Life does not begin at fertilization, the sperm and egg are very much alive before fertilization.
As Les said, human life starts at fertilisation. Life in general is not the point here, though. You started babbling about people not knowing when human life started and then when several people showed you, you switched direction to babbling about life in general being continuous, which is correct, IMO, but irrelevant to the point.
When a human embryo becomes a human being is about 23 weeks.
Most of the references in this website say that development of human life begins at conception, I don't have a problem with that. The relevant question is, when does it become a human being? We don't know.
Nonsense. You mean
YOU don't know, even after being showed many times. Human life becomes human being at viability. Why can you not understand that?
Incidentally, the website also affirms the view that life is a continuous process, it is a continuum.
Yup. But again, that is irrelevant to the point.
This website simply lists a bunch of books without telling us what they say.
So? You asked for textbooks. There's a pile of them and I bet if you looked into them, you'd notice they say a human life begins at fertilisation or conception.
This website does not say that human life begins at conception. This is what it says:
Each human life begins with a single, microscopic cell.
And when do you think this single celled beginning of human life comes into existence? I think you'd better stay away from biological topics, Porter, it seems to baffle you.
This single cell contains no bones, liver, brain, or any other adult tissue, but does contain a full complement of genetic instructions (genes) to specify all these tissues. In this very real sense, our genome is a blueprint for people. The genetic blueprint encodes the sequences of all the proteins within our bodies and also programs human development for all stages of our lives from the single cell to old age.
Right. And this occurs after the sperm fertilizes the egg.
Which sounds reasonable to me, I don't think anybody would have a problem with that. But how does this translate into fetus being a human being since conception?
It doesn't. You are confusing "human being" with "human life".
College of Family physicians is the official body representing Canadian Family Physicians and a such, its views carry a lot of weight. This is a very long publication. I skimmed thought it, but I did not see it say anywhere that human life begins at conception.
Then you are not very good at comprehending what people say concerning biological matters.
Incidentally, saying that human development begins at conception is not the same as saying that fetus is a human being from conception.
I agree.
All it means is that the process of becoming human starts at the conception.
Again, I agree. "Human being" is probably strictly a legal term. We are talking about science here, though. In which case, "human life" is the appropriate term.
We still cannot say at what stage it becomes a human being.
Speak for yourself. It appears the rest of humanity can.
OK, let us take a look at a couple of the quotes, most say pretty much the same thing.
"[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization,
IOW, a human life begins at fertilisation.
the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."
Yup.
"In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. ... Fertilization takes place in the oviduct ... resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus.
Which is the start of an individual human life that will become an individual human being.
Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point... This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
Yup, again.
What they are saying is that human development begins at fertilization. Which is true enough (and obvious enough), I don’t think there anybody would have a problem with that.
What they are saying is that the process of forming a human being begins at fertilization.[/quote]Yes.
It doesn't end until all cellular activity in the body ceases.
That is the crucial question.
And a completely simple and easy one to answer.
When the process is complete, we have a human being.
Wrong. When the process of development is done, the human being is dead. Human beings are developing physiologically from fertilisation until death. Otherwise you'd be bald, have no skin or other organs left, etc. in a very short period of time.
At the beginning, the human being is beginning to be formed. It is a potential human being.
Yup. It isn't a human being yet, that comes when the legal system defines it as being a human being. Science defines human life quite differently.
I looked at all the quotes. But none of them say that the fetus is a human being at conception.
And no-one said it is a human being at conception. What people are saying is that it is human life at conception.
In fact, they steer clear of the question as to when fetus becomes a human being,
Because it is accepted by the scientific community that a human life is a human being at viability.
because we just don’t know.
Wrong.
YOU don't know.
I think most of us would agree that development of human being starts at conception.
You didn't. When I came to CanCon you argued black against white that life and didn't begin until birth. And that it isn't human till birth. You are showing improvement, but you still seem to be confused.
