Abortion

[LemonMelon]

Are you against the morning after pill?

No, because at that point the woman has no knowledge of whether or not she is actually pregnant.

 

[trevster2k]

Rent Nova's The Miracle of life on video.

Saw it when made it's broadcast premiere on tv.

So answer this hypothetical to give me a better perspective on your views of life.

A tray of 30 embryos and a little girl are in a burning building, you can only save one or the other, whom do you save? The 30 embryos or the little girl?

 

[Justin24]

The little girl of course.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Interesting question.

I would personally consider anything animated (re: growing, moving) to have life in it. (However, I would exclude plantlife from this) A fetus is growing, changing, and has certain genetic characteristics imprinted in it from conception. That's why I consider it life.

Life isn't sacred, we eat animals all the time, and as soon as our brains shut down were just meat.

 

[trevster2k]

Why, aren't the 30 embryos, 30 lives based on the perception that life begins at conception.

 

[LemonMelon]

Life isn't sacred, we eat animals all the time, and as soon as our brains shut down were just meat.

Don't bring vegetarianism into this, please. That's a whole other can of worms yet to be opened here.

 

[deep]

That fetus is not a child and there is some kind of embryologist out there that will support this claim?

noooooooooooooo
it goes like this

life begins at conception

that is the mantra


so I ask when does the life of an apple tree begin?

 

[BVS]

It's cells dividing - making it life - nonliving things don't do this. I'm well aware of how many embryos never implant, but they're still dividing, living cells.

Well how do we mourn for all these lost "lives"? Does that make god the ultimate abortionist?

Come on!!!

 

[dazzlingamy]

You know what - it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks - it is MY body MY right. A fetus is alive yes it is a living organism, but so is a tree, an ant, a flower, the accodifolius biffolus in your yogurt is a live culture - where is the outrage when we cut a tree down, step on an ant, pick a flower, or eat some yogurt and therefore extinguish their life? Cause that is what a fetus is - it has no conciousness, it can't survive without the mother, its just a little blob of jelly. Putting human emotions - tying it with 'murder' is just ludicrious - it is not YET a baby - a person having abortion isn't the same as a person who kills an ACTUAL baby because they are not the same. So embreyologists and scientists think life begins at conception, well nah fucking dah. But "life" doesn't mean "person" it means living - like so many other things that are "living" but not conscious.

1. Using abortion as birth control is wrong. This is a horrible thing. If the mother was too irresponsible to use birth control before sex (which I know does not work 100% of the time, but still) she deserves to deal with the pain of birthing a baby.

2. If a woman is raped, the situation is split in my mind. Personally, I think she should go through with having the child and if she can't deal with it, put it up for adoption so someone else can give the child love. If she aborts, however, I understand why she would, but I would have to say she made the wrong choice.

3. If the woman's life is in danger by going through with childbirth, the baby should be aborted. It hurts me to say that, but as I said before, a mother's life has greater weight in my eyes than a fetus's does.

1. I don't think there are many women having 15 abortions because they're too lazy to go on the pill or somesuch. Accidents happen, they really truly happen, and i don't think i should be forced to carry an unwanted child purely because im some slutty bitch who missed taking the pill that morning and GASP had sex!!! And wow, make me suffer by having a natural birth and be in excruciating pain just to teach me a lesson!

2. Im sorry but this is just WRONG. Force a woman to carry a RAPISTS child for 9 months, feel it kicking etc then pop it out and have to deal with the cute little baby whether to give it up or keep it. Also lets not take into account the child who finds out that his mother didn't want him but was forced to have him and his father is a voilent rapist in jail and he is only on this earth due to a violent horrifying act. Wow.

3. At least we agree on something! At no point ever is a baby's life more important then the mothers. This whole 'keep the baby!' feelings annoy me - yeah lets let the baby grow up without its mother.

eh. i just shouldn't get involved in these things because we're never going to agree - so lets just agree to disagree

 

[80sU2isBest]

Just link me one for goodness sake.

I guarantee you they will all be from pro-life sites and little to no true reference. The fact I told you before is just one reason. No scienctist in their right mind would consider conception the beginning of life.

Here's one, from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-embryology.htm

(good luck calling that a "prolife" site...)

"Part of the problem lies within each embryology textbook. They all state that life begins at the moment of conception. While it is true that some form of life begins at conception, the degree, value and quality of such a life is not addressed."

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Here's more, from
from http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

Yes, I know you'll balk at the word "prolife" in the URL path, but look past that at the quotes contained therein. And there's many many more form other web sites.

"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]


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"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 their pronuclei (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]


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"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.]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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]


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"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 Müller, 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}]


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"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]


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"[A]nimal biologists use the term embryo to describe the single cell stage, the two-cell stage, and all subsequent stages up until a time when recognizable humanlike limbs and facial features begin to appear between six to eight weeks after fertilization....
"[A] number of specialists working in the field of human reproduction have suggested that we stop using the word embryo to describe the developing entity that exists for the first two weeks after fertilization. In its place, they proposed the term pre-embryo....
"I'll let you in on a secret. The term pre-embryo has been embraced wholeheartedly by IVF practitioners for reasons that are political, not scientific. The new term is used to provide the illusion that there is something profoundly different between what we nonmedical biologists still call a six-day-old embryo and what we and everyone else call a sixteen-day-old embryo.
"The term pre-embryo is useful in the political arena -- where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now called pre-embryo) experimentation -- as well as in the confines of a doctor's office, where it can be used to allay moral concerns that might be expressed by IVF patients. 'Don't worry,' a doctor might say, 'it's only pre-embryos that we're manipulating or freezing. They won't turn into real human embryos until after we've put them back into your body.'"
[Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. New York: Avon Books, 1997, p. 39]

 

[anitram]

noooooooooooooo
it goes like this

life begins at conception

that is the mantra

Seems to me a lot of people think the mantra is:

LIFE begins at conception

Except after rape, then it's something other than life.

