When does life begin?

[cathleeninnh]

I just feel like stirring the pot.

I really don't have an opinion at this point, so this is your chance to win a convert.

When I think about it, I find myself considering potentiality. Where does potential change to actual?

Cathleen

[Russell Kanning]

When you find a good wife?
When you move from Cal. to NH?

[AlanM]

Whenever you find something new that calls to you.

[Russell Kanning]

I think it is when there is a bun in the oven. But I could be wrong.

[KBCraig]

I just feel like stirring the pot.

This one is a big pot. 

Here's my take: from the moment of fertilization, the zygote is distinct, and human. It must either be alive, or dead. Since it is growing and changing constantly from the first moment, it is obviously not dead; it is alive.

The clinical definition of "dead" is generally "the irreversible cessation of brainwaves", but in the case of an embryo that hasn't yet developed a central nervous system, such a condition is hardly irreversible. Unless something goes wrong, that state will naturally reverse itself.

I don't know if this is a pot, so much as a can of worms. 

Kevin

[Lex]

This should explain everything:

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

but if you're too lazy to read  , here are the relevant parts to answer your question:

First, let us begin with the prenatal child. What is the parent?s, or rather the mother?s, property right in the fetus? In the first place, we must note that the conservative Catholic position has generally been dismissed too brusquely. This position holds that the fetus is a living person, and hence that abortion is an act of murder and must therefore be outlawed as in the case of any murder. The usual reply is simply to demarcate birth as the beginning of a live human being possessing natural rights, including the right not to be murdered; before birth, the counter-argument runs, the child cannot be considered a living person. But the Catholic reply that the fetus is alive and is an imminently potential person then comes disquietingly close to the general view that a newborn baby cannot be aggressed against because it is a potential adult. While birth is indeed the proper line of demarcation, the usual formulation makes birth an arbitrary dividing line, and lacks sufficient rational groundwork in the theory of self-ownership.

     The proper groundwork for analysis of abortion is in every man?s absolute right of self-ownership. This implies immediately that every woman has the absolute right to her own body, that she has absolute dominion over her body and everything within it. This includes the fetus. Most fetuses are in the mother?s womb because the mother consents to this situation, but the fetus is there by the mother?s freely-granted consent. But should the mother decide that she does not want the fetus there any longer, then the fetus becomes a parasitic ?invader? of her person, and the mother has the perfect right to expel this invader from her domain. Abortion should be looked upon, not as ?murder? of a living person, but as the expulsion of an unwanted invader from the mother?s body.[2] Any laws restricting or prohibiting abortion are therefore invasions of the rights of mothers.

     It has been objected that since the mother originally consented to the conception, the mother has therefore ?contracted? its status with the fetus, and may not ?violate? that ?contract? by having an abortion. There are many problems with this doctrine, however. In the first place, as we shall see further below, a mere promise is not an enforceable contract: contracts are only properly enforceable if their violation involves implicit theft, and clearly no such consideration can apply here. Secondly, there is obviously no ?contract? here, since the fetus (fertilized ovum?) can hardly be considered a voluntarily and consciously contracting entity. And thirdly as we have seen above, a crucial point in libertarian theory is the inalienability of the will, and therefore the impermissibility of enforcing voluntary slave contracts. Even if this had been a ?contract,? then, it could not be enforced because a mother?s will is inalienable, and she cannot legitimately be enslaved into carrying and having a baby against her will.

     Another argument of the anti-abortionists is that the fetus is a living human being, and is therefore entitled to all of the rights of human beings. Very good; let us concede, for purposes of the discussion, that fetuses are human beings?or, more broadly, potential human beings?and are therefore entitled to full human rights. But what humans, we may ask, have the right to be coercive parasites within the body of an unwilling human host? Clearly no born humans have such a right, and therefore, a fortiori, the fetus can have no such right either.

[AlanM]

Are we talking clinical life here? Or life that means something? Lots of folk are clinically alive, but otherwise dead. Of course that is their choice. Just not the kind of folk I want to be around.

[KBCraig]

[AlanM]

To me, life begins at birth, when the child is separated from the umbilical cord. until then, IMHO, it is like another part of the mother.

[Lex]

To me, life begins at birth, when the child is separated from the umbilical cord. until then, IMHO, it is like another part of the mother.

I think that it is "alive" when inside the mother. But I agree that once the umbilical cord is cut it is an independent being (although it still needs some human or animal (in case of ferrell children) to feed it).

[KBCraig]

To me, life begins at birth, when the child is separated from the umbilical cord. until then, IMHO, it is like another part of the mother.

So it's your position that the baby can be born, be breathing on its own, laying in its mother's arms, yet until the umbilical cord is cut, strangling it would be morally equivalent to cutting off a wart?

Just checking, to make sure I understand your position.

[Pat K]

Well for me it usaully starts at about 10 am after a cup of coffee.

[Lex]

To me, life begins at birth, when the child is separated from the umbilical cord. until then, IMHO, it is like another part of the mother.

So it's your position that the baby can be born, be breathing on its own, laying in its mother's arms, yet until the umbilical cord is cut, strangling it would be morally equivalent to cutting off a wart?

Just checking, to make sure I understand your position.

Good question KBCraig 

[cathleeninnh]

This should explain everything:

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

but if you're too lazy to read? , here are the relevant parts to answer your question:

It's a good article. I'm still chewing on it. It still seems as if people don't care what the weaknesses of their side are.

Cathleen

[cathleeninnh]

Full rights are restricted to competent adults, but we give children extra protections. Is the abortion question really a desire extend protection, not rights?



Cathleen