Having experienced the end of pregnancy in all of its forms (except partial birth abortion), as well as having been adopted, I have some thoughts on the matter. If the fetus could survive outside the womb (even if it is as early as 21 weeks) then I believe it is a human being. If the mother could potentially walk away (ie: give birth without the baby dying), then that fetus has become a 'baby', a person.

If you were of the opinion that the fetus was a human being prior to that point..at what stage would this determination no longer be applicable? Could it even be stretched to include unfertilized eggs and sperm? Because they have the 'potential' to become human beings, just as the unviable fetus does. The concept could reach ridiculous proportions.

I don't think there is a scientific way to decide this, it is an emotional, and sometimes religious, determination. If it feels wrong for you, then it is wrong.

I am eternally grateful for my three children as well as the fact that my birth mother chose not to abort me. I am also very grateful that I had choices available to me when I (stupidly) got pregnant as a very young woman. Having a baby while working full time to put myself through college (full time at night) with no family or support would have been disastrous for both me and the baby. Many years later, when I became pregnant while single, I had the resources and strength to have and to keep the baby (my oldest son) on my own. I do not regret my choices.

I am in favor of stem cell research. The embryos being used will either be frozen indefinately or be destroyed one way or another. The form of destruction will be either human or equipment error, or intentionally once they are no longer needed for their donor's pregnancy attempts.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/res_stem2.htm

If using the stem cells from an embryo that is less than 14 days old is such an issue, maybe all in vitro fertilization should be outlawed because this is the source of the embryos. 24+ eggs are extracted, fertilized and then 2-4 of them are implanted in the woman. The remainder? See above. So evidently it is ok to destroy these embryos as long as it is not in the course of scientific research? I do think that donor permission should be required as I would not want something that came from my body to be used for anything without my explicit knowledge and authorization.

Stormie

Chicken Egg Splooge
 

My brother used to have chickens. He served us fertilized eggs one morning and made a point of showing us said eggs before he scrambled them. You could see the sploogy mass of weirdness in the yolk:neutral: I must admit, I felt a little weird when I saw it. Once they were scrambled, they tasted like any other eggs.

We've got one egg customer who only wants fertilized eggs. mmmm.. tastes like chicken. ;)

chicken egg splooge = eww :)

exactly, well said.



p.s. I am glad your brith mom decided to keep you too. See there was a stormie in there! :)

:lol:

The massive dividing line between a zygote and sperm/eggs is genetic uniqueness. A sperm/egg is incomplete, whereas the zygote itself is a totally separate entity from the mother. It depends on the mothers body for nutrients during development but that by itself isn't a good measure of human vs. inhuman. I'm sure no one here would consider someone who's body has degenerated under the effects of cancer or through some other process to be less human because they require machines to supply them with oxygen, blood pressure, nutrients and kidney function just like a fetus does. I'm trying to isolate the exact criteria that give something human rights, such as 'ability to function independently'. Cortical activity is another possible point, after all it is how we determine death but it doesn't address the issue of getting around laws designed to protect people by saying a zygote isn't covered under the laws.

Tangent:
 

That's exactly what my wife says about eating meat. IE, there is no "death element" at McDonalds.

human life never begins or ends. it just is.

if you wanted to have an abortion debate, why not just say so?

you say that the crux of the abortion debate is the rights of the fetus/child, as though it were a fact. Is it? What about the rights of the host/mother? Is the baby not a part of her until it is delivered? Should you be prevented from cutting off your little finger if you wanted to because it made some busy body queasy?

If we'd just stay out of each others business.......

This was actually never intended to be an abortion debate. It's exactly what the title says, 'when does a human become human'. Once we had discussed that for a while it would probably turn to stem cells.

btw, what the heck do you mean by "it never begins or ends".:eyebrow:

Are we confusing the issue - as if human were somehow something special. Human - a bag of water, some lumps of DNA, and clumps of mineral deposits - is the physical being. When is life called life? A completely different question from the humanity question. After all, some creatures only differ significantly from others due to higher intelligence. They are all biological matter. They all have life in various degrees. There is no magic criteria for life; no digital threshold. In occurs in various degrees from viruses to other higher forms.

We routinely kill zygotes, stem cells and other human cells. They are all human life - which religious extremists must deny to impose their beliefs on all others. The emotional want to impose their emotions on all others in the name of their religion. Religious concepts have no place in a logical discussion. Religious concepts are and should never be more than a relationship between you and your god. [big period] No religion or religious teachings should appear in this discussion. This discussion is about life - not religion nor personal biases.

As even the pagan gods intended, we are expected to make life and death decisions every day. The only thing that differentiates humans is higher cognizance levels. We make life and death decisions every day as we kill off our own tissues - even bleed - even kill other life forms such as bacteria. Even blood is human life. Zygote is life. Stem cells are biological life. And we make those life and death decisions daily - not some ficticious god.

Meanwhile that is completely different from cognizant existence. But again, not one religious bias or extremist rhetoric belongs in this thread. Intelligent life is considered superior to other life forms - a basis upon which some life forms murder or preserve life. Don't kill that insect! You will go to hell! Or instead we use logic and drive those silly religious beliefs from this discussion.

Biological life exists in so many forms. And then some lives have more right to live than others. We humans routinely murder life every day - as is required to survive and is defined by the real god - sometimes called nature. Get over and ignore those silly religious concepts as if a zygote was any more special than some other stem cell. It's a cell - nothing more. And like all other living cells, it has a unique purpose. Nothing more. Religious extremists don't like blunt logic which is why religious reasoning has no acceptable purpose in this thread.

Are you alive? Fine. That was nature as others routinely determine; who lives and who dies. Using contraception? Then you are killing life that god intended - if using pervert logic that some religions mislabel as facts. And yet that too has no relevance to the question of what is life.

The question posed is about reality - not about your relationship with your god. There is no digital threshold that defines life. Mankind even created life by mixing a soup of proteins and electrically sparking them. Where is god in all this? He does not exist. The experiment simply created another type of life. Nothing special. Just a lifeform with less intelligence. And still we chose which and when life will be murdered or survives. We start this decision by throwing away all religious biases and other similar emotions.

Perhaps God is the very thing that enables us do this stuff...you never know.

What a pathetically silly question. You and I and everyone else who wants to discuss logically don't care about god. He is irrelevant even if he does exist. The 'executive summary' for those who only believe they understand.

Then why did you bring it up?