The most important bioethics issue today, in terms of the number of lives affected, is abortion. One of the main arguments used in the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion is that we cannot be sure when life begins, so that the best we can say is that unborn child is only a potential human life From a scientific point of view this makes no sense. What is the fundamental fact that makes one human being different from another, that makes this birth of protoplasm a human being and not a dog or a cat, or a morning glory? Human beings have 46 chromosomes, which determine a person's genetic makeup. Each person gets 23 from his mother and 23 from his father. Whey they come together a unique human being is formed. It can only be by a human being, including his mother, who has a different genetic makeup. The point at which the chromosomes come together is at the fertilization, when the sperm from the father fertilizes the ovum from the mother. The new person is only once cell big, but he still different from every person before or since. Immediately the cell starts to divide. It grows, and growth means LIFE! Even the earliest new cells show differtation, before the new child is even a week old. At two-three weeks, cell division and development is continues. Embryologist can date the age of the child within two days. The cell specializes to nourish the child. From three-four weeks, the child is only one-tenth inch long, but he already is forming eyes, a spinal cord, brain, lungs, stomach, kidneys, backbones, and a pumping heart. In the fourth week, the head is forming, the backbone complete, and the arms and legs begin to form. In the fifth week, the child is one-third inch long. His chest, abdomen, eyes, ears, nose, fingers, and toes begin to form. In the sixth week, the facial features are forming and the child has a nervous system, so he can feel pain. By the six-height week, all organs are present, the head and face are complete, the mouth has 20 teeth buds, the major muscle systems are present, the stomach secretes digestive juices, and the brain is complete. By the eight week, the brain has an EEG, and the child has his permanent bone structure. In the ninth-tenth week, he squints, swallows, and retracts his tongue, his heart is beat is detectable. (The list of weeks goes on and on....)
Thus we can see that life clearly begins at fertilization and that only significant differences between a born and unborn baby is size. Fertilization is the only point at which a clear distinction can be made between the living and non-living, yet the Supreme Court has ruled that an unborn baby, up to the last second before birth, can be legally aborted or killed in the womb. The natural law teaches that it is immoral to deliberately taken an innocent life. Clearly, the unborn baby is an innocent human life.
Here are a few of abortions consequences:
(1/) In people's mind, the unborn baby becomes a product, not a person.
(2.) Abortion harms the mother. Greater risks of miscarriages and premature births, as well as sterility, and psychiatric problems and depression have been proven to affect a large percentage of women who have had past abortions.
(3.) Abortion leads to a loss of respect for life in general, and to the growing acceptance of infanticide.
'I'll discuss the traditional and modern definition of "personhood" tomorrow. God bless!
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I'll let George Carlin respond to this for me.
I love that clip. Was actually going to look for an excuse to use it at some point.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
So do I. It makes a powerful point against the sanctity of life debate. I'm glad I got to use it, lol.
First and foremost, you claim in your blog that the supreme court allows abortion up until the last second before birth. This is not accurate. It is only legal to abort a embryo/fetus up until the end of the first trimester.
Secondly, you claim that "growth means life", and therefore abortion is killing a living thing. However, this life can only survive if in the mother's womb for the first five months. Up until this point, the embryo/fetus is more like a parasite as it requires the mother to live, yet provides no benefit in return for the mother. Think about it this way.... Say you have a bacterial infection. You don't want the infection, so you take an antibiotic to get rid of it. You thus kill the bacteria because it is not advantageous for you to keep it. This can be considered along the same lines as an abortion. Some people do not want to have a child, so they have an abortion. It is not murder, it's survival of the fittest.
