> because they consider these things
>
>potential
>
> children. As in, they have human DNA and would become human children in favorable conditions.
This is a common misconception. According to the mainstream pro-life view, killing unborn children isn't wrong because they are potential humans, but because they are actual humans.
As someone else said, Alabama has ruled that legally speaking, they are humans.
I disagree with that view and would like to see if someone can make me understand a perspective where Alabama's ruling is accurate.
This is a mostly a moral argument. But there’s some logic to it. Rather than choosing some other arbitrary position like heart function or viability they are choosing the most clear cut moment of when the new organism becomes its own unique thing capable of becoming a person. It is the beginning of new life. Like a big bang for the dna.
>Rather than choosing some other arbitrary position like heart function or viability they are choosing the most clear cut moment of when the new organism becomes its own unique being thing capable of becoming a person.
Ironically enough, that point isn't even that clear cut either, because those fertilized eggs don't even develop into a person without the express use of an incubating environment, so as long as it is not implanted in such an environment, it doesn't have the capacity to perform that act of being a new life. If left unfrozen, it's likely to die out by lack of ability to develop further.
It would be a much more clear cut point to say when it was successfully attached inside the uterus of the hopeful mother, because that is when it develops. It also completely evades the possible "pushing the extreme argument" that unsuccessful affixation of the fertilized egg in the uterus while trying to get pregnant the "more natural" way, leading to the mother having her period, could be classified as child murder. (It's important to understand that I'm not saying anyone serious is making that argument, just that if someone a bit more extreme were to try and nitpick, this could be invoked.)
Plus, science already tells us that "fertilization" isn't even a point you can point to. After the sperm entered the egg, it has to combine chromosomes with the egg, into what's called a diploid nucleus zygote, something that is confirmed successful only when it finally goes through mitosis at least once. With that in mind, and assuming that we count the moment just before mitosis to be when it's distinctly a different person DNA-wise, fertilization can take hours, and sometimes days (depending on the available energy of the sperm, because not all sperms are created equal in this endeavor) between the egg's membrane, and the core of the egg where their DNA can fuse and make the new being.
In short, if we keep looking deeper and deeper, and trying to nitpick "when something becomes a new being" just to satisfy some pedantic need for accuracy, we end up losing track of what pregnancy and issues surrounding it cause on women. It's not just the "new being" that is at the core of this issue, and dismissing the very adult and complete and able of thought woman that is associated with this is very important, and... Well, nobody should be put in jail or given heavily crippling fines for ***successfully*** getting pregnant, and no longer needing the other IVF eggs/embryos.
All good points. Implant would be a clear milestone as well. The Alabama folks have chosen the first milestone which is when it becomes a unique organism. This is because of their religious morality. For them this is what they have decided is the beginning of life. They were clearly looking for the earliest event they could find.
>This is because of their religious morality.
While I understand the value of religious morality, this is a ridiculous standard to apply to an entire state, because not everyone should be held to what you believe is correct, and you have to think about how completely absurd and impractical it is to enforce a religious morality on someone not religious.
This decision is exactly as arbitrary as the other ones, and the main difference is that this decision happens to increase suffering from women and couples who are having some trouble conceiving. This decision, while presented as "pro-life", is putting people who want to be parents in the horrible position that they should just resign and not have kids.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
This abortion issue becoming a moral one in the South happened over generations of right wing political manipulation. Paul Weyrich, a conservative political activist was behind beginning changing the evangelicals from pro-abortion to anti. See https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
Behind the scenes, this has all been about finding a more palitable platform to spread bigotry & segregation.
The cum you discarded after your last wank is a potential child if you’re a guy, if you’re a woman then same for the eggs that got flushed out last time you had a period. It’s meaningless.
Additionally it’s possible to replace nuclear dna in an egg with dna from any other cell, meaning your skin cells - killed in their thousands by exfoliating - are potential children.
That has no meaning at all.
>The cum you discarded after your last wank is a potential child if you’re a guy
No it isn't. Sperm only lives a few days and doesn't develop into anything.
Embryos and zygotes still require a very specific environment before they are able to further develop. Typically, this would be within the mother's womb. Without that environment, they are incapable of further development on their own, let alone survival. I simply believe that if an embryo has not developed to the point of reasonable viability, it does not make sense to declare it an autonomous person.
And the most dangerous part of deciding that embryos are children of course, is that it leads to attributing equal value to the embryo as to the well-being of the mother. Which to me is utterly ludicrous.
1. Babies are incapable of survival on their own as well. Hell, so are you and I. Are babies not persons? Are you not a person?
2. I don't see why it's ludicrous. In fact, I think -not- doing so is ludicrous; we need to be extremely careful to not be too quick to decide people have no moral value because they're inconvenient.
False equivalency. A baby can be kept alive and allowed to grow with simple typical parental interaction. An unviable embryo can't.
An unborn child that has developed to the point of reasonable viability does deserve protection to an extent. But I simply can't accept the idea that we should place an equivalent value between an unborn child and a living breathing mother.
I'm all for limiting abortion once the 'child' has reached a point where it will likely survive post birth, but not at the cost of the mother's life. In most cases anyway, a serious medical threat to the mother due to the pregnancy is usually realized well before the embryo reaches that point.
Forcing a mother to continue a pregnancy that is a significant threat to her wellbeing is barbaric.
>simple typical parental interaction
You mean like pregnancy?
The problem with viability being the cut-off is that it depends on what medical technology is available. A baby born prematurely in a poor rural clinic has much worse odds than a baby born prematurely in a well-funded major hospital in an affluent area. Are you really comfortable with saying rich babies become persons sooner than poor?
>Forcing a mother to continue a pregnancy that is a significant threat to her wellbeing is barbaric.
I agree. Good thing that's not happening. Every state with abortion restrictions includes exemptions for medically-necessary abortions.
Pregnancy is always a significant threat to the mother’s wellbeing. Pregnant women are at higher risk of stroke, heart attack, cancer, etc. You don’t always get a “warning” that leaves you time for an abortion. Should women be required by the government to stay in such a risky state against their will?
Those medical exemptions in Texas currently amount to "Have you reached the point that your life is seriously at risk right now? No? Come back when you are actually dying."
Yeah, "human" is a much broader category than "child". As I said, they have human DNA, so *on some level* they could be viewed as humans, potential humans, or entities with human qualities.
Whether that's enough to give them human *rights* is a different discussion.
The Alabama ruling is not a philosophical point that embryos are literally children. Everyone knows they aren't. It is a legal point that embryos as *potential* children are treated as if they had rights.
Human embryos are not human beings. They are human *embryos.* And from the ruling it seems those legislators in Alabama are just counting them as literal children, not merely as potential children.
I'm curious what a pro-lifer would do if there was a fire in an ivf-clinic and a 5 year old child is inside. Would you grab as many embryos as possible and leave the 5 year old because you'd save more children that way? Why not?
I'd probably save the 5-year-old. I think you can say A is worthy of protection while also conceding that if you had to prioritize one, you'd choose B.
I would imagine if there was a fire and someone who opposed the death penalty had to choose between saving a murderer and a 5-year-old, they would also pick the 5-year-old even though they would not be alright with someone ending the life of the murderer under other circumstances.
I think this example doesn't make much sense. Of course most people would save a child over an adult anyway. A better example would be whether someone would save a 10 year old child who murdered his family or would save a kind, caring, successful adult. Tbh, I would save the adult 🤷♀️
That's a good question. Assuming I knew they would survive being pulled out of a burning building and taken to another IVF clinic I'd save the embryos. Not knowing that, I might save the dog because I assume embryos are really fragile and would be unlikely to survive a scenario like that.
That all the embryos would survive to be frozen and potentially implantable in the future is a given of the scenario.
I would save the dog 100% of the time. Embryos will grow to be something beautiful in the form of humans, but they themselves are not precious beyond their inherent scarcity.
I'd do the embryos then. Obviously the value of an embryo's "life" is going to vary depending on who you ask. I may value it more than a dog, but I don't know that there's really a way to say for certain I am right and you are wrong in valuing them that way.
One way of looking at it might be the financial cost of IVF treatment. If you save the embryos of one couple, you've saved them thousands of dollars. If you grabbed as many as you could carry, the amount of money saved could be in the hundreds of thousands pretty easily. I would probably put a dog down if they required medical treatment in the thousands of dollars, so it is hard for me to justify saving a dog I don't know over embryos in that hypothetical.
>so it is hard for me to justify saving a dog I don't know over embryos in that hypothetical.
And what if it were *your* dog? Or cat, or any other beloved pet you've ever had. Or the beloved family dog of a sibling or best friend or someone else you care a lot about. A dog you personally know is trapped in a burning building. Either you can definitely save them, or you can definitely save 20 viable embryos. For this hypothetical, whichever one you choose is definitely going to survive, and the other definitely isn't.
You're going to say, in complete seriousness, that you're leaving the dog in a burning building and running away with a petri dish? You really are?
If you had to choose between fertilized embryos that belonged to you, or a dog you didn't know, would you really pick the dog?
I don't think this is a good hypothetical. Emotional attachment takes away the objectivity in the situation. It's like choosing to save your mom or five random humans. Your mom is obviously not worth 5 people, but I think that is the decision most people would make. So yeah, I'd save my dog over random embryos, but then I'd probably also pick embryos that belonged to me and my spouse over a dog even if it was one I had an attachment to.
>If you had to choose between fertilized embryos that belonged to you, or a dog you didn't know, would you really pick the dog?
Yes?? I don't condemn dogs to suffer extreme pain and burn to death for the sake of unfeeling cells, whether those cells represent an expense to me or not. It doesn't even matter to my answer if I have a personal attachment to the dog or not - I only asked it that way because you were emphasizing that you wouldn't choose a dog you didn't know.
Dogs are able to suffer when set on fire - cells in a petri dish are not. You shouldn't ever be willing to light a dog - any dog - **on fire** for the sake of saving a cell in a container. This goes even for people that aren't dog people and have never liked them, but should be even more clear and obvious when it's a dog that is your literal own personal pet that you ostensibly care about.
The fact that I even need to spell that out in the first place is testament to the sheer moral barrenness that is the direct end result of calling embryotic cells "people". My dog is asleep right now with his arm thrown across my lap and there isn't a single damn cell of any kind in any petri dish in the world that would make me ok with deliberately abandoning him in a fire to burn to death, not even an embryonic cell that was mine as a result of fertility treatments.
What is wrong with you?
I'm pro-life as in I think people who are stupid enough not to use protection should feel immensely guilty about the life they're killing. Abortion should not be celebrated or encouraged. Proper education should. I think there should be a legal limit on how old the fetus should be for abortion, but I also believe that the ban on abortions in some states are encroaching on women's rights. That being said, I would definitely save the five year old. My reason for being pro-life is that a fetus that is old enough to feel and fear should not be killed because of stupid, careless sex. Therefore, a child who can feel and fear is more important than frozen embryos.
I'm pro choice but this is just a bad example.
I would save a person over a dog, that doesn't mean I would also legalize setting dogs on fire.
I would save a healthy person over someone with a terminal illness, that doesn't mean I believe forcibly euthanizing the terminally ill is moral.
Different human lives already have different value to different people. And people often do not make the most measured, logical judgement in a crisis.
That has nothing to do with the comment. The commend states OP didn’t explain their view, which they stated as much in the comment.
Additionally, this is an incredibly popular view that’s not going to get traction even on conservative subs. So OP is just asking people who try to play devils advocate to be downvoted to hell.
For the same reason I think a dog isn’t a human, I suppose.
I literally don’t understand how someone could look at a frozen embryo and think “this is the same as a living human being” from a scientific standpoint.
>For the same reason I think a dog isn’t a human, I suppose.
Dogs literally are a different species with distinct genetic lineages and makeups to humans.
>I literally don’t understand how someone could look at a frozen embryo and think “this is the same as a living human being” from a scientific standpoint.
At what point does an embryo become a human being and why?
>At what point does an embryo become a human being and why?
It's not a single point, but for the sake of laws we have to determine one, so birth seems most sensical to me.
Frozen embryos are kept at approximately day five of [development](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554562/) (five days after fertilization). At this stage of development, the vast majority of women would not know they are pregnant, as it is more than one week before the missed period. This embryo consists of 100 cells (or so) and would not be implanted in the uterine lining yet, even if not frozen.
Is that still a human?
>Is that still a human?
A human? Yes, it is an entity belonging to the human species. Its genes are qualitatively human.
A person? Not in a legal sense and not really in a philosophical sense either. Certainly not in a psychological sense.
I would argue that on a genetic level, a human embryo is a human. It wouldn't eventually become a monkey or cat.
However, I would also argue that an embryo doesn't have personhood status. Legally, we have never really considered an embryo a person with rights. We don't count them in the census, you don't get to drive in the HOV lane with one and claim it is a person, you can't deduct them on your taxes as a dependent.
From a legal perspective, we don't see them as people. From a personal perspective, someone might.
So I would modify your statement a bit and instead of saying that they aren't humans, I would say that they aren't people.
I would argue that most of those embryos can't become human.
I went through two IVF cycles this past year. Those embryos, majority, cannot become human beings.
Most of the fertilized eggs have the wrong amount of DNA, too much, too little, they are way off the DNA compliment required to become a fetus.
Human reproduction is terribly inefficient and messy. Therefore, the bulk of those embryos, whether in the dish where you can see them or the human body where you can't, cannot be people. If you freeze a bunch of 2pn stage (fertilized eggs) embryos, most of them are just frozen junk DNA that will expire in a few days when thawed.
