Posted on 11/06/2003 2:43:16 PM PST by nickcarraway
Life does not begin when sperm meets egg, but 14 days after, according to the head of the Anglican Church in Australia.
Primate Peter Carnley told the Fertility Society of Australia in Perth yesterday this meant objections to IVF, genetic testing and stem cell research should fall away.
Archbishop Carnley said that until it was implanted in a womb lining, a fertilised egg was not a human life but rather a genetically novel kind of cell.
The fertilised egg must also pass the point that it could split to become an identical twin, which was at about 14 days. After that, the embryo should be accorded the status of an individual human with rights to care, protection and life.
Dr Carnley's position clearly contradicts that of the Catholic Church, which holds that life begins when an egg is fertilised.
But Dr Carnley said the debate about the beginning of life within the Christian faith did not come to that view until 1869, when Pius IX declared all abortion was wrong from the beginning of conception.
Dr Carnley argued that scientific knowledge had moved forward since then and must be taken into account.
If conception was defined as the meeting of gametes - egg and sperm - then the cloned sheep Dolly was not conceived, because Dolly was the product of cell nuclear transfer, where the ovum nucleus was replaced by DNA from an adult cell.
"I think it is now clear that we must begin to think of conception less as a moment and more in gradual and continuous terms as a process," Dr Carnley said.
He said since 1984 Anglican moral theology had concluded that conception was a 14-day process and this helped shape legislation around the world.
"Given that twinning can occur up to the 14th day of this process, it is not logically possible to talk of the conception of a unique human individual prior to the completion of this process.
"Each of us can say that we came to be in the sense that we were each conceived, as a potential human individual, 14 days after the fertilisation of an ovum, not before." He said the natural 60 per cent wastage of ova during IVF procedures need not be considered the killing of conceived human individuals.
"We do not have some 70,000 frozen people on ice at various places around Australia," he said.
Embryo experimentation and stem cell research were also morally acceptable.
"If there is a utilitarian argument for the possible benefit to mankind of experimentation on embryos, this could be tolerated in a controlled way under licence up until the 14th day in a way that after the 14th day it would not," he said.
"Stem cell research becomes also thinkable, for stem cells are harvested well within the 14th day period."
For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother's womb. I will confess and praise You for You are fearful and wonderful and for the awful wonder of my birth!
I disagree that this refers to a particular event like conception though. It's rather clear that the language describes a process of creation that culminates in birth. Not that this disproves a life-from-conception position, I just don't think it supports it.
Indeed, let us not forget Ecclesiastes 11:5: (Amplified)
As you know not what is the way of the wind, or how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a pregnant woman, even so you know not the work of God, Who does all.
So you think that a cell in your fingernail is human. You think it is alive. But you don't think it is a human life? What kind of life is it?
Motile cells are not alive?
On the other hand, reproducible observation gives evidence of the fact that healthy human zygotes do divide, the resulting cells are a cohesive unit which differentiate and develop and grow. Each zygote *is* "a life" at fertilization because he or she possesses these qualities -- even when that one life becomes 2, 3, or 4 in his or her development and growth.
By that reasoning, you must think a hepatocyte is "a life".
Is an ameoba a creature? How about a white blood cell? And do you really think the definition of "creature", which long predated any knowledge of genetics, must be based upon a genetic concept? Does that mean that people who used the word "creature" before knowledge of chromosomes did not know what they were talking about?
I think you have my argument backwards. I wasn't suggesting that anything need be a part of any larger structure for any of the concepts we are using. Just the opposite. I was suggesting that there are examples of things which are usually a part of a larger structure that can be shown to function individually, and even reproduce, in culture. That is, I am suggesting that being an individual life may have nothing to do with whether or not something ever was a part of a larger structure.
Thank God! I finally found a non-idiot who can tell me exactly what it means to "play God". I eagerly await your reply.
Excellent, excellent point. There must be some reason why the "a" gets dropped. I wonder why you were the first to make it.
So, you think a sperm is a life, but a sperm is not life? What is the difference between "life" and "a life"?
The 14th Amendment defines citizenship this way: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
But with good intentions. The language is confused and perhaps leads to confused thinking.
You have a separate life when it is viable without further volitional human intervention.
So a bacterium is "a separate life" because it "is viable without...volitional human intervention"?
Fertilization is the last volitional act required of man before the development of a new human being.
Placing a hepatocyte in the propper culture medium is the last volitional act required of man before the development of a colony of hepatocytes. Does this mean you agree that a living human hepatocyte is a human life?
Agreed.
I think I see your point.
If we thought one person (let's call him "Fred") might be in a box, we would not shoot at the box.
If we find out there is not just one person in the box, but there are two persons in the box, (Fred and Francis), we would not decide it is therefore okay to shoot at the box.
It's not the singleness of the person in the box that makes us hesitate to shoot, it's the human life/lives of whoever is in the box, which causes us to refrain from shooting.
... and, the first does not have sanctity of life. The second does. By way of illustration: if you remove my arm, you have not committed an offense against the life of my arm, but you have committed an offense against the life of ME.
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