I am a non-religious pro-lifer and I reject the argument that survival of the fittest is not murder. Technically, murder is a legal term, so it can be accurately said that abortion is not murder in the USA. However, abortion is homicide; the killing of one person by another. Survival of the fittest is an antiquated notion that, many hundreds of years ago, could be used to justify killing the weaker members of society in indirect means. By "indirect means" I mean such actions as not feeding those who could not get their own food and not helping those who couldn't stay warm, etc. And, these actions would only be justified hundreds of years ago if it was only possible for a certain number of people to survive, thus the stronger ones would obtain these precious rights. In most places of the world today, survival of the fittest cannot morally be active because it is unnecessary and unjustified. There are more than enough resources for all humans in America and therefore, there is not one person whose killing, can be considered justified. In other words, there are no people too weak to survive and because we, as a society, have the resources to respect all human rights, we also have the obligation to do everything that we can to protect all human life. Should we just let people with physical or mental disabilities, who can't fend for themselves or obtain resources necessary for survival, die? After all, they could just be considered leaches or parasites on society, but this does not make them lesser humans with lesser rights. The analogy comparing the killing of bacteria to the killing of an unborn person is logically flawed in many ways. First off, when we take antibiotics to kill off bacteria in our body, we are not targeting a harmless human being, but rather harmful, and possibly fatal foreign substance that does not belong there. Second, fetuses are nothing like bacteria targeted by antibiotics because in over 95% of abortion cases, not the slightest harm is being done to the woman's body, whereas the same cannot be said about the bacteria. Most importantly, a fetus is meant to be in a woman's body. That's how humans reproduce. It always has been and always will be. The bottom line is that a fetus has the right to be in his/her mother's womb, just as humans outside of the womb have the right to walk the earth. And we must remember that a society is only as good as they treat their most vulnerable members, which makes America a pretty rotten and brutal society. If anybody believes that I have flawed in my logic please e-mail me at mrmackey797@comcast.net. Thanks.
Life is sacred because it was created by God in the image of God. Secondly, Christianity does not support killing people, that's murder. War has to have a just cause. In fact, the Catholic Church has spoken out on the War on Terrorisim. Secondly, Christians can't be perfect, were human, were hypocrites just like everyone else, but we are striving to sanctify ourselves and the world around us. Jesus died on the cross to forgive us, knowing that even though we would bear the name Christian that we would continue to fall.
"It dosen't matter if you fall a thousand times if it's the fight your love and not the fall." -Fr. Marcial Maciel
One of the main arguments used in the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion is that we cannot be sure when life begins, so that the best we can say is that unborn child is only a potential human life From a scientific point of view this makes no sense.
Allow me to explain the scientific point of view:
Living human egg cells are undeniably alive. Living human sperm cells are undeniably alive. When the two come together, the resulting fertilized egg is still alive.
It makes no sense to say that life begins at fertilization, because the egg is alive both before fertilization and after.
Thus we can see that life clearly begins at fertilization
Nope. That is your personal belief, which is not supported by science nor shared by everyone.
and that only significant differences between a born and unborn baby is size.
A newborn baby can survive birth. A twelve week old fetus can not survive birth. I'd call that a hugely significant difference.
The natural law teaches that it is immoral to deliberately taken an innocent life.
I don't share your religion, and according to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, I don't have to.
Natural law is not a religious law system. Natural Laws are the laws that govern the moral standing of the universe and they are the basis for nearly all philosophies and religions. The greatest law systems in the world, Hammurabi's code and the British Common Law all use the two natural laws.
Natural law is not a religious law system. Natural Laws are the laws that govern the moral standing of the universe and they are the basis for nearly all philosophies and religions.
Looks like you went and contradicted yourself, there.
I don't believe in this religion you speak of. I don't believe that any natural law says that I have to carry every pregnancy, regardless of whether I want to or not.
My body is my own. If nature wanted everyone to get a vote in whether or not I carry a pregnancy, nature would've put a window on my uterus so everyone could see when I was pregnant.
There's nothing natural about men telling women that they must carry every pregnancy. Women are in charge of pregnancy. Women get to decide whether their pregnancies go to term or not. That is natural.
The issue isn't so much at what point is there life but at what point does it have rights. If you take the Constitution and other government documents literally, that's not until birth. If you want to do a little interpreting, you could easily get it pushed to the point during gestation that the child can survive outside its mother's womb (about 20-22 weeks at the earliest). However, any time before that starts getting fuzzy because you're also looking at a fairly high rate of miscarriage (which you will never see certificates for, btw) at 20% in the later terms and speculated as high as 50-60% before ~8 weeks.
This, of course, gets even more complicated when you take various laws into consideration. This article cites a number of cases where some states take the rights literally and others interpret them. It's also a state matter, as with all other violent crime matters, which can complicate things even further.
Abortion leads to a loss of respect for life in general, and to the growing acceptance of infanticide
Watch the fallacies. This one is known as a slippery slope.
Thus we can see that life clearly begins at fertilization and that only significant differences between a born and unborn baby is size.
Careful with that, too. An unborn child isn't "complete" (ie - the miniature version of a baby that you're implying here) until about week 10, and like I said before, can't live outside the womb until around week 20.
-- quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Correction: ILLEGAL abortion harms the mother. When abortion is illegal, hundreds of thousands of women DIE from botched abortions.