I Finally Understand Why Abortion Can't Be Discussed Logically.

BubbaJoe
First of all after 17 pages of this horse manure, there is no one that is pro-abortion. A misnomer of the far right wing religious nuts that want to paint libertarians and liberals as the devil. To the so called libertarians who are pro life, what gives you the right to place rules on a woman's body. To the religious nuts, please go to church, and pray for, and adopt all of the unwanted children you want protected. Also please donate to a worthy cause, your pastor doesn't need another rolex.

Excuse me...? I am neither Libertarian nor am I religious in any way... I am someone who is tired of the "Horse manure" you and pro-choicers fling around to justify the murder of other Human beings... What's next, murdering children under 5 because the Parents can't take care of them...? The murder of the severely disabled, elderly...?

Sorry, the right of the woman's body doesn't cut it when there is another life involved... A HUMAN LIFE!

Quadrivium

BubbaJoe

Quadrivium

windword
reply to post by Quadrivium

 

The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the scientific facts, doesn't make them invalid or untrue. There is absolutely NO science to back up the claim that "life begins at conception". No matter how much you wish it to be true, it just isn't.

edit on 17-9-2013 by windword because: (no reason given)

The evidence is everywhere. You just refuse to see it Windword.
30 seconds on google and you might understand how wrong you are.

Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
*"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception)."Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of theirpronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
*"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
*"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."[Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146]
*"Embryo: The early developing fertilized egg that is growing into another individual of the species. In man the term 'embryo' is usually restricted to the period of development from fertilization until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy."[Walters, William and Singer, Peter (eds.). Test-Tube Babies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 160]
*"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."[Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]
*"Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism.... At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.... The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life."[Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
*"I would say that among most scientists, the word 'embryo' includes the time from after fertilization..."[Dr. John Eppig, Senior Staff Scientist, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and Member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 31]
*"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
*"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
*"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
*"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."[O'Rahilly, Ronan and M�ller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12]]
*"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten's Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]

www.princeton.edu...

edit on 17-9-2013 by Quadrivium because: (no reason given)

and you have never started something that you then realized was a bad idea?

Of course, yet what do you do when you realize it was a bad idea? Do you continue down that road or change course?

If I make a mistake, I do every thing I can to mitigate the consequences of that mistake, and I educate myself, in order to never make that mistake again. This would be the common answer of any intelligent individual.

001ggg100
reply to post by windword

 

Potential Human Life...? Are you serious? Please, PLEASE show me an example of ANYTHING other then a HUMAN that has been born of a HUMAN FEMALE! It IS a HUMAN LIFE....

Take your complaint about semantics up with the Supreme Court.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability the State, in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life, may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother. Pp. 163-164; 164-165.
www.law.cornell.edu...

001ggg100

BubbaJoe
First of all after 17 pages of this horse manure, there is no one that is pro-abortion. A misnomer of the far right wing religious nuts that want to paint libertarians and liberals as the devil. To the so called libertarians who are pro life, what gives you the right to place rules on a woman's body. To the religious nuts, please go to church, and pray for, and adopt all of the unwanted children you want protected. Also please donate to a worthy cause, your pastor doesn't need another rolex.

Excuse me...? I am neither Libertarian nor am I religious in any way... I am someone who is tired of the "Horse manure" you and pro-choicers fling around to justify the murder of other Human beings... What's next, murdering children under 5 because the Parents can't take care of them...? The murder of the severely disabled, elderly...?

Sorry, the right of the woman's body doesn't cut it when there is another life involved... A HUMAN LIFE!

I am sorry you are so offended by my opinions. I do this in no way to justify murder as you indicate, which unfortunately, paints you as a religious person. As far as I am concerned, it is not a human life until it is viable outside of the uterus. My belief is that this is a decision that has to do with 3 people, the mother, the father, and the doctor. The government should get the hell out of it.

windword
reply to post by Quadrivium

 

That's great! You found all kinds of quotes that state that embryonic development of a human being begins after fertilization! Yet, I saw nothing about implantation, a critical event that MUST happen BEFORE embryonic development.

