An Unborn Child is in Fact, Human

[Akka]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
It is not!! Find for me one professional biologist who would agree with that statement!

An organism is an intact autonomous living entity which has the ability to consume energy and reproduce within the proper environment. Sperm do not reproduce, they are part of an organism's reproductive system. They can in fact be considered part of an organ, in the same manner that a nerve cell is not the brain, but it certainly is part of it.

An embryo is part of which organ? Whose organ is it part of?


Unfertilized eggs die at the end of the menestrual cycle. Sperm also die after a period of time.

Ah well.
Use a bacteria then. Or a virus. Given enough time, I'm pretty sure they can evolve in an intelligent species.
Oh well, after all, consider I'm wrong on this one. Then we can stop the red herring and goes back to were the true debate is : it's not because something as the POTENTIAL to become something else that it can be considered like if it's already the "else".

[Akka]

Originally posted by November Adam
Man I feel some of you are being thick to play with my head.

Are you forgetting basic biology?

The mind does not determine whether you are a member of a species. Your DNA does. quit being so thick.

That's not the point.
A sentient alien would not have human DNA, and still I would be consider it immoral to hurt him.
A trisomic has not, strictly speaking, human DNA, as he got one excess chromosom (number 21 in this case). He's still considered human and a full person.

What's important is the mind.
JFYI, in hospital, someone is considered dead when his brain is destroyed. Even if the rest of the body still works (beware : I'm talking about a DESTROYED brain, not deep comas, where the brain is still alive, though barely).

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil


That's not the point.
A sentient alien would not have human DNA, and still I would be consider it immoral to hurt him.
A trisomic has not, strictly speaking, human DNA, as he got one excess chromosom (number 21 in this case). He's still considered human and a full person.

What's important is the mind.
JFYI, in hospital, someone is considered dead when his brain is destroyed. Even if the rest of the body still works (beware : I'm talking about a DESTROYED brain, not deep comas, where the brain is still alive, though barely).

Surely a newborn can't be considered sentient can it? A baby learns to walk generally by ten months, but that's not sentience is it? Most babies can say a few words by eighteen months, but parrots can repeat words too, are they sentient? Isn't sentience essentially the same as complex reasoning? Doesn't sentience then develop sometime in the school years? So should we allow termination fo the sentient to be up to say six years of age?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
For example, 'You were with me in the womb' (quoting from memory, please correct me if I misquoted) could very well be referring to a fetus, but not an embryo.

Now you're just speculating. The Bible doesn't make any specifics. It is clearly referring to all of the unborn.

[DarthVeda]

Once again, Predestination.

Just like if I were to throw an apple into the air, all things being equal, it should return to the earth at some point.

Just the same, a fertilized embryo, zygote, or fetus will become a sentient human. The cells I shed every day are not predestined to be clones of myself. Special steps would have to be taken to turn my genetic information into a zygote, and eventually, another human.

Is a bacterium predestined to become sentient? No. At least not in one lifetime. By killing bacteria do you destroy a sentient being? No, because it's not predestined to become sentient in its lifetime, or even in ten lifetimes.

But anyway, the Bacteria/Animal argument is irrelevant because it is neither Human nor Sentient. And for that matter, neither are seperated sperm or eggs; they don't even have a complete genetic code.

The point is that every zygote in every conceiving mother is going to be a sentient human. It's not going to be a horse, duck, cow, or a pig. And nine times out of ten that zygote is going to survive to become a living, breathing human being.

Abortion is no doubt taking the life of a human. At the very least, a soon-to-be sentient human (the only missing ingredient being time itself).

But should it be illegal? That's harder to say. At the very least it should be highly discouraged. As it stands today, getting an abortion in the United States is about as easy as getting a VCR or Television, and about the same price as well.

Should abortions be illegal, in my opinion? Probably not. It's really the choice of the parents. While I consider it to be a high breach of morality and ethics to abort a pregnancy, other people (as is obvious on this webboard) don't feel so, and will probably get an abortion legally or otherwise.

[CyberGnu]

Darth, the majority of embryos die. Would you be as confident your apple would come down if more than half of them just stayed up?

