When does human life begin? I defy any intelligent person to answer

[Raven]

that question honestly and after having done some reading up on it. Except for politicians who use the issue for political purposes, this question remains unresolved as far as I can see. There are brilliant minds that disagree on this and I don't think there ever will be an answer that is other than politically or religiously motivated.

So, having said that, I'm thinking that, if there is, in fact, a God,and s/he created a way to cure terrible illnesses in humans through stem cells, why should wenot use them? Our charge is to do this ethically.

[graywarrior]

1. I don't know, but ABC censored this ad....which I despise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz80_PdMN40

[Raven]

9. Well, it is pretty compelling if, in fact, it is accurate but we have

gone past the abortion question in this Country with most people feeling that it is a woman's choice. The stem cell issue is different. Obviously, we need rules about this research i.e. hauling pregnant womaen in to take their babies for the stem cells (But I wager the Repubs would be tempted to do that if there was $ to be had), but I think we are beyond whether a woman can terminate her pregnancy regardless of the ststus of the fetus (the exception being late term abortions, I guess).

[damntexdem]

47. "Maybe he's even thinking." "Measurable brain activity." Nonsense!

Not until much later is the brain functional. But even this nonsense about seven weeks is well after the embryonic stage -- the stage where embyronic stem cells are at issue.

[ejpoeta]

71. today i heard five days as when the embryos are optimal.

five days. they are a bunch of cells at that point. they are NOT a human life. they are not a living thing. they are a group of cells. This argument is ridiculous. They want the cells BEFORE they decide what they are going to be. duh!!

[polmaven]

18. Good for them!!

What a horrid thing that was.

[graywarrior]

22. It's the tone of her voice

Grrrrr.

[polmaven]

27. With all that hate just

DRIPPING from her mouth....Holier that thou jerk!

[graywarrior]

32. They play that over and over up here

[WeDidIt]

2. Somewhere in between fertilization and the child drawing its first breath

That's the best estimate I can give.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. The Jewish answer is:

When the fetus graduates from law school, medical school or gets an MBA. :D

Stem cells and zygotes are not human beings. I think the proper line is the threshold of viability in the womb..not "can this fetus survive with heroic, massive, lifetime medical care" but "can this fetus survive without a whole lot of medical care" because it's ready to live outside the womb. Technically, it has to be born and draw its first breath, but I think fairly certain viability (however many weeks that is) would be a good threshold.

[ReliantJ]

30. Nice!!

[HeresyLives]

4. Same way we determine death.

Level of brain function.

[LiberalPersona]

38. This

When a brain begins to function and has detectable brain waves.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. 21. n/t

[yella_dawg]

6. When they show up in my phone book.

Good enough for Bill Hicks, good enough for me.

[peace13]

11. Bill...ya gotta love him!

He would be beside himself if he were here now. The onset of the second * would have just sent him over the edge. Peace, Kim

[damntexdem]

50. Not today with so many cell phones.

Yikes, do you suppose they'll get stem-cell phones? ;-)

[jpgray]

7. As soon as you have experiences outside the womb

Legally, that's the best definition I think anyone can come up with. There's no other way to draw an arbitrary line with any hope for grounding it objectively. Any other standard leads to absurdity--you'd have women being charged with involuntary manslaughter for falling down the stairs whilst eight months pregnant, etc.

Fuck, even crazy-ass Leviticus prescribes a lighter punishment for causing a miscarriage than for killing somebody. The debate should be fucking over in a legal sense. In a personal sense? Who really gives a shit what anyone believes?

[Lucian]

20. I share that definition as well.

[Cleita]

8. I posted an OP back years ago asking a similar question.

I asked when life begins not just human life. No one can answer that question. I do believe that we aren't human yet when we are just a clump of cells. We are potentially human but not there yet.

If stem cell research hadn't been held back I believe my husband would be alive today. There is promise of cloning fresh organs with the use of stem cells and DNA from the patient. My husband could have received a cloned kidney with his own DNA and wouldn't have died of renal failure. I hope future organ recipients will be able to receive this miracle of life, an organ with their own DNA so that their body doesn't try to reject it.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

10. Why dance around the answer ? Is it alive or dead inside the

mother? But that doesn't mean it would survive outside of her.

