apple0154
MEOW
Speaking for myself it's probably due to listening to this during my formative years.
When Does Life End?
- Thread starter Timshel
- Start date
Speaking for myself it's probably due to listening to this during my formative years.
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
And Mott is incorrect, as was pointed out by bravo. Once the SUCCESSFUL conception takes place, a living organism is produced. If the conception is UNSUCCESSFUL then a living organism is never produced, and it is academic. There is no debate over non-living cells which never became organisms. If the conception was successful, a living organism was indeed produced, and the classification of such an organism can only logically be human, there is no other life form it can possibly be. There is no such thing as something that is "living" but not an organism, cells can be temporarily "alive" but unable to maintain the process of life on their own because they are not organisms. An organism has to contain multiple parts which work together to metabolize and reproduce, sustaining a process of life, unlike a finger or kidney. If a cell is fertilized and never metabolizes or reproduces, it is never an organism and is not part of this discussion in any way.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Hey you almost got my point! I was using your logic and yup....since your comment was completely and totally ignorant I used our logic to make the exact opposite argument that was just as ignorant as yours. Get it?
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
You're confusing fertilization with conception. So was Bravo. You're also splitting pussy hairs with semantics. The point is, fertilization can occur in which a new cell (zygote) is formed which involves union of male and female gametes that has a complete cell wall, nuclear membrane and haploid number of chromosomes but for whatever the reason is not living. Metabolic functions do not begin, the cell does not duplicate/divide. The result is a non-living residual body.
Sorry to disappoint you dude..but I don't get to edit what they put in the dictionary....you want to have it your way, argue with the editors of the dictionary....
http://www.tfd.com/conception
con·cep·tion (kn-spshn)
a. Formation of a viable zygote by the union of the male sperm and female ovum; fertilization.
Its just typical of you guys in general...you can't admit being wrong on any level....even when proven you are with a simple definition....
If there is no viable zygote formed, conception did not occur....and all the bullshit about cell walls, nuclear membranes and haploid number of chromosomes won't alter that fact...
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Of course miscarriages occur all the time.....either after conception or there is no conception and menstruation occurs...what your point..???
Saying "something is missing" just don't cut it in this conversation...
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
Fertilization = Conception According to every source I can find.
" It's absurd to say a fertilized cell that lived "1 hour or 1 minute or even a millisecond" carried on the processes of life. "
So what time frame do you put on life before you deem the organism a human
being...??? and by what authority do you imagine yourself an authority on when human life begins....
If 1 hour isn't enough, what is ?...2 hours?...12 hours?...2 days?...2 weeks....9 months...?
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
but your approach amounts to, "since half the fertilized eggs didn't reach "human-ness" it's okay to kill the rest".....obviously a dishonest argument.....it ignores the fact that ALL abortions occur after that event has passed.....
apple0154
MEOW
You're mixing up discussions. One discussion is 'when does life begin' and the other discussion is 'are all fertilized cells organisms'.
Let's try another analogy. Everyone who is at the store had to get in their car and drive there. Every trip to the store started by getting in ones car. That does not mean everyone who got in their car this morning went to the store. The same follows with fertilized cells. Saying all life starts with a fertilized cell is not the same as saying all fertilized cells are the start of life.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
All fertilized cells are the start of life. Something may happen to disrupt that, however. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.
apple0154
MEOW
It's not a dishonest argument. I use the over 50% of self-aborted cells as an obvious example to show all fertilized cells are not human beings.
One requirement for something to be defined as a "human being" is that it must be an organism and for something to be defined as an organism it, too, must adhere to certain qualifiers. Do we know if a two day old cell adheres to those qualifiers? A three day old cell?
It's fine to assert we may be killing cells that will evolve but should we be so cavalier and debase the value of all human beings by saying we are no more important than a cell which may or may not evolve?
What I find most disturbing about all this is there are men who are willing to place the value of such a cell on the same footing as their wife or sister or daughter. I wonder what kind of world it would be if women compared the value of a man to that of a cell.
