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The All New Abortion Spin-Off Thread...
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I have said nothing about the cut off point for stopping a human life's development. As I keep pointing out I am not having an abortion debate, just pointing out that a new life begins at conception and what connotations you want to add to that is your own business. Whether you want to believe that ending a human life is wrong or not is beyond the scope of my point, I am simply trying to establish that it is a human life
Although, since a human life's development does not begin until conception it's not really possible to stop the process before that point. You can, however, prevent it from starting
Yes but in a strictly biological(unique dna) sense, not in a "I'm self aware and aware I actually have a life" sense surely? Its nowhere being another an individual human. There is the potential alright. You make it sound like you believe that most important part in creating human in its entirety (deserving of human rights) happens at the very point of conception, dare I say neglecting all the years and effort it takes to become an individual. Would I be wrong?0 -
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As I said, it's the consensus everywhere except where people have a vested interest in it not being the consensus. For example, creationists latch onto the idea that there is some debate about their ideals, that there is some doubt and they might be right when in reality there is no doubt anywhere except among those who really really want it to be true. Basically, just because there is debate does not mean one side is not completely wrong. I have never seen an argument for life beginning at some arbitrary point after conception that amounts to any more than "I really really really want it to begin then". A lot of people pick the development of the brain as the beginning of life but how can something grow a brain if it's not a living beingIt's not the "consensus", not theologically, not ideologically, not philosphically, not societally and not even medically (the first and most important phase is arguably when the unique DNA coalesces during gamete formation, is a hydatidiform mole a new life?, etc).
I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people instinctively know it's wrong to end a life but they want abortion to be ok so try to come up with a definition of life that excludes foetuses and we end up with what Goduznt Xzst calls the "semantic mess". Really they're just adding connotations to life that shouldn't be there and if they want abortion to be ok they need to drop this preconceived idea that ending a life is always wrong. As I said much earlier in the thread, pro-choice people would be much better off with a mantra like "it doesn't matter that life begins at conception, rights begin with the development of the brain" rather than trying to argue that life doesn't begin at conception because it quite clearly does.
And again, being "the most important phase" does not mean it's the beginning of life. Arguably, the most important phase is the birth of your mother without whom you could not exist but your life doesn't begin on the same day as your mother's or her mother's or her mother's, it begins when your cells undergo their first mitosis.
Wicknight keeps making that point too and I keep pointing out that a zygote that fails to split is a life form with a disease that has prevented it developing and that has effectively died at the earliest point. In order for it to be a life form it must possess the capacity to grow and a zygote that does not split does possess that ability. If you want to abort a zygote that didn't split I have absolutely no problem with that, just like I'd have no problem with you burying someone who had just died. It brings me back to my point about the plane where I could list dozens of tiny conditions that must be met before a plane can take off but it does not change the validity of the statement "planes can fly".I think there is also a definitional difference between when a "new life" starts to grow and when it becomes a living human being. For example, you could certainly argue that for every individual currently alive, their growth started at conception. But that is not the same as every uni-cellular zygote being a living human as it may never become one. A new car on an assembly line might start with an engine block, but an engine block is not a car. The pips in your apple are not the exact same thing as a whole apple tree!0 -
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I think a lot of the confusion comes from the fact that people instinctively know it's wrong to end a life but they want abortion to be ok so try to come up with a definition of life that excludes foetuses
But there is a semantic difference between when a "new life begins" and an actual human being. In fact, you could say that the first is only true if the latter occurs. I.e. for any living human being, their life began at conception. But every conception doesn't produce a living human. Only after a certain point has it succeeded in doing that, and at that point all the rights conferred on a human is conferred on the unborn human.
In exactly the same way that an Apple tree begins with the pips inside an apple, but we don't consider throwing an apple core in the bin as being the same as chopping down multiple apple trees. It seems like a reasonably objective semantic difference to me, unless you have ideological reasons for believing that after conception the zygote is immediately a fully living human being, and not the single cell it is in reality.A lot of people pick the development of the brain as the beginning of life but how can something grow a brain if it's not a living being
Again, there is a difference between "living tissue" and a "living being". E.g. cysts can grow on a kidney, but a kidney is not a "living being".0 -
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