But many of us will disagree as to when the process has reached a point at which we may refer to the fetus as a human being.
And those in that group of "many" are wrong.
They have not killed off anything, Goober. They have not put up any evidence to show that fetus is a human being since the moment of conception.
Again, that is not what we intended anyway. And it looks like you can't figure out what we provided is evidence of anyway. What we were trying to explain is that HUMAN
LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION.
The literature they have cited say that conception is an important landmark, it forms the blueprint for a human being and human development begins at conception (and I don’t have a problem with that). But when has the development gone far enough so that we may call the fetus a human being?
Again. That's at viability.
We don’t know the answer to that.
Wrong.
JLM
This is how pro choice deal with it - It is nothing so why should I care - Denial does work - For dummies and people that lie to themselves - the world is full of them.
I am Pro Choice and Pro Life. That in itself is difficult to deal with.
For you maybe. I have no problem with being pro-life and pro-choice. lol
There is no question of denial here, Goober; prolifers just have not made their case. Not in this forum, not in the society in general. Saying that human development begins at conception (with which most would agree) is a far cry from saying that fetus is a human being at conception.
Regardless of what you think prolifers say, science says a human life starts at conception and the legal system says a human life is a human being after it is viable and out of the mother.
You should know enough about me by now to know that I never run away from a discussion. The more adversaries there are, the better it gets my juices going.
But I have been thinking about it and really, what Anna or Sabine have posted indirectly supports pro choice position.
... and directly supports the scientific position that human life starts with that single cell made from a fertilised egg.
Saying that human development begins at conception (with which I agree) implies that at least for a while after that, it really cannot be called a human being.
I agree. But you are the one that brought the term "human being" into the conversation. And I at least, don't really care what the legal system calls a human life. It is independent of what science calls a human life.
Let me illustrate by a couple of examples. I am an IT professional, suppose I am writing a computer program that will run into several thousand statements. Now the development of the program may begin with a simple declarative statement, defining the size of an array.
DIM A(100)
I am sure most will recognize this simple statement. The development of the program starts with this statement. Does that mean that we now have a program? It doesn’t, it will have to be developed considerably more before we will have a recognizable program.
Perhaps you should stick to it because it is something you can understand then.
Or let us say I want to make an apple pie. The development of the apple pie will start with washing and slicing the apples. But can we say that we have an apple pie after we have sliced apples? We cannot, the pie has to at least proceed to the point where it can be put in the oven, before we can say that we have an apple pie.
?? Inane analogy. An apple isn't alive. It ceases to be alive after leaving the tree. All it is is a carrier for seeds.
Similarly, if we say that human development starts at conception, it implies that at least for a while after that, it cannot be considered a human being.
Again, no-one here that understands the science said it did.
Human life isn't. Human life doesn't start till fertilisation.
Make up your mind. Either you want to refer to human life or you don't. Quit switching back and forth to suit your idiotic ideology.
BTW, apparently you are the only one who doesn't know when human life begins.
Your arguments are disorganized, presumptuous, fickle, and mostly irrelevant.
Well, there's that, too, yes.
Perhaps one day I'll have to decide Sir Joseph if I arrive at the voting booth with the challenge.
I have no personal decision to make however - that right was taken from me when I was nearly twenty years old - not by my choice. Were I fertile for the years I could have been - thinking back - I am not certain how I would have voted or would vote in future. It's a tough question for many women.
Sorry to hear that, Curio.
Anyway, I agree it is a tough question for many women. For me it became easier when I started understanding the science of embryology a little and separated it from the legal understanding and my maternal understanding. I resolved the issue in myself when I came to the conclusion that the mother's life is more important than the baby's life because the mother is simply more developed and is a productive human whereas the unborn baby isn't yet. The problem I have is that the legal systems seem to be arbitrarily defining human life at birth (sometimes that isn't until about 40 weeks) when the scientific community defines it as being a complete human being at viability (around 23 weeks). IMO, sometimes the legal system is insane. lol
