Is a fetus a Human being?
- Thread starter ironsides
- Start date
What is it then? And how would you define what *IS* a human being, and at what point the crossover from fetus to human occurs?
Dexter, to answer your question, I don’t know, and I don’t know. I have said it many times, it is a very difficult question, with no easy answers.
You can't draw lines like that without talking about behavioral and cognitive abilities, and once you start accepting that, you can also start accepting similar arguments about the non-humanity of people with assorted disabilities who don't meet those criteria.
Now here I disagree with you. After birth, it is a human being, there is a near unanimous agreement in the society (any society). So I don’t think that danger arises.
Any criteria but basic biology are pretty dangerous. I don't think we want to go down that road.
But even basic biology does not tell us that fetus is a human being, it only tells us that given all the right conditions, it will develop into a human being.
Dexter, to answer your question, I don’t know, and I don’t know. I have said it many times, it is a very difficult question, with no easy answers.
You can't draw lines like that without talking about behavioral and cognitive abilities, and once you start accepting that, you can also start accepting similar arguments about the non-humanity of people with assorted disabilities who don't meet those criteria.
Now here I disagree with you. After birth, it is a human being, there is a near unanimous agreement in the society (any society). So I don’t think that danger arises.
Any criteria but basic biology are pretty dangerous. I don't think we want to go down that road.
But even basic biology does not tell us that fetus is a human being, it only tells us that given all the right conditions, it will develop into a human being.
Basic biology (depending on ones bias & personal agenda) can lead to
the argument for Eugenics by claiming that somehow a person without
a chromosome count of 46 is somehow not human. A can of worms...
But that happens today, Ron. Fetus is tested for abnormalities such as Down ’s syndrome. If an abnormality is detected, the woman will often abort the fetus. If you think it is a can of worms, the lid on he can was opened a long time ago.
It is all part of the fact that a fetus is not regarded as a human being, but only a potential human being.
the argument for Eugenics by claiming that somehow a person without
a chromosome count of 46 is somehow not human. A can of worms...
But that happens today, Ron. Fetus is tested for abnormalities such as Down ’s syndrome. If an abnormality is detected, the woman will often abort the fetus. If you think it is a can of worms, the lid on he can was opened a long time ago.
It is all part of the fact that a fetus is not regarded as a human being, but only a potential human being.
No worries, Ironsides. All I needed was lunch, a run to the park for a swim, and a run back.
Just in time too. It's started to rain.Now that I have the sociopath and the obtuse backside on ignore. I can post more evidence that the appropriate sciences (fetology, embryology, pediatrics, etc.)consider a homo sapiens to be human before birth. Not that it needs much, science has already shown that viability (sustained life outside the womb) can occur when a fetus is no less than 20 days and 500 grams which is a few days or so before the end of the 3rd trimester.
ABSTRACT. The American College of Pediatricians concurs with the body of scientific evidence that human life begins at conception—fertilization. This definition has been expounded since prior to Roe v. Wade, but was not made available to the US Supreme Court in 1973. Scientific and medical discoveries over the past three decades have only verified and solidified this age-old truth. At the completion of the process of fertilization, the human creature emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is not one of personhood but of development. The Mission of the American College of Pediatricians is to enable all children to reach their optimal physical and emotional health and well-being from the moment of conception. This statement reviews some of the associated historical, ethical and philosophical issues.
American College of Pediatricians Website - Life Issues - When Human Life Begins
American College of Pediatricians Website - Life Issues - When Human Life Begins
"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."
[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."
[Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146]
"Embryo: The early developing fertilized egg that is growing into another individual of the species. In man the term 'embryo' is usually restricted to the period of development from fertilization until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy."
[Walters, William and Singer, Peter (eds.). Test-Tube Babies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 160]
"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]
"Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism.... At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.... The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life."
[Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
"I would say that among most scientists, the word 'embryo' includes the time from after fertilization..."
[Dr. John Eppig, Senior Staff Scientist, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and Member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 31]
"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."
[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."
[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]
"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."
[O'Rahilly, Ronan and Müller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12}]
"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."
[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten's Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]
"[A]nimal biologists use the term embryo to describe the single cell stage, the two-cell stage, and all subsequent stages up until a time when recognizable humanlike limbs and facial features begin to appear between six to eight weeks after fertilization....
"[A] number of specialists working in the field of human reproduction have suggested that we stop using the word embryo to describe the developing entity that exists for the first two weeks after fertilization. In its place, they proposed the term pre-embryo....
"I'll let you in on a secret. The term pre-embryo has been embraced wholeheartedly by IVF practitioners for reasons that are political, not scientific. The new term is used to provide the illusion that there is something profoundly different between what we nonmedical biologists still call a six-day-old embryo and what we and everyone else call a sixteen-day-old embryo.
"The term pre-embryo is useful in the political arena -- where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now called pre-embryo) experimentation -- as well as in the confines of a doctor's office, where it can be used to allay moral concerns that might be expressed by IVF patients. 'Don't worry,' a doctor might say, 'it's only pre-embryos that we're manipulating or freezing. They won't turn into real human embryos until after we've put them back into your body.'"
[Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. New York: Avon Books, 1997, p. 39]
I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.... I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life....
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty...is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania
…after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.... Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes, Paris
By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic
“Human embryos and human fetuses are human beings, each with their own unique genetic DNA.”
