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."
BUT NO ONE IS ENTITLED TO HIS OR HER OWN SET OF FACTS.
When does life begin? http://www.roevwade.org/upl39.html
In 1981, a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on the very question before us here: When does human life begin? Speaking on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally known geneticists and biologists who had the same story to tell, namely, that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.
Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
The Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence. Human life began at conception "
Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind." And on the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, "To deny a truth [about when life begins] should not be made a basis for legalizing abortion."
Professor Eugene Diamond: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."
Since the demons for death cannot possibly refute the repeatedly provable truth, and Universally visible facts of life before birth, they manipulate language and change the debate to: WHEN DOES PERSONHOOD BEGIN. WHEN IS A HUMAN BEGING A PERSON WITH CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED RIGHTS? AND It’s a women’s body and her “Right” to CHOOSE!
One main AND False objection the Roe court had to the unborn as a person interpretation is the lack of precedent to support it.
Constitutional Persons:An Exchange on Abortion
The common law basis of our system embodied in the principle of stare decisis and the just requirements of consistency in applying the law demand a respect for precedent.
To this objection I offer two replies. First, there was a federal court precedent for the unborn person reading of Fourteenth Amendment before Roe v. Wade, though this fact was virtually ignored by Justice Harry Blackmun and the Roe Court.
In Steinberg v. Brown (1970) a three-judge federal district court upheld an anti-abortion statute, stating that privacy rights "must inevitably fall in conflict with express provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
After relating the biological facts of fetal development, the court stated that "those decisions which strike down state abortion statutes by equating contraception and abortion pay no attention to the facts of biology."
"Once new life has commenced," the court wrote, "the constitutional protections found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments impose upon the state the duty of safeguarding it."
Yet in commenting on the unborn person argument in Roe, Justice Blackmun wrote that "the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment." He did so despite the fact that he had cited the case just five paragraphs earlier!
To sum this up, our Supreme Court knew the truth and understood it. They lied to themselves and they lied to the people of this country. They instituted a “legalized” mass genocide UNPRECEDENTED in world history.
And of course we are all becoming more aware of fetal homicide laws. For example Lacie and Connor Peterson in CA. An honest and civilized society must ask: If it is a crime for a drunk driver to hit and kill a Mother and her unborn baby on the streets, why can she go into an abortion mill and have that same child killed “legally”
“There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.”
Pro-Choice Advocates Agree that Abortion Kills Humans. http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html#S4
Many abortion advocates have agreed that abortion kills human life: A 1963 Planned Parenthood brochure says that life begins at conception: This is a direct quote "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."
Former Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton admits that the preborn are alive in her 1986 book: "There are many sperm cells in the [seminal] fluid. If one of them meets an egg cell inside the mother, new life can begin to grow... If one of your friends is pregnant, ask her to let your child 'feel the baby move.' ... A baby grows in a special place inside the mother, called the uterus -- not in her stomach. In nine months it is born."
Similarly, Dr. Mary Calderone, former director of Planned Parenthood has stated that "[a]bortion is the taking of a human life" and Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former president of Planned Parenthood and founder of the Guttmacher Institute, the research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, has stated "[f]ertilization has then taken place; a baby has been conceived."
While many abortion defenders readily concede that abortion kills human life, it is necessary to expound on this point because examining the nature of the unborn human being at the point of conception shows the inherent dignity that we all share from our biologic beginnings that are hidden from eyes of the world.
Not only have representatives from the nations largest abortion provider agreed that life begins at conception, but others who support abortion have agreed that abortion is murder. Dr. Magda Denes who performed two years of research in an abortion facility and compiled her results told a Chicago newspaper "There wasn’t an (abortion) doctor who at one time or another in the questioning did not say ‘this is murder.’"
This so called “Women’s Right to Choose…to abort her baby” has as its foundation, three main points:
1. It must ignore universally acknowledged biological facts.>
2. It denies federal and state laws that clearly identify the unborn as a person with rights.
3. It promotes a blatant lie that “It’s” a woman’s body” When clearly “IT” is her BABY within her body.
How can something be alive but not be life? Isn't life, by definition, that which is alive?
life ( lºf) n. pl. lives ( lºvz) 1. Biology a. The property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism.
Since sperm are not alive, then I suppose it is impossible to kill them. But then, what is spermicide for?
If you are going to punish everyone who kills sperm, then even if you abstained from ejaculations, you would be guilty of cannabalizing them as your body reabsorbs them. Do you plan to go around trying to keep them all alive if they manage to find a way to get out someday on the bathroom floor? How many kids do you expect to not kill by not just wiping them up and flushing them? Getting a vasectomy would not relieve you guilt, neither would castration. Boy, are you in a heap of self inflicted trouble.
That having been said, I do think there are some major qualitative differences between an unimplanted embryo and an embryo which has fully implanted. Essentially, I see pregnancy as consisting of four roughly defined phases [to use the analogy of building and occupying a house]:
To be sure, the bible says that God knows a person's soul before a person is born, but it also suggests that God knows a person's soul before the person is even conceived (even IIRC before the person's parents are conceived). As such, the fact that God may know a person's soul at the moment of conception does not mean that the soul has yet entered the body at that point. It would seem to me more likely that the soul enters the body some time later, after God deems the body suitable.
I guess this belief stems partly from a belief that the process of matter becoming a human being is supposed to be beyond human understanding. The mechanics of fertilization are well-understood and can be manipulated at will. The stuff that happens after that, though, is not so well understood. I tend to believe the real magic is happening in the not-so-well-understood parts of the process.
"A person's a person, no matter how small."
That's part of the reason I'd regard implantation as more of a 'landmark' than fertilization. I personally would regard an unimplanted embryo as being equivalent to an acorn: it is a genetically unique product of sexual reproduction, but it has not yet reached the point of development where it must forevermore either grow or perish. An acorn isn't considered a living tree until it enters the ground and germinate; I would apply a similar standard to human development.
No, Dr. Carnley, what is logical in that case is that it is "possible to talk of the conception" of TWO unique human individuals.
1 + 1 = 2, Carnley old chum, not zero.
organ \or-gen\ n 2 : a differentiated animal or plant structure (as a heart or a leaf) made up of cells and tissues and performing some bodily function
(C) 1995 Zane Publishing, Inc. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (C) 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
organism \or-ge-ni-zem\ n : an individual living thing (as a person, animal, or plant
(C) 1995 Zane Publishing, Inc. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (C) 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
individual n 1 : a single member of a category : a particular person, animal, or thing 2 : person
(C) 1995 Zane Publishing, Inc. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (C) 1994 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
I don't believe that any particular significance should be given to any particular number of hours following conception, since the position of the ovum within the fallopian tube or uterus when fertilization occurs can greatly affect the timetable and outcome of development.
That having been said, there are a number of landmarks which are IMHO as significant as fertilization in the human development process. For example, from what I understand implantation (or, to be more precise, the fairly rapid sequence of events surrounding implantation, collectively) marks the point at which:
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