something the religiously insane never mention re: embryos

[donsu]

every month a woman's body kills and sloughs off any embryos left unfertilized in her womb during her menses.

(they probably don't really understand how the female body works and should keep their noses out of where it doesn't belong.)

[AllegroRondo]

1. They're not embryos until fertilized

[Vinca]

44. Many fertilized eggs do not implant in the lining of the uterus and

are flushed down the great, white, porcelain god known as Kohler. I'm surprised the fundies don't conduct weird rituals during menses just in case.

[havocmom]

2. If it is, unfertilized it is NOT an embryo, it's an egg.

Takes two to make an egg into an embryo.

[whistle]

3. A technical question, by your post then are the unfertilzed eggs

...considered to be embryos?

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Eggs not embryos...but only slightly less than 1/3 of all fertilized

eggs ever come to term...all the others are destroyed by nature/god/or whatever.

[fryguy]

5. correct your biology

women produce eggs, not embryos. embryos are not formed until the egg is fertilized by sperm.

[SnowGoose]

6. An embryo is (by definition) a fertilized ovum (egg).

so there's no such thing as an unfertilized embryo.

HOWEVER, you may be interested to know that many, many pregnancies end within a couple of days due to spontaneous abortion (without the woman even knowing it). Most people who talk about this cite a figure of over 50%, although to be fair, that was an estimate made back in the 70's (IIRC) and others have quibbled over the exact percentage.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

13. Well, that would explain why God hates women...

Silly. Theology is pretty simply as long as you don't think about it too much.

[johnaries]

24. I've always wondered how the folks who believe "the soul enters the

body at conception" felt about that. Of course, since most women don't even know they were pregnant in the first place we don't know how many as self-aborted. I'm guessing it's a lot higher than 50%

What a cruel God to send so many souls to hell only a few hours after creation!

[donsu]

7. sorry everyone for my using the word embryo instead of ova or egg

nt

[Warpy]

8. Um, you mean FERTILIZED

and yes, god is the biggest embryo killer of all.

A casual reading of any OB-Gyn text will leave you wondering how any of us managed to get here.

Allowing politicians and preachers to usurp science and medicine is pure folly. The former have a role in setting safety standards, the latter a role in educating people in what they see as moral issues. That's where the line is, though, and it should never be crossed.

These silly men proposing these sillier laws have such a dread and loathing of anything female that they are incapable of being educated in how female reproductive physiology works. We need to get them to stick to what they do know, and if they won't, we need to eliminate them from positions of power.

They don't have my permission. How about the rest of you?

[sinkingfeeling]

20. Agreed, let's demand they pass a law making sperm people too!

And have long prison sentences for those guys who just 'waste' life on the pages of Playboy!

[fob]

30. So you're saying I should claim somewhere around 3 million

dependents this year?

[MadisonProgressive]

40. I had closer to 10 BILLION, you girlie-man!

[Old and In the Way]

9. It's a potential embryo that could become a potential fetus that

could become a potential baby. If the the Whacked out Religious Right follow their logic, the next great battle should be control over the eggs.

Not fertilizing eggs would be "anti-life" and an affront to God, right?

[Shallah Kali]

28. Actually they already *are* saying choosing to not have kids is immoral

Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion With a New Face
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/weblogs/mohler/1224842.html?view=print

Give them a chance it they will be importing Nicolae Ceausescu's laws inspecting women for pregnancy and taxing them for failing to produce children.

[ProudDad]

46. What a crock

I read this article and it seems that they assume that humans are somehow more priveleged than the rest of the creatures of the Earth.

If we could ask the rest of our fellow creatures, the forests and fields, the Earth herself whether they would be better off without humans and their deprivations, well....

I think I know their answer.


:nuke:

[ProudDad]

47. FYI - Crosswalk.com is

Vision

We are a for-profit religious corporation dedicated to building up the Church, which is the Body of Christ.

Mission

As a Christ-centered, for-profit corporation, we will create value for our customers, employees and shareholders by:

* Bringing glory to God in all that we do;
* Equipping people to grow in their faith and the practical application of it in their lives;
* Enhancing fellowship, communication and relationship-building within the Christian community; and
* Encouraging and enabling personal involvement in the care of those who are spiritually, emotionally, physically or financially poor.

------------------------------

The Frontiers of capitalism??? :evilgrin:

[Canuckistanian]

10. But the Fristians are against the 'morning after' pill, too!

And that medication is designed to PREVENT fertilization in the first place. So basically, a contraceptive.
If these nutcases had their way, every act of unprotected sex should end with the delivery of a child.

[noamnety]

11. That's why they should support birth control pills

And not just the morning after pill.

Birth control reduces the chances that an embryo will end up in the trash or toilet. With no birth control, it's more likely that an egg will be fertilized but not implanted.

[zbdent]

12. Sometimes there are fertilized embryos that are spontaneously aborted

naturally, too (Read Kathie Lee Gifford's book).

Should these women be charged with murder (a la the anti-abortion crowd's fondest wish), even though they might not realize that they are pregnant, not just late?

[ArkDem]

14. Outstanding thought process.

[Coexist]

15. please correct me if I'm wrong here re:religious hypocrisy and babies

but isn't the pain of childbirth supposed to be the woman's punishment for the whole garden of Eden thingie?

So if a fundie woman gets an epidural, is she spitting in God's eye?

<16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.>

or have they rationalized that one away?