If you don't like the bacteria, consider a cancer cell. Put it in a nutrient bath, and eventually if will evolve into a sentient, [human, however you want to define that from DNA] being.

Potential as a binary value just doesn't cut it. Would you have some kind of cut-off value for propability instead? I hope you realize how absurd that would be... So we are back to square one. Only a sentient human organism would be a human being.

[CyberGnu]

Now you're just speculating. The Bible doesn't make any specifics. It is clearly referring to all of the unborn.

I am speculating? I'm saying that you might have misinterpreted the passage, you are claiming to be infallable...

Either way, what the passage says is only that God was with me in the womb, it does not mention how long I spent in there. Could be nine months, could be five minutes. We have no way of knowing.

But to claim that it 'obviously' refers to nine months is just preposterous...

So, to sum up: Science says you are wrong. God says "don't mix me into that, I constructed the system like this, it is up to you guys to figure it out".

[CyberGnu]

BTW, although I think we moved on from the topic:

From dictionary.com
Organism: An individual form of life, such as a plant, animal, bacterium, protist, or fungus; a body made up of organs, organelles, or other parts that work together to carry on the various processes of life.

So an embryo would be an organism.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Cloud9
A human zygote is a human being, but it is just in it's early development stages. Even after birth your body still continues to develop and become more complex as you go from a child to an adult. This process is accelerated during puberty.

Is a human zygote alive? Of course it is! If it weren't alive it wouldn't develop over time. This is because there are instructions called DNA that tell it how grow and develop; without DNA, it wouldn't do anything. DNA is the building blocks of life.

So, in effect, since zygotes are in an earlier human development stage, and they are alive because they develop over time, then taking away that life would be ending human life, which constitutes murder.

Doesn't this disturb anyone?

Pursuing similar logic, a recent corpse is human. True- it's unable of sustaining life itself, but it's genetic basis is still human and it still contains some cellular activity.

Is cremation therefore murder?

Another one- since many contraceptive pills do not prevent conception but prevent the ovum from bonding to the uterine lining, this means that the pill is murder too.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

On reflection, I'd like to add a footnote to my last post.

I only invite Cloud9's response if he now feels capable of discussing it like an adult, rather than triumphantly exclaiming that I've been added to his "ignore" list for expressing an alternative point of view. There are many reasons for this, but foremost among them is that I'm not about to waste my limited time on simpletons.

So has that debatorial Damascene conversion happened yet?

[Jaakko]

Thanks for answering Cloud9! Here's another question for you:
What would be the punishment for a rape victim who subsequently has an abortion, even though the embryo/fetus is completely viable? After all it isn't the baby's fault how he got conceived.

[Akka]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


Surely a newborn can't be considered sentient can it? A baby learns to walk generally by ten months, but that's not sentience is it? Most babies can say a few words by eighteen months, but parrots can repeat words too, are they sentient? Isn't sentience essentially the same as complex reasoning? Doesn't sentience then develop sometime in the school years? So should we allow termination fo the sentient to be up to say six years of age?

As I said before, what's important is the MIND, not sentience. Even if the baby has not yet the ability to have complex thoughts, it has the ability to feel. Hence he can be hurt. Hence hurting him is bad.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Ron Jeremy



Pursuing similar logic, a recent corpse is human. True- it's unable of sustaining life itself, but it's genetic basis is still human and it still contains some cellular activity.

Is cremation therefore murder?

Another one- since many contraceptive pills do not prevent conception but prevent the ovum from bonding to the uterine lining, this means that the pill is murder too.

Sorry, you're wrong.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil


As I said before, what's important is the MIND, not sentience. Even if the baby has not yet the ability to have complex thoughts, it has the ability to feel. Hence he can be hurt. Hence hurting him is bad.

I don't know if you did this somewhere way back in this thread, but would you care to tell me the difference between mind and sentience in your view?

[Akka]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


I don't know if you did this somewhere way back in this thread, but would you care to tell me the difference between mind and sentience in your view?

The mind is the spirit. The thing that allows us to think and to feel. Sentience is a work made by the mind, just like running is a work made by your body.
Sentience is a level of thought, and the thoughts comes from the mind.

Mind is the essence.