When does life begin in Human beings? Some might say, the moment of conception, others when the feotus becomes viable. Still others might say when it becomes independently viable after 26 weeks. My view is the feotus becomes alive when it is infused with blood at about 11 days. Is it possible to pin this down to an age / stage of development we can all agree on?
Life is there before the sperm meets the ovum. At that stage, the sperm may have existed for a few days; the ovum has existed since before the birth of the mother. The life of the foetus begins at conception. Dead cells do not divide, metabolise and grow. This has nothing at all to do with the question of the morality of abortion, by the way, unless you assume that the moment that life begins is somehow relevant to that question, in which case you need to justify that assumption.
Because the moment that life begins being somehow irrelevant to the question of abortion? an assumption that doesn't require justification?
lightgigantic: I've explained elsewhere on the forum why I do not consider the "beginning of life" to be relevant to the question of abortion. If you want me to explain my position again, you can start by explaining yours. Given my post above, I'd like to know first of all whether you consider destruction of live sperm or ova to be "abortion". If not, why not? Obviously nothing to do with the "beginning of life".
When a topic on sci delves into the philosophical, most posters tend to have a bout 5 key points which gets distributed over their many thousands of posts Well they are alive, but not the beginning of human life since in isolation they have no prospects of developing
So, is it fair to say that protecting potential is what's important for you in the abortion question, lightgigantic, and not where life begins? About 1 in every 3 pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. What do you think about that?
I don't follow. If it begins at conception, it ceases being a potential when? I'm not sure what you are suggesting. That because something is happening naturally, there is nothing suspect about engineering the same consequence unnaturally?
This is most definately NOT an abortion thread. It is to see if we can work out a consensus we can all work with.
A seperate life starts when it no longer totally depends upon the mothers ability to cease helping it and it can breathe on its own. That would be when it is actually born.
You do realize you just offered a political definition (IOW a definition based on issues of power and dependence)? and you do realize the problem science (or even philosophy that aims at categorizing things objectively) has with political definitions?
Yes, that's why I try my damnedest to avoid politics and keep things as practical as possible. As long as there's two people there will be contention between them even if they were the last people on earth. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Mod Note This thread is not about abortion, but about discussing when life begins when it comes to human reproduction. If you wish to discuss abortion, there is currently a thread with an active and ongoing discussion about abortion in the Ethics, Morality and Justice subforum.
Life begins when it's born. It's no longer in the womb and is now in a hostile territory- it becomes a being onto itself. Life begins when the unbiblical cord is cut. But then again there is surrogacy, where the foetus is grown in a host mother. And then again there's premature birth- babies can be born as early as we can sustain them. This puts them somewhere in the early part of the third trimester at its earliest. Anything earlier and it's not sustainable. So live can begin as early as month seven. But self-awareness in a foreign surrounding (the world at large) the number is at nine months- that's when they go off the respirators and enclosed environments and become their own being. Life begins at nine months.
The first brain activity is at 40 days, that would put it's consciousness at that of about a fish, moving up from there.
There is already a consensus on nomenclature in the developmental stages of pregnancy 3 weeks from the first day of your last menstrual period [called LMP by doctors], the ovum, if fertilised, moves down the fallopian tube. At this stage, it is called the fertilised ovum. The ovum begins as a single cell [mature egg]and upon fertilisation it divides and subdivides so that, by the time it reaches the uterus, it is over 100 cells. At this stage [when it is in the uterus] it is called an embryo The embryo now attaches to the uterine lining. At this point the outer cells take root and combine with the mothers blood supply, the inner cells divide into three layers. One layer goes on to form the brain, nervous sytem, skin and hair, eyes and ears. The second layer forms the lungs stomach and gut. A third layer forms the heart, blood, muscles and bones. Therefore at five weeks of pregnancy or approixmately at 40 days, once implantation and differentiation has been successful, the mass of cells is called a foetus, which means "little one". Ironically, in Latin, the term fetus was used for the newborn or for offspring. But in English, the term is used for the baby between the stages of embryo and birth.
That's a scientific definition, not a political one. The definition of a parasite is an organism that is dependent on another organism, and benefits at the expense of the second organism. A mutual symbiote is an organism that shares functions (digestion, food gathering etc) with another organism such that both benefit. Those definitions may have the terms "dependent" or "benefit" in them, but that alone does not make them political definitions.
It stops being a fetus when it is born and then becomes an infant. I believe it is alive at conception, but similarly to how it is alive before conception. Putting science aside though, intuitively I don't really consider a fetus "alive" until it can survive without its mother and actually becomes a physically independent being.
It's true that in the early stages the cells divide and differentiate, but I am not satisfied this constitutes life. This is tricky though because viruses cannot be said to be independently alive, having no CNS, vascular system, organs or, well anything much. But there comes a point when this growing ball of cells becomes alive to a greater degree than, say a virus. Evidently, we are not looking fore sentience here as it is not apparently key to the existence of life. Are we looking for something that is alive by proxy or is independently alive?
And their use of words like "dependent" and "benefit" do not exclusively define them. For instance, a parasite cannot be the same species as its host (at least as far as scientific definitions go) And mutual symbiosis defines a relationship between organisms, as opposed to defining an organism, per se.
