Replies to post #83692 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Rawnoc]

>> How can you have a universal definition of "when life starts" (rather then a general definition of life, in case of abortion) >>

If you want to get technical and non-religious, life never starts.....it only ends and continues.


One anti-conception argument is that the egg is capable of splitting after conception and making paternal twins. Clearly prior to the egg splitting and make two new humans the egg must have been something else as that form of reproduction just doesn't exist in what any rational person would call human.


I would say it is alive and human at some point whenever the fertilized egg can no longer reproduce itself but would die if split. JMO.

Raw

[Tenchu]

Zeev, How can you have a universal definition of "when life starts" (rather then a general definition of life, in case of abortion) when that definition is purely religious and each religion has its own definition, all the way from catholicism with life starts upon conception, to judaism with life starts with the first independent breath of the newborn?

I suppose an unborn baby could be considered "three-fifths" of a life. At least there would be legal precedent for the "three-fifths" figure.

Now before you bring up more relativism, you might want to consider why abortion is even an issue in the first place. Is it because we have an epidemic of rapes and medical problems for which abortion is seemingly the "only" way out? Or is it because of society's more liberal attitudes toward sex? Maybe that's what's causing people to start defining an unborn life in terms of their own convenience. Then they can simply blur the issue with differing religious views, even twisting Scripture in the process, all in an effort to avoid the moral responsibilities (both individual and societal) of pregnancy.

Just remember that no expectant mother ever refers to her unborn child as a "fetus."

Tenchu

[CoalTrain]

Zeev, How well have the Israeli government and the Chinese government gotten along since the creation of Israel? I see China as the dominating force in that region in the not to distant future and the way our foreign policy is these days in a decade or two maybe the dominant force in the world.