Pro life advocates claim that conception is the beginning of human life, making it the point at which human’s become morally relevant. Birth is just some event that happens later and has no bearing on things like rights. Thus, blastocysts deserve full legal protection that adult humans get and the death of a zygote ought to be weighed equally as the death of people outside the womb. It’s been repeatedly pointed out why this is either incorrect or irrelevant but this has failed to sway most pro lifers. So today I shall explore the implications of pro life reasoning were it actually sound.
What happens if we up the accuracy a bit and apply pro life reasoning? And by ‘up the accuracy’ I mean that we look at the actual beginning of a human’s life cycle. Pro lifers claim that its conception. But any high school biology student could tell you that there is a lot that has to happen before that. An egg has to be released by the female, which must then float down a long tube. During the brief period when this is happening, a sperm cell must travel from the male, through the birth canal, and meet up with the ovum. Only then can conception begin to take place. Thus, human life has an earlier chapter that pro lifers currently ignore.
Now you could point out that each of the gametes only have half the required chromosomes that ‘actual’ people have, but the response is the same as when its pointed out that blastocysts have no brain. According to Pro lifers such things are purely developmental issues, that have no bearing on person-hood. Physiology is nothing to base moral worth on, after all.
In fact any argument you could possibly come up with to say that the gamete is NOT a person, but a zygote is, there is a synonymous argument saying that the zygote is not a person, but a birthed human is. And since, for the purposes of this thought experiment, I’m granting the pro life position that the latter wouldn’t work, then I must also grant that the former wouldn’t work either.
Gametes fulfill the pro life criterion for human life and therefore moral worth. They are 100% human cells and their sole purpose is to develop into a separate human being, they are merely people one step back from zygotes. Conception is just some event that happens later and has no bearing on things like rights.
Can we go a step further? Well, I suppose we could look at oogonia in females and spermatagonia in males (the gametogonium that develop into their respective gametes) , but my grasp of biology starts getting hazy about that point, and so gametes are as far back as I can go right now. No matter, it is sufficient to reveal the absurdity of pro-life arguments.
So spermatogenesis and oogenisis (the procedures in which humans create gametes) are the actual beginnings of life, NOT conception, and the gamete (the spermazoa or the ovum) are therefore the initial receivers of human rights, protection, moral worth, etc. NOT zygotes. What would this mean?
Well, according to Pro life arguments, abortion is murder, as it is the knowing destruction of human life. Apply this to our current example and every single time a woman has a period, she is committing murder. Further, every time a male ejaculates, he is committing the mass genocide of approximately 80 million poor defenseless humans. Even if he were to impregnate someone with that ejaculation, that is still 79,999,999 deaths for one life. This is unacceptable. If Hitler somehow managed to increase the death toll of his holocaust tenfold (to approximate the deaths caused by a single male orgasm) but saved one single life in doing so, would that make everything alright? Not a chance.
By applying your arguments to a more accurate view of the life cycle, we see that after a lifetime of menstrual activity, each and every woman is responsible for more murders than our most notorious serial killers and that each time a male orgasms, he commits an atrocity ten times worse than the holocaust.
Is this sane? Is this rational? Is this something we should base legislation and governing policies on? Certainly not.
There is obviously a problem with the initial premise that humans obtain moral worth the instant their life cycle begins. I mentioned earlier that any reason one could come up with as to why a gamete is not a person, pro-lifers already have a synonimous argument to refute it (they just currently use it to claim person-hood for zygotes). But pro choice has an additional argument that a Pro lifer cannot use against the gamete activist. A birthed baby is a seperate, self-sustaining entity, who’s existence is not dependant on anyone elses. Birth is the true creation of the individual.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
107 comments
January 7, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Vern R. Kaine
Mystro, I don’t get the connection you’re making, because that’s not at all what I said. My point was to responsibility, not right. I’m not sure if the pro-choice position (or variants of it) argue that there is no moral or ethical question at all on behalf of the potential child, but if someone has sex, male or female, then the possibility ALWAYS exists that conception should occur, and they (I think) have the responsibility to at least CONSIDER that it is a potential life. I don’t think you’re saying that abortion should be an option held higher than individual responsibility?
And re: the “parasite” thing, we can also call each other “organisms”, or “masses of tissue”, but out of general courtesy and civility, we tend to call people by their names. I can see the thought experiment of looking at a fetus from a different (scientific) viewpoint, but in the context between J and N it appeared to be nothing more than a “jab” to a pro-life adversary while disingenuously claiming rational objectivity.
And I believe your definition is incorrect? Does not a parasite have to be something that is foreign to the host? A fetus, on the other hand, is of the species of that organism, and in fact 1/2 its chromosomes. Jesurgislac was seeming to pretend like a potential child was some sort of alien, completely foreign to the mother. When asked about this, she went apeshit and started throwing the assumptions and insults, so with that and after all her b.s. towards Neil, I figured it was about time she took some crap back. Nobody should get that bent over a question, unless they need pills.
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January 7, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Vern R. Kaine
A lot of things are distracting from the issue. For my part in this, I apologize.
