Scientific community on when life begins: I need help...

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

I'm embroiled in a heated discussion of the recent overturning of the ban on federal aid to foreign groups that include abortion as an option for family planning.

I want to know if anyone can direct me to what the scientific community says about when life begins: at conception or at birth?

Can anyone help me out on this?

[Crunchy Frog]

1. It's a philosophical question, not a scientific one.

[NMDemDist2]

2. you'll get as many answers as you can find websites

there are many many views on the subject

is it life as soon as it starts to multiply? or when it's viable outside the womb? and anything in between

you won't win this one

[Initech]

3. I think life began about a billion years ago and it's a continuous process.

[alarimer]

21. I think that's the right answer

Every cell in your body is (or was at some point) alive. That includes sperm and eggs. While they are not separate, living objects (like, say, bacteria or single-celled creatures) they do possess the quality of being "alive": they undergo respiration and replication.

So this question of when life begins is a philosophical one more than a scientific one. My question to pro-lifers is when do we consider a person alive? A person marks his or her life by their date of birth, not date of conception (or something in between). You are not counted on the census rolls or for tax purposes until you are born, not before. Making that time any earlier than birth just opens a whole new can of worms. We will never resolve the question of when human life begins to everyone's satisfaction. It is probably not a good idea to say that human life begins at viability, because, with medical technology, younger and younger preemies are kept alive, even though they will often have very severe problems. So I am not sure at what point we should set the "no abortions except to save the mother's life". Six months, seven months? I have no idea.

[jpak]

4. Life on Earth originated 3.8 billion years ago and has continued uninterrupted to the present

Sperm and eggs are the haploid stages of humans that are part of that continuum of life.

When sperm and eggs unite, they form a diploid zygote that develops into a diploid adult.

Reproductive cells in diploid human adults undergo meiosis to form haploid human gametes and the continuum will proceed until the species Homo sapiens becomes extinct.

Any other definition has to come from lawyers, lawmakers, courts and theologians- not biologists.

[MineralMan]

5. I'm still waiting to have one...a life, that is.

So, when will it begin?

[Coexist]

6. if you are splitting hairs, the egg and sperm are alive before joining, aren't they?

"Every sperm is sacred!"

[mike_c]

7. I'm an academic scientist (biologist) and university professor...

...just to get my credentials up front. I believe that question is nonsense.

Life began sometime about 4 billion years ago. Modern life stretches back in an unbroken chain to some initial common ancestor (or ancestors).

This is not a pedantic point. When multicellular, sexual organisms conceive, the gametes they produce are certainly alive, and so is the zygote they produce, which grows into a new individual. So life certainly never "begins" at any time in that process-- it already IS. The parent organisms that produced the gametes-- ova and spermatozoa-- were alive too, as were the gametes that produced them, and their parents who produced those gametes, and so on back to the original single-celled ancestor that founded that chain of progeny.

Life does not begin at conception.

Life does not begin at birth.

Life began some 4 billion years ago and has been continuous ever since.

[Taverner]

8. Depends on how you identify life

Are you doing it based on the nervous system? If so, the nervous system is almost nil until deep into second trimester.

[gcomeau]

9. Neither.

I want to know if anyone can direct me to what the scientific community says about when life begins: at conception or at birth?

Asking when "life" begins is an absurd thing to do in the first place. The cells involved are ALWAYS alive. So is the grass on my lawn, we don't prosecute the gardener for assault when he takes out the lawnmower. "Alive" is a meaningless benchmark for the debate.

"Life" began hundreds of millions of years ago. Once. Then it just kept going.

What you should be looking to do is define when personhood begins. That actually matters, and it's a lot harder to do. It basically depends on when sufficient brain function has developed to justify assuming that there is something with an actual personal identity present instead of just a bunch of cells with nobody home.

It's definitely not before 20 weeks, there's no coherent brain function then. And something like 99% of all abortions fall in that time window.

[Warpy]

10. When life begins is a red herring

and is belief only. You will have no luck changing any belief.

