Posted on 11/26/2007 4:11:17 PM PST by wagglebee
LOS ANGELES, November 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Human beings, being mammals, do not lay eggs. This fact, known to most school children, is frequently forgotten by those in the media reporting on advancements in embryo and cloning research. The latest example of media misrepresentation on embryo research comes from Saturday's Los Angeles Times which ran the headline, "Abortion opponents push for 'personhood' for eggs."
The Los Angeles Times reporter examines pending bills in several states that would confer legal personhood on the unborn child from the first moment of conception. Nicholas Riccardi cites efforts in Colorado, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana and Georgia to bring ballot initiatives forward that would recognise the existence of a human person from the moment of conception.
Riccardi quotes Belinda Bulger, deputy legal director for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) who complained that the "type of language," in the Colorado ballot initiative is deceptive.
In Colorado, should the effort succeed to bring a ballot initiative forward in 2008, voters would be asked if the constitution should "include any human being from the moment of fertilization as 'person' ... in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law."
Ironically, Bulger said the language of the question "may be scarier than an outright ban. First, because it can be hard for people to understand what it's doing, and second, because it would be far further reaching."
Pro-life advocates have often pointed to the misrepresentation in media of terminology surrounding cloning and embryo research. Terms such as "pre-embryo", "balls of stem cells", or "fertilized eggs" are commonly used to indicate what human embryologists have defined scientifically as a human embryo in the earlier stages of development.
Despite what many refer to as the "debate" over when a human being begins to exist, the facts have been known for more than a hundred and thirty years. In 1875, the German zoologist Oskar Hertwig showed definitively that penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum was the beginning of independent life and that the terms "conception" and "fertilization" are therefore interchangeable terms.
Human embryologists have shown that once fertilization has taken place, neither the male nor female sex cells (often misnamed "eggs") continue to exist.
Dianne Irving, a scientist and ethicist who has written extensively on the subject, says that misdirection by the media in terminology has enabled much of the enormous gains in legalizing destructive research on human embryos in the last ten years.
In her 2003 article, "Playing God by Manipulating Man: The Facts and Frauds of Human Cloning", Irving wrote of "the purposeful and massive manipulation of language, science, ethics, legislation and politicians" that has led to the creation of such legislation.
"We are being led into 'believing' that what are being manipulated and dissected in petri dishes in laboratories across the world during human cloning experiments are not really innocent living human beings who will be killed in the process. Rather they are 'just a bunch of stem cells'."
The left has a long history of redefining terms to fit their agenda.
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Except for this one:
I used to love to hear “mass of undifferentiated tissue.” Let’s just say that the people using the term weren’t biology majors.
“mass of undifferentiated tissue.”
Contestant #2: “The question, Alex, is What is a Lefty”
Alex: No, Contestant #1?
Contestant #1: “What is a liberal?”
Alex: No, Contestant #3?
Contestant #3: “What is a Democrat?”
Alex: Sorry, the answer was “What is Hillary”.
Great book on that topic:
“Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives”
Covers abortion, slavery, Nazi Holocaust and more. Important history.
The term “fertilization” is a term of art. As soon as the head of the sperm penetrates the egg, an explosiion of genetic material take place. It needs to be likened to a chemical reaction. When hydrogen and oxygen combine, one gets a new substance, water. When sperm and ovum combine, one gets an embryo.
“I used to love to hear mass of undifferentiated tissue. Lets just say that the people using the term werent biology majors.”
..as a bio person, and fu**ing how.
Confusing eggs with embryos
confusing bacteria with viruses
confusing darwinian evolution with lamarckian evolution...
they can’t be trusted
Who wrote it?
Short beaked echidna.
Monotreme ping!
Hey Jim! "Monotreme" is not in your spell-checker! Nor is "echidna". What's up with this crummy site? ;)
As I understand it, an unfertilized chicken egg is one cell. Just like an unfertilized human egg only much much larger. If someone knows differently, please tell me. And once the chicken egg is fertilized, it then becomes an unhatched chicken.
Some biologist tell me, please, if this is incorrect. The shell is made of calcium, not a bunch of cells containing calcium. The white is nothing but protein, no cells. The yellow also has no cells. The chicken makes one every day, if an egg were more than one cell, how would that miracle of multiplication of cells take place?
Dianne Irving, a scientist and ethicist
Be it ever so humble, from the moment of fertilization it is an individual human being.
I spent more time than I care to replicate arguing about abortion yesterday. The implications of saying the fertilized egg is a human life on par with someone walking the streets are huge.
I’m pretty deep in the pro-life side, and I don’t believe that. If you try to make it the basis of law, you will have some very unpopular consequences. For example, if delivery of the fetus endangers the mother, then logically you should kill the mother to save the infant - who has more of his/her life ahead than the mother. You should also prosecute any woman asking for an abortion for first degree murder.
“When sperm and ovum combine, one gets an embryo.”
The fertilized egg is not an embyo until the first cleaving takes place. A fertilized egg is defined as a single cell with genetic material of both parents. An embryo is multicellular and the parent’s genetic material has been copied and distributed to two or more cells.
The cleaving is a manifestation of an action that is occuring. I won’t push the anaology too far, but like when enough h20 molecules have combined so that a visible drop is formed.
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