When Is Human Life A Human Being?

http://www.freebritannia.co.uk ^ | 6/16/2003 | Marvin Galloway

[MHGinTN]

In a recent article for First Things, Maureen L. Condic, PhD, Assistant professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, presents a convincing argument for meaning of the death protocol (used when organ harvesting is anticipated) to also be used when contemplating prenatal life. She has stated accurately that, “… the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.”

...

To paraphrase Dr. Condic’s assertion: to be alive as an ORGANISM, the organism is functioning as an integrated whole, rather than life being defined solely from an organ, a form within the organism. …

In order to accurately apply the meaning of the death protocol offered in Dr. Condic’s article, we will have to show how an embryo is more than a mere collection of cells. We will have to show how the embryo is in fact a functioning, integrated whole human organism. If the embryo can be defined on this basis, the definition of an alive, individual human being would fit, and the human being should be protected from exploitation and euthanasia.

What is the focus of the transition from embryo age to fetal age are the organs of the fetus. It is generally held that the organs are all in place when the individual life is redefined as a fetus. The gestational process during the fetal age is a process of the already constructed organs growing larger and more functional for survival. But during the fetal age, the not yet fully functional organs are not the sole sustainer of the individual life. The placenta is still drawing nourishment from the woman’s body and protecting the individual from being rejected as foreign tissue. If we are to apply the notion of a functioning integrated whole to define individual aliveness, the organs necessary for survival must all be included. Since the primitive brain stem and other organs such as primitive lungs, to be relied upon at a later age in the individual’s lifetime, are not yet fully functional, some other organ will have to be responsible for the functioning whole.

[hocndoc]

excellent points.

I'm convinced that the pro-abortion advocates understand those points, too.
They've just decided that the unborn human child is inconvenient or could be more useful and valuable to them if he or she is killed. They don't see the risk to their own lives and rights when they discriminate between those humans who are human enough to have the right not to be killed and those they deem not human enough.

[exmarine]

Today I would vote for a Zell Miller any day over a Specter or Snowe or Collins.

Pro-abort repubs lose because there are a significant no. of conservatives who vote on MORAL PRINCIPLE not party line (admirable); however Democrats have no moral center and vote party line every time - the more libertine, the better! It makes them feel better to know that there are candidates out there who have the toilet morals they have - it makes them feel vindicated. I vote moral principle and moral principle ALONE. I don't care what party a candidate belongs to - if he supports killing babies or gay rights, he goes on the scrap heap.

I would never vote for any Democrat as that is casting a vote for the abortion party, or anti-family party, or anti-american party, or amoral party - take your pick - they are all true.

[hocndoc]

The zygote has the right not to be purposefully killed unless he or she is a danger to life of another human.

Every human alive has the same right to life. But that does not mean that I can be obigated by law to save every human life in the world, only that I can't kill them. I can enjoy my freedom and pursue happiness in any way that does not kill someone else.

[syriacus]

Ignorance is no excuse for condoning allowing 'people' to die, when the technology exists to save their lives.

I think that seeking out every sloughed-off fertilized egg would be ludicrous.

I guess you are being facetious, since you must know that people are not morally obligated to go to such extremes, as you describe, to save lives.

Here's a question for you?

Why are are people who argue against pro-lifers so very, very eager to interfere with the natural course of things?

• If you produce an egg, they want to fertilize it in a petri dish.
• If a woman's fertilized egg sloughs off naturally, they ask why not go to technological extremes to rear it. (Perhaps it sloughed off because it was not capable of developing correctly.)
• Naturally grow a baby in a womb and they want to destroy it.

See any pattern of extremism here?

Pro-aborts want permission to unnaturally destroy a slightly imperfect human that is already growing inside a womb. Perhaps it's almost ready to be born.

On the other hand, you want someone to go to extremes to stop natural destruction of a fertilized egg that might not even be capable of developing.

As I said in another post, people who are intent on destroying preborns, not only throw out the baby, but also throw out common sense, and any search for the truth.

Most of them have already decided they want to legalize killing of the unborn. They grab at any silly excuse they can find and even use arguments that contradict their other arguments.

[syriacus]

How many fertilized eggs have you buried?

One.

[hocndoc]

If you are driving your car, you have contracted with society to maintain awareness of what you hit.

A more logical comparison would be to compare the unknown pregnancies with the deaths from old age, disease or trauma all over the world that I am unaware of. Even if I knew about them, I probably couldn't do anything about them even as a doctor. And I am definitely not required to seek them out and try to intervene in the course of their natural deaths. I'm not even required to act to save those I can save, except when I have entered into a patient-physician relationship with them.

