If Abortion becomes illegal in the US

[palerider]

Perhaps we should legislate that any male who fails to take responsibility for his side of the pregnancy equation should be sterilized?

Maybe that would cut down on the number of unwanted pregnancies?

Sterilized and garnished until the child graduates from college. I have no patience with people who won't face the consequences of their actions. Male or female.

 

[top gun]

palerider;17996] Another opinion that you're entitled to hold I guess...

The Question is Also What it Is, Not Just When it Begins
Published by Warren September 14th, 2006
With the fairly recent decision by the FDA to provisionally allow distribution of the “Plan B” pill and the attendant noise from (what are increasingly known as) anti-choice activists, it’s easy to see why the subject of abortion specifically, and conception control in general, is on my mind. I’m hardly unique, after all.

(As an aside, the “Plan B” type pills were approved without fuss in many other nations which had already settled their abortion issues. The US is lagging in this, quite badly.)

The history of Plan B is painful. Initially the pill was to be freely available over the counter to pretty much anyone who asked for it, but FDA approval was stalled. Minimum age requirements were then put in place, but approval was still stalled. This continued for several cycles until the minimum age was set to 18, at which point the pill passed the FDA review board.

It comes back, by long and discursive means that include boogeymen such as teenagers having sex (What? Never!) and the desire by at least some men to have control over women, to abortion.

There are plenty on the anti-abortion side who claim that Plan B is an abortion pill, but it isn’t. The pill just prevents an egg from implanting on the uterine wall. This actually happens quite frequently due to natural biological processes, and even after implantation the zygote isn’t guaranteed to survive. About half of all “pregnancies” end somewhere in the early implantation stage, before the woman could ever know she has a fertilized egg in her.

The only difference between spontaneous flushings like this and what Plan B provides … is that the woman decides, in the latter case, that she will take an additional precaution against pregnancy. That decision alone is enough for some to call taking the pill an abortion, but that is a semantic quibble, not a factually-valid argument.

I can see the problem, I think. Hardliners who are dead set against abortion in any context, even in the case of rape, incest or the mother’s life being endangered by the pregnancy, seem to hold as their central argument that life begins at conception — but the clear fact is that conception is not a single point that can be fixed in time. It’s actually a process that requires three stages to be completed before it can be argued to have happened:

Sperm is accepted by egg (the egg chooses the sperm that fertilizes it; it doesn’t just go to the strongest swimmer as was once thought).
Egg implants on the uterine wall.
Egg remains on the uterine wall long enough to actually form something more complex than a mass of stem cells (days, at the very least).
But at any of these three stages, if anything goes awry, the fertilized egg or zygote is flushed from the woman’s body, terminating the pregnancy before it can even be detected.

So the problem facing the “life begins at conception” camp is twofold; first, when exactly is the moment of conception? And second, does this apply to every conception? If so, what about the half or so that never make it past stage 3, above?

These questions have to be asked and answered, and it’s a problem because just as soon as you start asking these questions, anti-abortion hardliners seem to get very hostile. They don’t seem to want to have to think about it too much, maybe because what they’re proclaiming sounds like nonsense, even to themselves.

I think — though I can’t be sure — that what is meant by “life” in the hardline anti-abortion camp is closer to “ensoulment”. That is, the moment the sperm and ovum join, the product is something possessed of a literal, actual soul, despite the utter untraceability of such a thing.

This is close enough to a belief in magic that it makes many people feel a little queasy when they really think about it. It’s only slightly less primitive than believing a man’s sperm is “seed” that is “sown” into the “fertile place” of a woman’s body — that is, the woman is a passive receptacle for the man’s Baby Juice, and all she really acts as is an incubator with legs and a convenient double-spigot milk dispenser.

And this still begs the question of what it means to the idea of ensoulment that half of all fertilized eggs are jettisoned by women’s bodies.

The tangential question — the definition of a soul — is crucial to this discussion as well.

Saying the I that I think I am existed from conception doesn’t make sense from a simple perceptual perspective. I can’t offer proof of my own consciousness existing prior to a period some time after the infant I used to be was born; if I had actually been in full existence prior to that time, why wouldn’t I be able to remember it?