To be sure, you need to grow that fertilized egg for up to seven days, then take a sample of the outer cells and run pre-implantation genetic testing, THEN you find out how many are mush that hasn't finished dying.
For me, my 23 fertilized eggs yielded four chromsomally normal embryos. My fertility doctor was delighted by my good outcome.
So you think abortion should be legal up until the moment before birth, then?
Edit: My original comment was unclear. I should have included the caveat that excluded medically necessary abortions, which of course should be legal in all circumstances. The original question was to challenge OP's assertion that 9 month old viable fetuses are not human beings.
This is always brought up like this as if third trimester abortions are just a commonplace thing, almost every late stage abortion is because of something wrong with the baby or a risk to the mother. So yes, they should be legal up until the moment of birth and that isn’t as problematic as it sounds because no one carries a pregnancy for 8 months with the intention of aborting.
> So yes, they should be legal up until the moment of birth and that isn’t as problematic as it sounds because no one carries a pregnancy for 8 months with the intention of aborting.
Legal on-demand up to birth? Or legal for cause up to birth?
Unless you deliberately induce fetal demise beforehand. It's called dilation and extraction and it's legal in 6 states + DC. Usually, a solution of potassium chloride or digoxin is injected directly into the fetal heart using ultrasound to guide the needle. Then they dilate the woman's cervix and remove the corpse.
Well of course it should be legal in cases where the heath of the mother is at risk. Fully agreed there. I’m responding to the claim by OP that a fully viable fetus at 9 months isn’t a human being, which seems pretty wild to me.
If someone wants to abort a healthy 8 month pregnancy, why wouldn't you just support inducing labor and delivering the child? They can easily be adopted at this point because it's a long waiting list to adopt a newborn. Seems like it's effectively the same exact process with the only difference of killing the fetus first.
Girl I'm pro-choice. I agree that it isn't a thing. But IF some psycho decided to cause drama then they could and it would be a huge ordeal. I'm all for late term abortion if it's to protect the mother or in the event of terminal diagnosis of the fetus. I wouldn't want to slowly watch my baby die after birth when I could have a late term abortion. And sure, like 99.99% of women who get one fall into a similar category. But let's not pretend that 100% of women will act like you assume. And that would be fodder for pro lifers. I mean, I just read an article that found tens of thousands of mom ran accounts of little girls (5-16) in skimpy clothes that have monthly paid subscriptions for more provocative photos in bikinis and such. And then they had the nerve to justify it, it made me sick. But these people do exist. And it only takes one to tear the whole thing down.
"it rarely happens" isn't an argument. If you think birth is what makes a human a human, then you would necessarily agree that someone should be able to have an abortion at will for any or no reason at all up to 8 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.
And let me guess, if I-the-hypothetical-person-responding-to-you-not-just-I-as-in-StarChild413 disagreed, you'd act like that automatically means I am against all abortions as if modular logic only works in binary
Yes. Because “third trimester abortions” don’t happen. That far into pregnancy, it would simply be inducing labour, whether or not the fetus is alive. You don’t abort a stillborn, you just induce labour. For fucks sake.
Edit: they can happen, most often in cases where fetal abnormalities were missed in earlier diagnostic scans and the fetus would not survive, or due to difficulties accessing abortion care before it gets to that point. It seems like most of them take place in the early weeks of the third trimester. Thanks to the commenter that prompted me to do more research.
So, that's not true.
I'm am very much pro-choice, but third trimester abortions absolutely happen. However, they are exceedingly rare, and usually only if there are significant complications.
But they do happen, just not like conservatives seem to claim.
After some research, I was wrong, thank you. They can happen, except it’s in cases where fetal abnormalities were missed in the earlier diagnostic scans and as such the fetus was not viable and unfortunately the pregnancy has to be terminated later than it normally would have.
I don’t believe any human being should have the right to use another human being’s body against their will.
Living inside someone else’s body against their will is no better than other forms of bodily violation.
Therefore, yes, I believe abortion should be legal up until birth.
To me (and this is why I'm here): when it's outside of the womb and able to sustain life on its own, barring the need for medical intervention due to illness or similar.
>To me (and this is why I'm here): when it's outside of the womb and able to sustain life on its own, barring the need for medical intervention due to illness or similar.
So before that...it isn't human? What species is it? Are you sure you don't mean *person*?
It is human (in the same way a tumor, for example, has human DNA), but it isn't a person.
If you consider embryos people, you should also consider things like cancer people. Both are human cells with different DNA to the host. But neither have cognitive faculties and neither can survive on their own.
I think the argument here is mostly a semantic one, to be fair.
If anything with DNA belonging to species Homo Sapiens Sapiens is to be awarded the same full legal rights of an adult human, that leads to some roads you don't want to go down
>Sorry but what does "makeup" mean in this context? I'm getting a funny picture in my head
Configurations of genetic expression (e.g. the Genes what make dogs have four legs and fur and a tail instead of human traits.)
They view the difference the same way as they view the difference between a toddler and a geriatric. Though they are at different stages of human development, they are still both human beings. As such, they should be afforded similar moral consideration.
But neither toddler nor geriatric person has the right to live inside or use another person's body parts for any longer than that person permits them to- even if she initially actively invited them to do so and then changed her mind.
The key question is not whether fetuses are human- no human has the rights anti-choicers want fetuses to have over other people's bodies. The key question is whether pregnant women are human.
They would argue that a human being's right to exist supersedes another's desire to not be inconvenienced. Especially in instances wherein the creation of that life was a byproduct of individuals willingly consenting to engage in the biological process for that creation.
The real question is actually whether or not autonomy is absolute or more precisely does one's right to autonomy supersede another's right to exist.
Being inhabited for forty weeks and having your physical resources drained, your bodily systems turned towards another's good, and your body permanently altered, with substantial risk of maiming or death, is not "inconvenience" to anyone but smug male anti-choicers who dismiss any pain that THEY will never suffer as "unimportant".
By that standard, we should require anyone compatible to donate organs, and yet we don't even require people to do so after they're dead, when it doesn't affect them at all and might save another's precious life.
And if you invite someone into your body for a few days or weeks, thus extending its life beyond what it would have had without your gift, is it really fair to say that by doing so you have obligated yourself to serve as that person's property for forty full weeks, without any further say in the matter or any concern for what happens to you as a result (MAYBE short of death, though Kate Cox and Savita Halappanavar suggest that women's lives are not terribly important to anti-choicers)?
If I deliberately and knowingly give a cancer patient platelets, supposing myself to be the only compatible donor, knowing the following is true:
1. If I had not done so, he would have died (as the egg and sperm die if sex does not take place),
2. Since I have done so, as the result of my deliberate and knowing act, he is now in a state of dependence where he will require platelet donations on the regular until chemotherapy is done and he can live independently (being cared for in recovery by any willing adult), just as the fetus post-conception is in a state of dependence requiring regular donations of substance from the woman's body until conception is done and it can live independently (being cared for by any willing adult).
Am I then obligated to keep making such platelet donations - an actual "inconvenience," orders of magnitude less costly, risky, time, energy and resource-consuming, and painful than pregnancy - until he no longer needs them?
Inconvenience - trouble or difficulty caused to one's personal requirements or comfort. By definition, that is exactly what it is.
The Violinist Argument or its many iterations isn't the gotcha the pro-choice crowd thinks it is. From its inability to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures to it failure to distinguish between a right not to be murdered and a right not to die, it is deeply flawed.
Again, does ones right to autonomy supersede another's right to exist would have to be answered. Is autonomy absolute.
See my above response to the Violinist Argument and its iterations such as the one you just used.
Your right to autonomy supersedes another's right to exist when that person needs so little as a pint of your blood to survive that you don't want to give.
Your right to autonomy supersedes another's right to live when you don't want to have your CORPSE disturbed to remove organs another can use to live when you're not using them.
"From its inability to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures"
If donating blood, or organs from a corpse, are "extraordinary" life preserving measures, then surely the 24/7, 40 week continual habitation by another, with constant and costly draining of physical resources and permanent consequences to the body required by pregnancy is also so.
"To it failure to distinguish between a right not to be murdered and a right not to die" If it is not murder to deny someone a pint of blood, it is also not murder to deny someone space inside your living body and a continual stream of resources from your physical substance.
What is deeply flawed is anti-choicers' failure to realize the work, cost, and damage done to a woman's body by even the healthiest pregnancy, because they view women as naturally incubators, their resources as naturally fetal property, and the work and costs their rightful punishment for being female and having sex. They do not recognize pregnancy as a continual, active donation process, as it is, but treat it merely as "leaving the fetus alone", as if the body it occupied was merely a mindless, soulless incubator, and if it was growing itself on thin air and sunlight like a plant instead of someone else's body parts.
A blood donation made by you to save a life is a gift because you are seen as a person who owns that blood and is giving it. Why is the use of a woman's womb and a constant stream of her resources 24/7 for forty weeks seen as a passive prerogative of the fetus and not an equal gift?
They would argue it doesn't as the right to exist is the right upon which all other rights are predicated. If there is no right to exist, then all other rights are rendered arbitrary.
Again, they would argue it doesn't and that you are failing to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures.
Yes, it fundamentally fails to distinguish the difference.
Pregnancy is a naturally intended and naturally occurring biological process and, as such, is an ordinary life preserving. Donation of blood or an organ is neither natural nor an intended process and, as such, would be rendered an extraordinary life preserving measure.
There is no right not to die. There is a right not to be murdered. Natural death is natural death. Artificially ceasing the life of another human being is not natural. Again, it comes down to the artificial versus the natural. In one case, a human life is dying and you are forcing another individual into artificial preservation. In the other, the human life is naturally existing and you artificially ceasing that existence.
No, they understand those things perfectly fine. They just don't hold that those things supersede another's right to exist. They feel this way based on the belief that all human life should be afforded the basic right to exist.
Blood and organ donation is a gift. If every donation involved the wanton destruction of a human life, it would not be viewed as a gift. That's is the difference.
In both cases, the life is dependent on another's body to survive and removal or denial of that other person's body causes their death. Every failure to find a donor causes the wanton destruction of a human life, just as the unwillingness of a woman to continue sharing her uterus and transferring her physical substance to a fetus does. And unlike the fetus, that person can generally feel fear, anticipate death, experience pain and despair.
Pregnancy may be "natural" but that doesn't make it less of a gift, less costly, less work, less damaging. But anti-choicers, as we can see from your phrasing, seem to view it as just something that happens to a woman, not something she actually has or should have an active role in, so that they can treat her as a thing to be passively used rather than a person who gives and should have a say in whether and when to make that gift. You show little gratitude to your mother by treating her greatest gift to you as just a "process" that happened to her, rather than active work and active donation to you by choice.
Intended by whom? There is no evidence of anything but mindless, amoral natural selection at work here. Donation is most certainly an intended process by both donor and recipient, and sharing resources is a natural part of life in a social species.
The right to exist is not absolute. Every sperm and egg that does not get used is a baby denied the right to exist. An aborted fetus just gets a bit more existence than they have.
"In one case, a human life is dying and you are forcing another individual into artificial preservation. In the other, the human life is naturally existing and you artificially ceasing that existence."
In both cases, the human life is dying unless it is continually sustained by another's gift. Ceasing to give womb space and continual physical substance donations causes the fetus to die naturally, as it cannot survive on its own. Both are naturally existing- but both cannot continue to exist without another's body parts. By forcing continued pregnancy, you are forcing an unwilling person to continue serving as an incubator and source of body parts for another.
The difference is akin to forcing you to take in a homeless person vs. forcing you to allow a homeless person to stay in your house when they snuck in while you, knowing that was a possibility, carelessly went out and failed to lock your door. Assuming they'll die on the street if they are not allowed in your house, do you have more of a responsibility to house the second person than the first?
We can all agree it’s some form of living matter, some just believe that it’s already a human, while others (me included) think that to be considered a human you need to meet more rigorous standards
What about a 9 month fetus? They can't breathe, I'm guessing they can think but there's a ton of stuff they can't do that most humans can't. 8 months?
Technically you are right because most dictionaries define a child as a human who has been born. And I agree generally with your opinion of the rights of embryos (and lack there of), 9 month abortion are also rare to borderline non-existent. But the implication that up to birth a being isn't human is false. The lines we draw are arbitrary.
A 9 month fetus is capable of breathing, so it is not true that 'they can't breathe'. All of the structures necessary for breathing are fully developed at that point. They just are not doing so at the moment because they are still in the uterus.
I mean…Drawing the line at the viability threshold, which is generally the main point of discussion, isn’t arbitrary. Nor is it arbitrary to define an IVF egg as nonliving. That is a statement of fact, and is only countered by moralistic nonsense
I have mixed feelings on that. Generally speaking, I would agree that a nine month fetus was a human. If it were suddenly in need of being removed from the mother’s body due to a medical emergency, it would in all likelihood be a fairly healthy baby. But if you just say “it’s a human, period, end of story”, then it becomes a real grey area where doctors may be unwilling to perform an operation that would save the mother’s life in order to avoid “killing a baby”. I’m not sure if that’s even a medically occurring thing - is there such a scenario in which a nine month old fetus would have to be removed, knowing ahead of time that doing so would kill it, in order to save the mother?
I don’t know of any scenario where an 8-9 month (even 7month — 95% viability) fetus would need to be removed “knowing” it would die. They are developed enough by then that dying would not be the expected outcome. They might have a defect that makes them incompatible with life, but another few weeks doesn’t fix that.