[syriacus]

Interesting - then we need to start collecting every menses from every woman, and check for fertilized eggs, and try to implant them before they die. It can be done, and according to your standards, we should do it.

Nope.

[Semper]

Great post (#524)!

I should never support any law to prevent anyone from doing anything, if that thing, however much or often it is done, can never be a direct threat to me, my property, or my family.

I suspect that many of the meddlers would consider this "freedom to decide" a threat. The fact that "murder" is being permitted in their society is a threat to their environment.

By the way, if "murder" is indeed happening here, it is premeditated and done to the purely innocent. If ever there was a crime deserving the death penalty, logic says this is it. To be true to principle here we should end abortion by executing all the aborting women as well as their doctors. Why do we not hear cries for that? Murder deserves proper punishment. Why? Because they know that it is not murder. It is an emotional ploy to win an agrument and it has failed miserably.

When someone does something I would not do, or I do not like, or I personally believe is immoral, that does not give me a right to use force to make them conform to my convictions and preferances. That is what is wrong with the entire anti-abortion movement. They ought to oppose abortion but what they do has the opposite affect, because what they really want to do is interefer in the lives of others. Essentially, they are intruders and meddlers in others affairs..

It deserved repeating.

[syriacus]

so, if youall win, what do you think should be the punishment for allowing a fertilized egg to die?

Fertilized eggs that die, do so because it is natural for them to do it.

BTW, Do you believe in any natural events?

[exmarine]

Why is it so hard for you to grasp that a zygote is a human being?

A thing cannot change from one thing into another thing. In other words, there can't be alterations or changes in a thing unless something about that thing always remains the same. You have changed from a child to an adult because the "you" which is you, your soul or whatever, your personhood, has stayed the same throughout the changes. The changes have been to accidental things about you, your body, for example. Different things have happened to your body and the same is true of an unborn child. No, an unborn child is an individual being and that's absolutely obvious from the biology and also from the reflection that, if you are a female, and you have a being with a penis inside of you, obviously it's not you because women don't have penises. So the being inside you is a separate being. So, my question for you is: What kind of being is it?

Let me help you:

Beings produce other beings just like themselves. So it is irrefutable that this "fetus" is a human being. I've never seen anything come out of the womb other than a human being, have you?

[hocndoc]

That is not what I am arguing for at all. The point of responsibility comes at *action.*

The right to life is the right not to be purposefully killed. Abortion is not "allowing to die." It is purposefully killing and in case of elective abortions, it is done for "elective" reasons." There are no legitimate elective reasons to infringe on human rights.

I have the right not to be shot. I don't have the right to take transplantable organs by force and/or without consent from another human - whether or not it kills him or her - because I want or even need them.

In the case of cloning for medical research and destruction of embryos from in vitro fertilization for stem cells, there should be an added responsibility on the person who used complicated, purposeful actions, knowledge and technology to create a human life for the purpose of killing him or her.

[exmarine]

By the way, if "murder" is indeed happening here, it is premeditated and done to the purely innocent. If ever there was a crime deserving the death penalty, logic says this is it. To be true to principle here we should end abortion by executing all the aborting women as well as their doctors. Why do we not hear cries for that? Murder deserves proper punishment. Why? Because they know that it is not murder. It is an emotional ploy to win an agrument and it has failed miserably.

That's not good logic. Why didn't the germans try Himmler, and Heydrich and the other Nazis for murdering the jews? It must not have been murder! They aren't tried for murder becuase the unborn have been DEHUMANIZED just like the Jews were! It's easier to commit genocide when you can convince people that what you are killing isn't human! And that's exactly what they've done in America. But people are waking up. They see that the little creatures coming out of the womb look peculiarly like babies! (wonder why?)

If I had my way, the Dr. Mengele's at the aborturaries and the woman to kills her child would both be tried for murder and sentenced under the U.S. and State statutes against homicide. We only have to change the laws to ensure that this will happen in the future.

[syriacus]

So - then an apple seed is an apple tree? An acorn is an oak tree, yes?

Here is the correct comparison.

Are children adults? No.

Are adults children? No.

Are both children and adults human beings? Yes.

We can now extend the logic....

Are fetuses adults? No.

Are adults fetuses? No.

Are both fetuses and adults human beings? Yes.

