Emergence of humanity
 

This is a bit of a feeler thread to scope out the sentiments on the board. When do you believe a human life begins?

Some time after initial brain waves and before birth.

When the developing fetus can support life independently of the mother. (Third trimester?)

Onset of neocortical brain activity (about the same time as viability)

I would say first genetically unique cell . No one could be the person they are without that first cell . It is the beginning of a human life .

I'm with Peter Singer. I don't think they're human until 2 years old, when they become rational free agents. Anytime prior to that, do whatever you want to them.

Rational free agents at 2 ? That must be something to do with all that early learning they do in America . The British start becoming rational free agents when they are knocking on for fifty .

As soon as it is a zygote.

Now you have condemned fertility clincs as mass murders. Now you have condemned surgeons as mass murders. Anyone who would kill a living human cell, even a cancer cell, is a murder?

I agree.

I went for first genetically unique cell. And yes, tw, I think that abortion clinics are killing children ... the problem I have with abortion is not that it is done, but that the process is cloaked in all kinds of semantic nonsense about fetus, not baby, tissue, not clump of actual living cells, etc. etc. The marketing of abortion is what I abhor. Understand what you are really doing, and make you choices based on that.

Weighing the alternatives of safe and legal vs. available either at great risk or only to the wealthy as existed before the 1970s, until there is some better alternative, I'll stick with safe and legal ... you can't reflower that particular virgin.

wolf - tw didn't say abortion clinics.

Driver's license. :cool:

But the same medical terminology is used (by the doctors anyway) when you plan to keep the baby.

edit: I don't have an answer to the question.... I don't think it matters.

I am not in the scientific or medical field, but for some reason, it makes the most sense to me that the first genetically unique cell is a precursor to human life. I don't believe that it is full-on human life. As for the actual question, when do I believe human life begins...I don't know.

I agree with everyone that said as soon as it can think/survive outside the mother's body.

Now lets shift the direction slightly. Based on what's been said so far about when a human's life begins, do the rights afforded to people apply to what will become human? The buying and selling of fertilized eggs/fetus's/zygots is a good starting point.

A cancer cell being compared to a zygote that will become a human inside a woman's reproductive system as the same?
Pretty sad stretch there TW, even for you. I know you like to argue, but you can't do better than that, really?

When it has learned how to walk and talk.

They are both human cells - living tissue. Therefore they must be human life according to the same reasoning that somehow ignores thousands of zygotes 'murdered' in fertility clinics. Sad that you ignore the most damning part of that post?

Zygote and cancer cells are same - stem cells. Cancer (ie breast cancer, leukemia, etc) is when stem cells have gone astray. Suddenly those stem cells are no longer human life because they replicate faster? Suddenly because they replicate faster, then they are no longer human?

Rather silly to somehow claim a zygote so different from other human cells. They are all human life according to those religious definitions. Why does a zygote instead have "god's seal of approval"? Silly emotion.

Well that won't work, because you've brought up the root question of all arguments on the Internet.

I'm pretty much in lock-step with wolf. Don't pretend you're doing something less than you're doing. We can honestly disagree on its morality just don't make me complicit in your choice by having me fund it. Yes, I'll extend this argument to stem cell research.

I'd say viability & at the same time, I agree with wolf, call a spade a spade. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be perfectly legal. Stem cell research is however a whole different kettle of fish, it's a bunch of goddamn cells for crying out loud.

The terminology wasn't invented by abortionists, it's used thoughout biology. And even in colloquial use - maybe not those particular words - there is a difference. If a woman trying to become pregnant has a period after having sex, she doesn't say "our baby died", she says "we're not going to have a baby".

Roughly two-thirds of pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion.

So if we use this new "correct" terminology, there are more babies at the wastewater treatment plant than at the hospital.

Huh. Could it be, something about this terminology seems a little emotionally loaded.

I'm against abortion, but for killing babies.

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....egressive1.gif

It's not whether or not a zygot is a human or just tissue that's the really important issue here. The issue is when that person is concidered human enough to have rights. If a fetus is not human enough to have a right to life then it can also be bought and sold as a commodity, simple logic. You can take it further and say that even though you cannot experiment on humans without consent you can do so with a fetus. Go another step and laws against genetically modifying and cloning humans do not apply before it becomes human. There seems to be a misunderstanding about what is really upsetting people here, it's the issues down the road that are the big problem. And please don't say that even though a fetus isn't human we can be wishy-washy and pretend it is in some cases.