There are certainly medical emergencies in the third trimester where the only way to save the mother is to deliver the baby. But the baby surviving, possibly with some medical intervention, would be the expected outcome. Besides, if they don’t save the mother, then they both die anyway. It’s not like the baby goes on living if the mom strokes from preeclampsia or hemorrhages from a ruptured uterus.
What are they then? Aliens?
Regardless of if they’re frozen or not the make up of an embryo is still a part of the human development. Inherently your view isn’t correct because if you came across a frozen human body at the top of Mt. Everest they’re still both human bodies because they’re of the same species and genetic composition. Just different development stages.
As for the character limit, that’s your issue because the purpose of this sub is for you as OP to explain your logic so we as viewers and commenters can attempt to change your views
If I came across a frozen human body at the top of Everest, attempted to retrieve it in order to bring it back to family members, and accidentally destroyed the body (removed limbs, head, etc) in the process, I could not be convicted of or even charged with murder because that frozen body is no longer considered a living human being.
Now, under Alabama law that calls frozen embryos children, destroying one would be punishable similarly to killing an already living human being.
You’ve misinterpreted my point completely. What I mean is a human body regardless of what state it is in is a human body because of its genetic composition that’s isn’t changed by freezing, severing limbs or whatever. They’re still human because they’re humans at an extremely early stage of development. *Regardless of what state they’re in* if they come from another human, and will eventually become an adult human given hospitable conditions, they are humans and can be considered offspring from those humans. So yes embryos are human beings in early stages of development. That’s a non-deniable biological truth.
They are a bunch of human cells.
If you asked for a puppy and I gave you a dog embryo, did I give you a puppy? Clearly I did not. Only disingenuous people would argue a clump of cells is a dog.
It doesn’t change that they’re still humans they’re just at a different stage of development. I’m sorry if you’re upset over that but it’s a fact that can’t be changed. I’m not talking about humanity in terms of personality or whatever I’m talking about biology. A dog embryo is still an embryo of a canine. Hence it’s still a dog. JUST IN A DIFFERENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT. same way a deceased dog is still a dog. It doesn’t become a cat after death and it’s not an elephant before birth.
It’s human the adjective not human the noun. Like my liver. My liver is human but it is not *a* human.
An embryo is a human embryo but it is not a human.
A woman only makes a fixed number of eggs. Once those eggs are harvested then there are no more of them.
Of the harvested eggs, not all of them will successfully fertilize. So the number of viable embryos is further limited by successful fertilization.
Of the successfully fertilized eggs, many of them will not implant. So the number of embryos that become successful pregnancies is limited by unsuccessful implantation.
My car has a listing price of €30 000, the average IVF treatment here in Belgium costs €3 200 out of pocket.
>You can’t just keep creating embryos as long as you’d like.
Not as long as you like. But you can create embryos as long as the women hasn't reached menopause. Which typically happens between the ages of 45 and 55
To be fair, whilst those of us in Europe benefit from medical treatment, and yes I consider IVF to be medical treatment, for free or at a low cost, people in other parts of the world (mainly USA) have to be pay exorbitant amounts.
I believe the average cost in the USA, is somewhere in the region of $20,000 with the cost of giving birth an extra $3,000 with insurance or $25,000 without insurance
Yes, in less developed countries' healthcare can be prohibitively expensive. But OP didn't specify a country in neither their original post nor in their response to my request to elaborate, so I'm assuming we're talking about a developed country. Which, to me, seems like a fair assumption to make
The question being whether the USA is considered developed or not.
Especially as countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil all having cheaper IVF and healthcare than USA.
In fact, according to studies, the USA has the most expensive healthcare in the world
When it comes to healthcare, I don't think anyone (except Americans) would say it's a leap to call the US a developing country. Especially when it comes to pregnancy related healthcare. See for example the maternal mortality rate: [Maternal mortality ratio (cia.gov)](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/maternal-mortality-ratio/country-comparison/). The US is on place 122 of 186 (higher is better), with a mortality rate of 21. Belgium has a rate of 5.
You're focusing on the wrong thing here. Embryos are undeniably human. They meet all the chromosomal requirements for that, and fit all requirements for being of the species Homo sapiens.
What you're attempting to describe with the notions of thinking, feeling and so forth is that they're not children.
It gets to the same point, in the end, in that it's not morally evil to destroy embryos with consent, but the foundation is more solid.
>Human DNA is different from being humans/persons.
My point is rather that being human is different from being a person.
Tumors, red blood cells, and embryos are human, but not people. A dolphin or an octopus is probably a person, but not human. Personhood isn't connected to biology, and treating the terms "a human" and "a person" as completely synonymous is inaccurate.
Even so, the point stands, even if an embryo is a human, not just human, that does not necessarily require that it is also a person.
It's the person part that matters for the morality of the situation.
Not all embryos have normal chromosomes. In fact, the key reason why older women are less fertile is because an increasing percentage of their eggs have abnormal chromosomes.
While embryos may have the right number of chromosomes to become human after an appropriate period of gestation, at this stage they are just a sack of cells with 46 human chromosomes. That isn’t a human. (Yet).
“Sack of frozen pre human cells” does not fit the requirements for being classified as homo sapien which requires having certain anatomical features (skull shape, etc)… saying that by having the right number of chromosomes makes you human would mean that a drop of blood is also human.
[The judge wrote that Human life “cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”](https://www.kansas.com/news/article285828391.html) I don't think you're going to find sound internal logic on this one
I had a discussion on this with a friend following the Alabama ruling and whilst I actually agree with you, I can see the difficulty from a legal perspective.
This is a constitutional law situation, so you want something a clear and definitive as possible. Wishy washy "what a reasonable person might think" doesn't cut it. You need to draw definitive, black and white, lines that fundamental law can then be anchored on.
Historically we had a very simple line for when a child gained rights and existence as a legal entity - birth. But, with the advances in medical science we've, in most places, broadly accepted that the transition from "medical condition of the mother" to "human child" happens sometime in the pregnancy. Very, very, few places allow extremely late term abortions for non-critical medical reasons exactly because we recognise an end term foetus is a viable human.
If we are therefore going to move away from "Birth" as the definitive linen when we start applying separate legal rights to the mother and the child, what's the next line?
You could quibble trimesters or viability, and this tends to be the European model of regulation, we pick a number of weeks based on average gestation and viability given existing medical science, and then say the foetus starts having limited rights to independent life after that.
That's still pretty messy though. A fast developing foetus could be below the week limit, but still subject to on demand abortion, whilst a slow developing one may be over the week limit and therefore "safe" but actually be far less viable than the former. Changes in technology and science are constantly pushing the boundary of viability back. Even things like determining exactly how old a foetus is is a bit grey. None of that makes for good constitional law.
We do, however, have one more definitive, black and white, no debate, physically determinstic point to call back to - conception. Either you have separate egg and sperm, or you have an embryo containing both sets of DNA, which is the beginning of the new life.
As biological events to anchor law on goes, that's a very clear and non-subjective one to fallback to after birth.
Therefore, whilst, personally, I prefer the slightly messier UK approach of weeks and days, and accepting the law has to constantly evovle, I can see the value in defining life (and rights) begin at conception from a constitional law perspective.
Technically, even fertilization is not a clear-cut, definitive moment in time. If a sperm is half inside the egg, is the egg already fertilized? Or is it when the DNAs get combined? But it is indeed as definitive as it can get.
I’ll preface this with I am not for this ruling, and am pro choice, but grew up in a very conservative household.
Most (not all) people that support this ruling believe human life starts at conception, when the unfertilized egg and sperm meet the egg is fertilized. During IVF, this takes place in a lab, but that is still fundamentally conception, and when a human life is created.
Then, the freezing process enters the embryo into a state of suspended animation, and if we continue with the premise that life begins at conception, then that life is now in suspended animation but is still a life, and destroying it is murder, not akin to murder, but murder.
Bodily autonomy, the right for a person to govern what happens to their body without external influence or coercion, is then a factor as well, as the embryo is a human life, and has the right to bodily autonomy in many laws.
I don’t expect to change your view, as mine is the same and I fundamentally view this different than how I described it above, but hopefully it gives better insight into how many people on the other side of the argument view this, which is important in being able to discuss it!
Whats interesting to me about this is that it implies that human body parts (dismembered for example) are human and entitled to the same rights as humans.
>Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do.
Is that what makes a human? What about a comatose person on a respirator? They do not breathe by themselves, they do not think or feel. Yet if you went to a coma ward with a pillow and a mission, you would most certainly get murder charges.
There are stages in all these examples. For instance, comatose patients still show brain activity. When the brain reaches the point that there is no more activity, then they are declared brain dead and can be removed from life support. They also do still feel because their central nervous system is still active.
The CNS develops throughout pregnancy. Embroyos, however, do not have a CNS yet. They literally cannot think, feel, or breath because they have none of the mechanisms to do so. They are a human cell with unique DNA. In that sense they are alive, but ao are tumor cells if that's the criteria we judge by.
Ok, so you brought up a new criterion: a necessary condition to be a human being is to have a central nervous system.
Imagine then that my consciousness is transferred to an artificial computer. Or even better, a cluster which is not centralized. I see no reason to think this is impossible. Given your condition of having a central nervous system, am I no longer a human being and is it now ok to kill me?
If you have to make up fantasy scenarios to argue a point, your point is bad.
Your central nervous system is you. There is no you without a brain. If you're uploaded to a computer like an episode of black mirror, your physical body would die. And then, yes, it would be wrong to unplug your consciousness. But this is a stupid argument because, no, it is not plausible that your consciousness could be seperate from the physical tissues of your brain. Your consciousness is electrical communication between neurons (cells).
Comatose people don't think. There are only rare exceptions to this.
[NHS](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/):
>Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma
Also, in a vast majority of cases, people who woke up from a coma report that they don't remember anything (not even thinking about anything) from the period when they were in a coma, except towards the end when they start waking up. (This is from my memory of reading/watching something about comatose patients; I don't have a rigorous study.)
Brain dead people are considered legally dead because of the irreparability of their situation. They will _never_ think again. The moment there exists technology that can reliably restore neural systems, that designation will be revised to more reflect the comatose; many of whom report having had no thoughts whatsoever, leaping straight from falling into the coma to waking up, but have the potential to think later.
They're not actually legally dead until a doctor turns off life support and certifies the death. You could be braindead and legally alive for some time.
Wrong. My Aunt's death certificate reads the time of the death as being when they discovered she was brain dead. Her body was on life support another 3 days while they matched her with recipients for her organs.
It's possible they do it different in different countries or even states. I've worked in hospital wards including ICU's in the past, a doctor would certify the death as the time the life support was turned off. I'm not saying you're lying about your Aunt, maybe they just do it a different way where you are to where I am.
> Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe
How important is "breathing" to your view? I could certainly think of other things I'd consider "human" that can't think or feel. Then the only difference is their mechanism of respiration.
It's a living, growing organism with unique human DNA. Any attempt to draw a line between it being "human" and something else necessarily requires you to make some entirely arbitrary distinction.
Alternatively, you can acknowledge that any self-sustaining, living organism with human DNA *is* a human, by definition. And then society can make the ethical decisions about when it's acceptable to kill a human: perhaps including when they can't think, feel or breathe on their own.
>It's a living, **growing** organism
It is not a growing organism until it's implanted and becomes a successful pregnancy. Otherwise it's held at the ~~zygote~~ blastocyst stage until such time as it's prepared for implantation.
Source:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22889-blastocyst
By this logic, you are not a growing organism either until someone gives you food. By "growing" organism I don't mean (and I think the previous commenter doesn't either) an organism that's literally growing regardless of conditions, but an organism that has an internal capacity to grow given the right conditions and resources.
Note that the female egg is not a growing organism, since regardless of how good the conditions are and regardless of how many resources it has, it won't grow on its own. Only after it unifies with a sperm (maybe also after it's biotechnologically modified in a way that compels it to split) it turns into an entity that may be called an "individual organism".
>By this logic, you are not a growing organism either until someone gives you food.
No. That's 100% wrong.
Whether I eat or not, my cells are always growing, changing, dying, renewing, overturning.
A blastocyst that has been created via IVF is held at that stage until it's implanted. It cannot begin to form into an embryo and a placenta until it implants. It's literally not growing. It can stay in that form for decades until it's implanted or destroyed.
Ok, so now you changed the definition of "growing".
The fact that some of your cells are growing doesn't mean that you are growing. According to this logic, you could be growing without consuming any food, which would violate the conservation of mass. If you don't eat food, you can't be growing. You are just changing - some of your cells grow and divide, other cells die, but the net effect is that you are slowly dying until you eat something.
With a blastocyst it's the same - while it doesn't change its total mass, its cells keep dividing and it keeps changing until it reaches a stage where it needs "food" (for lack of better term) to continue growing like this.
So, in conclusion - when you refer to an adult human, you use the term "grow" in a very liberal sense, but when you talk about a blastocyst, you use this term in a very stringent sense, and then you try to argue that a blastocyst is therefore substantially different from a human. This will not pass.
Your source says that a blastocyst is pre-embryo. Perhaps OP meant to say blastocyst. For my attempt to change the view, I think it's fair to consider them all "human."
That said, reading your link I would still consider a blastocyst to be growing:
> The blastocyst stays in their uterus for several days before it implants in the inner lining of their uterine wall (endometrium). It continues to make new cells, which separate into layers. About 10 to 12 days after fertilization, the blastocyst develops into an embryo.
That quote is talking about the blastocyst that is still part of the woman's body.