It is obvously foolish to assert that my mind has remained fixed over all those years, that it emerged from the moment of conception as a solid, finished whole. Well, if a soul is somehow attached to this consciousness, wouldn’t it be apparent as some kind of eternal, unchanging thing, or something that has never modified itself from that first moment when two gametes met?

Wouldn’t I be aware of it somehow?

Is a soul, something eternal and changeless and ostensibly present from the moment of conception (or a moment somewhere in the process of conception), really that much harder to find than my left big toe?

Or is it possible that, if a soul exists, it develops along with the mind, the consciousness, the awareness?

That would be much more convenient in terms of abortion — if we can say that a soul grows, as a body or a mind grows, then we don’t have to explain the fifty-percent success rate of fertilized eggs. We don’t actually have a moment of ensoulment, any more than we have a moment of consciousness.

With consciousness there is no clear line of demarcation. We can’t fix a point in time in any one person’s development and say, “Before that moment, there was no consciousness; after that moment, there was total and fully-functional consciousness.”

Ensoulment, then, like consciousness, becomes an emergent property of a complex biological process, subject to all the fuzz and uncertainty that conscious development holds. The problem there is that hardliners want to make unambiguous something that, by its nature, must be uncertain. It’s required not just from their religious perspective, but from a legal point of view as well.

Laws, in order to be universally applicable and consistently enforcable, seek to place on life the one thing life can’t have: Fixed, unambiguous certainty. And since neither conception nor ensoulment nor consciousness can be said to have happened at a specific single point in time, attaching laws to when abortion is permissible and when it is not becomes much, much harder.

Of course, this “development of soul” outlook will be resisted by the magical thinkers, who aren’t comfortable with analyzing their “life begins at conception” claims too closely — but it will also be rejected by insightful faith-holders, who understand that by suggesting a soul is an emergent process like consciousness, it’s an easy step to suggest the soul itself just doesn’t exist. It’s an unnecessary complication; human life and awareness doesn’t need a soul to be understood.

Now for many a soul is a nice idea, a comforting thought; however, it is not necessary. There is no aspect of human behavior that requires the presence of a soul to be understood; there is no part of human life that is comprehensible with the idea of a soul but incomprehensible if the idea of a soul is taken away.

I’m not trying to convert anyone to atheism, so I’ll leave this part of the discussion and move on to life — which is ever so much easier to define.

Life’s tricky. I see it as a kind of standing wave in otherwise unremarkable matter. After all, living things absorb chemicals, keep those chemicals for a while, and then pass those chemicals along; there’s no clear boundary with the body of a living organism, any more than there is no clear point at which it can be said consciousness has come into being.

Of course, this can be related back to the abortion discussion. There is definitely a time when a fetus is more like a newborn infant than not, in terms of development and ability to survive without its umbilicus and mother’s body; and there is a time when the fetus is much less like a newborn infant. Most people would probably be comfortable agreeing that abortion is more acceptable in the latter time, and progressively less acceptable the closer the fetus comes to being like a newborn infant. But again we have the problem of fixing an arbitrary point when we say “This fetus may no longer be aborted.”

Unless we do one of two things: Make all abortion illegal, or make all abortion legal.

Neither alternative is palatable to a surpriusingly large number of people, but from a standpoint of human health and dignity alone, I think it’s wiser to slip to the side of total legalization than a total ban. If we’re caught having to decide one or the other, with no middle ground or compromise, I think the majority would agree — however grudgingly — with that assessment.

Part of being a civilized society includes protecting innocents — but I have to decide that a functioning, pregnant human being is more “alive” than the fetus she has and does not want or cannot bear; in my view, this means the mother’s needs must always matter more than the desires of those who do not want her to end her pregnancy.

That aside, we will never be able to reach a completely-satisfying conclusion, because in order to do so we’d have to be able to say, with absolute certainty, when life begins, when it ends, what it means to be alive, what the nature of consciousness is … and what it actually means to be human.