[sinkingfeeling]

16. Another reason not believe that the Bible is the 'pure' word of god!

There are so many verses in the thing that reflect the social and male-dominated world view of MAN, that it fails to convince me. Not saying it's not a 'good' book, just that it was written by humans.

[Ilsa]

22. As long as rich fundie doctors providing anesthesia make money

on the epidural, it won't be a crime.

[ComerPerro]

31. That's true. It would be in direct defiance of God's will

Funny how fundies believe the Bible literally, but only the parts they pick and choose.

[ComerPerro]

17. That's murder

Each of those eggs is a potential life.

[MissMarple]

18. God aborts little babies all the time.

He doesn't let all of them become implanted AND sometimes the implanted ones are rejected spontaneously because of abnormalities especially at the third month. Now what does that say about God, I ask you? ;-)

[tenshi816]

19. I've been through IVF

Actually, I went through it a fair few times so I know a bit about eggs/embryos.

My eggs were mixed with my husband's sperm to create embryos, which were then placed into my womb (very strange experience, to see a 2 or 4 or, happy days! an actual 8 cell embryo projected onto a screen for viewing prior to being put back into my body). The entire process is emotionally draining.

However, not once, not one single time did either I or my husband think of these embryos as babies. To us, they were the parts of us that had the potential for becoming life but for one reason or another weren't working for us without medical intervention.

What the fundies are missing, either through willful ignorance or just an inability to understand, is that an embryo that has not implanted in the mother's womb is simply a small collection of cells. No more, no less. Whether people want to argue about that being a person or not after that is up to them, but I just don't see how an unimplanted embryo is a human being. That's my take on it anyway, and I had several years to think about it.

One of our embryos actually implanted 14 years ago, and that's the one I'm always telling to pick his dirty socks up off the bedroom floor. I'm not beating myself up over the ones that didn't make it.

[zanne]

21. Loved your post, tenshi816. n/t

[tenshi816]

25. Thank you - I tend to get on my soapbox about this

because I went through the process several times, and I get so angry at the fundies and their attitudes about embryos. Four cells is not a human being!

You know what's bizarre as well? I've been told on occasion that my son "doesn't have a soul" because he's the result of IVF treatment. (We're talking serious fundamentalists here...)

[donsu]

32. don't worry, souls are a religious construct

nt

[Ilsa]

23. Bush would like you to adopt the others out...

You know, the big propaganda deal today about couples sharing their frozen embryos as if they were sharing a bowl of ice cream.

[Up2Late]

26. Here are 2 great web pages that will help clarify the difference ...

...between an Embryo and the blastocystwhich Embryonic Stem cells are extracted from. The blastocyst are frozen at "Stage 4" of this cycle. Click any part of the spiral to go to info an that stage.

Note the size of the blastocyst, 0.1-0.2mm. That's tiny.

<http://www.visembryo.com/baby/>

<http://www.visembryo.com/baby/stage4.html>

<http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/StemCells/embryonic.html>

[dsc]

27. It is kind of ironic

that you make such a huge mistake in a post where you snarkily chastize your opponents for ignorance.

[donsu]

33. wow, I "snarkily chastized my opponents"

strange - I didn't percieve them as opponents. I thought they were rather friendly with their information

[dsc]

34. I was referring to this quote

and it is a direct quote, in your OP.

(they probably don't really understand how the female body works and should keep their noses out of where it doesn't belong.)

It is evidently you, not they, who don't understand how the female body works, since it is you, not they, who made the error.

[donsu]

38. LOL

nt

[Fire Walk With Me]

29. Do sugar, flour, and eggs have the same rights as a cake?

Odd how a woman's egg isn't worthy/holy until the man's part of the bargain is involved. Looks quite sexist to me. Back to the kitchen, ladies. Make sure your feet are bare and that you don't talk unless first talked to. :sarcasm:

[The Flaming Red Head]

35. I think these idiots are like the Pharisees and are straining at gnats.

Look at all the research that's done to build better killing machines to kill the already born and the routine murder and torture of detainees.

[leesa]

36. Thay slough off many fertilized embryos as well. God gave rabbits the

ability to abort when conditions aren't right, why not us?

[donsu]

39. we do - our bodies have a survival mechinism that will abort for any

number of reasons: if the woman is too thin to grow a baby, if what is growing in the womb becomes degraded, if the woman's body doesn't have the right amount of harmones, chemicals to support growing a baby, etc., etc.

sometimes a woman's body won't even let her get pregnant by not having periods.

[NEDem]

37. My wife wondered that aloud last night.....

She saw the footage of il duche' with the 'former embryo' crowd and said "Alright, he's gonna ban periods!"

[paineinthearse]

41. "embryos left unfertilized"?

:wtf:

[LittleClarkie]

42. Eddie the Embryo isn't born until egg meets sperm

to be followed by Freddie the Fetus

[Norquist Nemesis]

45. Yes! Which is why we should call it BC stem cell research

BC = Blastocyst (or Before Conception) :evilgrin:

Shoots that 'life begins at the moment of conception' argument right out of the water.

[FrenchieCat]

43. A bit off topic, but I just Love the use of RELIGIOUSLY INSANE.....

Kudos to you on the War of Words! :toast:

[AzDar]

48. I've often wondered if we women shouldn't be sending those fundies

our used tampons and sanitary pads every month for burial....
Just in case.

[MadisonProgressive]

49. Damn!I think you're on to something!

All the thousands of women on DU sending their used sanitary pads, tampons, and douche residue to Dobson - every month - FOREVER!!!