[slackmaster]

12. Mine begins at about 5:30 PM every Monday through Friday

When I get to leave work.

[ReliantJ]

29. LOL. But I wonder

But I wonder if some of the more extreme people think that I should not dispose of my...

[SmileyRose]

13. Life is one thing - "personhood" is another.

Look, cows are life. We have no problem as a society putting them in brutal conditions and then killing them to support our own human lives. The abortion or stem cell arguments will never be about "life". It's about deciding the fuzzy line regarding a certain level of life has it's own rights.

I think for some, when it comes to stem cells, there's this fear that if we don't put the hammer down now we will someday have clones kept barely alive to be used for spare parts. Some folks just have an uneasiness about where science is headed on this. Whatever excuse they use for saying why this should not be (religion, finances, the role of the feds whatever) the bottom line is that they just personally feel the scientific community can't be trusted to stay on the side of exploiting mere life rather than exploiting persons.

[csziggy]

73. The argument of when human life begins is moot when it comes to "snowflake" embryos

Those are the frozen embryos that will not be implanted in the donor's womb. Those may be stored for a period in case of need but most are discarded - THROWN AWAY. So they will be killed - if they are alive. Those "right to lifers" haven't made a peep about those thousands of discarded embryos so any claim they make about abusing the use of them is absurd.

[Cronus Protagonist]

14. When Mother Earth gave birth to us

Anyone who says anything else is clearly totally incorrect.

[kestrel91316]

15. Life itself began billions of years ago and has continued since.

It's a CONTINUUM.

Now to the real question: when does PERSONHOOD begin? IMHO it begins when the fetus is viable outside the womb without use of advanced technology or any assistance beyond what CPR a mother could provide should the need arise. IOW, a 6-month fetus is not a "person". The exception would be if the woman bearing the child wants to consider it a person and treat it as such, but that's HER call. YMMV.

[DearAbby]

19. Ding ding ding

Life began billions of years ago, been a chain reaction since. PERSONHOOD is the question.

[cags]

16. Very hard question. If I'm seeing a heartbeat, hands, feet and brain activity...I consider that

a life...

I believe that women should have the right to choose up to a point, but I'm not so sensitive that I will pretend that it is not taking a life. I wouldn't try to explain it away as a bunch of cells at 12 weeks along to make myself feel better about what I was doing at that point.

The need for abortion needs to be greatly reduced by having the Morning After Pill on a shelf for easy purchase. I believe teens should be allowed free birth control without parental consent. I believe if a woman feels the need to have an abortion and end the life inside her, then she should have that right. Its not an easy choice, and I hate the way some try to suggest that most abortions are done as a form of birth control. I don't think any woman takes that decision lightly.

[ejpoeta]

72. in stem cell research, they want cells. today on one of the shows i heard

a doctor who works on the embryonic stem cells say that five days old is when they would want to use it. it is a bunch of cells at that point. as far as an abortion, that definitely should be the woman's choice. without any bs guilt trips like trying to make her see an ultrasound. A woman should definitely be able to decide what is best for herself. and her body.

[corruptmewithpower]

17. Is this one of those "the chicken or the egg" questions?

[Raven]

23. I did not mean it to be. My point is that we will probably never answer

the question but I believe in a just God and I can't imagine that entity giving us a way to cure illness if we can't use it. Doesn't make any sense to me.

[devilgrrl]

21. Human life begins at age 40.

:P

[Raven]

24. Uh, uh. I was still worring about my kid at 40. It begins at around 60

when they start worrying about you!

[TahitiNut]

25. It depends on whether the guy wears boxers or briefs, I guess.

The human female is born with all her ova, while the human male actually 'creates' life (sperm) in his testes. The little swimmers are, afaik, the 'beginning' of autonomous human life. That's not to say a 'person' is created ... a question of not only science but politics. After all, a 'person' who exists under another sovereign authority than the U.S. government is not subject to U.S. laws. If we regard birth as a kind of 'immigration' then it becomes a question of sovereignty instead of existence.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

34. Once you get your ticket to the new sovereignty you discover it's one way

"I don't fear death. I remember no particular discomfort with it before I was born." Mark Twain

[rocktivity]

26. Priest: "Life begins at conception."

Minister: "Wrong--life begins at birth."
Rabbi: "You're both wrong. Life begins when the youngest finishes college and the dog dies."