 

[dahermit]

Question for palerider

The law can't define human life. Human life is what it is and no law can change that.

Playing devil's advocate again; thank you for indulging me.

On one slide is a human egg next to a human spermatozoa. On another is a human egg that has just been fertilized with a spermatozoa. What is your basis for determining that the second slide is a human being and the first slide is not?

 

[palerider]

Playing devil's advocate again; thank you for indulging me.

On one slide is a human egg next to a human spermatozoa. On another is a human egg that has just been fertilized with a spermatozoa. What is your basis for determining that the second slide is a human being and the first slide is not?

Aside from the obvious difference in appearance, the sperm, like an egg only has 22 chromosomes plus one X sex chromosome in the case of the egg and and an X or a Y sex chromosome in the case of the sperm. . The egg that has been fertilized has a full compliment of 46 chromosomes just like the reast of us and is therefore a human being.

 

[Coyote]

You are missing the fact that it is possible, with a very simple blood test, to determine that a woman has been pregnant, not that I am suggesting that we go to such lengths. A woman found in posession, however, could easily be tested to see if she had actually killed another human being with those pills.

A blood test could detect pregnancy before implantation even occured?

 

[palerider]

A blood test could detect pregnancy before implantation even occured?

Yes. Immediately after fertilization is complete, the unborn begins chemical communication with its mother's body directing her via hormones not to attack it as an invader.

There is a race among makers of early pregancy tests to produce a test that can detect pregnancy at the earliest date. My bet is that within 10 years, over the counter tests will be sensitive enough to detect pregnancy within hours of fertilization.

You may want to keep tabs of the makers of such tests for your stock portfolio.

 

[r0beph]

So riddle me this, pale. What of eggs which are fertilized outside the body, you know, in a petri dish? Are these also human? Is it wrong to toss these dishes aside? Is a human life created when some PhD squeezes a syringe of semen into a dish containing an egg? You are asserting that this is the case. I call shenanigans.

On this same note, there has been elsewhere, discussion of clones. It is said that human life in this case "could" conceivably be created without conception/egg & sperm. While this is theoretical (and well debated) it is a viable question. Since clones form from implanted dna, and form in a very similar manner as eggs do, at which point would they be considered human? Is it as cell division begins? Is it at the point that it begins "communication" (in your case, hormone communique)? What if this is purely outside the womb and the formation was directed towards only the growth of an organ? is this a human still at the low stage of cellular development before one directs the growth?


While I know this is all hypothetical and somewhat on the fantastical, at some point this may become reality and is very relevant.

Lastly, the supposition that the ability to communicate makes the cells human is not a validation of the argument. Communication is by no means a directly human trait. And I imagine you're trying to equate autonomous communication with life. This also is not exactly a valid argument, as I can show you plenty of examples of software that is autonomous and communicative. Of course I digress. I simply cannot find any justification for stating that the cellular conception of an egg is A human life.

I know much of what I asked here is a bit abstract and far reaching, but so is your suppositions.

 

[palerider]

So riddle me this, pale. What of eggs which are fertilized outside the body, you know, in a petri dish? Are these also human?

Of course. We don't become something different because of our geographical location (inside/outside). We are just what we are in a different location.

Is it wrong to toss these dishes aside? Is a human life created when some PhD squeezes a syringe of semen into a dish containing an egg? You are asserting that this is the case. I call shenanigans.

Yes it is if fertilization is complete. Do you believe it is fine to create human beings for the purpose of medical experimentation? Those stem cell lines that are presently being used are in effect families of human beings who will never have any chance at life beyond being the subject of medical research.

On this same note, there has been elsewhere, discussion of clones. It is said that human life in this case "could" conceivably be created without conception/egg & sperm. While this is theoretical (and well debated) it is a viable question. Since clones form from implanted dna, and form in a very similar manner as eggs do, at which point would they be considered human?

At the point that is analogous to fertilization. At the point that it has a complete set of 46 chromosomes.

Is it as cell division begins?

No.

Is it at the point that it begins "communication" (in your case, hormone communique)?