However, what needs to be considered is the right of a fully functioning human being to defend herself against the threat to her life, health, finances, social support system, and, well, basically her right to her own body against an unwanted pregnancy.

The right wing would love to keep the focus on the fetus, to deny the human rights of all women in its favor. That's what we can't allow them to do.

This is a matter of self defense, nothing else. They will never stop it. They'll only be able to stop our being able to do it safely.

[Kitty Herder]

22. Absolutely. Well said. nt

[uppityperson]

11. I depends on what they mean by "life". If they mean when does a human soul

appear, that is one thing. If they mean is each individual cell alive, that is another. Do they mean the definition of "life" being growth (no, a growing crystal isn't alive), metabolism (eat/drinking/excreting), reproduction, adaptation to environment, that is another thing.

Make them define "life" first, since that word can have many meanings. Then you will be able to argue better. As well as wasting their time using their time making them perhaps think about that little phrase "life begins".

[IDemo]

12. Here's a great article by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan on the topic:

http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml

[Believing Is Art]

13. You won't find one consistent answer

Personally, I don't see how one could argue that even a zygote isn't some form of life. For me, the question is: when does the inalienable right to life begin? That's a question we'll probably never know the answer to. Legally, I don't think we can attach that right to the fetus unless we can legislate it. And we can't. Should we prosecute a woman who chooses to get pregnant, despite a history of miscarriages, and that pregnancy ends in a miscarriage as well? She's knowingly playing Russian roulette with its life. That would be illegal if it were an infant and not a fetus. What about couples that use in vitro but don't use all the embryos? Should they be charged with abandonment? Or a woman, like an athlete, who never even knew she was pregnant but whose lifestyle led to a miscarriage. Should she be charged with involuntary manslaughter? Aside from possibly the second case, even the most militant pro-lifer wouldn't consider these crimes or even immoral. But if the fetus really did have the same right to life under the law, these would all be crimes.

Obviously none of these scenarios should be criminal. Thus, we are unable to say that a fetus is legally entitled to the same right to life we have.

*Edited a typo

[CTyankee]

14. You should also know that the medical profession believes that pregnancy begins

upon implantation of the fertilized egg in the uterus, NOT at the moment of fertilization. This is important when discussing whether birth control, particularly Emergency Contraception, which prevents implantation is an abortifacient. No pregnancy, no "life beginning".

[Duer 157099]

15. The scientific community cannot even agree upon what "life" is

There's a long-standing debate about whether a virus is "alive" -- and similarly, there's a debate about whether "prions" should be considered some form of life.

So turning to the scientific community for unanimity on *any* opinion is futile.

[Marr]

16. It's not a scientific question. Obviously a single sperm or egg is "alive".

I'd tell them life on Earth began about three and a half billion years ago. It's all been a steady stream since then. You don't "create life" by giving birth-- you just continue it.

[Vattel]

17. As the biologist above pointed out

even a sperm and an unfertilized ovum is alive in the standard biological sense of the term. The philosophical question that is more relevant to the abortion debate is, "When does a person's life begin?", e.g., "When did Barrack Obama come into existence?" That question isn't meaningless, or purely a matter of opinion, as some would have you believe. But it is a damned hard question.

[zbdent]

18. ask the RW ahole exactly when

the insurance company will pay for loss of a fetus (that should frighten the RWers ... "I was pregnant, and then I had my period ... pay up, Met Life!") ... and when the former mother to be can sue a company for negligence in causing the natural abortion ...

[Ezlivin]

19. It begins Friday after work

Go to any Happy Hour on Friday evening and you'll see a bunch of people coming back to life.

:)

[ChickMagic]

20. I've found by talking with anti-choice folks that they have

no, and I mean no, information about biology. Much less philosophy. Some studies say that 1/2 of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion (from memory at college). God is the worst abortionist of all!

They have no idea when pregnancy actually begins. They don't need to since this is all just boilerplate stuff to rile up the masses. They would have no compunction about freezing off a wart and it's just as alive as the rest of us.

Look at the Terry Sciavo mess. They didn't care one whit about that poor woman. It's all to score political points.