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From what I've seen, people with a pro-choice viewpoint generally acknowledge that life biologically begins at conception. The split in viewpoints, as I unders
by benjohnson 11y ago
From what I've seen, people with a pro-choice viewpoint generally acknowledge that life biologically begins at conception.
The split in viewpoints, as I understand it, is that early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development.
- task_queue 11y agoThose egg and sperm cells are quite alive before they meet.
- jonah 11y agoHowever neither carries a full copy of a person's DNA. They're only "alive" in that they're biological.
- mistermann 11y agoFWIW, from any of these debates I've read on reddit at least, I've encountered almost no pro-choice people who believe life begins at conception. The party line seems to be that it is a zygote until birth - well, of course they'd never state it in such clear terms as that, instead you get any variety of mental gymnastics to avoid the question, but one thing they are absolutely certain about is, it is not a life.
- amake 11y ago"Life" vs "(viable) human life". Not the same thing.
- refurb 11y agoA 26 week old fetus is viable, but you can still abort it.
- amake 11y agoI think most people would say that "viable only with massive medical intervention" is not what they mean by "viable" in this context.
- refurb 11y agoThere are plenty of full term babies that need "massive medical intervention". Are they viable?
- mistermann 11y agoThey are not, and using the exact same logic advocated by the the pro-choice camp, there should be no moral issues with not providing the necessary medical support for the baby to survive. Taken at their word, if it is not self-sufficient, it is not a life.
- mistermann 11y agoI'm more than willing to admit that if the baby is removed from the womb too early, it will not survive, so in that sense it is "not viable". What bothers me is most (if not all, in my experience) pro-choice advocates refuse to even acknowledge the fact that non-intervention will result in a human being successfully born in the vast majority of scenarios. To me it is intellectually dishonest.
- MichaelCrawford 11y agoI believe life _continues_ at conception but began about one billion years ago. I am pro choice. I know very well that abortion stops a beating heart. I know very well the foetus cries out in pain, desperately struggles to survive. But even so I am pro-choice because the alternative is far worse: women will have abortions. That has been the case since the Dawn of Humanity. UCSC Anthropologist Stuard Schlegel was told be a Tiruray woman - Mindanao rainforest village dwellers in the Philippines - that there was a certain herb that the Tiruray women use to induce miscarriage. Dr. Schlegel of course wanted to know what that herb was as it would be of huge benefit to women in the industrialized world, but she refused to identify it was doing so could lead all the men to murder all the women. That's known as a "Pessary". The Hippocratic Oath forbids the administration of Pessaries. Hippocrates was an Ancient Greek.
- jonah 11y agoInteresting. Most of the people I hear supporting abortion won't acknowledge that it's a life that's being ended. Whether they don't know or just won't admit it varies by person.
- amake 11y agoearly life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development The usual condition as I understand it is that it must be a "viable human life" to merit protection. All sorts of things can go wrong, such as miscarriage, so it's not a viable human life until it's born.