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.

[MHGinTN]

ping-a-ling

[XBob]

a toddler is not a teenager, nor is a toddler a parent,

A baby is a potential toddler.

A fetus is a potential baby.

A zygote is a potential fetus.

Have fun building your oak desk from an acorn.

[XBob]

79 - "I notice you keep avoiding my question regarding spirit. Is there a superstitious reason for that?"

I hadn't noted a specific question about a 'spirit'. I don't believe people have souls, as opposed to animals.

If you have a question, please ask again, and more directly.

[XBob]

I think you better stop posting tonight, and get some sleep.

[MHGinTN]

ping-a-ling-a-ling

[Tailgunner Joe]

I think you better change your mind about whether or not it's okay to kill unborn babies.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Oh, and wake up.

[XBob]

I think you better go to sleep, and also I think you better start understanding that 70-80% of the people in this country believe in having the choice of abortion.

[Servant of the Nine]

So, if it isn't human, because it isn't breathing on its own, then those cell masses hooked to life support systems in our hospitals must not be human, either?

Not in my book.

So9

[Cyber Ninja]

On this issue of life beginning, I think that the Law of the Perversity of Nature is best applied. The law is best understood by example i.e. beforehand you cannot determine which side of the bread to butter. While, after the bread is buttered, it is easy to determine which side to butter, because it is buttered.

The beginning of a life is indeterminable, but the ending of life is obvious. One instant there is not life and the next instant there is life. Anything anyone does to intervene, the instant after a life begins that causes that life end, is killing.

You can kill wheat with a combine. You can kill a horse with a broken leg. You can kill a bug with your shoe. You can kill a zygote with chemicals. You can kill a hog with an electric shock. You can kill a nearly born baby with scissors through the back of its head. You can kill yourself with razor blades in the bath. You can kill a murderer with an injection. You can kill an attacker with a Smith and Wesson. You can kill the terminally ill with a morphine drip.

Slaughter, euthanasia, murder, mercy killing, self-defense, abortion, execution, chemical abortion, homicide, suicide, harvesting, extermination, partial birth abortion (D&E), assisted suicide, infanticide; they are all killing.

You cannot know when to begin to call anything alive, but you can easily know when to call something dead. There is bad killing, and good killing. Most people can tell the good from the bad, when they see it. Combine harvesting winter wheat – good killing. Armed bank robber shot dead on the on the scene – good killing. Young woman dead in a dark red bathtub – bad killing. Dismembered fetus pulled out piece-by-piece – bad killing.

Most who see an abortion know instinctively that it is bad killing. The rest is politics. Sorry for the length, but the preceding argument has convinced even atheists that abortion at any stage is bad killing. And I didn’t have to mention God even once.

CB^)

[MHGinTN]

You wrote:
"a toddler is not a teenager, nor is a toddler a parent, A baby is a potential toddler. A fetus is a potential baby. A zygote is a potential fetus.
Have fun building your oak desk from an acorn."

Besides oddly equating plants to humans in an oblique way, you have exposed the illogic of your perspective, since to become an oak tree the oak must go through the earlier age of it's lifetime which was the age of acorn. Your syllogistic flow doesn't appear to make a point, other than to repeat the term 'potential', which of course when an alive organism is located at one moment in time is the exact same state for every alive organism, namely, its next temporal moment is always and only potential. But it is the same organism from moment to moment once conceived.

[MHGinTN]

Did you happen to read the essay, the part that Dr. Condic explians regarding the state of comatose or vegetative state human beings?

[Tailgunner Joe]

Why don't you make me?

It didn't matter to seven black robed men what most people "believe" when they made their decision, and it still doesn't matter.

Those who believe in life will win this argument because we are more dedicated, and we are right.

[MHGinTN]

I like your flair ... and your tagline!

[XBob]

so, you agree, a fertilized egg is not the same as a baby.

Good.

Now, are a specific egg and a specific sperm the same organisms after they merge?

[MHGinTN]

Ping

[MHGinTN]

Absolutely not, because the conceptus is totipotent in the 'potential' temporal flow (all the cells , tissues, and organs of a later age along its continuum of life may come from it in the fullness of time), AND it is also alive, a human gamete derived organism and has 46 chromosomes (where the gametes had only 23 each and could have no other 'potential' than gametes in the natural order of their aliveness).

[MHGinTN]

I would also note for you, Bob, that the neonate baby is the SAME individual that was the zygote back along its lifetime continuum.

[XBob]

Identical twins have markedly similar behavior, body types, and diseases - throughout the years, though not exactly identical - it varies somewhat depending upon experiences, as does everything. The north and the south side of the same mountain are slightly different, because of their different exposures.

"When the second egg seperates from the first it acquires a new soul, obviously. "

Now - all those soul believers above have said that the soul is created when the egg and sperm unit, not when they split - so they must disagree with you.