:headbang:
rocktivity

[Ilsa]

55. Priest: Life begins at conception, but innocent life ends at birth.

Just ask the excommunicated mother of the 9 year old Brazilian girl who needed an abortion because she was so young and small and carrying twins. To the fucking priest, her life, nine years established, didn't mean shit.

[Tab]

28. I would argue that it requires two conditions...

1) That the fetus be viable outside the womb. We can push this earlier and earlier, but basically if all its organs have developed enough that it would survive whether inside or out, then I say it's viable.

2) That is be congnizant of its surroundings, once it becomes viable. Now, I don't think... let's take a 6 month fetus... which is the start of the third trimester, and it's generally agreed that there should be no third trimester abortions except in the most dire of health circumstanes (e.g.: something bad happened, and it is determined that the fetus can't survive, even though at six months, on its own, but if you continue any longer, then both the mother AND the fetus will die, so that's two lives gone). Dire circumstances aside, if a "normal" fetus is taken out of the womb at that point, it will express itself in terms of crying. Granted, that kind of "awareness" is as primal as it gets, but it is aware.

I think this thing about embryo being life is sort of ridiculous. It technically is "life", but not as a human; a blastocyst might divide and consume whatever nutrients it needs to grow, but it's not human - it's a collection of dividing cells, and left to its own devices, it's going nowhere without a human host (regardless of its DNA). It's not aware in any fashion, either (remember, you have to have a working brain to be aware, or even function, after you develop complex systems). You can go at it from the other end, when a person is brain dead and obviously not coming back, we consider them dead, and the only debate possible is whether or not the host body should be terminated (and that host body can't function without a brain).

There's a slippery slope too. If an embryo is life, than a zygote is life. To prevent life from continuing would be improper (under this reasoning). Therefore, the choice to not use birth control is preventing a life (the position the Catholic church holds or held). But why stop there? How about the choice to have or not have sex one night? If I choose not to, am I preventing life? Why not insist that any two consenting humans (even if they're age 14) must have sex and try to procreate? If they think they're not ready to be parents, would that matter? After all, they're preventing life from happening. Hell, why not force a female to be constantly pregnant, whether she wants to or not? I mean, otherwise to let her be abstinent would be preventing life. Force it on her, if you have to. The needs or ability of the parent to care for the potential child seems irrelevant under the reasoning of the pro-lifers, whatever the cost to everyone.

And just more practically, if these are frozen embryos that were about to be destroyed, then what's the difference? Use them for a good thing. Or perhaps we should insist embryos be kept indefinitely - after all, someone, sometime, might want to create, and it'd be awful to have the restriction of not being able to choose between billions and billions of saved embryos, which we are saving "just in case".

I say that when we get to the point where there are no more adoptable children, and we're running out of frozen embryos to fill the demand, THEN we start putting restriction. But until we reach THAT point, I argue that we try to save the lives that we DO have out there, and if stem-cell research will get us there, so much the better.

Anyway, I hope that was an answer by an "intelligent person"; the actual answer to your question was in the first two criteria - they could be debated, but I think they're a good starting point.

Let's work from there.

- Tab

[Captain Hilts]

31. When you have your own apt., with a guest room and no bicycle in the living room. nt

[dysfunctional press]

33. birth.

next question?

[Lex]

35. Aren't these embryos being used ones that were going to be discarded anyway?

When parents have X amount of embryos but use less of them to have the children they want, then the remaining ones are discarded.

Previously, we have not been able to use those in governmental research.

How is it even unethical to use them when they were either out of date (couldn't be used) or going to be discarded because the parents had already conceived the number of kids they wanted.

[Stellabella]

61. Yes. They're thrown away.

Apparently it's okay with these anti-research morons that the embryos end up in the trash bin instead of saving someone's life.