No. It has been alive for some small time before it organizes enough to begin communication.

What if this is purely outside the womb and the formation was directed towards only the growth of an organ? is this a human still at the low stage of cellular development before one directs the growth?

Again, we aren't a different thing because we are in a different geographical location. If you began with a liver cell for instance and were able to direct the growth of a liver from that cell without having to create an embryo first, then you would not be experimenting on human beings, you would be experimenting with human tissue which is fine by me.

Lastly, the supposition that the ability to communicate makes the cells human is not a validation of the argument.

I never suggested that they were human because they could communicate. They are human beings by virtue of what they are. I merely pointed out that they communicate with their mother to explain to coyote that we can detect that a woman has been pregnant even if the child never implants into the uterus.

I simply cannot find any justification for stating that the cellular conception of an egg is A human life.

Then the fault lies with you and your inability to grasp the biology of developmental biology. No offense but that is explanation enough. I simply can't wrap my mind around certain concepts in quantum physics (effect being a precursor to cause for example). The fact that I can't grasp the concept however has absolutely nothing to do with the reality.

 

[dahermit]

Still more questions for palerider:

The egg that has been fertilized has a full compliment of 46 chromosomes just like the reast of us and is therefore a human being.

How many chromosomes do chimps, and orangutans have? Under that difinition, if 46, chimps would be human. However, my main quesiton is: Who's definition (above), is that?
1) Legal
2)Scientific
3)Religious
4) Other

It is not likely number one because you said: "...The law can't define human life. Human life is what it is and no law can change that..."

How about number two? Everything I have read that was derived from science referred to a fertilized egg as a "Zygote", or a human zygote, not a human being. Nevertheless, please provide a citation if this is the basis for your statement.

If number three, Mare will jump on you like a duck on a June bug; God help you.

Number four is offered because you may have a basis that I have not anticipated and do not want to put boundaries on your definition.

 

[palerider]

How many chromosomes do chimps, and orangutans have? Under that difinition, if 46, chimps would be human.

Chimps and orangutans have 48 chromosomes.

However, my main quesiton is: Who's definition (above), is that?
1) Legal
2)Scientific
3)Religious
4) Other

It is not likely number one because you said: "...The law can't define human life. Human life is what it is and no law can change that..."

How about number two? Everything I have read that was derived from science referred to a fertilized egg as a "Zygote", or a human zygote, not a human being. Nevertheless, please provide a citation if this is the basis for your statement.

What the material you are reading would depend upon the agenda of the writer or what the purpose of the material was and the readership it was intended for.

"Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."
John C. Fletcher, Mark I. Evans, "Maternal Bonding in Early Fetal Ultrasound Examinations," New England Journal of Medicine, February 17, 1983.


"The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."M. Allen et. al., "The Limits of Viability." New England Journal of Medicine. 11/25/93: Vol. 329, No. 22, p. 1597

"an unborn child is a human being from conception is “supported by standard textbooks on embryology or human biology” T.W. SADLER, LANGMAN’S MEDICAL EMBRYOLOGY (John N. Gardner ed., 6th ed. 1990;

These are from medical textbooks and peer reviewed medical journals. The agenda is to teach and to pass on accurate information. If you want more citations, I can provide more.

 

[dahermit]

Will await counter citations.

What the material you are reading would depend upon the agenda of the writer or what the purpose of the material was and the readership it was intended for.

"Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."

John C. Fletcher, Mark I. Evans, "Maternal Bonding in Early Fetal Ultrasound Examinations," New England Journal of Medicine, February 17, 1983.


"The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."M. Allen et. al., "The Limits of Viability." New England Journal of Medicine. 11/25/93: Vol. 329, No. 22, p. 1597

"an unborn child is a human being from conception is “supported by standard textbooks on embryology or human biology” T.W. SADLER, LANGMAN’S MEDICAL EMBRYOLOGY (John N. Gardner ed., 6th ed. 1990;

These are from medical textbooks and peer reviewed medical journals. The agenda is to teach and to pass on accurate information. If you want more citations, I can provide more.

