DISCLAIMER:THIS IS NOT AN ABORTION THREAD. IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS ABOUT WHETHER IT IS ETHICAL, MURDER, LEGAL, ETC, DO IT IN OTHER POST. THIS POST ONLY DEALS WITH THE ISSUE: When does human life begin?Implications and possibilities
People from pro-life organizations and such always talk about the idea "life from the point of conception" and even get to the point of post-day (emergency) pills should be considered murder. I'd like to put into question those ideas. I'd like to discuss also about implications and possible strange things that happens if we interpret that.
First of all I think that it would be wise to separate the idea of human life. human and alive are not necessarily bound. A sperm and an ovule are alive, part of a human but are not considered a human life (when they are separate). We can talk of human yet, not alive (as in the case of death).
Either with sonservatives or liberals there is a common unspoken agreement. There is a point in which both partiesacknowledge about when it is human. Late development is considered a human being by default. The radical problem is at the beginning of gestation. Liberals (pro abortion, or pro-choice, you name it) tend to say that it takes a time to call a "product" a human being. Conservatives (anti abortion, pro-life) say that it starts from the moment male and female reproductive cells unite.
The really big issue comes with "a sperm combined with a cell is a human life (and thus should be protected)". Well, I'd like to mention several instances in which this idea becomes quite strange. Let u say that a couple go to a clinic to inseminate the woman because of some reason. The medic (or laboratorist) takes both male and female cells and combines them to a petri dish. According to the pro-life view, this is considered a complete human being. But let us continue. Imagine that this medic trips and falls. Inevitably the zygote falls and is unable to live. In this case are we talking about a murder(malpractice for sure, but murder)? The intention was to have a new life, and the zygote was complete. Now imagine he had not only one sample that was supposed to fertyilize a woman, but lets say 5 women. He had in a tray5different samples. Does it meanhe just killed unintentionally 5 human beings??
There is also the case of miscarriages. If it is a human being, it is subjected to the law. Are we talking of suicide, murder (maybe unintentional, but murder in the end) or we think as death of natural causes? In any case, the term miscarriage becomes an eufemism of death. Going on with miscarriages, not all of them happen at noticeable stages. Some of them may happen even without the "mother" knowing it. To make it clearer lets imagine a scenario.
A couple has unprotected relations, and the sperm DOES combine with the egg, we are talking according to the conservative paradigm about a human being. At this pointwe can handle different scenarios, all of which are real:
a)The eggfor some reason does not implant and is "washed away"
b) The egg is implanted but the female's period washes away the product in any way
c)The egg continues the "normal development"to form a baby.
If it is the case of c, we are not in a problematic scenario. However, a and b can become quite a debate. Just by saying that the human being was not allowed to develop, we can argue about a possible murder (negating an implantationis as harsh as drowning someone). So should we talk about murder? If this is the case, any unprotected relation which does not end up in pregnancy could is suspected to be homicide. And such is not the case. So, why do we take for granted this case, and if it is provoked we are talking about murder? Some say it is intention what matters, but then again,what we discuss about is if that was a human life. By saying that "what decides if it is human" is our intention, the ruling factor in what we consider the beggining of human life becomes our intention (which could lead to more problems and even darker discussion). Pregnant women who are killed can be taken as double homicide, but miscarriage is in any way seen as a pity and there is no problem. That is just biasing standars and it shouldnt be. Imagine that a woman does not want an offspring and a natural miscarriage happens: is it then a murder, since intention was fulfilled by chance? And, if a woman alleges to want an offspring, but makes everything (drink, smoke, receive damage, abuse drugs) to cause an abortion, do we set her free? As seen, intention SHOULD not be the deciding factor.
My guess is that a safer way to talk about human life is to make a comparison with building a house. That way we can move a little aside the ideas of choice, religion and "sacredness of life". It is a proposal of talking about what our cognitive systems do recognize as an object before and during the constuction.
Talking about pregnancy and building has similarities. Both require the raw materials, need a place to "house" the project", start with a strange form and at the end it is about maturating (growing or adding details).
If we have a terrain with blocks, cement and stuff we do not have a house. If we dig a hole, we do not have a house. If we construct cimentations, there is still not a house. At the first wall made, there is a wall, not a house. Two walls in anglewith floor can be noticed as a house, but most people will not see that as a house, but rather as a couple of walls. By the third wall, some will say that is a house; incomplete but a house in the end, and some other will say no with many many reasons.By the fourth wall, a house is easily recognizable (even though certain people may disagree) the basic structure of a wall will be recognized. By the moment we have 4 walls and a roof, there is a house, beyond any doubt.
Such is the case of pregnancy. Which can be molded into 3 basic stages: blob, basic structure and maturation.
Within the first stage, we have cells in bloblike forms. The only hint we have about that being human is the DNA and maybe some other thing, but for most of live species, they all start like this. So. How can we defend something as human when it is hardly (if not impossible) to recognize as human?
The second stage is the tricky one. Because at that point we do not have a clear human form. There is something humanoid, and similar to the "build a house" thing, we know from experience that it will most likely be a house, but at the moment it is still not. Some othe say that the basic layout is enough to consider the produc a human, but still, there is a large period which will determine how will the "human be". What I mean, it is still a process in development. We can't still call it a finished work. Question arises again. If it is not still a "finished job" is it still human? I know it comes from human, and it is still alive, and through development, it will most likely become a human. But why can we say that as a human it is phisically incomplete but we say it is human? A very conservative ideology, my best answer.
Human life asI think should be thought at the start of the development stage. Thatis something recognizable as human, and with mosthuman body features inserted.What do you think???
In b4 wall of text,too longand boring....
Log in to comment