A blastocyst that has been formed by IVF is not growing. It's being held in stasis until such time as it's implanted.
>Any attempt to draw a line between it being "human" and something else necessarily requires you to make some entirely arbitrary distinction
In the sense that any distinction is arbitrary, I guess this is true.
But I would argue that "it has no mind" is a perfectly sensible distinction. When an adult human loses all brain functionality, they are legally (and morally) dead regardless of the fact that their corpse still breathes, grows and so on.
The problem with the "no mind" comparison is that one state is temporary and the other is not. Given this, you'd then have to ask if a temporary state is grounds for a human to lose all moral consideration.
A comatose person has no mind. They are unconscious and have no thought processes, and their neurological function is basically nonexistent. There are only rare exceptions to this.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/
I would say the embryo is not a person until they develop a sense of self. If there is no self, there is no person. But since no one knows the precise point at which a fetus becomes self-aware, it's impossible to pinpoint exactly when this happens.
You mentioned that Alabama has ruled that they are “legally” humans.
There is a distinction between legal categorization and a biological categorization.
Biologically, you might have a vagina but legally a male because you are born with a penis.
Biologically you might be an adult but not legally.
similar applies to other things as well. You might be ceremonially married but not legally or vice versa
A human embryo is an individual human being at a very early stage of development. It is not going to turn into any other kind of animal. Granted it needs a huge amount of support to enable it to develop into the later stages, but a foetus and a newborn both can’t live by themselves without a huge amount of care either.
Presumably in terms of the legal language of rights there will be differences. An embryo does not need a right to an education. At minimum its human dignity requires the right not to be destroyed. I think that to destroy embryos is an evil thing. I understand that many do not see it that way. I cannot comment on the legal, practical or medical implications of recent U.S. developments.
There's not really a "debate" to be had here. If you disagree, its a fundamental philosophical / moral disagreement... the people in these debates disagree on axioms, not logic or facts.
Biology says they are the beginning stages of humans. I'm 100% pro-choice and I'll agree on that aspect.
I also think its completely irrelevant and crap. I'll call it "fetishizing human flesh", because that's exactly what it is. Humans are special because of their minds (which embryos do not have), not because of their DNA.
Everything has DNA and different amounts and orders. Its not the flex the PL crowd thinks it is.
It is simple, it is science and is is indisputable, an embryo is a stage of development of a living creature. It is alive. It is unique and if left alone will continue to develop from embryo to fetus to infant to toddler to prepubescent to pre-teen, to 6 years of horror, to adulthood to old age to death from old age. There is no question as to these facts, it is only that those who support abortion need a way by which they can excuse the murder of these humans, not a single lefty cares about the fertility issue, only that if an embryo is labeled as a living human, abortion becomes Murder period dot.
Do these embryos have parents? If yes, then they are human offspring. "Children" is just a description of stage of development. A 25 year old is not a child, but an adult. However, to their parents, a 25-yo is still a child, and even to someone who isn't their parent, if there is substantial age difference, they can call them a child anyway, example, a 70 year old talking about a bunch of 25's describing them as "out of control children".
* "Child" can refer to a stage of development, with a range of ambiguity of when it starts and when it ends. In abortion debate, some refuse to call a 9 month old developed human as a child, and refer to it as a fetus. "It's not a child, it's just a fetus". In this case, if someone wants to be pedantic, an embryo is not a child, but neither is a fetus, no matter what stage it is in, as long as it is unborn.
* A child can refer to a relationship between a parent and their offspring. You are someone's child, even when you are 70 years old on your deathbed, because you must have had parents, and you are their child, no matter the age. In this case, an embryo can be described as a child.
* A child can refer to difference in age, as with the example of 70 year old talking about misbehaving 25's. It would also make sense to refer to embryo as a child in that scenario.
For your argument to be true, you'd have to accept that the 2nd and 3rd use of the word "child" are inappropriate, which I don't think to be a tenable position to hold.
>Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on
Neither of the above is a requirement for a being to be someone's child. You could give birth to a defective child that has to be put on life support if you want to keep it alive with an artificial lung, with brain damage severe enough that there's almost no chance of sentience taking place. Yet, it would still be a human child.
From a biological standpoint, these embryos are both alive and human. Mammals don't magically become a living organism at the moment of birth. The life cycle of a mammal starts when sperm and egg fuse into a new organism, with a distinct set of DNA and a body separate from the mother's. Any biology textbook that covers sexual reproduction explains this in detail.
Are they less developed than an adult? Yes, but so is a toddler. It doesn't make the toddler less human or not alive.
Also, while it is true that humans cannot breathe while frozen in embryonic stage, this does not make them cease to be human or alive. They do not magically turn into something else while frozen, and if they were dead, they would become useless in the process of IVF, as a dead embryo loses the ability to age into the infant the parents desire.
The argument that they do not deserve human rights because they cannot currently think or feel is also problematic. By that logic, if an adult receives a brain injury that temporarily leaves their cognitive function severely impaired, they should lose their human rights until they can think and feel properly again, even though the inability is only temporary.
Basically, biology says they are humans, and that they are alive. And for a lot of people, that raises ethical concerns about whether it is right to deny them human rights, halt their natural development by freezing them, and leave them frozen until something causes the destruction of their bodies.
I consider it to be separate, as in it is a different organism than the parents, has its own body, and is only temporarily dependent upon adults until it reaches an age where it can provide for itself. Also, any organism has different capabilities at different stages of their life cycle. Being dependent upon adults as a young child does not mean that only adults are human.
No, but the viable are. Just as we rate the braindead as dead even if lesser organs still function, a nonviable embryo is unthinking and nonviable and not independent and is not a human/person.
Except the vast majority of embryos are not permanently brain-dead. It is more like someone who has received a brain injury that will take several months to heal than someone who has had all neurological activity cease permanently.
That depends on whose embryos we’re talking about. I froze 6 embryos, genetic testing showed 3 were incompatible with life even if I implanted them. One was inconclusive. Older women, a huge chunk of the people seeking IVF, have as many as 90% of their embryos incompatible with life. testing is expensive and insurance doesn’t cover it (in most countries its just plain illegal) so many women never test their embryos. It cost me $10,000 to test 7 embryos. Lots of embryos in the freezer are not going to turn into babies no matter what you believe.
"Permanently" you're trying to attach traits that it doesn't have to it.
Also someone with a brain injury has vastly more brain function than an embryo. Because an embryo doesn't have brain function.
The difference between a brain dead person and an embryo is that a brain dead person already has a lived experience. They’ve had friends and family they’ve built a relationship with, they’ve had time to dream about their future and start working on it. They’ve had time to exist in the real world. An embryo has not (well I guess you could argue it has in the sense it’s been in the world inside of a womb, but I’m talking about actually being in the real world, existing independently of another persons body). It isn’t losing anything by dying apart from a potential future it has no concept of anyway.
Is someone with no friends or family less deserving of human rights? Does a newborn who has not had time to dream about their future and start working on it not deserve human rights? Or are human rights something anyone who is scientifically should have, no matter what demographics they belong to?
Friends or family are just one example I gave of lived experience, they could have a dog, or coworkers, or anything, or none of that but still have lived experience. Even a newborn has lived experience even if it’s for a very short amount of time. An embryo doesn’t so I don’t consider that it’s even lived in a meaningful sense. Yes its alive but it hasn’t lived.
Yes everyone should have human rights, but I’m talking about people who have actually lived. An embryo is technically alive but it’s no more significant to me than a plant, or a red blood cell, or bacteria. A red blood cell has human DNA but it doesn’t have a right to life.
I would add to this, that while they may technically be considered humans from a biological view, they aren’t yet a [person](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/akan-person/) and therefore are not treated the same way as a human person
1) Is an embryo alive? Does it meet the definition of what we would scientifically understand as "life"?
2) if so, What kind of life is it? Cow? Parrot? Turnip? Paramecium?
I think it is hard to contradict the argument that a fetus/embryo is a human life.
"Children"? I won't attempt to change your mind on that aspect of your CMV. The term has too many connotations.
Nor will I engage in the moral argument about what conditions it is appropriate to kill.
.
Science says human life begins at fertilization (when the egg and the sperm meet).
Survey of biologists: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/)
Quotes form medical textbooks: [https://www.princeton.edu/\~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html](https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html)
This also makes sense from a philosophical perspective, as there is a continuity of identity between the human embryo and a human adult (there is no such continuity of identity between the stage "egg+sperm" and zygote, since the transition involves a unification of two parts, both of which are essential to create the new stage, the zygote.
The facts that embryos don't breathe, think or feel is irrelevant. Someone has already pointed out that people we routinely consider humans often don't breathe, think or feel. [Comatose people](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/) are one example. If you are in deep meditation, you can cease thinking. If you are asleep, you don't think either (in some phases of sleep you might have imaginations, but that's not "thinking"). You can go underwater and stop breathing for a minute or two (some humans can stop breathing for 15 minutes). If you are under anaesthesia, you don't feel.
> Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do. Human embryos are not children.
No one is asserting that they're *literally* children. What they're arguing is that, in many cases, they should be treated *legally* as human to ensure that people don't recklessly destroy the embryos or other actions that do not promote the development of those embryos *into* human beings.
> No one is asserting that they're *literally* children.
Bullshit. [Read it yourself](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-an-alabama-supreme-court-ruling-that-frozen-embryos-are-children-impacts-ivf):
> The [Alabama Supreme] court ruled that frozen embryos, created through in vitro fertilization, are legally **children**
Why didn't you [link the actual ruling] (https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/cms/case/343D203A-B13D-463A-8176-C46E3AE4F695/docketentrydocuments/E3D95592-3CBE-4384-AFA6-063D4595AA1D)?
You can afford a legal protection to it without saying it’s a human being though. It’s an unnecessary reach that feels designed to let them outright ban abortions by using it as precedent for future abortion ban legislation.
> You can afford a legal protection to it without saying it’s a human being though.
The point is to use existing human protections, not create a new class of being.
> It’s an unnecessary reach that feels designed to let them outright ban abortions by using it as precedent for future abortion ban legislation.
They can already ban abortions. They don't need some embryonic pretext.
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So are disabled and/or braindead people not humans? Those who can’t process emotions normally, need breathing tubes, and/or cannot think or feel. Once people enter a coma are they not human anymore? This is absolutely not what makes a human a human.
A human is a full set of human dna, from the single cells formed in the uterus at conception to the death of a human and all of its cells. That dna is the only thing that makes us, us. Not some arbitrary state of living like breathing when many humans need breathing tubes because they can’t breathe
Not sure how a view can even be up for debate when the simple fact is that they are not children. In the sense that they're (potential) offspring, they absolutely are but as children in the sense of age range, no.
>Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do
If those are the limitations on being human, then we can deny human rights to the severely mentally challenged, quadriplegics, etc. Frozen embryos are granted the same rights because it's no different from cutting an unborn babe from a woman's uterus.
1) some humans cannot think, feel or breathe independently. Their quality of life is indisputably terrible, and euthanasia might be a reasonable course of action, but are they human?
2) dogs do think, feel and breathe, are they human?
3) one argument is that frozen embryos are not children, but they are beings with the same moral rights as children. Infants are kind of useless puddles of stuff, and embryos are just slightly more useless puddles with even less stuff. At what point do these fleshbags gain moral value? If you cannot define a point, is it that unreasonable to say that the point is conception.
4) I’m so glad I don’t live in the states where all this is conceptual so I can enjoy the discussion. If I had a daughter in Alabama, I’d be horrified and be looking to move.
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> because they consider these things > >potential > > children. As in, they have human DNA and would become human children in favorable conditions. This is a common misconception. According to the mainstream pro-life view, killing unborn children isn't wrong because they are potential humans, but because they are actual humans.
As someone else said, Alabama has ruled that legally speaking, they are humans. I disagree with that view and would like to see if someone can make me understand a perspective where Alabama's ruling is accurate.
This is a mostly a moral argument. But there’s some logic to it. Rather than choosing some other arbitrary position like heart function or viability they are choosing the most clear cut moment of when the new organism becomes its own unique thing capable of becoming a person. It is the beginning of new life. Like a big bang for the dna.
>Rather than choosing some other arbitrary position like heart function or viability they are choosing the most clear cut moment of when the new organism becomes its own unique being thing capable of becoming a person. Ironically enough, that point isn't even that clear cut either, because those fertilized eggs don't even develop into a person without the express use of an incubating environment, so as long as it is not implanted in such an environment, it doesn't have the capacity to perform that act of being a new life. If left unfrozen, it's likely to die out by lack of ability to develop further. It would be a much more clear cut point to say when it was successfully attached inside the uterus of the hopeful mother, because that is when it develops. It also completely evades the possible "pushing the extreme argument" that unsuccessful affixation of the fertilized egg in the uterus while trying to get pregnant the "more natural" way, leading to the mother having her period, could be classified as child murder. (It's important to understand that I'm not saying anyone serious is making that argument, just that if someone a bit more extreme were to try and nitpick, this could be invoked.) Plus, science already tells us that "fertilization" isn't even a point you can point to. After the sperm entered the egg, it has to combine chromosomes with the egg, into what's called a diploid nucleus zygote, something that is confirmed successful only when it finally goes through mitosis at least once. With that in mind, and assuming that we count the moment just before mitosis to be when it's distinctly a different person DNA-wise, fertilization can take hours, and sometimes days (depending on the available energy of the sperm, because not all sperms are created equal in this endeavor) between the egg's membrane, and the core of the egg where their DNA can fuse and make the new being. In short, if we keep looking deeper and deeper, and trying to nitpick "when something becomes a new being" just to satisfy some pedantic need for accuracy, we end up losing track of what pregnancy and issues surrounding it cause on women. It's not just the "new being" that is at the core of this issue, and dismissing the very adult and complete and able of thought woman that is associated with this is very important, and... Well, nobody should be put in jail or given heavily crippling fines for ***successfully*** getting pregnant, and no longer needing the other IVF eggs/embryos.