Jesurgislac, I’ll ask you to note where and why I stepped in. Your views are what they are, and Neils are what his are. I really don’t have a problem with either of them at all. I can respect the high levels of emotion involved in this issue, too, and how it might be easy to make someone out to be the personification or figurehead of an issue just because that person might share in some of the common views. People then have someone to yell at and take their frustrations out on.
However, with the extent you were taking your arguments and making them personal, it appeared that your position was more based on man-hating than anything to do with “rights”. As well, your complains re: bullying were hypocritical, because it appeared that that’s exactly what a bunch of pro-choice people in the room were doing – circling the only pro-life person in the room and taunting him, then belittling him.
Had Neil or anyone been a woman-hating jerk who was belittling you in the same way, I would have stepped in all the same and lobbed similar flaming arrows at them, regardless of if I agreed with your underlying views. But because your attacks seemed to come from a strictly man-hating point of view, I interjected (in part, as a man) and shot back (harshly) in the hopes of changing the discourse, and also to see whether you were actually listening, or just talking.
Now that Mystro’s come in and made the peace (haha!), I hope the discussion amongst everybody can continue on a much more civil level. I meant what I said before – I appreciate hearing/reading/trying to understand the viewpoints.
And re: my actual position, I’m don’t as of yet have a firm one, and my life situation is not such that I need to have one any time soon. Discussions like these, if intelligent and civil, should help, though, don’t you think?
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January 7, 2011 at 5:21 pm
jesurgislac
I’m not sure if the pro-choice position (or variants of it) argue that there is no moral or ethical question at all on behalf of the potential child, but if someone has sex, male or female, then the possibility ALWAYS exists that conception should occur, and they (I think) have the responsibility to at least CONSIDER that it is a potential life.
But how is that anyone’s business except the pregnant woman’s herself? Anyone else who tries to decide on her behalf, or tries to bully or coerce her into a decision that’s wrong for her, is a woman-hating jerk.
The pro-choice position is just that; it’s up to each woman to decide, for each pregnancy, whether she wants to continue the pregnancy or terminate it. She may if she wishes seek the advice / support of her partner, or her best friend, or her doctor, or even her parents, or anyone else she thinks will give her good advice: but that’s her concern. It’s not within the remit of government or the church or nasty little bullying pieces of crap like Neil, to force her to consult with any of the above, or to force her through pregnancy and childbirth against her will.
The prolifer notion that because she decided to have sex she ought to decide to continue the pregnancy is extremely muddled thinking: consent to sex is in no way identical to consent to pregnancy, and no one should expect a woman to remain celibate unless she’s decided she wants to engender a child: that’s childish thinking, of the sort “mummy and daddy probably had sex twice because they have two children”.
And I believe your definition is incorrect? Does not a parasite have to be something that is foreign to the host?
Technically not – some parasite-host relationships are of long and intimate duration. Offspring produced by sex with a male partner is by definition genetically very different from the female parent – that’s how sexual reproduction works, see also diversity of species and evolutionary theory! – as you yourself note, at least half the chromosomes are different. One of the interesting balancing acts of mammalian reproduction is how the fetus can remain alive and well inside a living body for the entire gestation, despite being so genetically different. Half of all human fetuses conceived spontaneously abort. (Prolifer claims to consider fetuses as identical to babies never somehow extend to any concern for what they are supposed to perceive as half of the babies in the world dying before birth.)
Jesurgislac, I’ll ask you to note where and why I stepped in.
I think I’ll take your next three paragraphs to be a verbose and muddled apology for acting like a woman-hating jerk out for a troll. I note the words “I’m sorry” don’t actually appear, but I suppose that would be too much to ask: I’ll take it that you are sorry for the things you’ve said now you’ve re-read them in a calmer frame of mind and realize how appallingly you’ve presented yourself, and that you hope to be better-behaved in future.
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January 7, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Vern R. Kaine
“I think I’ll take your next three paragraphs to be a verbose and muddled apology for acting like a woman-hating jerk out for a troll. I note the words “I’m sorry” don’t actually appear, but I suppose that would be too much to ask: I’ll take it that you are sorry for the things you’ve said now you’ve re-read them in a calmer frame of mind and realize how appallingly you’ve presented yourself, and that you hope to be better-behaved in future.”
You ignore and assume an apology? Don’t flatter yourself. Woman-hating? You wish. All you are is a lonely, miserable snapshow, and you smell. Have fun making love to your dictionary.
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August 12, 2012 at 6:19 am
The DWR Sunday Disservice – Killing is Wrong(?) « Dead Wild Roses
[…] for the sake of argument that you think that “life” begins conception. It is an erroneous, problematic assumption at best. So, what this comes down to is whether or not you think women […]
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August 20, 2012 at 6:08 am
Christian “Anti-Choice” Site Advocates No Abortion for Child Rape Victims. « Dead Wild Roses
[…] of a child[anti-choice distortion, the first of many – It is not a child, we get a child after the little event called "Birth". Acorns are not oak trees]. Should a child’s life [*facepalm* – repeating misinformation does […]
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January 30, 2014 at 6:11 am
“Pro Life” Procedure For Men | Dead Wild Roses
[…] of this is found about 3 minutes in on this pretty great video. It follows the point I made in a previous post, but in a new, wonderfully hilarious way. Watch, laugh, be better equipped to deal with […]
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