Having said that I did feel rather small when a cheer leader in high school laughed when I asked her for a date.
apple0154
MEOW
If the woman does not take any medication to intentionally disrupt the fertilized cell the only conclusion one can draw is the cell was not a human being. It did not have the ability to carry on the processes of life and that's a basic requirement.
Truck Fump / h1b
Verified User
People who die were still people when they were alive. is that what you're thinking of?
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
ah, but until they get out of the car, they are all driving.....you assume the essential element is getting to the store......would it be morally right to rip all drivers from their cars because you don't want them to get to the store.......
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
why do we need to know....no one is trying to kill a three day old cell.....
more dishonesty, you are basing all of your argument upon the claim you can equate a developing human fetus with a cell......obvious hypocrisy.....
So YOU (the organism) die at 97 years old because you "did not have the ability to carry on the processes of life and that's a basic requirement" means you were never a human being.
If the above sounds stupid, its because it is...
If you logic was reasonable and sound, it would make as much sense at 97 years of age, as you think it makes at 97 seconds of age.... obviously its doesn't...
A HUMAN BEING IS A HUMAN BEING NO MATTER AT WHAT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT OR GROWTH IT IS...
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Look for some older dictionaries then. The definitions have changed quite a bit in this area.
Over and over again you guys trot out definitions as if it is argument or something of importance, when it is not.
You know what "conception" means? Whatever we say it means. That's what it means.
The only use for a definition is to clarify. Definitions are just our best attempt to summarize some concept. They are rarely perfect and the more complicated the concept the more problematic it is to define. This is why you will usually find one definition of a word that fits your meaning and others that do not. As our knowledge changes we find new errors in our definitions and they change.
Take that dictionary and shove it up your ass! Pull it out when you are unsure of someone's use of a word and need to clarify.
A better analogy would be that each time you get in the car to drive to the store doesn't mean that you will make it there. You might get in an accident (spontaneous abortion), your car may not start (residual body), you might break down (birth defect causing spontaneous abortion), you might be the victim of an insurance scam where somebody deliberately hits you (directed abortion)....
Each time you get in the car your original destination was the store, but sometimes things got in your way.
A United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. All of the quotes from the following experts come directly from the official government record of their testimony.1
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated:
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.... I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life....
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty...is not a human being. This is human life at every stage."
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, "after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being." He stated that this "is no longer a matter of taste or opinion," and "not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence." He added, "Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception."
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: "It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive.... It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.... Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data."
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: "The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals."
A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings, "Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell when life begins."2
Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with certainty that human life begins at conception:
Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the prolife cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, "The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception."3
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty thousand abortions.
Dr. Nathanson's study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his "increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths."4
In his film, "The Silent Scream," Nathanson later stated, "Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us." Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he had been a primary leader.5 At the time Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the biological facts.
Dr. Landrum Shettles was for twenty-seven years attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Shettles was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally famous for being the discoverer of male- and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states,
I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest—that human life commences at the time of conception—and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian. 6
The First International Symposium on Abortion came to the following conclusion:
The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week-old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation. The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a human life.7
The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the "Human Life Bill," summarized the issue this way:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.8
Paper here
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated:
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.... I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life....
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty...is not a human being. This is human life at every stage."
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, "after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being." He stated that this "is no longer a matter of taste or opinion," and "not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence." He added, "Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception."
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: "It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive.... It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.... Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data."
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School: "The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals."
A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings, "Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell when life begins."2
Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with certainty that human life begins at conception:
Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the prolife cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, "The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception."3
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty thousand abortions.
Dr. Nathanson's study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his "increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths."4
In his film, "The Silent Scream," Nathanson later stated, "Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us." Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he had been a primary leader.5 At the time Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the biological facts.
Dr. Landrum Shettles was for twenty-seven years attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Shettles was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally famous for being the discoverer of male- and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states,
I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest—that human life commences at the time of conception—and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian. 6
The First International Symposium on Abortion came to the following conclusion:
The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week-old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation. The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a human life.7
The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the "Human Life Bill," summarized the issue this way:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.8
Paper here
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