[MHGinTN]

You asserted (stupidly), Killing a caterpillar is not ending the life of a butterfly because the life of the butterfly has not started. The caterpillar is the same individual organism as the later manifesting butterfly form. The exact same individual organism has two distinct looks to it without ever ending one life as caterpillar then beginning a new life as a butterfly ... stop the individual organismal life at caterpillar and you will have also eliminated the butterfly age of the organism.

You look completely different at thirty than you did at birth, and your functional capacity has developed vastly more complexity by the age of thirty than you had at six months in utero. If your Mother had ended your lifetime at six months in utero or even one month in utero, all the rest of your lifetime begun at conception would have been wiped out. It is good that your Mother did not end your lifetime at one month in utero, but it is very sad that you have chosen to deny your individual lifetime extends back to your unique conception, simply because to admit to that truth, you will have defined your exploitative desire as bankrupt. Rather than see the truth put before you, you choose willfull and deadly serious ignorance.

Clearly, you have 'talked a good ruse'. And you've even tried to assert that the founding principles of this nation are somehow 'my religious values'. How full of fecal stench your assertions have become! With your inane comment regarding the caterpillar and the butterfly, you have exposed yourself for the transactionalist you are, a ghoul more than willing to kill individual human beings to serve what you deem to be 'lives of more worthy existence'. At least poor XBob cannot help his dumb, baiting remarks. You, on the other hand, have thought through your wrongheaded perspective and deemed it utmost utilitarian and just what you want to be, regardless of the truths you must deny.

[RinaseaofDs]

So if I take a bat to a pregnant woman's belly, and she lives, but the baby dies, what is that in the real world?

I've always believed that the barrier of compassion in a liberials eyes is the vagina. You make it out of there, and you've got a shot.

Until you clear it, though, you are nothing but a collection of cells.

[RinaseaofDs]

Not necessarily. If you leave the egg and sperm in a petrie dish without implanting it in a womb, you get nothing.

Egg, sperm, AND host and you have a life unless bad genes or something else interferes other than an abortionist.

[Servant of the Nine]

So if I take a bat to a pregnant woman's belly, and she lives, but the baby dies, what is that in the real world?

If you take a baseball bat to a womans belly you oughta get life whether she was pregnant or not.
I have always thought that attempted murder should have the same penalty as succesful murder. Why reward incompetence?

So9

So9

[hocndoc]

You said,
""stop preventing preventing this research to cure my sicknesses.""
You have no right to body parts or the life or resources of anyone else. You don't even have the "right" to medical care. If you had a right to medical care, society and I couldn't refuse to act to give you medicine, surgery, and transplantable organs and that would make us your slaves. We may not inject you with too much insulin in order to kill you, but we don't have to provide you with insulin, much less new insulin-producing cells.

When your diabetes damages your kidneys, will you have the "right" to a kidney transplant from your brother or sister, even if no one wants to give you one? Would you have the right to subject your very young child to surgery to remove his kidney or take his pancreas if he's a tissue match for you? When your uncontrolled diabetes clogs your coronary arteries, causing a heart attack, will you be able to demand that someone else give his life so that you can have a new heart? If you drink too much or share a needle with the wrong person, contracting Hepatitis C or cirrhosis, who will you demand fulfill your "right" to a lobe of their liver?

You don't have the right, and they have the right to not help you with their body parts. It is just as immoral to infringe on your cloned identical twin or someone else's embryo, just because he or she was created by in vitro fertilization.

Just because you have chosen to discriminate between humans so that you can kill and canabalize some, doesn't mean that I have to stand by silently while you kill humans. Stop demanding that society kill for you.

BTW, If you are type 2 diabetic, I can "cure" you, at least temporarily, with diet and exercise. I've never failed to correct hyperglycemia in patients when I've had them in the hospital, on a hospital diet. On the contrary, I have to be careful that I don't lower their glucose too much.

[hocndoc]

No, you still don't understand.
A brick is not a house, it's part of a house. A house was never a brick, but many bricks, lumber and thousands of inanimate objects.

A zygote is a human being. A complete human being. You were a zygote.

[hocndoc]

It was never a crime to "allow a fertilized egg to die." There is a big difference between natural death and the act of killing by means of purposeful intervention.

The crime of elective abortion will be very rare when it's illegal. I believe that when abortion is illegal again, illegal abortions should be treated the same way as crimes of mothers who kill their new borns or infants. And that doctors should be tried under criminal laws, as well as being punished by the Board of Medical Examiners.