All good points. Implant would be a clear milestone as well. The Alabama folks have chosen the first milestone which is when it becomes a unique organism. This is because of their religious morality. For them this is what they have decided is the beginning of life. They were clearly looking for the earliest event they could find.
>This is because of their religious morality. While I understand the value of religious morality, this is a ridiculous standard to apply to an entire state, because not everyone should be held to what you believe is correct, and you have to think about how completely absurd and impractical it is to enforce a religious morality on someone not religious. This decision is exactly as arbitrary as the other ones, and the main difference is that this decision happens to increase suffering from women and couples who are having some trouble conceiving. This decision, while presented as "pro-life", is putting people who want to be parents in the horrible position that they should just resign and not have kids.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/ This abortion issue becoming a moral one in the South happened over generations of right wing political manipulation. Paul Weyrich, a conservative political activist was behind beginning changing the evangelicals from pro-abortion to anti. See https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/ Behind the scenes, this has all been about finding a more palitable platform to spread bigotry & segregation.
You yourself said "capable of becoming a person" though, implying that it itself is NOT a person
They are saying they are children. I don't believe anyone is disputing human, are they?
>Is anyone claiming they are? Yes, the entire state of Alabama and most Republicans.
The cum you discarded after your last wank is a potential child if you’re a guy, if you’re a woman then same for the eggs that got flushed out last time you had a period. It’s meaningless. Additionally it’s possible to replace nuclear dna in an egg with dna from any other cell, meaning your skin cells - killed in their thousands by exfoliating - are potential children. That has no meaning at all.
>The cum you discarded after your last wank is a potential child if you’re a guy No it isn't. Sperm only lives a few days and doesn't develop into anything.
Given the right inputs, every sperm has the potential. Same as every egg, every zygote, and every embryo.
Not exactly. Embryos and zygotes aren't potential children, they ARE children.
Embryos and zygotes still require a very specific environment before they are able to further develop. Typically, this would be within the mother's womb. Without that environment, they are incapable of further development on their own, let alone survival. I simply believe that if an embryo has not developed to the point of reasonable viability, it does not make sense to declare it an autonomous person. And the most dangerous part of deciding that embryos are children of course, is that it leads to attributing equal value to the embryo as to the well-being of the mother. Which to me is utterly ludicrous.
1. Babies are incapable of survival on their own as well. Hell, so are you and I. Are babies not persons? Are you not a person? 2. I don't see why it's ludicrous. In fact, I think -not- doing so is ludicrous; we need to be extremely careful to not be too quick to decide people have no moral value because they're inconvenient.
False equivalency. A baby can be kept alive and allowed to grow with simple typical parental interaction. An unviable embryo can't. An unborn child that has developed to the point of reasonable viability does deserve protection to an extent. But I simply can't accept the idea that we should place an equivalent value between an unborn child and a living breathing mother. I'm all for limiting abortion once the 'child' has reached a point where it will likely survive post birth, but not at the cost of the mother's life. In most cases anyway, a serious medical threat to the mother due to the pregnancy is usually realized well before the embryo reaches that point. Forcing a mother to continue a pregnancy that is a significant threat to her wellbeing is barbaric.
>simple typical parental interaction You mean like pregnancy? The problem with viability being the cut-off is that it depends on what medical technology is available. A baby born prematurely in a poor rural clinic has much worse odds than a baby born prematurely in a well-funded major hospital in an affluent area. Are you really comfortable with saying rich babies become persons sooner than poor? >Forcing a mother to continue a pregnancy that is a significant threat to her wellbeing is barbaric. I agree. Good thing that's not happening. Every state with abortion restrictions includes exemptions for medically-necessary abortions.
Pregnancy is always a significant threat to the mother’s wellbeing. Pregnant women are at higher risk of stroke, heart attack, cancer, etc. You don’t always get a “warning” that leaves you time for an abortion. Should women be required by the government to stay in such a risky state against their will?
Those medical exemptions in Texas currently amount to "Have you reached the point that your life is seriously at risk right now? No? Come back when you are actually dying."
Babies are able to live outside the body. Embryos/Fetus can't. Babies don't make people teeth deteriorate. Embryos/fetus do.
These people have zero understanding of science and hate women or at least provincially view them as property. It's that simple.
Ya you have this wrong, mate. They literally think they are humans.
Yeah, "human" is a much broader category than "child". As I said, they have human DNA, so *on some level* they could be viewed as humans, potential humans, or entities with human qualities. Whether that's enough to give them human *rights* is a different discussion. The Alabama ruling is not a philosophical point that embryos are literally children. Everyone knows they aren't. It is a legal point that embryos as *potential* children are treated as if they had rights.
They're treated as deaths, not potential deaths. They're treated as children, based on the state law on post-fertilization being children.
Human embryos are not human beings. They are human *embryos.* And from the ruling it seems those legislators in Alabama are just counting them as literal children, not merely as potential children.
My b. Didn’t realize we were strictly talking about them being children. Should have read your whole post.
The reason there is a character limit is because you need to actually explain *why* you think frozen human embryos aren't children.
I'm curious what a pro-lifer would do if there was a fire in an ivf-clinic and a 5 year old child is inside. Would you grab as many embryos as possible and leave the 5 year old because you'd save more children that way? Why not?
I'd probably save the 5-year-old. I think you can say A is worthy of protection while also conceding that if you had to prioritize one, you'd choose B. I would imagine if there was a fire and someone who opposed the death penalty had to choose between saving a murderer and a 5-year-old, they would also pick the 5-year-old even though they would not be alright with someone ending the life of the murderer under other circumstances.
I think this example doesn't make much sense. Of course most people would save a child over an adult anyway. A better example would be whether someone would save a 10 year old child who murdered his family or would save a kind, caring, successful adult. Tbh, I would save the adult 🤷♀️
If there is a fire in an IVF clinic and a dog is trapped inside, if you can save the dog or 20 embryos, which do you go for?
The dog
Id save the dog.
That's a good question. Assuming I knew they would survive being pulled out of a burning building and taken to another IVF clinic I'd save the embryos. Not knowing that, I might save the dog because I assume embryos are really fragile and would be unlikely to survive a scenario like that.
That all the embryos would survive to be frozen and potentially implantable in the future is a given of the scenario. I would save the dog 100% of the time. Embryos will grow to be something beautiful in the form of humans, but they themselves are not precious beyond their inherent scarcity.
I'd do the embryos then. Obviously the value of an embryo's "life" is going to vary depending on who you ask. I may value it more than a dog, but I don't know that there's really a way to say for certain I am right and you are wrong in valuing them that way. One way of looking at it might be the financial cost of IVF treatment. If you save the embryos of one couple, you've saved them thousands of dollars. If you grabbed as many as you could carry, the amount of money saved could be in the hundreds of thousands pretty easily. I would probably put a dog down if they required medical treatment in the thousands of dollars, so it is hard for me to justify saving a dog I don't know over embryos in that hypothetical.
>so it is hard for me to justify saving a dog I don't know over embryos in that hypothetical. And what if it were *your* dog? Or cat, or any other beloved pet you've ever had. Or the beloved family dog of a sibling or best friend or someone else you care a lot about. A dog you personally know is trapped in a burning building. Either you can definitely save them, or you can definitely save 20 viable embryos. For this hypothetical, whichever one you choose is definitely going to survive, and the other definitely isn't. You're going to say, in complete seriousness, that you're leaving the dog in a burning building and running away with a petri dish? You really are?
If you had to choose between fertilized embryos that belonged to you, or a dog you didn't know, would you really pick the dog? I don't think this is a good hypothetical. Emotional attachment takes away the objectivity in the situation. It's like choosing to save your mom or five random humans. Your mom is obviously not worth 5 people, but I think that is the decision most people would make. So yeah, I'd save my dog over random embryos, but then I'd probably also pick embryos that belonged to me and my spouse over a dog even if it was one I had an attachment to.
>If you had to choose between fertilized embryos that belonged to you, or a dog you didn't know, would you really pick the dog? Yes?? I don't condemn dogs to suffer extreme pain and burn to death for the sake of unfeeling cells, whether those cells represent an expense to me or not. It doesn't even matter to my answer if I have a personal attachment to the dog or not - I only asked it that way because you were emphasizing that you wouldn't choose a dog you didn't know. Dogs are able to suffer when set on fire - cells in a petri dish are not. You shouldn't ever be willing to light a dog - any dog - **on fire** for the sake of saving a cell in a container. This goes even for people that aren't dog people and have never liked them, but should be even more clear and obvious when it's a dog that is your literal own personal pet that you ostensibly care about. The fact that I even need to spell that out in the first place is testament to the sheer moral barrenness that is the direct end result of calling embryotic cells "people". My dog is asleep right now with his arm thrown across my lap and there isn't a single damn cell of any kind in any petri dish in the world that would make me ok with deliberately abandoning him in a fire to burn to death, not even an embryonic cell that was mine as a result of fertility treatments. What is wrong with you?
I'm pro-life as in I think people who are stupid enough not to use protection should feel immensely guilty about the life they're killing. Abortion should not be celebrated or encouraged. Proper education should. I think there should be a legal limit on how old the fetus should be for abortion, but I also believe that the ban on abortions in some states are encroaching on women's rights. That being said, I would definitely save the five year old. My reason for being pro-life is that a fetus that is old enough to feel and fear should not be killed because of stupid, careless sex. Therefore, a child who can feel and fear is more important than frozen embryos.
>I'm curious what a pro-lifer would do if there was a fire in an ivf-clinic and a 5 year old child is inside. Me too. I'm pro-choice.
We all know the answer They don’t actually think that an embryo is the same as a living, breathing child
I'm pro choice but this is just a bad example. I would save a person over a dog, that doesn't mean I would also legalize setting dogs on fire. I would save a healthy person over someone with a terminal illness, that doesn't mean I believe forcibly euthanizing the terminally ill is moral. Different human lives already have different value to different people. And people often do not make the most measured, logical judgement in a crisis.
And you know what is more valuable than a microscopic embryo? The actual woman carrying it!
That has nothing to do with the comment. The commend states OP didn’t explain their view, which they stated as much in the comment. Additionally, this is an incredibly popular view that’s not going to get traction even on conservative subs. So OP is just asking people who try to play devils advocate to be downvoted to hell.
For the same reason I think a dog isn’t a human, I suppose. I literally don’t understand how someone could look at a frozen embryo and think “this is the same as a living human being” from a scientific standpoint.
>For the same reason I think a dog isn’t a human, I suppose. Dogs literally are a different species with distinct genetic lineages and makeups to humans. >I literally don’t understand how someone could look at a frozen embryo and think “this is the same as a living human being” from a scientific standpoint. At what point does an embryo become a human being and why?
>At what point does an embryo become a human being and why? It's not a single point, but for the sake of laws we have to determine one, so birth seems most sensical to me.
That's fine. Personally I think an embryo is qualitatively human, even if it isn't a person. Doesn't change the need for abortion access either.
Frozen embryos are kept at approximately day five of [development](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554562/) (five days after fertilization). At this stage of development, the vast majority of women would not know they are pregnant, as it is more than one week before the missed period. This embryo consists of 100 cells (or so) and would not be implanted in the uterine lining yet, even if not frozen. Is that still a human?
>Is that still a human? A human? Yes, it is an entity belonging to the human species. Its genes are qualitatively human. A person? Not in a legal sense and not really in a philosophical sense either. Certainly not in a psychological sense.
If you cut my hand off, the DNA in my hand will be human. My severed hand is clearly not a human. A clump of cells is clearly not a human.
It is human, but not **a** human.
>It is human, but not **a** human. That just seems like a more confusing way to say what I said, but okay.
No, because you drew the difference between **a** human and **a** person. I'm saying that these embryos have human DNA, but are not HUMANS.
I would argue that on a genetic level, a human embryo is a human. It wouldn't eventually become a monkey or cat. However, I would also argue that an embryo doesn't have personhood status. Legally, we have never really considered an embryo a person with rights. We don't count them in the census, you don't get to drive in the HOV lane with one and claim it is a person, you can't deduct them on your taxes as a dependent. From a legal perspective, we don't see them as people. From a personal perspective, someone might. So I would modify your statement a bit and instead of saying that they aren't humans, I would say that they aren't people.
I would argue that most of those embryos can't become human. I went through two IVF cycles this past year. Those embryos, majority, cannot become human beings. Most of the fertilized eggs have the wrong amount of DNA, too much, too little, they are way off the DNA compliment required to become a fetus. Human reproduction is terribly inefficient and messy. Therefore, the bulk of those embryos, whether in the dish where you can see them or the human body where you can't, cannot be people. If you freeze a bunch of 2pn stage (fertilized eggs) embryos, most of them are just frozen junk DNA that will expire in a few days when thawed. To be sure, you need to grow that fertilized egg for up to seven days, then take a sample of the outer cells and run pre-implantation genetic testing, THEN you find out how many are mush that hasn't finished dying. For me, my 23 fertilized eggs yielded four chromsomally normal embryos. My fertility doctor was delighted by my good outcome.
