Q: Is disposing of fertilized eggs the same as abortion and should it be illegal?

[renie408]

How do you feel about disposing of unused fertilized eggs? Fertility clinics all over the country store unused fertilized eggs and dispose of them after a certain period of time. If life begins at conception, isn't this murder?

When does life begin for you? The moment of fertilization? At two weeks? Three? 62% of abortions are performed before nine weeks. Another 27% are performed before twelve weeks. That means that nearly 90% of abortions are performed before twelve weeks. Only 1.5% of abortions are performed after 21 weeks. Of those, I wonder what percentage are for reasons of the mother's health or the lack of viability of the fetus?

How do you feel about prosecuting women who drink alcohol during pregnancy? Or engage in other behaviors that could harm the child they are carrying? Pregnant women also choose to ride in cars. Motor vehicle fatalities run at about 40,000 a year. Should pregnant women be excluded from riding in cars as that could harm their innocent fetus who has no choice but to be carried around by the mother? The number one cause of death for pregnant women is being killed by their spouse/boyfriend. Should we say that pregnant women cannot have contact with their significant others until the baby is born? Should women be allowed to become pregnant after 40 since so many of those pregnancies end in miscarriage? It could be said that they are putting a life into a flawed vessel and therefore increasing the likelihood of that life ending.

The list of 'what if's' is endless. When there is so much that can end the life of a fertilized egg, why is abortion the only thing that gets some people so worked up? If you believe that the other things are the acts of an all powerful, all knowing God; then couldn't abortion ALSO be such an act?

Where do rational people draw the line?

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

http://www.now.org/issues/violence/043003pregnant.html

[PeaceNikki]

1. One of the most common anti-choice claims is that "life begins at conception."

Beyond the obvious controversy of this statement, there is actually a second and more subtle error here. And that is that human life began only once: at the dawn of humanity, with the rise of the first human beings. Since then, there has been a continuum of human life: every sperm, every egg and every zygote have been full-fledged signs of human life, complete with all the characteristics of normal cellular activity, and all 46 human chromosomes. (Half of these chromosomes go unused in the case of sperm and eggs, but all 46 are there nonetheless.) The correct question is not "When does human life begin?" but "When does personhood begin?"

If pro-choice advocates reject conception as the first moment of personhood, then the question becomes: when do pro-choice advocates believe that personhood begins? One of the best tests of personhood is viability, upon which the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe vs. Wade was based. Viability is defined as the ability to live outside the womb. It is based upon the broader logic that "a person is as a person does." In other words, people normally breathe on their own, circulate blood on their own, fight off most germs on their own and sustain normal cellular activity on their own. A fetus is able to achieve these functions once it reaches a weight of about 5 pounds. This usually occurs between the 7th and 8th month of pregnancy -- coincidentally, about the time that the baby has finished its brain and central nervous system. The extra womb time appears to be a biological courtesy.


From: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-personhood.htm

[TheWraith]

3. Gold star for you for using the correct terminology.

Technically, all of the "moving parts" are "alive" before and during fertilization.

Also, scientifically speaking "pregnancy" doesn't begin at conception, but at the implantation of the egg.

[PeaceNikki]

5. "Pro-life" is a term filled with bullshit. You are pro-choice or anti-choice. The end.

[renie408]

6. I am good with that. n/t

[TheWraith]

2. ...

Also, this:

"The number one cause of death for pregnant women is being killed by their spouse/boyfriend."

Is not true. Complications from pregnancy are the number one cause of death for pregnant women.

[renie408]

4. Argue with google.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/411212

[TheWraith]

8. One, Google is an inanimate object.

Two, you just linked to a login page with no information on it.

Three, I'm still right. That claim has long since been debunked: you have to treat no less than the nine most common complications of pregnancy as completely different causes of death in order to justify it.

[renie408]

9. Ok...

I thought it seemed like a good study since it was published in the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health. But you are obviously the authority on this.


Forget the link, it works when I access it from google, but not from here.

Here is the article:

New York (MedscapeWire) Feb 20 - The leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide, according to a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health.

The study's authors reviewed 651 autopsy charts from the District of Columbia's Chief Medical Examiner's Office for cases from 1988 until 1996. The researchers discovered 13 homicides of pregnant women that had not been reported with the 21 maternal deaths from medical causes (eg, hemorrhage and infection). These 13 unreported deaths account for 38% of pregnancy-associated deaths.

"Few studies have evaluated the prevalence of homicide in women of childbearing age," explains the study's lead author and researcher, Cara Krulewitch, CNM, PhD, of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. "We need to turn our attention to these women and develop a clearer understanding of the magnitude of the problem, especially among pregnant women."

Other findings include:

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to have been killed earlyin the pregnancy, which can make it difficult to identify the pregnancy and link it with the homicide.

Pregnant homicide victims are more likely to be killed with a gun.

Pregnant teenagers (aged 15-19 years) were more at risk.
Similar results have been found in other areas of the country. In addition to the inability to easily collect data on homicide as a cause of maternal mortality due to cause of death coding standards, Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics do not note if a woman was pregnant at the time of the homicide. This study highlights these shortcomings in identifying and reporting maternal mortality across the nation, which allows this epidemic of violent death to escape scrutiny.

"What pregnant women do not know," said American College of Nurse-Midwives Executive Director Deanne Williams, "is that instead of facing joyful celebration at the announcement of pregnancy, too many face violence and death. We have got to do a better job of identifying this problem and helping the women and their partners not end up with such a horrific outcome."

The authors note that the deaths in the study, although not officially reported within maternal mortality ratios, may truly be pregnancy-related in that the violence might not have escalated to result in death had the women not become pregnant.

[surrealAmerican]

7. "When does life begin?" is the wrong question.

The question is, "when does personhood begin?", and there is no one correct answer that everybody will agree on. I'm alright with the legal definition being viability outside the womb. People who believe it is sooner are free to act on their beliefs, but need not impose their opinion on the rest of us.

[renie408]

10. Thank you. This is how I feel, also. n/t

[TheWraith]

11. Exactly. Based on our current scientific understanding, any answer will be somewhat arbitrary.

Since gestational development is, well, developmental. It doesn't have settings marked "Baby" and "Not-a-baby." Brain development, ability to display emotion, ability to feel pain, ability to survive outside the mother, you can make an argument for any of them, any of which exist at wildly varying levels of development.

It might be that in the future we have some kind of scientific advance that gives us more insight into neural network development and sentience in an unborn child, but that isn't today.

[Nikia]

12. I agree that the developing embryo/fetus becomes closer to personhood as it develops

Americans disagree how close to personhood at each stage, but most people are more comfortable destroying a ferilized egg than any abortion and most are more comfortable aborting a fetus in the first trimester than the third.
Early abortions are also safer for the woman than later abortions.