Posted on 06/18/2003 3:25:36 PM PDT by 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.
Mama - you have a strange god who kills 40% of all humans beings (your definition of a fertilized egg) before they even get to be a fetus. What a cruel god you have.
Your post 633:
You can't even prove the existence of god, let alone that he was 'alone', so your analogy is inappropriate.
You have been perfectly willing to discuss god/God in several posts here.
In Post 17, you were content to posit that He is so cruel that He uses his immense, far-reaching, supernatural powers to kill "40% of all human beings before they even get to a fetus."
But you aren't content with the idea that, if a Being has long-distance power to kill those fetuses, that same Being might be powerful enough to have created mankind. In that case, He would have existed before mankind brought human death into the world.
I can see why you are an agnostic.
I'd be an agnostic, too, if I thought God could be so cruel. The idea of worshipping a god who doesn't bring life to mankind, but only uses his powers to kill fetuses is repugnant.
Abortion is repugnant, too.
So, then it's alright to let little 'people' die because it's too much trouble to attempt to save them?
Would you have all swimmers at public beaches wear radio-rigged scuba equipment and swim among boats filled with lifeguards to make sure no one drowns?
Some of us have had contacts with other religions, too. We are not necessarily close-minded, just because we have come to certain conclusions about our own religious beliefs.
For many years, one of my best friends was a Hindu and she was a very moral and caring person. But her husband (also a Hindu) was very judgmental in an arbitrary way. He wanted to tell others how to run their lives. (For example, he used to give warning stares to men who looked admiringly at pretty women who commuted on the train with them.) There are condemnatory people like that in most religions.
I used to have a problem with the idea that Christianity was the one true religion. I thought: There are so many different religions, how could only one be right?
I've found that some (mostly nominal) Christians think Christianity has a lot going for it, but they object to the fact that Christians say Christianity is the true religion.
But, if it seems to someone that they have found the true religion, why wouldn't they be allowed to say it seems that way to them? They'd be lying, if they said otherwise. And telling Christians they can't say their religion is the true one, is it's own kind of intrusiveness.
I'm not saying you are doing that, I just want to make it clear that tolerance for other's religions does not mean one has to say the other religion is right.
Gee, I thought most abortions took place in clinics or hospitals.
Which religion is enforcing the abortions?
If abortion is a religious issue, then those who want to allow abortions must be enforcing their religious viewpoints.
In some Northern European countries there are laws against parents hitting a child.
But a parent who hits a child is not usually penalized.
I wish more of our lawmakers had the guts to at least say abortion is wrong, even if they can't accept the idea of punishing those involved.
http://www.cei.net/~rcox/hitting.htmlOver five million European children are already protected from all physcial punishment in their home as well as in institutions. Five European countries - Sweden (in 1979), Finland (in 1983), Denmark (in 1985), Norway (in 1987) and Austria (in 1989) have adopted laws which prohibit parents hitting their children. The purpose in each case has been educational; to change attitudes, not to punish parents. There are no criminal penalties attached to the bans. The reforms have not led to a rush of children taking their parents to court over physical punishment, and numbers of children taken into care in Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are low and reducing.
Agree. And the same for the implanted embryo, up to a point. Picking a point later for legal protection gets harder.
Yes, but the harm done to a insufficently developed embryo, one without facial features, say, does not merit murder prosecution for most pro-lifers, I'd guess.
Of course the empathy point may come earlier if the culture advances in a pro-life direction.
Seems logical to me.
You can't have it both ways. Every fertile woman having sex needs a monthly inspection to determine if she is 'inadvertantly' comminting 'manslaughter'. And she needs to be punnished, just like the punnishment for manslaughter for 'born' persons.
Tough case for the prosecutor - he'd need probable cause to require screening, and have to prove a viable fertilized egg indeed suffered from negligent homicide (failure to freeze for future implantation) to win a murder case.
But prosecution aside, one's own conscience would seem to require screening, assuming that current technology can save the conceptus - if we agree on post-conception personhood.
Even in the case of "defective" embryos, freezing for posterity makes sense, since technological advance might fix the problem.
You can't have it both ways. Every fertile woman having sex needs a monthly inspection to determine if she is 'inadvertantly' comminting 'manslaughter'. And she needs to be punnished, just like the punnishment for manslaughter for 'born' persons.
If not, you have a stupid, irrelevant argument of 'humanity'.
Not at all. It has a lot of cogency to it, and I still don't understand all of it.
But your objections (not your insults - regardless of who started!) seem in order to me, so far, in my partial digestion of MGHinTN's article.
But falsifying a theory doesn't necessarily require throwing out the whole theory, or make it stupid or irrelevant.
Googling for Condic I found this along those lines:
What will the next twelve months bring? Will we next be asked to accept the need to “culture” therapeutic clones in artificial wombs for a few months until tissue-specific stem cells can be obtained from growing embryos? Perhaps the cloned embryos will need to be grown even longer, until usable organs for transplant can be “harvested.”
Stem Cells and False Hopes by Maureen L. Condic
I understand the concern to set the bright line way back at conception, so as to prevent research developing a "hunger" for more and more developed embryonic organs. It doesn't convince me of the moral harm done to a days old embryo, however.
While reluctance to impose a personal view on others is deeply ingrained in American society, one must question the legitimacy of such reluctance when the topic of our 'imposition' is a matter (quite literally) of life and death. Few beyond the irrationally obdurate would maintain that human embryos are anything other than biologically Homo sapiens and alive, even at the earliest developmental stages. Equally few would contest the fact that, at early stages of embryonic development, human embryos bear little resemblance to anything we easily identify as 'human. For most people, reconciling these two facts involves the uncomfortably fuzzy process of drawing a line somewhere during the continuously changing process of human prenatal development and asserting: 'There. That's when human life begins—at least for me.' It is precisely the subjectivity and inaccuracy of this decision that fuels our discomfort at 'imposing' it on others.
I agree with all of the above.
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