According to the American Medical Association, a woman isn't pregnant until implantation has occurred. Even then, there is no guarantee that the process will yield a human being.

You still can't claim that life begins at conception. It doesn't.

It does Windword, implantation is just another step of development.
Read your post again. Does it say that life does not begin until implantation?
No it does not. Care to try again?
Your development stared before implantation. You already had your own unique DNA.

BubbaJoe

Quadrivium

BubbaJoe

Quadrivium

windword
reply to post by Quadrivium

 

The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the scientific facts, doesn't make them invalid or untrue. There is absolutely NO science to back up the claim that "life begins at conception". No matter how much you wish it to be true, it just isn't.

edit on 17-9-2013 by windword because: (no reason given)

The evidence is everywhere. You just refuse to see it Windword.
30 seconds on google and you might understand how wrong you are.

Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
*"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception)."Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of theirpronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
*"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
*"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."[Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146]
*"Embryo: The early developing fertilized egg that is growing into another individual of the species. In man the term 'embryo' is usually restricted to the period of development from fertilization until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy."[Walters, William and Singer, Peter (eds.). Test-Tube Babies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 160]
*"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."[Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]
*"Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism.... At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.... The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life."[Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
*"I would say that among most scientists, the word 'embryo' includes the time from after fertilization..."[Dr. John Eppig, Senior Staff Scientist, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and Member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 31]
*"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
*"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
*"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
*"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."[O'Rahilly, Ronan and M�ller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12]]
*"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten's Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]

www.princeton.edu...

edit on 17-9-2013 by Quadrivium because: (no reason given)

and you have never started something that you then realized was a bad idea?

Of course, yet what do you do when you realize it was a bad idea? Do you continue down that road or change course?

If I make a mistake, I do every thing I can to mitigate the consequences of that mistake, and I educate myself, in order to never make that mistake again. This would be the common answer of any intelligent individual.

I agree, so why the comment on my post to Windword. If you were following thread you would understand my post.

reply to post by BubbaJoe

Dear BubbaJoe,

Always nice to welcome a new voice into the discussion.

I started this thread with the opinion that there was not a logical argument to support the pro-choice position. I'm seeing, as the thread progresses, that if there is a logical argument, the posters so far have been unable or unwilling to express it.

Let's go back to the discussion around the opinion you've expressed:

As far as I am concerned, it is not a human life until it is viable outside of the uterus.

That's fine. You have an opinion, I have an opinion, all God's chillun have an opinion. But what is the logical argument supporting your position?

As we know, the foetus is that early stage of development of a child which occurs in the mother's womb, and during which the foetus relies on the mother for nourishment. Well, the foetus is not supposed to be viable outside the womb, it's supposed to be there. So you're saying the foetus is not a human life because it is a foetus. Fine, but not strong logically.

If you want to argue that human "cell masses" that rely on others to stay alive are not human lives because they're dependent, feel free, but maybe what, 20% of Americans are dependent on some one else to stay alive?

What logical reason is there for declaring the child in it's earliest stages is not a child?

You might want to take a lesson from windword. She will tell us over and over that it's not a life, it's a "potential" life. Unfortunately that is never truly clarified and explained. We know that it is human. We know the "thing" has a unique DNA structure, unlike either of its parents. We know that it is alive. Normal English usage thus gives us the foetus is a unique human life.

The only thing that I can conclude about windword's fondness for "potential," is that she means to be sayin that it is a human life that has the potential of being protected by American laws. That's true, of course, but everybody already knows that and it doesn't advance the discussion.

Now, apparently we're talking about the "Cycle of life." Why that supports the pro-choice position is beyond me. While life itself may not has a start or an end, each individual life does. Each life is a unique individual. None of us are immortal (at least physically) and that Harvard professor is saying something that is true, obvious, and almost entirely useless.

So, my dear BubbaJoe, let's see a logical argument on the question. As I've said in this thread and others, I'm delighted to change my mind if I'm wrong, but not if some one only has a different opinion.

