When does Life begin?

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Three things before we start:

1. If you find there is an issue that hasn't been addressed adequately, please contribute
2. The points made on this page are to be used as a primer for a discussion on the subject
3. Thanks for your comments and participation!
   
   
   OK, let's be honest. The only reason we are even talking about this issue is to attempt to justify abortion as the legal, ethical, personal right of a person seeking to deal with one of the logical results of intercourse. As a person, you began your journey at a specific time... the question is when?
   In any other context, this discussion would merely be an academic exercise.
   
   Why Women Choose Abortion

   The 2004 Abortion Supervisory Committee (ASC) Report in New Zealand gave the following grounds on which authorisation was given for abortions in 2003:

   Grounds	Total	%
   Serious danger to life	11	0.1
   Serious danger to physical health	13	0.1
   Serious danger to mental health	18,279	98.7
   Combination of serious danger to physical and mental health	75	0.4
   Combination of serious danger to life and mental health	4	0.0
   Substantial risk of physically or mentally abnormal seriously handicapped child	123	0.7
   Incest and serious danger to mental health - - Offence under s.131 Crimes Act 1961 and serious danger to mental health	6	0.0
   TOTAL	18,511	100

   
   
   Politics, economics, social engineering, eugenics and other subjective personal choices often seem to be at the root of a decision to abort. Historical positions taken by foundational thinker concerning the practice of abortion seem to indicate that objective search for truth was not always the driving force behind the cultural acceptation for ending the life of unborn children.
   
   • Although not very clear on the exact beginning of "personhood", Spartans frowned upon abortion because it ran counter to the desire to raise strong males for military struggles. Yet in Sparta, the practice of leaving a child to die of exposure on a hillside was not considered murder if the child was judged to be unsuitable for some reason (Morowitz and Trefil 1992)
   • Plato's belief was that the human soul only entered the body at birth and that abortions should be required of any woman expecting a child above the age of 40 years old. If this latter course of action failed, then the parents were expected to "dispose" of the newborn child (Bonner 1985)
   • The Roman stoic philosopher, Seneca, maintains that abortions were frowned upon, but that the practice of aborting to preserve one's figure was common (Tribe 1990)
   • Pythagoreans believed that life, begins at conception which is reflected in the Hippocratic oath to "... neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor [...] make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy." Hippocrates' outright disapproval of abortion stemmed from his belief that conception marked the beginning of a human life (Tribe 1990)
   • Aristotle, like Plato believed that the State should set the acceptable number of children a couple could have. Beyond that number, an abortion should be provided "before sensation and life develops in the embryo" (Bonner 1985).
   What is Life?
   Four primary criteria to determine whether an organism is living or inanimate
   
   1. Growth
   2. Ability to reproduce
   3. Consumption of energy
      
   4. Reaction with or impact on its environment
      
   Wendell M. Stanley, Nobel Prize winner and discoverer of the tobacco mosaic virus stated that "The essence of life is the ability to reproduce. This is accomplished by the utilization of energy to create order out of disorder, to bring together into a specific predetermined pattern from semiorder or even from chaos all the component parts of that pattern with the perpetuation of that pattern with time. This is life." Stanley, Wendell M. 1957. The nature of viruses, cancer, genes and life - a declaration of dependence. Proc. Amer. Philosoph. Soc., 101:357-370.
   
   What allows us to classify a life form as "human"?
   Compared to other living organisms on Earth, humans are capable of abstract reasoning, language, and introspection. Social interactions between humans have also established an extremely wide variety of traditions, rituals, ethics, values, social norms, and laws which form the basis of human society. A human being has first a human ascendancy and therefore carries a very distinct genetic combination that identifies him as a member of the Homo genus. He has the potential to contribute to and interact in some form and at some level with other members of that group and will, at some point, be able to understand, internalize, develop and instrumentalize similar values. Humanhood is determined by DNA.
   
   At what point does a human being become a person?
   ...the beginning of a new life is exacted by the beginning of fertilization, the reproductive event which is the essence of life (The Beginning Of Life And The Establishment Of The Continuum).

Since all human beings can be identified through specific DNA patterns, it is reasonable to say that a two-day zygote is human by definition. What allows some people to dispose of a human life at any point prior to birth can be two-fold.

1. the life of the mother is in danger
2. the human being has not yet reached the status of "person" in their eyes

So a natural question could be "at what point in the developmental process is a pre-born human being protected as a person"?

What some human embryologists say...

1. Embryology is the study of development of the new individual from beginning to end. We should, therefore, be alerted as to what contemporary and renowned human embryologists have to say about the beginning of a new life and the beginning of the human being:
   • Moore, Keith L. "This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being"24
   • Larsen, William J. ".... gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual."25
   • Carlson, Bruce M. "Human pregnancy begins with the fusion of an egg and a sperm ...."26
   • Patten, Bradley M. p. 13 "Fertilized ovum gives rise to new individual". P. 43: ".... the process of fertilization .... marks the initiation of the life of a new individual."27 Quoting F.R. Lillie: P. 41: ".... in the act of fertilization .... two lives are gathered in one knot .... and are rewoven in a new individual life-history."28
   • Sadler, T.W. "The development of a human being begins with fertilization."29
   • Moore, Keith L. and T.V.N. Persaud. "Human development is a continuous process that begins when an oocyte (ovum) from a female is fertilized by a sperm (spermatozoan) from a male."30
   • O'Rahilly, Ronan and Fabiola Müller. "Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed."31
   24 Moore, Keith L. 1988. Essentials of Human Embryology. p. 2. B.C. Decker Co., Toronto
   25 Larsen, William J. 1993. Human Embryology. p. 1. Churchill-Livingston, New York
   26 Carlson, Bruce M. 1994. Human Embryology and Developmental Biology. p. 3. Mosby, St. Louis
   27 Patten, Bradley M. 1968. Human Embryology, 3rd Ed. p. 13. McGraw-Hill, New York
   28 Lillie, F.R 1919. Problems of Fertilization. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
   29 Sadler, T.W. 1990. Langman's Medical Embryology, 6th Ed. p 3. Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore
   30 Moore, Keith L. and T.V.N. Persaud. 1993. The Developing Human, 5th Ed. p. 1. W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia
   31 O'Rahilly, Ronan and Fabiola Muller. 1992. Human Embryology and Teratology. p. 5. Wiley-Liss, New York