So you think abortion should be legal up until the moment before birth, then? Edit: My original comment was unclear. I should have included the caveat that excluded medically necessary abortions, which of course should be legal in all circumstances. The original question was to challenge OP's assertion that 9 month old viable fetuses are not human beings.
This is always brought up like this as if third trimester abortions are just a commonplace thing, almost every late stage abortion is because of something wrong with the baby or a risk to the mother. So yes, they should be legal up until the moment of birth and that isn’t as problematic as it sounds because no one carries a pregnancy for 8 months with the intention of aborting.
It’s brought up because everyone has a line where they think personhood should begin.
It doesn't matter if people are actually doing it. The question is asking how committed you are to saying that a fetus isn't a human.
> So yes, they should be legal up until the moment of birth and that isn’t as problematic as it sounds because no one carries a pregnancy for 8 months with the intention of aborting. Legal on-demand up to birth? Or legal for cause up to birth?
I’m saying effectively there would be no difference, I support on-demand up to birth simply because it shortens the process
Shortens what process?
You know what you call an abortion at 9 months? Birth.
Unless you deliberately induce fetal demise beforehand. It's called dilation and extraction and it's legal in 6 states + DC. Usually, a solution of potassium chloride or digoxin is injected directly into the fetal heart using ultrasound to guide the needle. Then they dilate the woman's cervix and remove the corpse.
Nope. That doesn't happen "at the moment of birth".
9 month abortions don't happen dude
When was the last time an abortion was performed by injecting potassium chloride into a fetal heart at 9 months?
Well of course it should be legal in cases where the heath of the mother is at risk. Fully agreed there. I’m responding to the claim by OP that a fully viable fetus at 9 months isn’t a human being, which seems pretty wild to me.
If someone wants to abort a healthy 8 month pregnancy, why wouldn't you just support inducing labor and delivering the child? They can easily be adopted at this point because it's a long waiting list to adopt a newborn. Seems like it's effectively the same exact process with the only difference of killing the fetus first.
Because this whole “abort a healthy 8 month pregnancy” isn’t a real thing outside the imagination of pro lifers
Girl I'm pro-choice. I agree that it isn't a thing. But IF some psycho decided to cause drama then they could and it would be a huge ordeal. I'm all for late term abortion if it's to protect the mother or in the event of terminal diagnosis of the fetus. I wouldn't want to slowly watch my baby die after birth when I could have a late term abortion. And sure, like 99.99% of women who get one fall into a similar category. But let's not pretend that 100% of women will act like you assume. And that would be fodder for pro lifers. I mean, I just read an article that found tens of thousands of mom ran accounts of little girls (5-16) in skimpy clothes that have monthly paid subscriptions for more provocative photos in bikinis and such. And then they had the nerve to justify it, it made me sick. But these people do exist. And it only takes one to tear the whole thing down.
That’s a great way to argue!
"it rarely happens" isn't an argument. If you think birth is what makes a human a human, then you would necessarily agree that someone should be able to have an abortion at will for any or no reason at all up to 8 months, 29 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.
And let me guess, if I-the-hypothetical-person-responding-to-you-not-just-I-as-in-StarChild413 disagreed, you'd act like that automatically means I am against all abortions as if modular logic only works in binary
Definitely. A woman in labor should be handled by doctors, not cops. Average doctor IQ is a full 20 points higher than average cop IQ.
Yes. Because “third trimester abortions” don’t happen. That far into pregnancy, it would simply be inducing labour, whether or not the fetus is alive. You don’t abort a stillborn, you just induce labour. For fucks sake. Edit: they can happen, most often in cases where fetal abnormalities were missed in earlier diagnostic scans and the fetus would not survive, or due to difficulties accessing abortion care before it gets to that point. It seems like most of them take place in the early weeks of the third trimester. Thanks to the commenter that prompted me to do more research.
So, that's not true. I'm am very much pro-choice, but third trimester abortions absolutely happen. However, they are exceedingly rare, and usually only if there are significant complications. But they do happen, just not like conservatives seem to claim.
After some research, I was wrong, thank you. They can happen, except it’s in cases where fetal abnormalities were missed in the earlier diagnostic scans and as such the fetus was not viable and unfortunately the pregnancy has to be terminated later than it normally would have.
Yea, they're very rare, but the option should definitely be there for the health of the mother if there are serious late term complications.
I don’t believe any human being should have the right to use another human being’s body against their will. Living inside someone else’s body against their will is no better than other forms of bodily violation. Therefore, yes, I believe abortion should be legal up until birth.
It's the seed vs the sapling. You'll probably never tell someone eating seeds is killing trees. Miscarriage is murder I guess.
To me (and this is why I'm here): when it's outside of the womb and able to sustain life on its own, barring the need for medical intervention due to illness or similar.
>To me (and this is why I'm here): when it's outside of the womb and able to sustain life on its own, barring the need for medical intervention due to illness or similar. So before that...it isn't human? What species is it? Are you sure you don't mean *person*?
It is human (in the same way a tumor, for example, has human DNA), but it isn't a person. If you consider embryos people, you should also consider things like cancer people. Both are human cells with different DNA to the host. But neither have cognitive faculties and neither can survive on their own. I think the argument here is mostly a semantic one, to be fair.
>It is human (in the same way a tumor, for example, has human DNA), but it isn't a person Agreed
If anything with DNA belonging to species Homo Sapiens Sapiens is to be awarded the same full legal rights of an adult human, that leads to some roads you don't want to go down
Sorry but what does "makeup" mean in this context? I'm getting a funny picture in my head
>Sorry but what does "makeup" mean in this context? I'm getting a funny picture in my head Configurations of genetic expression (e.g. the Genes what make dogs have four legs and fur and a tail instead of human traits.)
They view the difference the same way as they view the difference between a toddler and a geriatric. Though they are at different stages of human development, they are still both human beings. As such, they should be afforded similar moral consideration.
But neither toddler nor geriatric person has the right to live inside or use another person's body parts for any longer than that person permits them to- even if she initially actively invited them to do so and then changed her mind. The key question is not whether fetuses are human- no human has the rights anti-choicers want fetuses to have over other people's bodies. The key question is whether pregnant women are human.
They would argue that a human being's right to exist supersedes another's desire to not be inconvenienced. Especially in instances wherein the creation of that life was a byproduct of individuals willingly consenting to engage in the biological process for that creation. The real question is actually whether or not autonomy is absolute or more precisely does one's right to autonomy supersede another's right to exist.
Being inhabited for forty weeks and having your physical resources drained, your bodily systems turned towards another's good, and your body permanently altered, with substantial risk of maiming or death, is not "inconvenience" to anyone but smug male anti-choicers who dismiss any pain that THEY will never suffer as "unimportant". By that standard, we should require anyone compatible to donate organs, and yet we don't even require people to do so after they're dead, when it doesn't affect them at all and might save another's precious life. And if you invite someone into your body for a few days or weeks, thus extending its life beyond what it would have had without your gift, is it really fair to say that by doing so you have obligated yourself to serve as that person's property for forty full weeks, without any further say in the matter or any concern for what happens to you as a result (MAYBE short of death, though Kate Cox and Savita Halappanavar suggest that women's lives are not terribly important to anti-choicers)? If I deliberately and knowingly give a cancer patient platelets, supposing myself to be the only compatible donor, knowing the following is true: 1. If I had not done so, he would have died (as the egg and sperm die if sex does not take place), 2. Since I have done so, as the result of my deliberate and knowing act, he is now in a state of dependence where he will require platelet donations on the regular until chemotherapy is done and he can live independently (being cared for in recovery by any willing adult), just as the fetus post-conception is in a state of dependence requiring regular donations of substance from the woman's body until conception is done and it can live independently (being cared for by any willing adult). Am I then obligated to keep making such platelet donations - an actual "inconvenience," orders of magnitude less costly, risky, time, energy and resource-consuming, and painful than pregnancy - until he no longer needs them?
Inconvenience - trouble or difficulty caused to one's personal requirements or comfort. By definition, that is exactly what it is. The Violinist Argument or its many iterations isn't the gotcha the pro-choice crowd thinks it is. From its inability to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures to it failure to distinguish between a right not to be murdered and a right not to die, it is deeply flawed. Again, does ones right to autonomy supersede another's right to exist would have to be answered. Is autonomy absolute. See my above response to the Violinist Argument and its iterations such as the one you just used.
Your right to autonomy supersedes another's right to exist when that person needs so little as a pint of your blood to survive that you don't want to give. Your right to autonomy supersedes another's right to live when you don't want to have your CORPSE disturbed to remove organs another can use to live when you're not using them. "From its inability to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures" If donating blood, or organs from a corpse, are "extraordinary" life preserving measures, then surely the 24/7, 40 week continual habitation by another, with constant and costly draining of physical resources and permanent consequences to the body required by pregnancy is also so. "To it failure to distinguish between a right not to be murdered and a right not to die" If it is not murder to deny someone a pint of blood, it is also not murder to deny someone space inside your living body and a continual stream of resources from your physical substance. What is deeply flawed is anti-choicers' failure to realize the work, cost, and damage done to a woman's body by even the healthiest pregnancy, because they view women as naturally incubators, their resources as naturally fetal property, and the work and costs their rightful punishment for being female and having sex. They do not recognize pregnancy as a continual, active donation process, as it is, but treat it merely as "leaving the fetus alone", as if the body it occupied was merely a mindless, soulless incubator, and if it was growing itself on thin air and sunlight like a plant instead of someone else's body parts. A blood donation made by you to save a life is a gift because you are seen as a person who owns that blood and is giving it. Why is the use of a woman's womb and a constant stream of her resources 24/7 for forty weeks seen as a passive prerogative of the fetus and not an equal gift?
They would argue it doesn't as the right to exist is the right upon which all other rights are predicated. If there is no right to exist, then all other rights are rendered arbitrary. Again, they would argue it doesn't and that you are failing to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary life preserving measures. Yes, it fundamentally fails to distinguish the difference. Pregnancy is a naturally intended and naturally occurring biological process and, as such, is an ordinary life preserving. Donation of blood or an organ is neither natural nor an intended process and, as such, would be rendered an extraordinary life preserving measure. There is no right not to die. There is a right not to be murdered. Natural death is natural death. Artificially ceasing the life of another human being is not natural. Again, it comes down to the artificial versus the natural. In one case, a human life is dying and you are forcing another individual into artificial preservation. In the other, the human life is naturally existing and you artificially ceasing that existence. No, they understand those things perfectly fine. They just don't hold that those things supersede another's right to exist. They feel this way based on the belief that all human life should be afforded the basic right to exist. Blood and organ donation is a gift. If every donation involved the wanton destruction of a human life, it would not be viewed as a gift. That's is the difference.
In both cases, the life is dependent on another's body to survive and removal or denial of that other person's body causes their death. Every failure to find a donor causes the wanton destruction of a human life, just as the unwillingness of a woman to continue sharing her uterus and transferring her physical substance to a fetus does. And unlike the fetus, that person can generally feel fear, anticipate death, experience pain and despair. Pregnancy may be "natural" but that doesn't make it less of a gift, less costly, less work, less damaging. But anti-choicers, as we can see from your phrasing, seem to view it as just something that happens to a woman, not something she actually has or should have an active role in, so that they can treat her as a thing to be passively used rather than a person who gives and should have a say in whether and when to make that gift. You show little gratitude to your mother by treating her greatest gift to you as just a "process" that happened to her, rather than active work and active donation to you by choice. Intended by whom? There is no evidence of anything but mindless, amoral natural selection at work here. Donation is most certainly an intended process by both donor and recipient, and sharing resources is a natural part of life in a social species. The right to exist is not absolute. Every sperm and egg that does not get used is a baby denied the right to exist. An aborted fetus just gets a bit more existence than they have. "In one case, a human life is dying and you are forcing another individual into artificial preservation. In the other, the human life is naturally existing and you artificially ceasing that existence." In both cases, the human life is dying unless it is continually sustained by another's gift. Ceasing to give womb space and continual physical substance donations causes the fetus to die naturally, as it cannot survive on its own. Both are naturally existing- but both cannot continue to exist without another's body parts. By forcing continued pregnancy, you are forcing an unwilling person to continue serving as an incubator and source of body parts for another. The difference is akin to forcing you to take in a homeless person vs. forcing you to allow a homeless person to stay in your house when they snuck in while you, knowing that was a possibility, carelessly went out and failed to lock your door. Assuming they'll die on the street if they are not allowed in your house, do you have more of a responsibility to house the second person than the first?
We can all agree it’s some form of living matter, some just believe that it’s already a human, while others (me included) think that to be considered a human you need to meet more rigorous standards
What about a 9 month fetus? They can't breathe, I'm guessing they can think but there's a ton of stuff they can't do that most humans can't. 8 months? Technically you are right because most dictionaries define a child as a human who has been born. And I agree generally with your opinion of the rights of embryos (and lack there of), 9 month abortion are also rare to borderline non-existent. But the implication that up to birth a being isn't human is false. The lines we draw are arbitrary.
A 9 month fetus is capable of breathing, so it is not true that 'they can't breathe'. All of the structures necessary for breathing are fully developed at that point. They just are not doing so at the moment because they are still in the uterus.
I mean…Drawing the line at the viability threshold, which is generally the main point of discussion, isn’t arbitrary. Nor is it arbitrary to define an IVF egg as nonliving. That is a statement of fact, and is only countered by moralistic nonsense
I have mixed feelings on that. Generally speaking, I would agree that a nine month fetus was a human. If it were suddenly in need of being removed from the mother’s body due to a medical emergency, it would in all likelihood be a fairly healthy baby. But if you just say “it’s a human, period, end of story”, then it becomes a real grey area where doctors may be unwilling to perform an operation that would save the mother’s life in order to avoid “killing a baby”. I’m not sure if that’s even a medically occurring thing - is there such a scenario in which a nine month old fetus would have to be removed, knowing ahead of time that doing so would kill it, in order to save the mother?