 

[BVS]

No, because at that point the woman has no knowledge of whether or not she is actually pregnant.

So it's only wrong when it's a conscience effort?

 

[LemonMelon]

so lets just agree to disagree

Indeed. Let me tell you all a secret: I don't really like talking about this stuff, but I did want to make my opinion known (plus, if anyone asks me about these things in the future, I'll know what to copy/paste )

 

[80sU2isBest]

Seems to me a lot of people think the mantra is:

LIFE begins at conception

Except after rape, then it's something other than life.

That's not my mantra.

 

[randhail]

Well how do we mourn for all these lost "lives"? Does that make god the ultimate abortionist?

Come on!!!

Depending on your point of view, yes it does. I don't view it that way however. For me, every embryo is living - you can't argue that it's not living. You can argue that it's not "human life" because it doesn't fit our definitions, but it certainly is living.

Knowing everything that can go wrong in development, it makes you truly appreciate what a miracle life really is.

 

[LemonMelon]

So it's only wrong when it's a conscience effort?

All I'm saying is I don't blame anyone for using birth control, and I have nothing personally against it. "Birth control" is for just that; to make sure you won't have to abort or go full term for a baby you didn't even want.

 

[anitram]

That's not my mantra.

So you would legislate rape victims be forced to carry to term?

And a 13 year old girl impregnated by her father to carry to term?

 

[BVS]

80's the problem with those links(thanks btw) is "life" is being defined very differently from yours. Also some of those quotes are just individuals using the stages of development in their own words.

I can say the life of a car begins the second the chasis is placed on the assembly line. But it sure doesn't make it a car.

 

[deep]

Here's one, from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-embryology.htm

(good luck calling that a "prolife" site...)

"Part of the problem lies within each embryology textbook. They all state that life begins at the moment of conception. While it is true that some form of life begins at conception, the degree, value and quality of such a life is not addressed."

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's more, from
from http://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html

Yes, I know you'll balk at the word "prolife" in the URL path, but look past that at the quotes contained therein. And there's many many more form other web sites.

"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]


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So 80s

life begins at conception


and the life of an apple tree begins when a seed is placed in soil, watered and the seed begins to germinate.

at the beginning stage of germination it is not an apple tree

it has the potential to grow into an apple tree

and yes apple tree life begins at germination

 

[Angela Harlem]

When does the life of an apple tree begin?

they say the apple never falls far from the tree...

 

[CTU2fan]

Is stabbing a pregnant woman in the belly & killing her unborn child murder? People have been tried & convicted of murder in that case.

So wanted fetuses are LIFE, but unwanted ones are not?

 

[BVS]

All I'm saying is I don't blame anyone for using birth control, and I have nothing personally against it. "Birth control" is for just that; to make sure you won't have to abort or go full term for a baby you didn't even want.

But didn't you say life begins at conception? Do you know what the morning after pill does?

 

[80sU2isBest]

So embreyologists and scientists think life begins at conception, well nah fucking dah. But "life" doesn't mean "person" it means living - like so many other things that are "living" but not conscious.

Actually, many embryologists think that "personhood" begins at conception, also.

 

[80sU2isBest]

Is stabbing a pregnant woman in the belly & killing her unborn child murder? People have been tried & convicted of murder in that case.

So wanted fetuses are LIFE, but unwanted ones are not?

Good point.

 

[anitram]

Is stabbing a pregnant woman in the belly & killing her unborn child murder? People have been tried & convicted of murder in that case.

So wanted fetuses are LIFE, but unwanted ones are not?

Have they in the US?

In Canada, this would not be murder. You would be prosecuted for assaulting the mother, but because under our Charter, constitutionally a fetus is not a person and therefore has no rights under the law, there would be no case as against the fetus.

 

[trevster2k]

A tray of 30 embryos and a little girl are in a burning building, you can only save one or the other, whom do you save? The 30 embryos or the little girl?

Ok 80's, pick one based on your views of life.

 

[BVS]

Depending on your point of view, yes it does. I don't view it that way however. For me, every embryo is living - you can't argue that it's not living. You can argue that it's not "human life" because it doesn't fit our definitions, but it certainly is living.

Knowing everything that can go wrong in development, it makes you truly appreciate what a miracle life really is.

Well yes I can say the virus I had last week is living, but it's not life. Go back to my posts, I never argued there wasn't anything living.

 

[80sU2isBest]

So 80s

life begins at conception


and the life of an apple tree begins when a seed is placed in soil, watered and the seed begins to germinate.

at the beginning stage of germination it is not an apple tree

it has the potential to grow into an apple tree

and yes apple tree life begins at germination

is an apple tree at germination a "full developed" apple tree? No, but it is an apple tree in the beginning stages, none the less.

 

[LemonMelon]

But didn't you say life begins at conception? Do you know what the morning after pill does?

It prevents contraception. I don't see how that's any different than earlier birth control or a condom.

 

[deep]

Actually, many embryologists think that "personhood" begins at conception, also.

many?

you said nothig here


most embryologists throw your "personhoods" down the drain