I think that would be around 6 or 7 years old. Humans, more than any other mammal, require years of protection and assistance before they can "survive" on their own.

That said, this is an issue because we humans still have sex for pleasure and bonding rather than for just procreation. It's all about technology, the technology that is used to do work for us (no more need for children for their labor) or that which is used to control (inhibit/encourage) our reproduction. We really need more research on male contraception. We men have trouble keeping our dicks in our pants and you women are always allowing them into your vaginas (except in the case of rape); yet the burden of the result (unwanted pregnancy) always seems to be carried by the woman. We all know how reason goes out the window in the throes of sexual passion, so a male contraceptive that would make sperm ineffective until the couple desires a baby would be a good solution; though I can hear Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred" song playing in the background. Let's shift the burden for birth control to the men.:neutral:

Valid points of possibilitys 9th Engineer.


The veto and issue I thought was from harvested eggs frozen and not fertilized ? Are they viable life? I don't think so. I think we can say the same for a chicken egg. We eat them because they are not fertilized. I don't think we would want to if even we suspected they were fertilized even if they looked the same. So do we have some inborn instinct that a fertilized egg is viable.?

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?

Because you posted the religious extremist rhetoric. You posted You quoted religious extermist rhetoric word for word, and then you did only what a religious extremist would do - post no supporting facts. You filled the discussion with nonsense religous beliefs including no factual and logical supporting reasons.

He asked a simple question that required a logical answer. You replied with a classic religious extremist retort. Maybe you would like to put some 'logical meat' on a dead animal that was posted and that is quoted above? Maybe you could explain how a virus is not life - without quoting religious extremist rhetoric?

How is that religious in any way? LOL!!!
I fear for your sanity.

After reading this thread, I've decided the catholics have had it right all along. If you're a twinkle in your daddies eye, then you've got just as much right to live as anyone else, so Down with Condoms! Down with the Pill! Down with anything that could possibly stop a human life from evolving! Let's just go ahead and breed ourselves out of existance even quicker! :)

LMAO!! It wasn't a question, dear--it was a theoretical point of view. You're cute. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

While I'm being in a theoretical mood and all...my mother has a theory that one of the reasons why gay people exist is to help us to not breed ourselves out of existence. Interesting, no?

Not all along - from the 13th to 17th century, fetuses used to be ensouled at quickening, not at conception.

OK...what is ensouled and what is quickening?

Blue...I don't know about interesting as far as that goes. Particularly these days where people can have access to children in one way or another if they feel the desire to be a parent. I have gay friends with children, and they're not from previously heterosexual relationships.

Your mum might need to take the blinders off I reckon. ;)

At what point was the mechanism of conception actually understood, though? Spermatzoa meets egg and all that. Until the invention of the microscope the idea tha there were discrete cells in ejaculate would have been considered witchcraft. Throughout the medieval period human dissection was not permitted, and most medical scholarship was based on surviving Greek and Roman Texts. Even the Greek Anatomist, Galen, got information wrong because he wasn't permitted human subjects, and extrapolated from animal systems.

The linkage between sex and procreation was not always completely clear, at least in humans. Animals with an obvious estrus cycle, yes, it's understood that the sexual act results in offspring some specified amount of time later, but with humans, at what point in history was that figured out? Women knew they were pregant when they felt the child move ... lack of menstrual cycle is a clue, but not a definite indicator of pregnancy. That remains the case today, actually.

You're absolutely right--some of my friends have biological children, and some of my mother's friends do too, as well. :) I guess I can appreciate her theory, because I know she doesn't have blinders on in that regard.

Wolf, are you talking about the quickening?

That must be refreshing for you Blue. Although my mum was very compassionate in most regards, she had a problem with gay couples having children. I argued with her once in a while about the ethics of those situations but it didn't seem to make much difference. I guess it's true that sometimes you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I think it was more likely her strict catholic upbringing though. Religion has a lot to answer for.

I think that's what happens when one Immortal cuts the head off another one.

Oh, wait, you mean in the context of this discussion ... quickening is when the mother first feels the baby move ... which is by a lot of religious traditions when the soul is supposed to enter the body of the child. Other say when the child draws first breath.

I'm in the moment of conception camp, as previously stated.

There can be only one!

:smack: