Giving Away National Sovereignty?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

Sloth,

I have to applaud you. You are the first person I’ve heard/seen in a long time who is willing to state his beliefs and back them up with their reasoning. I actually agree with most of your opinions (if not for the religious reasons behind them) but I have to say that the abortion thing seems to be a bit more complex than most people make it.

The question as to when life begins is all to often argued, one way or the other, by quick summations and one line statements. Such as “it has DNA, it’s a life” or “it doesn’t breath, it doesn’t count” etc… I find myself in awe of the fact that people can oversimplify something of such seeming importance.

To determine when life begins, i.e. whether or not a fetus is, in fact, a life and counts as a person, we first need to define life and person. These are matters of philosophy and science, not morality. So what defines life? How does one distinguish between the living and the non living?

Wikipedia gives this as the conventional scientific definition of life:

Certainly an early term fetus can be said to meet the requirements of 2, 3, 4, and 7 (as a function of 4). However, 1, 5, and 6 are not so clear cut.

A fetus relies almost entirely on the mother for homeostasis (point 1). Later in the pregnancy the fetus may or may not be capable of handling these functions on it’s own, but it doesn’t actually do so until birth. So judging by that, a fetus doesn’t count as a life until it’s capable of maintaining homeostasis on it’s own.

Next, Adaptation. Does a fetus have the ability to change over a period of time in response to its environment. Well, to use a terrible example, look at FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) or crack babies. Babies are capable of getting addicted to drugs used by the mother, hence adapting to this substance introduced into their environment. It’s not necessarily good adaptation, but it seems to meet the requirements.

Third we have response to stimuli. Is a fetus able to respond to some form of external stimulus. Here we have the same issue as with number 1. After a certain stage in the pregnancy, yes, babies can kick and move and do all sorts of things in response to being poked or exposed to music, etc… But in the early stages of pregnancy, I’d have to say no, this requirement is not met.

So, for the most part, especially in later pregnancy, a fetus meets the requirements for life by the conventional scientific definition. Great, so do cats, dogs, mice, birds, plants, and even amoeba and algae. Should it be illegal to kill algae? Or pick flowers? What about euthanizing a sick petor eating meat? No, obviously none of these things constitute homicide. So we come to our second big question, does a fetus constitute a person and how do we define person?

This is where things can get philosophical, but from a purely scientific point of view, yes, a fetus has the genetic characteristics of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. However, so do hair clippings, and severed limbs, and dead people for a while, and as far as I know, it’s not illegal to kill them, again. But obviously, a fetus is not the same as a cadaver. But also, as we established earlier, the fetus doesn’t quite meet all the requirements for life. So we’re stuck somewhere in the middle. Not technically alive, but obviously not dead. This poses an awkward conundrum. Traditionally life and death are mutually exclusive. If something isn’t alive, it’s dead, and vice versa (except of course zombies, vampires, and inorganic materials like minerals, metals, etc…). This sticking point is the same as last year’s Terry Schaivo(sp?) debate. How does one classify something or someone who doesn’t meet all the requirements for life, but at the same time, doesn’t lack enough of them to be qualified as dead? This I don’t have an answer for so I put it to you for debate.

Regardless of the answer to that question, we still need to define what separates humans from other living beings, and determine whether or not a fetus meets those requirements. This, however, is a much more complex question that philosophers and scientists have been discussing and debating for ages and I’m not sure I’m qualified to discuss it, so I won’t. I just wanted to express my opinion that the issue of abortion is infinitely more complex than it’s made out to be in typical arguments.

However, when it comes down to it, right now, it’s legal in this country and until someone can prove that the Roe v. Wade judgment was legally (not morally or ethically) flawed, or someone concretely and scientifically demonstrates that a fetus is, in fact, alive and fully qualifies as a person in both the scientific and philosophical sense, then there is no legal justification for changing the law.

Just my $.02,
Jay

22

Sloth.

Who pays for you to legislate your moral values?

m-dogg

23

[quote]Marmadogg wrote:
Sloth.

Who pays for you to legislate your moral values?

m-dogg[/quote]

We already pay taxes to protect the lives of innocents. I make no apologies when it comes to legislating morality, if it’s a question of actively taking an innocent huma life. When it is a “crime,” or “sin,” that effects noone but consenting adults, then it’s their business.

24

Very good posts on abortion, I would have to also agree with Sloth in pretty much every way. As for the reponse to stimuli, this is a mute point as almost anything can be considered a stimuli, poking the fetus with a needle can certainly be considered a stimuli and you can discern a reaction from that.

As for when something is alive this is a mute point as well. Consider this when something organic is not alve, it begins to rot whether inside or outside a body. A fetus obviously does not rot. If you consider one cell animals such as an ameba to be alive, as do the overwhelming majority of biologists then you must believe a fetus is alive as well however fragile it is.

Another excellent point would be baby kangarros, they are helpless and blind after birth and could NEVER survive without a mother.

The difference between your arm cut off of your body is that it begins to rot and die, a fetus does not. If the cells of a fetus are alive then the entire fetus must be alive. Hence it is an alive human being with some growing to do.

25

I’ve capitalized some rather interesting wording. the Zygote an organism?! Is not an organsim a living thing? So what species is this organism? Test it’s DNA! A human?!

“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]

“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]

"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]

“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]

“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 M?ller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29.]

26

[quote]blck1jack wrote:
Very good posts on abortion, I would have to also agree with Sloth in pretty much every way. As for the reponse to stimuli, this is a mute point as almost anything can be considered a stimuli, poking the fetus with a needle can certainly be considered a stimuli and you can discern a reaction from that.

As for when something is alive this is a mute point as well. Consider this when something organic is not alve, it begins to rot whether inside or outside a body. A fetus obviously does not rot. If you consider one cell animals such as an ameba to be alive, as do the overwhelming majority of biologists then you must believe a fetus is alive as well however fragile it is.

Another excellent point would be baby kangarros, they are helpless and blind after birth and could NEVER survive without a mother.

The difference between your arm cut off of your body is that it begins to rot and die, a fetus does not. If the cells of a fetus are alive then the entire fetus must be alive. Hence it is an alive human being with some growing to do.

[/quote]

Well said. In fact, I’ll let your response speak for me, regarding some some of the questions asked of me.

27

[quote]blck1jack wrote:
Very good posts on abortion, I would have to also agree with Sloth in pretty much every way. As for the reponse to stimuli, this is a mute point as almost anything can be considered a stimuli, poking the fetus with a needle can certainly be considered a stimuli and you can discern a reaction from that.

As for when something is alive this is a mute point as well. Consider this when something organic is not alve, it begins to rot whether inside or outside a body. A fetus obviously does not rot. If you consider one cell animals such as an ameba to be alive, as do the overwhelming majority of biologists then you must believe a fetus is alive as well however fragile it is.

Another excellent point would be baby kangarros, they are helpless and blind after birth and could NEVER survive without a mother.

The difference between your arm cut off of your body is that it begins to rot and die, a fetus does not. If the cells of a fetus are alive then the entire fetus must be alive. Hence it is an alive human being with some growing to do.

[/quote]

first of all thank you, sloth as well, this has to be the first time in ages I’ve seen rational responses without flames on a political forum.

Second, the term is moot, not mute. If a point is mute, it’s silent, i.e. no sound.

Anyway, no, it’s not a moot point to discuss reaction to stimuli. Poking a very early term fetus with a needle will probably not elicit any response whatsoever, or if it does, it won’t be a human response (but that’s getting more to the point of what separates humans from animals and plants and amoebas).

Regarding your second point, apparently you failed to read my entire post, I know it was long, sorry. I in fact reference amoeba at one point as a living thing, however, not a human one. You’ll notice that I never really questioned whether or not a fetus was alive, simply when it met the generally accepted requirements for being such. Saying it’s alive because it’s not rotting doesn’t really help. I believe I said something to the effect of “it’s obviously not dead, yet it doesn’t quite meet all the requirements for life.” To get back to the amoeba example, yes, I know they’re alive, however they do one thing which a fetus doesn’t, they maintain homeostasis on their own. That’s pretty important (probably why it’s number one on the list).

I’m not sure the point of mentioning joey kangaroos but I’d like to point out that they are, in fact, able to survive without their mothers after birth, just as human babies are. However unlikely, they are able to live without being attached to a host. Yes, it’s much easier if they have their mother’s pouch, but not completely necessary. I suppose the same argument could be made for test tube babies, but it’s a stretch considering it’s really only modern medical science, and not nature which provides for that. Kangaroos just need a warm, dark place to cuddle up, satchels or backpacks often work well.

And lastly, I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. If you remove a fetus from the womb too prematurely it will die and rot.

Either way, the scientific part is really only half of the question. Yes, you can make a fairly strong case that a human fetus is alive, however, that’s not proving it’s a conscious person and hence has rights as such ,or, more importantly, knows it’s alive or can feel pain in being killed.

Anyway, sorry for the long rambling post, it’s friday night and I have nothing better to do than drink beer and debate on the internet so I tend to get a bit pedantic.

Cheers,
Jay

28

Thanks for the correction on grammar. Anyway, if a fetus is alive and contains human DNA in all its cells, then it must be human. I thought that was pretty obvious so I didnt sate it intially.

I think you maybe mstaken about fetus’s out of womb, perhaps test tube babies, they grow and live for a short period of time, however short they maybe.

BTW, the cells of the body are able to maintain homeostasis pretty well on there own, that is why they are able to grow organs and tissue from stem cells and give it to grown human beings, its the same principal as an organ transplant. They are alive humans so that is why they can do that.