(Oh, the government should get out of it? Remember in the OP, the boyfriend was charged with murder. If the foetus is determined to be a protectable human life, I want the government in it. It is not necessarily religious to have that point of view, it is concern for all life.)

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by Quadrivium

It does Windword, implantation is just another step of development.

Correct. However, implantation has to happen before embryonic development. Before that, it's just a fertilized egg, a blastocystIs.

Read your post again. Does it say that life does not begin until implantation?

Sigh. There is NO starting point to life. It's a continuous cycle.

Your development stared before implantation. You already had your own unique DNA.

Way before. I was alive in my mothers ovaries since before she was born. Fertilization is an event in the process that begins the unfolding of the blue print that will create a unique human body. In the end, the body will be a complex organism, made up of other populations of living organism of tissue cells, blood, bone and organ cells, T cells, bacteria, viruses, etc. All being a time released process, that results in a human being.

There is nothing unethical in purposefully ejecting a fertilized egg before implantation. An implanted embryo is not yet a person, and there is nothing unethical in evicting it from ones' body.

First of all after 17 pages of this horse manure, there is no one that is pro-abortion. A misnomer of the far right wing religious nuts that want to paint libertarians and liberals as the devil. To the so called libertarians who are pro life, what gives you the right to place rules on a woman's body. To the religious nuts, please go to church, and pray for, and adopt all of the unwanted children you want protected. Also please donate to a worthy cause, your pastor doesn't need another rolex.

I try not to bring my faith into these types of discussions for obvious reasons. I try and stick with the science and the facts.

I am sorry you are so offended by my opinions. I do this in no way to justify murder as you indicate, which unfortunately, paints you as a religious person. As far as I am concerned, it is not a human life until it is viable outside of the uterus. My belief is that this is a decision that has to do with 3 people, the mother, the father, and the doctor. The government should get the hell out of it.

Reading your post, like the one above, leads me to believe that you might be what YOU consider as religious. No science, just your beliefs.

reply to post by charles1952


At what point do you grant or deny a fetus it's 'right to life?' Often times answers can be found using such an example as this:
Lets say a woman has had 10 babies and aborted each one of them. Is there enough evidence to send this person to trial as a possible murderer? Is there criminal intent involved? Does it matter what the intent is or does it matter that 10 babies had their life taken from them? This is just an example to highlight the underlying point i am trying to make: at what point does abortion become a crime? Does it take a rather large number of abortions to bring attention to the idea of criminal intentions, or is one abortion enough to be considered -- in a strictly technical sense -- a murderer?

reply to post by windword

Way before. I was alive in my mothers ovaries since before she was born. Fertilization is an event in the process that begins the unfolding of the blue print that will create a unique human body. In the end, the body will be a complex organism, made up of other populations of living organism of tissue cells, blood, bone and organ cells, T cells, bacteria, viruses, etc. All being a time released process, that results in a human being. There is nothing unethical in purposefully ejecting a fertilized egg before implantation. An implanted embryo is not yet a person, and there is nothing unethical in evicting it from ones' body.

There is so much wrong with this post that I do not even know where to start.
YOUR life began in your mothers womb when her egg met with YOUR fathers sperm.
YOU Were not the egg in your mothers ovaries before she was born.
YOU Were not your father's sperm.
YOU are unique. You share a part of them both, but you are not either of them.
Why would you make such false statements? Are you truly clinging to your beliefs that hard?
As you stated earlier, "All because you keep repeating something does not make it true".
I am not trying to be mean or malicious, I just truly do not understand how an intelligent person, as you seem to be, could make those kinds of statements.
Quad

reply to post by ImagineFree

Dear ImagineFree,

Hello, thanks for joining the discussion. You've got a good question and I'm grateful. Nuggets of gold can be found on ATS, I have every expectation that you'll become a nugget.

You're asking a legal question. While I have an answer, it might not be what you are looking for. If I misunderstood, please write back.