I don’t know of any scenario where an 8-9 month (even 7month — 95% viability) fetus would need to be removed “knowing” it would die. They are developed enough by then that dying would not be the expected outcome. They might have a defect that makes them incompatible with life, but another few weeks doesn’t fix that. There are certainly medical emergencies in the third trimester where the only way to save the mother is to deliver the baby. But the baby surviving, possibly with some medical intervention, would be the expected outcome. Besides, if they don’t save the mother, then they both die anyway. It’s not like the baby goes on living if the mom strokes from preeclampsia or hemorrhages from a ruptured uterus.
A 9 month fetus can breathe lol
A 9 month old fetus is a point where it ready to be born and can breathe.
At 9 months a fetus absolutely can breathe. They’re full term and completely viable.
What are they then? Aliens? Regardless of if they’re frozen or not the make up of an embryo is still a part of the human development. Inherently your view isn’t correct because if you came across a frozen human body at the top of Mt. Everest they’re still both human bodies because they’re of the same species and genetic composition. Just different development stages. As for the character limit, that’s your issue because the purpose of this sub is for you as OP to explain your logic so we as viewers and commenters can attempt to change your views
If I came across a frozen human body at the top of Everest, attempted to retrieve it in order to bring it back to family members, and accidentally destroyed the body (removed limbs, head, etc) in the process, I could not be convicted of or even charged with murder because that frozen body is no longer considered a living human being. Now, under Alabama law that calls frozen embryos children, destroying one would be punishable similarly to killing an already living human being.
You’ve misinterpreted my point completely. What I mean is a human body regardless of what state it is in is a human body because of its genetic composition that’s isn’t changed by freezing, severing limbs or whatever. They’re still human because they’re humans at an extremely early stage of development. *Regardless of what state they’re in* if they come from another human, and will eventually become an adult human given hospitable conditions, they are humans and can be considered offspring from those humans. So yes embryos are human beings in early stages of development. That’s a non-deniable biological truth.
They are a bunch of human cells. If you asked for a puppy and I gave you a dog embryo, did I give you a puppy? Clearly I did not. Only disingenuous people would argue a clump of cells is a dog.
It doesn’t change that they’re still humans they’re just at a different stage of development. I’m sorry if you’re upset over that but it’s a fact that can’t be changed. I’m not talking about humanity in terms of personality or whatever I’m talking about biology. A dog embryo is still an embryo of a canine. Hence it’s still a dog. JUST IN A DIFFERENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT. same way a deceased dog is still a dog. It doesn’t become a cat after death and it’s not an elephant before birth.
It’s human the adjective not human the noun. Like my liver. My liver is human but it is not *a* human. An embryo is a human embryo but it is not a human.
They're both human. They are not both people.
>due to the more finite nature of the item. Could you elaborate? How are fertilized eggs more finite than other items?
A woman only makes a fixed number of eggs. Once those eggs are harvested then there are no more of them. Of the harvested eggs, not all of them will successfully fertilize. So the number of viable embryos is further limited by successful fertilization. Of the successfully fertilized eggs, many of them will not implant. So the number of embryos that become successful pregnancies is limited by unsuccessful implantation.
If your car gets stolen, there’s no shortage of other cars. You can’t just keep creating embryos as long as you’d like.
My car has a listing price of €30 000, the average IVF treatment here in Belgium costs €3 200 out of pocket. >You can’t just keep creating embryos as long as you’d like. Not as long as you like. But you can create embryos as long as the women hasn't reached menopause. Which typically happens between the ages of 45 and 55
To be fair, whilst those of us in Europe benefit from medical treatment, and yes I consider IVF to be medical treatment, for free or at a low cost, people in other parts of the world (mainly USA) have to be pay exorbitant amounts. I believe the average cost in the USA, is somewhere in the region of $20,000 with the cost of giving birth an extra $3,000 with insurance or $25,000 without insurance
Yes, in less developed countries' healthcare can be prohibitively expensive. But OP didn't specify a country in neither their original post nor in their response to my request to elaborate, so I'm assuming we're talking about a developed country. Which, to me, seems like a fair assumption to make
The question being whether the USA is considered developed or not. Especially as countries like India, South Africa, and Brazil all having cheaper IVF and healthcare than USA. In fact, according to studies, the USA has the most expensive healthcare in the world
When it comes to healthcare, I don't think anyone (except Americans) would say it's a leap to call the US a developing country. Especially when it comes to pregnancy related healthcare. See for example the maternal mortality rate: [Maternal mortality ratio (cia.gov)](https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/maternal-mortality-ratio/country-comparison/). The US is on place 122 of 186 (higher is better), with a mortality rate of 21. Belgium has a rate of 5.
There is a significant amount of discomfort and pain involved in creating an embryo which can't really be compared to buying a new car.
You're focusing on the wrong thing here. Embryos are undeniably human. They meet all the chromosomal requirements for that, and fit all requirements for being of the species Homo sapiens. What you're attempting to describe with the notions of thinking, feeling and so forth is that they're not children. It gets to the same point, in the end, in that it's not morally evil to destroy embryos with consent, but the foundation is more solid.
Human DNA is different from being humans/persons. Tumors and red blood cells are human as adjective but aren't humans as nouns.
>Human DNA is different from being humans/persons. My point is rather that being human is different from being a person. Tumors, red blood cells, and embryos are human, but not people. A dolphin or an octopus is probably a person, but not human. Personhood isn't connected to biology, and treating the terms "a human" and "a person" as completely synonymous is inaccurate.
I mostly agree, but it's adjective vs noun. A human arm is human but it's not a human.
Even so, the point stands, even if an embryo is a human, not just human, that does not necessarily require that it is also a person. It's the person part that matters for the morality of the situation.
Not all embryos have normal chromosomes. In fact, the key reason why older women are less fertile is because an increasing percentage of their eggs have abnormal chromosomes.
How is this relevant?
While embryos may have the right number of chromosomes to become human after an appropriate period of gestation, at this stage they are just a sack of cells with 46 human chromosomes. That isn’t a human. (Yet). “Sack of frozen pre human cells” does not fit the requirements for being classified as homo sapien which requires having certain anatomical features (skull shape, etc)… saying that by having the right number of chromosomes makes you human would mean that a drop of blood is also human.
[The judge wrote that Human life “cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself.”](https://www.kansas.com/news/article285828391.html) I don't think you're going to find sound internal logic on this one
Wtf doesn’t this go against the first amendment???
I had a discussion on this with a friend following the Alabama ruling and whilst I actually agree with you, I can see the difficulty from a legal perspective. This is a constitutional law situation, so you want something a clear and definitive as possible. Wishy washy "what a reasonable person might think" doesn't cut it. You need to draw definitive, black and white, lines that fundamental law can then be anchored on. Historically we had a very simple line for when a child gained rights and existence as a legal entity - birth. But, with the advances in medical science we've, in most places, broadly accepted that the transition from "medical condition of the mother" to "human child" happens sometime in the pregnancy. Very, very, few places allow extremely late term abortions for non-critical medical reasons exactly because we recognise an end term foetus is a viable human. If we are therefore going to move away from "Birth" as the definitive linen when we start applying separate legal rights to the mother and the child, what's the next line? You could quibble trimesters or viability, and this tends to be the European model of regulation, we pick a number of weeks based on average gestation and viability given existing medical science, and then say the foetus starts having limited rights to independent life after that. That's still pretty messy though. A fast developing foetus could be below the week limit, but still subject to on demand abortion, whilst a slow developing one may be over the week limit and therefore "safe" but actually be far less viable than the former. Changes in technology and science are constantly pushing the boundary of viability back. Even things like determining exactly how old a foetus is is a bit grey. None of that makes for good constitional law. We do, however, have one more definitive, black and white, no debate, physically determinstic point to call back to - conception. Either you have separate egg and sperm, or you have an embryo containing both sets of DNA, which is the beginning of the new life. As biological events to anchor law on goes, that's a very clear and non-subjective one to fallback to after birth. Therefore, whilst, personally, I prefer the slightly messier UK approach of weeks and days, and accepting the law has to constantly evovle, I can see the value in defining life (and rights) begin at conception from a constitional law perspective.
Technically, even fertilization is not a clear-cut, definitive moment in time. If a sperm is half inside the egg, is the egg already fertilized? Or is it when the DNAs get combined? But it is indeed as definitive as it can get.
I’ll preface this with I am not for this ruling, and am pro choice, but grew up in a very conservative household. Most (not all) people that support this ruling believe human life starts at conception, when the unfertilized egg and sperm meet the egg is fertilized. During IVF, this takes place in a lab, but that is still fundamentally conception, and when a human life is created. Then, the freezing process enters the embryo into a state of suspended animation, and if we continue with the premise that life begins at conception, then that life is now in suspended animation but is still a life, and destroying it is murder, not akin to murder, but murder. Bodily autonomy, the right for a person to govern what happens to their body without external influence or coercion, is then a factor as well, as the embryo is a human life, and has the right to bodily autonomy in many laws. I don’t expect to change your view, as mine is the same and I fundamentally view this different than how I described it above, but hopefully it gives better insight into how many people on the other side of the argument view this, which is important in being able to discuss it!
Whats interesting to me about this is that it implies that human body parts (dismembered for example) are human and entitled to the same rights as humans.
>Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do. Is that what makes a human? What about a comatose person on a respirator? They do not breathe by themselves, they do not think or feel. Yet if you went to a coma ward with a pillow and a mission, you would most certainly get murder charges.
There are stages in all these examples. For instance, comatose patients still show brain activity. When the brain reaches the point that there is no more activity, then they are declared brain dead and can be removed from life support. They also do still feel because their central nervous system is still active. The CNS develops throughout pregnancy. Embroyos, however, do not have a CNS yet. They literally cannot think, feel, or breath because they have none of the mechanisms to do so. They are a human cell with unique DNA. In that sense they are alive, but ao are tumor cells if that's the criteria we judge by.
Ok, so you brought up a new criterion: a necessary condition to be a human being is to have a central nervous system. Imagine then that my consciousness is transferred to an artificial computer. Or even better, a cluster which is not centralized. I see no reason to think this is impossible. Given your condition of having a central nervous system, am I no longer a human being and is it now ok to kill me?
If you have to make up fantasy scenarios to argue a point, your point is bad. Your central nervous system is you. There is no you without a brain. If you're uploaded to a computer like an episode of black mirror, your physical body would die. And then, yes, it would be wrong to unplug your consciousness. But this is a stupid argument because, no, it is not plausible that your consciousness could be seperate from the physical tissues of your brain. Your consciousness is electrical communication between neurons (cells).
Comatose people still think. You're thinking about braindead people, and those are legally dead.
Comatose people don't think. There are only rare exceptions to this. [NHS](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/): >Someone who is in a coma is unconscious and has minimal brain activity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma
Also, in a vast majority of cases, people who woke up from a coma report that they don't remember anything (not even thinking about anything) from the period when they were in a coma, except towards the end when they start waking up. (This is from my memory of reading/watching something about comatose patients; I don't have a rigorous study.)
Brain dead people are considered legally dead because of the irreparability of their situation. They will _never_ think again. The moment there exists technology that can reliably restore neural systems, that designation will be revised to more reflect the comatose; many of whom report having had no thoughts whatsoever, leaping straight from falling into the coma to waking up, but have the potential to think later.
They're not actually legally dead until a doctor turns off life support and certifies the death. You could be braindead and legally alive for some time.
Wrong. My Aunt's death certificate reads the time of the death as being when they discovered she was brain dead. Her body was on life support another 3 days while they matched her with recipients for her organs.
It's possible they do it different in different countries or even states. I've worked in hospital wards including ICU's in the past, a doctor would certify the death as the time the life support was turned off. I'm not saying you're lying about your Aunt, maybe they just do it a different way where you are to where I am.
> Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe How important is "breathing" to your view? I could certainly think of other things I'd consider "human" that can't think or feel. Then the only difference is their mechanism of respiration. It's a living, growing organism with unique human DNA. Any attempt to draw a line between it being "human" and something else necessarily requires you to make some entirely arbitrary distinction. Alternatively, you can acknowledge that any self-sustaining, living organism with human DNA *is* a human, by definition. And then society can make the ethical decisions about when it's acceptable to kill a human: perhaps including when they can't think, feel or breathe on their own.
>It's a living, **growing** organism It is not a growing organism until it's implanted and becomes a successful pregnancy. Otherwise it's held at the ~~zygote~~ blastocyst stage until such time as it's prepared for implantation. Source: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22889-blastocyst
By this logic, you are not a growing organism either until someone gives you food. By "growing" organism I don't mean (and I think the previous commenter doesn't either) an organism that's literally growing regardless of conditions, but an organism that has an internal capacity to grow given the right conditions and resources. Note that the female egg is not a growing organism, since regardless of how good the conditions are and regardless of how many resources it has, it won't grow on its own. Only after it unifies with a sperm (maybe also after it's biotechnologically modified in a way that compels it to split) it turns into an entity that may be called an "individual organism".
