When Does Life Begin? When are you a person?

[sixtyandaquarter]

Life.  It's a constant wonder of debate among both philosophers, scientists, and law, as to when it starts.

Is it at birth?  At conception?  At the legal length of abortion?  Is it before the spermatozoon and one lucky li'l ovum meet and do their thang?

We can look back at history and see dozens of different examples as to when life began, and also their reasons.  As at times, the reason wasn't because life was precious, but for other reasons.

In ancient Sparta abortion was frowned down at because it was counterproductive to raising a strong male military.  Despite that a child could be left to die if it was not considered strong, the theory of life was one of immediate action, once pregnancy was known.  Although it is unclear if you were a "person" yet to the Spartan people, based on historic accounts.

Plato, remember him?  He stated you didn't have a soul (in essence wasn't a true "person") until after birth.  This actually affected sciences and law at the time, and you were actually viewed better if you had an abortion after 40 years of age.  After a certain amount of time, you were actually asked to, within eugenic policy, to seek and do whatever you could to prevent child birth.  Like many cultures, it was believed your child would be lame, and various other illnesses (Downs Syndrome is more evident the older the mother is, after all) would have strong holds, but also you risked something unnatural in birth.  Pythagoreans however believed that you were a full person, with a soul, at the moment of conception, and their great thinkers had the opposite view of Plato.

I can list thousands of deals.  From cultures in the Eastern world, Eastern and Middle Easter, to the Western world to islands in the pacific and their cultures all the way around to Africa and the Native Americans - and everyone in between.  I can list the thousands of reasons why a soul entered a body after birth, before birth but after conception, at conception, and even at undetermined times depending on what the person did to EARN a soul, and be a true "person".

So I'll just put it simply.
When does life begin?  When are we people?  If we have a soul, when is it evident?  If we don't, what is the line we have to cross to be a true person?  Life.  With or without a soul, must begin somewhere - and some would argue on when.  So let us join in.

 

[dadevvtsvre]

Is it at birth?  At conception?  At the legal length of abortion?  Is it before the spermatozoon and one lucky li'l ovum meet and do their thang?

Funny, we just had this discussion the other day in class.

For this, I was fairly unsure, but my opinion is that you are alive for sure from the moment you are conceived, but aren't technically "human" per se until birth. Why do I think this? Well, it's hard to disprove that you aren't alive when you are conceived, and we all know that babies have hearts that beat, blood pumping, etc. while still in the womb. But in the womb, they're still attached to the mother, so in my opinion they aren't really a separate entity until separated. Life truly begins when the baby becomes it's own being.

Some people may believe that people aren't technically "humans" until they start to process their thoughts, interpret their emotions, have morals, etc. A few people in my class the other day actually compared the fetuses to animals. It's not that I'm agreeing with abortion, but I believe that until the baby is it's own lifeforce and begins to support itself, they are still a part of the mother.

It's a very touchy subject, obviously, like religion and abortion. But I found out it really depends on your perspective. There are two main parts to a human-the physical aspects and the mental/emotional/spiritual aspects. All the latter aspects are abstract, while the former is concrete. If you look at it from a physical point of view, you could say the fetus is human from the moment of conception. But from the other point of view, some might argue they are fully human until they are able to have morals, process thoughts, have emotions, and all the other things humans have that animals don't. Trying to come up with a definite answer for mixing both concrete and abstract aspects is nearly impossible. In my opinion, I think it's just another one of the things humans were never meant to know, like the creation of the universe, or how our brains work.

 

[Venetia]

If people are people at conception ... Eggs and sperms are technically half a person ... So is it 1/2nd degree murder when you have a period or you blast one out into a sock? Ha, ha.

I feel like ... When the heartbeat starts should be a good cut off point. Up until then, it's just a little squirt of genetic material, no more well-off on its own than a loogie. Hell, sometimes eggs are fertilized and then just washed out with the period anyway because it didn't "catch" well/fast enough. Then the chick never even knows she was pregnant. But after the heartbeat starts, it's transitioned into a phase of advanced life. It's a creature. It's somebody, instead of something, because it actually has a body at that point.