Ralph P. Miech (Brown University)
C. Christopher Hook (Mayo Clinic): “When fertilization is complete, a unique genetic human entity exists.”– quoted by Richard Ostling in an AP news story, 9/24/99
Life Begins at Fertilization with the Embryo's Conception
American Bioethics Advisory Commission
CONTROVERSIES
©2000 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. (Reprinted) JAMA, December 27, 2000—Vol 284, No. 24 3177
[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."
[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."
[Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146]
"Embryo: The early developing fertilized egg that is growing into another individual of the species. In man the term 'embryo' is usually restricted to the period of development from fertilization until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy."
[Walters, William and Singer, Peter (eds.). Test-Tube Babies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 160]
"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]
"Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism.... At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.... The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life."
[Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
"I would say that among most scientists, the word 'embryo' includes the time from after fertilization..."
[Dr. John Eppig, Senior Staff Scientist, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and Member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 31]
"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."
[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."
[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]
"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."
[O'Rahilly, Ronan and Müller, Fabiola. Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12}]
"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."
[Carlson, Bruce M. Patten's Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]
"[A]nimal biologists use the term embryo to describe the single cell stage, the two-cell stage, and all subsequent stages up until a time when recognizable humanlike limbs and facial features begin to appear between six to eight weeks after fertilization....
"[A] number of specialists working in the field of human reproduction have suggested that we stop using the word embryo to describe the developing entity that exists for the first two weeks after fertilization. In its place, they proposed the term pre-embryo....
"I'll let you in on a secret. The term pre-embryo has been embraced wholeheartedly by IVF practitioners for reasons that are political, not scientific. The new term is used to provide the illusion that there is something profoundly different between what we nonmedical biologists still call a six-day-old embryo and what we and everyone else call a sixteen-day-old embryo.
"The term pre-embryo is useful in the political arena -- where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now called pre-embryo) experimentation -- as well as in the confines of a doctor's office, where it can be used to allay moral concerns that might be expressed by IVF patients. 'Don't worry,' a doctor might say, 'it's only pre-embryos that we're manipulating or freezing. They won't turn into real human embryos until after we've put them back into your body.'"
[Silver, Lee M. Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. New York: Avon Books, 1997, p. 39]
I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.... I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life....
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty...is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics, University of Pennsylvania
…after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.... Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes, Paris
By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic
“Human embryos and human fetuses are human beings, each with their own unique genetic DNA.”
Ralph P. Miech (Brown University)
C. Christopher Hook (Mayo Clinic): “When fertilization is complete, a unique genetic human entity exists.”– quoted by Richard Ostling in an AP news story, 9/24/99
Life Begins at Fertilization with the Embryo's Conception
American Bioethics Advisory Commission
CONTROVERSIES
©2000 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. (Reprinted) JAMA, December 27, 2000—Vol 284, No. 24 3177
Last edited:
One caution about this website. No doubt it has an official sounding name, American College of Pediatricians, to give an impression that it represents the pediatricians in USA.
Nothing of the sort. It is a pro life, right wing group formed by pro life pediatricians. Dr. Dobson, of Focus on the Family (and extreme right wing, religious right organization very influential in Republican Party) is a pediatrician.
So just because this body says that life begins at conception, it means nothing. The body that represents pediatrician in USA is AAP (American Academy of Pediatricians). Nowhere on its website it says that life begins at conception.
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS - ABOUT THE AAP
It is a common enough trick in politics, give your organization a misleading, official sounding name and at least a few suckers will believe you. Idi Amin called his organization of thugs State Research Buro.
Thus many anti-abortion agencies list themselves in yellow pages under abortion services. The idea is to pull in unsuspecting women and scare them into not having an abortion (by showing them scary movies, exaggerating the after effects of abortion etc.).
American College of Pediatrics is a right wing organization, like 700 Club, Focus on the Family etc. and its credibility is zero, at least as far as I am concerned.
ooops. Yup, still had days in my head from a different part of development. I meant weeks.
Incidentally Google for ‘pediatrics USA’. American College of Pediatricians does not appear in the first two pages, evidentially Goggle is aware of the true nature of the organization.
AAP however, appears on the very first page, near the top of the page.
AAP however, appears on the very first page, near the top of the page.
A bit more about the two organizations.
The organization referenced in the article is the American College of Pediatricians, a wingnut breakaway group (founded in 2002) from the American Academy of Pediatricians (founded in 1930).
The American College of Pediatricians supports:
Opposition to adoption by homosexual individuals
Support for the right to life of preborn children
Defense of traditional mother-father heterosexual marriage
It is a typical religious right hate group.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, believes:
Children who are born to or adopted by 1 member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of 2 legally recognized parents.
Therefore, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports legislative and legal efforts to provide the possibility of adoption of the child by the second parent or coparent in these families.
Forever In Hell: American College of Pediatricians
The organization referenced in the article is the American College of Pediatricians, a wingnut breakaway group (founded in 2002) from the American Academy of Pediatricians (founded in 1930).
The American College of Pediatricians supports:
Opposition to adoption by homosexual individuals
Support for the right to life of preborn children
Defense of traditional mother-father heterosexual marriage
It is a typical religious right hate group.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, on the other hand, believes:
Children who are born to or adopted by 1 member of a same-sex couple deserve the security of 2 legally recognized parents.
Therefore, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports legislative and legal efforts to provide the possibility of adoption of the child by the second parent or coparent in these families.
Forever In Hell: American College of Pediatricians
I suppose the difference may be in how the search is keyed ... but you just go ahead and be right....
