside those narrow conditions, without the host, be it the natural mother or surrogate, a zygote dies along with every other tissue in the mother. These conditions are the same for every other tissue in the mother's body. None of these tissues are considered to be separate lives. They can theoretically, given today's developing cloning technology generate new life. While the individual cells themselves may not be able to generate a new life, the genetic material inside, including that contained in cancer, wart or mole cells, contains a complete blueprint and theoretically only has to be transferred to a viable ovum to become a zygote and become a "new life". If the mother wishes to excise any of that tissue, there is no, "separate life" argument given. Yet, embryonic tissue that exists as a zygote/blastula/embryo/fetus that exists in the very same conditions, that would die outside of the mother or surrogate is governed under a separate set of rules and laws. My only " pro-life " argument would be that, in the human case, since the father provides genetic influence and will be subject to providing care, under the law , a father should have input in any decision regarding the zygote/embryo/fetus. However, since those decisions ultimately affect the mother, her health and body in general (not just the developing zygote/embryo/fetus) she and her health care provider should have ultimate say unless she designates otherwise... but all that was off topic and I apologize.
Well said and well written. If other folks want it changed they need to change the law and leave everyone else alone. Or they could move to Afghanistan and join some of the radicals there.
Super Expert
Thank you for your kind words. However, I think the need to change the law is precisely the problem at hand. That is the reason why many individuals on either side of the debate, especially, those in any position to influence policy are making back flips and other acrobatics in reasoning and/or twisting logic. I feel the law should reflect facts, evidence and logic, and, reasoning based on those facts and evidence presented, tempered with the wishes and benefit of the public (notice I did not say the law should reflect the will of the public at large). I expect nothing better than "gut feeling" politics and politics based on unfettered morality not tempered or influenced by reason and logic from the masses, who are easily influenced by demagogues and extremist "gurus"... However, that our elected leaders have debased themselves and lowered themselves to this over the last couple of years (some would say decades) such that our republic is slowly headed towards the Shura system employed by Iran or Afghanistan, where the "mullahs" are running the the government, is disheartening.