I'm all for choice, but partial birth abortions are grotesque. If the thing has a shot at survival outside your body, who says it's not murder just because it's in a cramped, wet little room?

However, even though the pro-lifers always like to trot out pics of partial birth abortions in opposition to choice, it's only in extreme cases that these are ever allowed by law. And in these cases, the instances wherein the mother's life or well-being may be forfeit, or the child has severe life-threatening mutations, it's probably the best case scenario to terminate.

Anyway my answer stands at the heartbeat. If you can't make up your mind in 5-6 weeks, then too late, bitch.

 

[craybest]

You become a person when you post in the Symposium, easy as that.
Now seriously, I don't think you should be considered a human being at the moment of conception, you're basically nothing back then, to me it's just as silly as considering sperm and ovules humans. I think brain activity or as Venetia said heartbeat should be a lot mroe important (although I don't know when the brains actually starts having any activity in it.

 

[Ellie]

If people are people at conception ... Eggs and sperms are technically half a person ... So is it 1/2nd degree murder when you have a period or you blast one out into a sock? Ha, ha.

Every sperm is sacred
Every sperm is great
If a sperm is wasted
God will be irrate



In my opinion, yeah you need a heartbeat and brain activity. There is something alive there before then, but it is just a clump of cells, and is still attached to the mother so is technically just an organ of the mother. But once it has a brain of its own and can function on its own, it's human.

 

[sixtyandaquarter]

Umm... quick question, because "brain activity" has been brought up a few times... can we define it?
Is it thought?  Or simply your brains natural subconscious ability to start making your heart beat and your brains breath?

Are we talking motor skills here, cognitive thought, logic, or if your clinically brain dead - that kind of brain activity?

 

[Venetia]

I'm figuring, when the first measurable synapses start firing. Though I'm not entirely sure at what point that is. I have heard that it's shortly after (like, 1-2 weeks) the first heart beat.

 

[___]

I look at it in terms of potential for independent life. A chunk of liver or some skin cells will not, put in a womb and given time, or in any other circumstance, ever create another human being. A fertilized egg will. So that's where I think life begins.

It's sort of like, and this is a horrible analogy, but when you turn on a PC the first ten seconds or so it's pretty useless to 99% of all people. The boot up routine and the POST data do not amount to a functional PC, but you don't flick the power switch at that point and declare the machine useless, because if you wait a little bit for all the software to load you have everything you need to come post in the Symposium.

A human being isn't much use until probably eight to nine years after conception. Up till that point the hardware is still being assembled an the software's still being loaded. A heartbeat and brain activity don't amount to the independence and intelligence of a human being, they amount to, oh, say, an insect or any other basic form of animal life. The point is given time they'll get here.

So you'd think saying all that I'd be "pro-life". Nope. I think the statement that "a woman has a right to do what she wants to her body" is a cop-out, since there's more than one body involved, but from a practical and social stance the consequence of mandatory gestation is much more regrettable than the loss of potential human life involved in abortion. It's still a horrible thing, I' not sure it amounts to murder but it's a horrible thing. What's even worse is the damage to the mother, the family, and the child when the woman is forced to bear the child into a society that doesn't care enough for the child to provide it the care it needs when the mother isn't capable. The policies advocated by "pro-lifers" amounts to mandating that children be brought into families that don't want them, don't love them and don't care for them without taking any responsibility for providing acceptable alternatives. So instead of killing the child, they want it tormented and abused for eighteen years. Brilliant.

 

[FlippyD]

I look at it in terms of potential for independent life. A chunk of liver or some skin cells will not, put in a womb and given time, or in any other circumstance, ever create another human being. A fertilized egg will. So that's where I think life begins.

The problem with that is you can go back as far as you want. In fact, you could argue that the moment a couple's eyes lock and they both get turned on that the infant is guaranteed. The man has the semen and the woman the egg, they're just not assembled yet.