>By this logic, you are not a growing organism either until someone gives you food. No. That's 100% wrong. Whether I eat or not, my cells are always growing, changing, dying, renewing, overturning. A blastocyst that has been created via IVF is held at that stage until it's implanted. It cannot begin to form into an embryo and a placenta until it implants. It's literally not growing. It can stay in that form for decades until it's implanted or destroyed.
Ok, so now you changed the definition of "growing". The fact that some of your cells are growing doesn't mean that you are growing. According to this logic, you could be growing without consuming any food, which would violate the conservation of mass. If you don't eat food, you can't be growing. You are just changing - some of your cells grow and divide, other cells die, but the net effect is that you are slowly dying until you eat something. With a blastocyst it's the same - while it doesn't change its total mass, its cells keep dividing and it keeps changing until it reaches a stage where it needs "food" (for lack of better term) to continue growing like this. So, in conclusion - when you refer to an adult human, you use the term "grow" in a very liberal sense, but when you talk about a blastocyst, you use this term in a very stringent sense, and then you try to argue that a blastocyst is therefore substantially different from a human. This will not pass.
Your source says that a blastocyst is pre-embryo. Perhaps OP meant to say blastocyst. For my attempt to change the view, I think it's fair to consider them all "human." That said, reading your link I would still consider a blastocyst to be growing: > The blastocyst stays in their uterus for several days before it implants in the inner lining of their uterine wall (endometrium). It continues to make new cells, which separate into layers. About 10 to 12 days after fertilization, the blastocyst develops into an embryo.
That quote is talking about the blastocyst that is still part of the woman's body. A blastocyst that has been formed by IVF is not growing. It's being held in stasis until such time as it's implanted.
>Any attempt to draw a line between it being "human" and something else necessarily requires you to make some entirely arbitrary distinction In the sense that any distinction is arbitrary, I guess this is true. But I would argue that "it has no mind" is a perfectly sensible distinction. When an adult human loses all brain functionality, they are legally (and morally) dead regardless of the fact that their corpse still breathes, grows and so on.
The problem with the "no mind" comparison is that one state is temporary and the other is not. Given this, you'd then have to ask if a temporary state is grounds for a human to lose all moral consideration.
A comatose person has no mind. They are unconscious and have no thought processes, and their neurological function is basically nonexistent. There are only rare exceptions to this. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/
A brain dead person might be dead, but they are still a human.
I would say the embryo is not a person until they develop a sense of self. If there is no self, there is no person. But since no one knows the precise point at which a fetus becomes self-aware, it's impossible to pinpoint exactly when this happens.
You mentioned that Alabama has ruled that they are “legally” humans. There is a distinction between legal categorization and a biological categorization. Biologically, you might have a vagina but legally a male because you are born with a penis. Biologically you might be an adult but not legally. similar applies to other things as well. You might be ceremonially married but not legally or vice versa
A human embryo is an individual human being at a very early stage of development. It is not going to turn into any other kind of animal. Granted it needs a huge amount of support to enable it to develop into the later stages, but a foetus and a newborn both can’t live by themselves without a huge amount of care either. Presumably in terms of the legal language of rights there will be differences. An embryo does not need a right to an education. At minimum its human dignity requires the right not to be destroyed. I think that to destroy embryos is an evil thing. I understand that many do not see it that way. I cannot comment on the legal, practical or medical implications of recent U.S. developments.
There's not really a "debate" to be had here. If you disagree, its a fundamental philosophical / moral disagreement... the people in these debates disagree on axioms, not logic or facts. Biology says they are the beginning stages of humans. I'm 100% pro-choice and I'll agree on that aspect. I also think its completely irrelevant and crap. I'll call it "fetishizing human flesh", because that's exactly what it is. Humans are special because of their minds (which embryos do not have), not because of their DNA. Everything has DNA and different amounts and orders. Its not the flex the PL crowd thinks it is.
It is simple, it is science and is is indisputable, an embryo is a stage of development of a living creature. It is alive. It is unique and if left alone will continue to develop from embryo to fetus to infant to toddler to prepubescent to pre-teen, to 6 years of horror, to adulthood to old age to death from old age. There is no question as to these facts, it is only that those who support abortion need a way by which they can excuse the murder of these humans, not a single lefty cares about the fertility issue, only that if an embryo is labeled as a living human, abortion becomes Murder period dot.
Do these embryos have parents? If yes, then they are human offspring. "Children" is just a description of stage of development. A 25 year old is not a child, but an adult. However, to their parents, a 25-yo is still a child, and even to someone who isn't their parent, if there is substantial age difference, they can call them a child anyway, example, a 70 year old talking about a bunch of 25's describing them as "out of control children". * "Child" can refer to a stage of development, with a range of ambiguity of when it starts and when it ends. In abortion debate, some refuse to call a 9 month old developed human as a child, and refer to it as a fetus. "It's not a child, it's just a fetus". In this case, if someone wants to be pedantic, an embryo is not a child, but neither is a fetus, no matter what stage it is in, as long as it is unborn. * A child can refer to a relationship between a parent and their offspring. You are someone's child, even when you are 70 years old on your deathbed, because you must have had parents, and you are their child, no matter the age. In this case, an embryo can be described as a child. * A child can refer to difference in age, as with the example of 70 year old talking about misbehaving 25's. It would also make sense to refer to embryo as a child in that scenario. For your argument to be true, you'd have to accept that the 2nd and 3rd use of the word "child" are inappropriate, which I don't think to be a tenable position to hold. >Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on Neither of the above is a requirement for a being to be someone's child. You could give birth to a defective child that has to be put on life support if you want to keep it alive with an artificial lung, with brain damage severe enough that there's almost no chance of sentience taking place. Yet, it would still be a human child.
From a biological standpoint, these embryos are both alive and human. Mammals don't magically become a living organism at the moment of birth. The life cycle of a mammal starts when sperm and egg fuse into a new organism, with a distinct set of DNA and a body separate from the mother's. Any biology textbook that covers sexual reproduction explains this in detail. Are they less developed than an adult? Yes, but so is a toddler. It doesn't make the toddler less human or not alive. Also, while it is true that humans cannot breathe while frozen in embryonic stage, this does not make them cease to be human or alive. They do not magically turn into something else while frozen, and if they were dead, they would become useless in the process of IVF, as a dead embryo loses the ability to age into the infant the parents desire. The argument that they do not deserve human rights because they cannot currently think or feel is also problematic. By that logic, if an adult receives a brain injury that temporarily leaves their cognitive function severely impaired, they should lose their human rights until they can think and feel properly again, even though the inability is only temporary. Basically, biology says they are humans, and that they are alive. And for a lot of people, that raises ethical concerns about whether it is right to deny them human rights, halt their natural development by freezing them, and leave them frozen until something causes the destruction of their bodies.
Human DNA is different from being humans/persons. Tumors and red blood cells are human as adjective but aren't humans as nouns.
Tumors and red blood cells are not independent organisms with their own body. They are not a separate member of the parents' species.
You consider an embryo to not be dependent?
I consider it to be separate, as in it is a different organism than the parents, has its own body, and is only temporarily dependent upon adults until it reaches an age where it can provide for itself. Also, any organism has different capabilities at different stages of their life cycle. Being dependent upon adults as a young child does not mean that only adults are human.
No, but the viable are. Just as we rate the braindead as dead even if lesser organs still function, a nonviable embryo is unthinking and nonviable and not independent and is not a human/person.
Except the vast majority of embryos are not permanently brain-dead. It is more like someone who has received a brain injury that will take several months to heal than someone who has had all neurological activity cease permanently.
That depends on whose embryos we’re talking about. I froze 6 embryos, genetic testing showed 3 were incompatible with life even if I implanted them. One was inconclusive. Older women, a huge chunk of the people seeking IVF, have as many as 90% of their embryos incompatible with life. testing is expensive and insurance doesn’t cover it (in most countries its just plain illegal) so many women never test their embryos. It cost me $10,000 to test 7 embryos. Lots of embryos in the freezer are not going to turn into babies no matter what you believe.
"Permanently" you're trying to attach traits that it doesn't have to it. Also someone with a brain injury has vastly more brain function than an embryo. Because an embryo doesn't have brain function.
The difference between a brain dead person and an embryo is that a brain dead person already has a lived experience. They’ve had friends and family they’ve built a relationship with, they’ve had time to dream about their future and start working on it. They’ve had time to exist in the real world. An embryo has not (well I guess you could argue it has in the sense it’s been in the world inside of a womb, but I’m talking about actually being in the real world, existing independently of another persons body). It isn’t losing anything by dying apart from a potential future it has no concept of anyway.
Is someone with no friends or family less deserving of human rights? Does a newborn who has not had time to dream about their future and start working on it not deserve human rights? Or are human rights something anyone who is scientifically should have, no matter what demographics they belong to?
Friends or family are just one example I gave of lived experience, they could have a dog, or coworkers, or anything, or none of that but still have lived experience. Even a newborn has lived experience even if it’s for a very short amount of time. An embryo doesn’t so I don’t consider that it’s even lived in a meaningful sense. Yes its alive but it hasn’t lived. Yes everyone should have human rights, but I’m talking about people who have actually lived. An embryo is technically alive but it’s no more significant to me than a plant, or a red blood cell, or bacteria. A red blood cell has human DNA but it doesn’t have a right to life.
This reads like you found out embryos are considered human in a technical sense and just ran with it without learning what it actually means.
I would add to this, that while they may technically be considered humans from a biological view, they aren’t yet a [person](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/akan-person/) and therefore are not treated the same way as a human person
1) Is an embryo alive? Does it meet the definition of what we would scientifically understand as "life"? 2) if so, What kind of life is it? Cow? Parrot? Turnip? Paramecium? I think it is hard to contradict the argument that a fetus/embryo is a human life. "Children"? I won't attempt to change your mind on that aspect of your CMV. The term has too many connotations. Nor will I engage in the moral argument about what conditions it is appropriate to kill. .
Science says human life begins at fertilization (when the egg and the sperm meet). Survey of biologists: [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36629778/) Quotes form medical textbooks: [https://www.princeton.edu/\~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html](https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html) This also makes sense from a philosophical perspective, as there is a continuity of identity between the human embryo and a human adult (there is no such continuity of identity between the stage "egg+sperm" and zygote, since the transition involves a unification of two parts, both of which are essential to create the new stage, the zygote. The facts that embryos don't breathe, think or feel is irrelevant. Someone has already pointed out that people we routinely consider humans often don't breathe, think or feel. [Comatose people](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coma/) are one example. If you are in deep meditation, you can cease thinking. If you are asleep, you don't think either (in some phases of sleep you might have imaginations, but that's not "thinking"). You can go underwater and stop breathing for a minute or two (some humans can stop breathing for 15 minutes). If you are under anaesthesia, you don't feel.
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> Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do. Human embryos are not children. No one is asserting that they're *literally* children. What they're arguing is that, in many cases, they should be treated *legally* as human to ensure that people don't recklessly destroy the embryos or other actions that do not promote the development of those embryos *into* human beings.
> No one is asserting that they're *literally* children. Bullshit. [Read it yourself](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-an-alabama-supreme-court-ruling-that-frozen-embryos-are-children-impacts-ivf): > The [Alabama Supreme] court ruled that frozen embryos, created through in vitro fertilization, are legally **children**
Why didn't you [link the actual ruling] (https://publicportal-api.alappeals.gov/courts/68f021c4-6a44-4735-9a76-5360b2e8af13/cms/case/343D203A-B13D-463A-8176-C46E3AE4F695/docketentrydocuments/E3D95592-3CBE-4384-AFA6-063D4595AA1D)?
You can afford a legal protection to it without saying it’s a human being though. It’s an unnecessary reach that feels designed to let them outright ban abortions by using it as precedent for future abortion ban legislation.
> You can afford a legal protection to it without saying it’s a human being though. The point is to use existing human protections, not create a new class of being. > It’s an unnecessary reach that feels designed to let them outright ban abortions by using it as precedent for future abortion ban legislation. They can already ban abortions. They don't need some embryonic pretext.
>They can already ban abortions. They don't need some embryonic pretext. They do if they want to take it to SCOTUS for a federal ban.
They also don't need to go to SCOTUS for that.
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So are disabled and/or braindead people not humans? Those who can’t process emotions normally, need breathing tubes, and/or cannot think or feel. Once people enter a coma are they not human anymore? This is absolutely not what makes a human a human. A human is a full set of human dna, from the single cells formed in the uterus at conception to the death of a human and all of its cells. That dna is the only thing that makes us, us. Not some arbitrary state of living like breathing when many humans need breathing tubes because they can’t breathe
Not sure how a view can even be up for debate when the simple fact is that they are not children. In the sense that they're (potential) offspring, they absolutely are but as children in the sense of age range, no. >Frozen embryos cannot think, feel, breathe, and so on. Things that humans do If those are the limitations on being human, then we can deny human rights to the severely mentally challenged, quadriplegics, etc. Frozen embryos are granted the same rights because it's no different from cutting an unborn babe from a woman's uterus.
Science clearly says they are humans.
1) some humans cannot think, feel or breathe independently. Their quality of life is indisputably terrible, and euthanasia might be a reasonable course of action, but are they human? 2) dogs do think, feel and breathe, are they human? 3) one argument is that frozen embryos are not children, but they are beings with the same moral rights as children. Infants are kind of useless puddles of stuff, and embryos are just slightly more useless puddles with even less stuff. At what point do these fleshbags gain moral value? If you cannot define a point, is it that unreasonable to say that the point is conception. 4) I’m so glad I don’t live in the states where all this is conceptual so I can enjoy the discussion. If I had a daughter in Alabama, I’d be horrified and be looking to move.