I'm assuming you're talking about a woman going to an abortionist before the baby is about to be born. If she delivers the baby, then flushes it down the toilet, I don't know of any defense except, maybe, temporary insanity.

But in the standard case, she won't be charged with murder no matter how many abortions she has, given the laws we have now. (Although there may be states that require an abortion done by a qualified professional, so if she hits herself in the stomach until the baby dies, there might be a case. But again, that's not the normal situation.)

In the situation where a woman gets an abortion from a professional before the child is delivered, our laws don't allow for charging her with murder. It wouldn't matter if she did it one time or ten. Even if they did, under the current climate it would be tough to find a jury that would vote unanimously for conviction.

In the future? Who knows? Maybe Roe v. Wade will be modified or reversed. It reached a result that many people celebrated, but Roe is considered by legal professionals to be one of the fuzziest and illogical decisions the Court has reached. (Trust me on this.) Reversing Roe would send it back to the states for their laws to be controlling.

Morally, the pro-choicers' haven't advanced much in the way of arguments. It would be tough, and I suspect the closeness between morals and religion would make that an unfriendly arena to debate in.

Logically? That's the point I was hoping to explore in this thread. I haven't yet seen a convincing logical argument, but I'm perfectly willing to adjust my position if there is one. I wanted to get away from the slogans and empty arguments we've heard so often before.

But if I'm not properly answering your question, please write back.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by windword

Dear windword,

Sigh. There is NO starting point to life.

I AGREE WITH YOU! Unless of course, you consider the Creation event, or primordial ooze, or aliens, or a meteorite carrying life to earth, but I don't think that's what you mean.

However, there was a starting point to your individual, unique, life.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by Quadrivium


I don't know if you're being deliberately obtuse, or if you just really don't understand the biology of the issue.

YOU Were not the egg in your mothers ovaries before she was born.
YOU Were not your father's sperm.

Now your the one not making sense. I most certainly did reside in my mothers ovaries before she was born and before she ovulated and I began my trek into her fallopian tube. I was a one celled, happy haploid organism. I had the potential to become a human being if, if, if...........

When my father's sperm penetrated me, it died, but not before imparting within me, a chemical soup of chromosomal DNA information, that fused with what I already had.

This started a chemical reaction that transformed me in to a self replicating diploid cells. I began to duplicate myself. www.diffen.com...

I was a clump of cells, reproducing as per a set of instruction, but not yet a person. I had the potential to become a person, and that potential rose when I implanted in the uterine wall. If I hadn't, that would have been the end of my life.

Life has been in existence since the beginning. There isn't one magical point that we can say "There! Life started." The event of conception doesn't create an individual that suddenly has constitutional rights or human rights that override the rights of the woman who dropped her egg in the first place.

reply to post by windword


Absolutely false. "Life" is defined as:

1
a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body
b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings
c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction

2
a : the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual
b : one or more aspects of the process of living

Biology determines that even a single cell is alive. Both a sperm and ovum are alive, as is what is created when they come together.

All of this really comes down to the fact that even sea turtles not yet hatched have more of a right to life than "potential" humans. It's sickening.

reply to post by The Old American

Dear The Old American,

Now you see one of my difficulties. Even the word "Life" is argued over. I would have thought that anything that is alive has a life, but apparently that position meets with violent opposition.

I suspect that when windword uses "life," she means "Constitutionally protected life."

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by beezzer


Having had this discussion with someone in the past I was made to realize that the distinction is drawn by many at whether or not one is a sentient being.

reply to post by windword

Oh Brother!
Windword...........You were NOT an egg.
You began YOUR life cycle as a zygote.

. In higher animals, the life cycle also encompasses a single generation: the individual animal begins with the fusion of male and female sex cells (gametes); it grows to reproductive maturity; and it then produces gametes, at which point the cycle begins anew (assuming that fertilization takes place).

www.britannica.com...
Please take notice of words in BOLD print.

reply to post by The Old American

Biology determines that even a single cell is alive. Both a sperm and ovum are alive, as is what is created when they come together.

That's what I've been saying! Have a star!