 

[Venetia]

well the woman definitely has the egg, but the sperm usually isn't born until <24 hours before the insemination :3

 

[Despain]

Life begins when you're born.

End of story.

 

[Sic Semper Tyranosaurus]

Or simply your brains natural subconscious ability to start making your heart beat and your brains breath?

My brains didn't start breathing until I was about two, so I don't know if that's a good way to define it.

P.S. Durrrr

 

[___]

I look at it in terms of potential for independent life. A chunk of liver or some skin cells will not, put in a womb and given time, or in any other circumstance, ever create another human being. A fertilized egg will. So that's where I think life begins.

The problem with that is you can go back as far as you want. In fact, you could argue that the moment a couple's eyes lock and they both get turned on that the infant is guaranteed. The man has the semen and the woman the egg, they're just not assembled yet.

Not really. If you take the egg or sperm or twinkle in a person's eye and throw it in a uterus by itself you get a whole lot of nothing.

 

[craybest]

the point is that you need the uterus, so the fertilized egg by itself is nothing, just like the sperm without the ovule is nothing too.

 

[___]

The uterus without a fertilized egg is also nothing. It's not a magical baby oven :P The egg is what will be come a human. The fact that a uterus is the only place it'll do that is secondary to that point. Nothing else on the planet, when placed under the right conditions, will spontaneously become a human being.

 

[FlippyD]

The uterus without a fertilized egg is also nothing. It's not a magical baby oven :P The egg is what will be come a human. The fact that a uterus is the only place it'll do that is secondary to that point. Nothing else on the planet, when placed under the right conditions, will spontaneously become a human being.

A fertilized egg might not attach itself to the uterus though. It could get pushed out via ovulation. That's the flaw in your reasoning, and why I think it's innacurate to measure life by what might happen to it in the future. By wandering into a kennel with rabid dogs I would potentially contract rabies, but you can't say I have the disease until I have the disease.

 

[Venetia]

And what about miscarriages? They happen really often, esp. in the first few weeks. Are those like, accidental manslaughter?

 

[FlippyD]

And what about miscarriages? They happen really often, esp. in the first few weeks. Are those like, accidental manslaughter?

I personally like the concept of the foetus being an extension of the woman until such a time as the foetus has developed a central nervous system. So I'd say it's akin to a very unique organ failure. In fact, it could've been caused by organ failure.

 

[___]

Nah miscarriages and other failed starts are just that: the kid had a shot, and by either defect in its genetics or the mother it failed. Saying that's accidental manslaughter would be like blaming the mother for having the kid if it died in any other accidental fashion after birth.

As for the rabid dog analogy: if you went into a room full of rabid dogs you wouldn't necessarily get rabies, but you most certainly wouldn't get rabies in a room full of dogs without rabies. The moment you go into a room full of rabid animals you have the *potential* to get rabies, where it was not present before. Although the analogy generally fails to be relevant (you may get rabies after leaving the room from a squirrel, or you might be one in a million who's immune to rabies, etc).

Edit: actually thinking over it more the accurate analogy would be more like "I get bit by a rabid dog and the virus is passed on, that doesn't mean I have rabies". Anyway it doesn't matter that much, I only object to abortion on a moral basis and if you remember from the morality thread I think morals are pointless and should not have an impact on policy. I'm ethically pro-choice, it would be most accurate to say I find abortion extremely distasteful. But I can keep playing devil's advocate since nobody else can come up with anything I guess.

 

[FlippyD]

The point of the discussion that we're talking about at present is when a person is considered a person. When does life begin and when does human life begin, and to a lesser extent when does self-conscious human life begin and does that have, or should have, any affect on abortion laws.

I'm simply arguing that your statement that life is measured by the potential of creating life is incorrect, as you're pretty much relying on statistics to determine the outcome (though the statistics are highly in your favor.) It's still a slippery slope because statistics aren't a hard and clear basis for determining anything (which is something required if such a consensus were to pass as to when life begins.)