   Links
   

   • lifeissues.net: clear thinking about crucial issues http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kisc/kisc_08lifecontinum.html
   • When Does Human Life Begin?
     http://8edevbio.com/article.php?id=162
   • Ethis Updates, ". . . dedicated to promoting the houghtful discussion of difficult moral issues."
     http://ethics.sandiego.edu/Applied/Abortion/index.asp
   • BBC - Abortion - Moral certainty
     http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/abortion/philosophical/moralcertainty.shtml
   • BBC - Religion & Ethics - Abortion
     http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/abortion/index.shtml
   • Chromosomes
     http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/Chromosomes.html
   • Suicide, Abortion & Euthanasia . . . are matters of life and death!
     www.life.org.nz

The Complexity Argument

TRUTH is like fingerprints, you see it only when you dust for it...

Imagine someone trying to convince you that the Eiffel tower was a product of time and chance and was not built by someone. How long would you entertain the thought that this highly complex object, containing a great number of recognizable patterns could be the product of Nature rather than a construction of Man?


Similarly, imagine that Mt. Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota was decreeted a Natural wonder. Would you agree that "time and chance" could, possibly, have been their author?

The Complexity argument is based on the ability of human intelligence to separate random or naturalistic patterns from the ones generated by some kind of intelligence (the capacity of mind, especially to understand principles, truths, facts or meanings, acquire knowledge, and apply it to practice; the ability to learn and comprehend).

Beside the fact that these projects are widely known and that nobody would question their origin, we are also able to claim that both of them bear the mark of Intelligent Design and are therefore the product of human efforts.

Can we see pattern and design in the human eye? (news.softpedia.com)

• one of nature's wonder that functions like a camera... Only much more complex...

• it has 12 million photoreceptors

• it has 6 muscles that move the ocular sphere with such precision, the eye can follow moving objects

• it has 130 photosensitive rods and 7 million color photosensitive cones that turn light into electric signals which are transmitted to the brain

• it can only see three basic colors (red, green, mauve) but can detect 10 million hues

• is able to create 3-D images together with the brain

All this in a 24 mm-wide ball...

Does God exist?

God's eternal power and divine nature are so obvious in what surrounds us that, in the end, men are without excuse (Romans 1:20).

• What are objective reasons for your belief in God?

1. I don't believe there are any "proofs" that could convince someone who is not interested in Truth in general (whatever it might be). Plato understood this and created a masterpiece in the allegory of the Cave. This being said, for those who are ready to be surprised by Truth (whatever it might be) there is a flurry of winks and fingerprint trails left by something bigger than we are. Some of them are so explicit and obvious that we are indeed "without excuse". One such fingerprint has to be... Complexity
   but there are others...

• If you do not believe God exists, what are your reasons?

1. Here is something interesting to ponder: 39 Unconvincing Arguments for God from the Friendly Atheist. Most of the arguments are subjective (in the sense that the author seems unable to consider the alternative to his position as an option. Objectivity requires a fair treatment of the opposite side... this I did not notice...) or quasi scientific (statement like "there are many transitional links in nature" is easy to make but either there is no scientific consensus or its an unproven assertion. I am still waiting a worldwide acclaimed discovery of some of the million missing links that have been necessary for us to be where we are today. Is Lucy one of them? the answer is not conclusive. Even if she was, she is awfully lonely...) and nothing more is expected of Hemant (even friendly atheists seem threatened, at times, by the fact that there is something bigger than they =)). Nevertheless, there are a few points that make for interesting discussions... I'll let you find which ones =)

God is dead

What I find interesting about this statement is that in order to pronounce someone dead, we need to be convinced of his existence...

Nietzsche was, of course, entitled to claim the irrelevance of spiritual values. The natural consequences of such choice is, of course, a loss of needed references and a rise in relativism in a world that constantly looks for boundaries. In a relativistic culture, all convictions must be given equal weight. No idea can stand higher than any other in the sea of human thought. The Intenet, a beautiful showcase of human nature, is a good reminder that Man is not ready to renounce personal, material or philosophical gain for the benefit of others.

But what if Nietzsche was wrong or didn't look in the right places?
Plato's allegory of the cave is a useful tool to show Truth is often hidden from those who do not look for Her.
...
[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
[Glaucon] No question, he said.
...

TRUTH is like fingerprints, you see it only when you dust for it... =)

... might be wise to allow us to be challenged by the following:

• The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." (Psalm 53:1)
  

• God's eternal power and divine nature are so obvious in what surrounds us that, in the end, men are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)
  

Those are heavy words indeed. Evidence is there for anyone who wants to see it. Of course, it is a matter of will.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging to know that "everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened". In the end, we mostly find what we set out to see. (Matthew 7:8)

What would be the effect of God's disappearance?
Check God is Dead - Ron Currie, Jr.

The Real Nature of Human Nature

Are human beings intrinsically good or are they bad or evil?
What is "good"?
What is "bad"?
How do you define "Human Nature"?
What is our reference in terms of good and bad?
Do we have an absolute reference for good and bad?
Should we have an absolute reference or is everything relative?