Quote:The zygote (in normal circumstances) is either xx or xy upon conception. Good point. And conceded. However, it could be argued that the ability of those genes to express gender may not necessarily define life...


In regards to the murder law-- I started by giving a few musings of before I answered the question. I don't the my answer (and therefore my opinion) was a cop out. I think I've properly identified why there is such contention on this topic between the two sides, with out breaking the coc.


I think the major issue which excludes you, and people that agree with your position, is that it is your honest and sincere opinion that life begins at conception.


However, this is not absolute. The definition of life, for one can be vague--- a fertilized egg is life to you, sure. But many people and scientists would, while agreeing that the beginning of the life cycle begins at meiosis, would argue there are other stages in the development of a fertilized egg that would better resemble life than just an egg that has just split into a 2 cell gamete. Additionally, many metaphysical books which include philosophical discusses as well as religious texts would disagree with the idea that a fertilized egg is the beginning of life.


Next, if we were to agree that life begins at conception, our world just became extremely complicated. First of all the birth control pill, would then be a device of murder.


Gotta head out. There's more to this, but I'm in a hurry. I'll try to pick up on this thought later...

 

OK, so back to it...

 

So birth control becomes a major deal with we think that humanity begins at conception.  Now..  Again, as our climate change denying friends have mentioned science describes the beginning of the life cycle as that moment when the egg is germinated by the sperm.  But the beginning of the lifecyle as science describes it still has many steps to go before it is even viable.  One of those being attaching to the uterin wall and continuing to develop.

 

But if we are going to take the hard line that a germinated egg is  a  human, then there are murders daily.  The birth control pill works in 2 ways.  First it tries to stop the female body from releasing an egg and second it hardens the lining of the uterus so that a fertilized egg cannot attach to the wall.  How many murders has the birth control pill performed, if we take a conception approach?  Is every woman that is on birth control a murderer?  And why have pro-lifers focused on that?  Same with the IUD.  These types of birth control pills must murder thousands of "babies" a day!

 

No, obviously this is ridiculous, right? Or, if you are a staunch supporter of the conception point as the beginning of humanity, why are we not picketing outside every doctors office that is prescribing birth control?  Why do we not have protesters outside of Walgreens and CVS trying to stop women from buying death by little white pill?

 

It's clear that most reasonable people realize that life, and specifically when a human becomes human is more complicated than just when the egg is fertilized.  As you mentioned before, the moment of fertilization the child's sex has been determined.  But that doesn't mean that the fertilized egg IS a boy or a girl.  Those genes have not been expressed yet.  That egg now has the potential to become a human, but it is not a human yet.  That's my thought on it.  And if a woman, or a couple, want to stop that process from becoming complete, I think they still have a couple months or so to figure that out and do something about it.

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