The bible and abortion

I'm torn on this issue.Shouldn't the fact that the embryo has a large potential to become a human with brain function weigh in on our decision as to whether we can terminate it?

Yes, I'm well aware of this complication. All I can say is that the chances of particular sperm impregnating an egg is vanishingly small. So a sperm's potential and an egg's potential of becoming a human are very small. Once conception occurs though, the potential becomes much much greater that it will develop into a full grown human.It is hard to dichotomize a continuum into 'not enough potential' and 'enough potential', but I still feel that a zygote should be able to develop.Whose to say that brain function is the indication of whether a human should be aborted or not? How is that any less arbitrary than saying, "A new born baby cannot think like an adult human, so we have the right to kill it." It's just at a different developmental stage than the rest of us, and developmental stage doesn't seem to indicate moral status.I like to live by the Golden Rule, although I'm not quite sure it can apply to zygotes and hypothetical humans. Would you of wanted someone to abort you when you were developing? Would this potential human want to get aborted if it had the chance? Aren't you basically denying a humans right to existance by aborting them before they can develop?JustinC[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 09-23-2003]

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But the chances of a full load of semen is quite another story. I can't actually speak for anyone else, but I know that when I ejaculate, considerably more than one sperm cell comes out.

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Yes, but I'm not sure you can equivocate semen and sperm. I'd say you have to look at the odds of each sperm becoming a full human being, and then decide whether its immoral to stop this sperm from becoming a human. I realize this is a shakey argument, I'm just throwing stuff out there though.

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What are you asking? Would I, a thinking human, want to be aborted, would would proto-Dan, the blob of cells in his mother's womb, have wanted to be aborted?

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I was talking about hypothetical humans, which again is shakey. I just had a nephew born, and it seems ludicrous that someone could of stopped this human from being born once fertilization took place and its potential to become a full grown human was immense.

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You can't deny rights to something that doesn't exist.

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It does exist though. Its on its way to become just like you and me.

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There are no odds, or ambiguous potential on that. To my knowledge, neither of us are infertile, and we have sex quite regularly. So that's two humans denied the right to exist by our murderous use of birth control, if we stick with this argument.

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You are making the extremely low oddsof one of your sperm fertilizing an egg zero. To me, this seems different than making the very high odds of a zygote becoming a human zero.JustinC[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 09-23-2003]

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I realize that I'm being smarmy. In all seriousness, I'm against second-trimester abortions for the simple reason that at that point I don't know whether the fetus has become human life or not.

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Do you really think there is a dichotomy in the continuum between fertilized egg and new born baby where it becomes a "human life"? And that until we find this out we should be on the safe side?It's just a developing human, no reason to apply a label to certain times of that development and act as if its "human life" during this stage and not in that stage.[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 09-23-2003]

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And so would be any combination of sperm and eggs. Is it a tragedy that they did not occur?

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No, because the odds of them becoming a human were very low to begin with. Once you have a zygote, the odds of it becoming a human are much higher.

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By the way, just some food for thought: The majority of embryos abort before the woman even knows she's pregnant. If that clues you in to how much value a God must place on the survival of an embryo...

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I'm an atheist.

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Do you realize that the second part of this contradicts the first?

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I mean... yes, there is a thing there. It is certainly a collection of cells. But no human exists at that point.

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No contradiction. Its a human at a different developmental stage than us.Do you think at one point it becomes a 'human'? And that one day before this its alright to abort the baby? You shouldn't just look at what it is, you should take into account what its becoming.

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The odds of one of my sperm fertilizing an egg are not low. If my girlfriend and I have unprotected sex every day, I will impregnate her.

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I was referring to the odds of an individual sperm impregnating an egg are low. I guess you can't really say the same thing about an egg though.The fact that there is a continuum from non-life to life is pretty troubling though. There's never going to be a satisfactory answer because of this.Say someone is painting a masterpiece. Can we just look at it halfway through and say, "This isn't a masterpiece, so I'm going to throw it out." You have to look at what its becoming, and not what it is.I think there is an analogy there...(probably not)JustinCFYI, I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. I have to write a biomedical ethics paper soon and am just throwing around some ideas.[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 09-24-2003]

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I haven't tried to nail down the exact point at which it becomes human. As I said earlier, the second trimester is a little too hazy for my tastes. But early enough on, you can definitely say, "that isn't a person."

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There is no exact point in which it becomes human. That's just an arbitrary dichotomy in a continuum. I think you know this though. That's why I don't think you can arbitrarily define one point as "human" and then base its moral status on that.

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However, if we work under the assumption that it is human all along, I still have to bring it back to asking why the separate egg and sperm are not human as well.

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I'm not sure we can act on the assumption that its a human all along, i.e. going to back to egg and sperm. I'd say the odds of a zygote becoming a fully developed are good enough for it to be considered a human. Of course then I'll have to dichotomize the continuum of odds as "good enough" and "not good enough". So we are basically back to the initial problem: we have to make an arbitrary dichotomy. Very unsatisfactory.How would you decide whether it is human enough to forbid its termination? Say we let the end of the second trimester be that point, then what about a day before that? Doesn't that seem absurd that one day we can abort then the day after we can't?

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You and I don't have the right to throw it out. But the painter certainly does. I don't care if they've already bought the canvas and started mixing paints. They are under no obligation to give the world a masterpiece if they don't want to do so.

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It's a bad analogy though, because the painter also has the right to throw the painting out after it can be called a masterpiece.

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Yes, I guess I didn't mean analogy. I was just trying to show an example that you shouldn't measure the value of something based on what it is at one point when it is developing into something else.

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Cool. I hope you post the paper when it's done.

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It's not due til December, so don't hold your breath. It has to be 15-20 pages long, so I figured I'd better start thinking and discussing it now.JustinC

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There are different ends of a spectrum though, with "definitely human" at one end, and "definitely not human" at the other. It's somewhere in between where things get hazy. But that doesn't mean you don't have a good long stretch of "not human" at the beginning.

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I do agree with this, though I must ask what it means to be 'human'. I'm kindof leaning towards when it becomes viable outside the womb to be the cutoff point. But can babies at the end of the second trimester survive outside the womb without intensive medical care? I have yet to research this, so I really don't know.

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Think of it as the same as driving laws. Is it a little silly that on your sixteenth birthday you can drive, and the day before you couldn't? Sure. But you've gotta make the cutoff point somewhere, right? We can't have two year olds trying to drive cars, because that would be downright silly and dangerous.

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So we cut it off where we know it's safe. Sixteen and up? Yeah, you can trust them behind the wheel if they've been taught right. Fifteen... eh... kinda hazy. Probably varies person to person. So we'd better play it safe and stick with sixteen.

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I do think that the law is silly because age isn't necessarily an indicator of driving abilities. I think the criterion should be more pertinent to the function or status.So I think I'm kindof giving up on the potential view because you come to the same problem as dichotomizing the continuum from zygote to human. It almost seems more arbitrary seperating enough potential from not enough potential.Also, wouldn't it be like treating kids the same as adults because they are developing into adults?I think the cutoff shouldn't be an age though, it should be a quality that the fetus possesses. Though you can pick an age where every fetus posseses these qualities. But if it is a late developer, I'd say you'd have to be allowed to abort it still. The major question is, what are the qualities that make one human?JustinCAnythoughts[This message has been edited by JustinCy, 09-29-2003]