[Kansas Wyatt]

64. That's what their whole shit fit has been about.... What is in the garbage can.

They cannot find people who would take a sixth of these embryos to pregnancy to birth. Yet, they'll be damned if someone is going to take them out of the garbage bin and use them for experiments to help other people. To find cures and treatments that they would gladly accept if they ever needed it.

And here's the kicker: They claim that adult stem cell research is the only research that has been proven to have potential. Psst... Don't focus on the ban of embryo stem cell research, when you compare which one has been tested for potential. With that kind of logic, they would still have us bleeding each other to cure diseases.

[serrano2008]

36. I believe it begins at conception - when the sperm goes in the egg.

That being said, I am also very much FOR stem cell research and am AGAINST the Govt telling people they can't have abortions.

[SteelPenguin]

37. Life? Conception

Are you alive? Is a baby alive? What about that baby 1 minute before it's born, or 1 hour? Is a fertilized egg alive? Is it growing, consuming? I'd consider it alive. Maybe it's a semantic argument, but if something is biological, consuming 'food' of some sort, and growing by doing so, I'd consider it alive. The 'morality' of how to treat that life and how important it is, is the purview of politics and religion apparently, though I personally don't see how what god you believe in should affect a scientific definition.

I'm still unabashedly 100% pro-choice as well though. I don't see the two as mutually exclusive. Stem cell research using fertilized eggs that are frozen and otherwise would be thrown into the trash? I have no problem with that. It'd help thousands of people, if not millions. How is it more ethical to burn them into ash, than to use them to improve the lives of other children?

[Oregone]

39. 3 months after birth

For the religious traditionalists.

[KittyWampus]

48. in some cultures, Life begins when a baby's feet touch the floor.

[Marrah_G]

40. Life begins at birth. Pregnancy leads up to that.

[begin_within]

41. When you leave Free Republic and move to DU

[Believing Is Art]

42. Sorry, I think human life begins at conception

Assuming two humans were involved in conception, of course. Even the zygote is certainly some form of life, even if it's parasitic at that point, and genetically it's human.

I don't think the right to life that society has bestowed upon humans begins at conception. But it's really shaky to argue that an embryo is not life in some way or another.

[damntexdem]

51. But the real question is when there is a human person.

That is clearly NOT at fertilization. If there were a human person at fertilization, we would have a major issue with identical twins: which one is the human person and which one is not, or is each half a human person?

[Believing Is Art]

58. I like it better posed that way

I agree, it's not at fertilization. My personal opinion is personhood begins at birth.

I still think late-term abortions are immoral, I just don't think it's the same thing as murder.

If personhood and all the legal rights applied with it began at conception, a lot more than abortion should be illegal. If a woman who has had multiple miscarriages purposely became pregnant again and miscarried again, that should be prosecuted. A couple who uses in vitro and does not choose to implant all the embryos should be prosecuted. A woman whose lifestyle (athlete, manual labor) results in a miscarriage should be prosecuted, whether she knew she was pregnant or not. But the religious right argues that beginning at fertilization, the fetus has all the rights that you and I do, yet only abortion is a crime. It's a faulty argument.

[Eryemil]

75. An adult cockatoo is more intelligent and self-aware than the average toddler...

...yet most people do not consider them "persons".

I always found this to be interesting. I wonder if we would feel differently if we were a reptilian species, with no evolutionary instinct to protect and care for our young.

[gcomeau]

43. "Life began" well over a billion years ago.

Once. Then it just kept going.

It is most certainly not "unresolved". Is the sperm dead? No. Is the egg dead? no. Is the zygote dead? No. is the embryo dead? No. Is the fetus dead? No. All alive. ALL THE TIME. Dead cells don't reproduce. This is not a great mystery, it is not a matter for deep philosophical pondering, it is a mind numbingly obvious fact.

The entire question of when "life begins" is a giant red herring. It is completely and totally irrelevant to the abortion/stem cell/etc... debate. My LAWN is alive for fuck's sake. Who cares?

[madamesilverspurs]

44. Apparently, for Americans anyway,

human life begins at the moment decreed by right-wing candidates. It's "the moment" they trot out every election cycle, then ignore until they need it again during the next cycle.