No, I am sure that these will be enough for your adversaries on this thread to provide counter citations from scientific journals. I am not here to tell anyone they are wrong, I just want to hear the best arguments from both sides.

 

[palerider]

What the material you are reading would depend upon the agenda of the writer or what the purpose of the material was and the readership it was intended for.

"Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings."
No, I am sure that these will be enough for your adversaries on this thread to provide counter citations from scientific journals. I am not here to tell anyone they are wrong, I just want to hear the best arguments from both sides.

I have been waiting for more than a decade for someone to provide some credible science that states that the offspring of two human beings is ever anything but a human being. So far, no one has stepped up and delivered.

Calling a zygote a human zygote instead of a human being is like calling an infant a human infant instead of a human being. Zygote, infant, blastocyst, toddler, embryo, adult, old geezer etc. etc. They are all just words some common, some scientific that are used to describe a human being at various stages of his or her life or development.

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

I have been waiting for more than a decade for someone to provide some credible science that states that the offspring of two human beings is ever anything but a human being. So far, no one has stepped up and delivered.
Calling a zygote a human zygote instead of a human being is like calling an infant a human infant instead of a human being. Zygote, infant, blastocyst, toddler, embryo, adult, old geezer etc. etc. They are all just words some common, some scientific that are used to describe a human being at various stages of his or her life or development.

You may have done it yourself when you stated that humans have a "spark" that makes them more than animals because you then went on to say that only human life has an inalienable "right to life". As far as I know no one has been able to detect or prove when that "spark" enters the fetal human, or even if that "spark" exists. If it does not exist, then humans are animals with no inalienable "right to life".

You are the scientist who is postulating a theory that appeals to you emotionally and been waiting for DECADES that someone prove you wrong. One cannot prove a negative, one cannot prove that God doesn't exist, one cannot prove that the "spark" of which speak does not exist. It's your theory, the onus is on you to prove your theory correct. None of the citations in your post did that, opinions were expressed (just like you have done) but no PROOF has been given.

 

[dahermit]

A hint of relegion

You may have done it yourself when you stated that humans have a "spark" that makes them more than animals because you then went on to say that only human life has an inalienable "right to life". As far as I know no one has been able to detect or prove when that "spark" enters the fetal human, or even if that "spark" exists. If it does not exist, then humans are animals with no inalienable "right to life".

If palerider did indeed use these words it suggests a religious argument after all despite his insistence that his argument is solely based on logic and science. Hmmmm. Well, palerider is this true?

 

[palerider]

You may have done it yourself when you stated that humans have a "spark" that makes them more than animals because you then went on to say that only human life has an inalienable "right to life". As far as I know no one has been able to detect or prove when that "spark" enters the fetal human, or even if that "spark" exists. If it does not exist, then humans are animals with no inalienable "right to life".

Are you completely unable to express anything in an honest manner. I never said that we were more than animals. In fact, I repeatedly point out to you our position in the food chain. Is it that you are deliberately obtuse or are you really this stupid? I stated clearly that there is something different about us in that we can see we have options. That you have glomed onto that word as if it means more than I said, is just another indication of your basic dishonesty.

You are the scientist who is postulating a theory that appeals to you emotionally and been waiting for DECADES that someone prove you wrong. One cannot prove a negative, one cannot prove that God doesn't exist, one cannot prove that the "spark" of which speak does not exist. It's your theory, the onus is on you to prove your theory correct. None of the citations in your post did that, opinions were expressed (just like you have done) but no PROOF has been given.

OK. I challenge you to provide some evidence of emotionality in my position. Bring it forward or admit that you are a liar.

I have never asked for anyone to prove a negative mare. Again, you don't have a clue as to what you are talking about. I can prove that the sun is not cold. I can prove that the moon does not have grass growing on its surface. I can prove that sea water is not made of sulfuric acid. I can prove that a chimp is not a turtle. Proving what a thing is not does not constitute proving a negative. If unborns were not human beings from the time they are concieved, that could be proven and would not constitute proving a negative.