[damntexdem]

53. Yeah, but for them, life ends at birth.

Then starts again when a person is both rich and old enough to vote.

[damntexdem]

45. Don't know for sure; but it can't be before the brain boots up.

So not before about 22 weeks gestational. After that, who knows what goes on in the brain? Consciousness, self-consciousness? But it cannot be there before. And after, we do know that the mother has a human life, while the status of the fetus is doubtful.

And none of this has anything to do with an embryo. An embryo is not, cannot be, a person. Sure, there are ethics about the use of embryos in research, but not because they are persons.

[leftofthedial]

46. 5:00 PM, Friday afternoon.

[FudaFuda]

49. I am intelligent enough not to attempt an answer

I don't think abortion is any of the government's business. As in we shouldn't even be talking about legal or illegal ... it's personal and medical.

I do think its interesting what preemie care could potentially do to the abortion debate over time, however. "Viability" under proper hospital care nowadays is dipping into the 22-23 week area. That means at least a 50% chance to live if born at that 'age.'

[Smith_3]

52. Seriously. That question is just a fuzz over semantics. It has no answer.

Like asking when does grass become a lawn.

[AngryOldDem]

54. Myself, I'd rather see the stem cells used ethically and with purpose...

...as opposed to just being thrown into the incinerator.

[DireStrike]

56. If there is a god, and s/he created a way to farm organs from clones and live forever

Why should we not use it? Our charge is to do it ethically.


Not saying there's anything wrong with stem cells. Just the flaw in reasoning jumped out at me.

[Ilsa]

There's a huge % of miscarriages, like 1/3.

God or Mother Nature sure does kill alot of babies in the first trimester.

[girl gone mad]

57. Technically, sperm is alive..

so if the anti-choice crowd is right, we've got a serial killer epidemic in this country.

[stuntcat]

62. for real, life's EVERYWHERE

OH but each of these potential "God's Image"s (:eyes:) are of crucial world-changing importance.. while the 40,000 people who will starve to death today don't mean so much to the religious people.
Our planet being raped by GOD's favorite species..? no worries! Long as we don't give women the right not to breed! Long as we can use this little issue to divide the country.

:banghead:

[Dinger]

59. When The NFL Season Starts,

the Green Bay Packer season in particular.:evilgrin:

[JanMichael]

60. There are some who believe that life begins not at conception but upon

graduation from an accredited university.

[Marr]

63. Life on Earth began about 4.5 billion years ago, and it's been continuous since then.

The question of when life begins has always seemed asinine to me. The life you enjoy didn't begin spontaneously in your mother's womb.

[Deja Q]

65. Conception. When does it end?

When "pro-life" people and corporations, amongst other phony-baloney Christian-wannabes pull ageism and other anti-Christian tactics.

[ZombieHorde]

66. Is a tadpole a frog?

[Uzybone]

67. It begins at birth. I could be wrong

but thats my position and I'm sticking to it.

[blues90]

68. well if there is a god then way is it that

Man developes more ways to kill and poison the planet that is the one main reason we have all of these diseases in the first place.

Beside that even if they created cures through the use of stem cells who just will be able to afford the cure?

No one knows when life begins but we sure as hell know when it ends.

The entire issue is hypocitical simply because man wipes out millions of people who were perfectly healthy with their man made weapons of war and on the other side man talks about curing disease and religion always enters the picture.

[sohndrsmith]

69. The relevant word being "human"... (and by the way, I'm not answering, just

commenting). : )

I, personally, think there is a difference between a fertilized egg and a baby. I can't explain that though.

Plants have life. Single celled animals have life. Bacteria have life. Cattle, chickens, fish and lobsters have life. For those that argue that life begins at conception, I'd want to argue that they might want to consider all forms of life as sacred. But they don't, because they eat (presumably).

You are entirely right in that this seems to be an unanswerable question - empirically, anyway - by anyone with a modicum of intelligence. Life doesn't begin at such-and-such a time "because I say so", but that seems to be the only argument for finite specifics on the subject.

[Hannah Bell]

70. always was, always will be, world without end, amen.

you're soaking in it.

[jkirch]

74. 37 years old.