Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
The Imaginary Conception
In science, the term "conception" commonly refers to fertilization. But among bioethicists, conception is sometimes defined as implantation or even "the point at which human life begins". Because of the imprecise meaning of the term, it has served as the fulcrum for semantic arguments within the abortion debate. The typical usage one encounters among anti-choice proponents is that life begins at conception. The statement is often made with complete confidence as though it's the uncontroversial scientific truth.
It does sound good, hard to argue against, right? Nope, it's a right-wing myth, as accurate scientifically as 'there is no evidence for global warming' and 'Intelligent Design is a scientific theory'. Developmental/evolutionary biology Professor PZ Myers, who happens to study embryos for a living, gives some insight:
[Link] Developmentally speaking, fertilization is one transition state among many. It's a major bottleneck and an incredibly wasteful process--the overwhelming majority of gametes fail to fuse--but even when fertilization occurs, Nature is quite cavalier about throwing the whole thing out and requiring us to start again. Other major events in which an error can negate all prior processes are implantation, gastrulation, neurulation, birth, and learning to drive. It's awfully silly to privilege one event among many as the sole source of humanity, I would think; if it's mere priority that focuses interest on fertilization, the two meiotic divisions that produce the gametes came first, and that's also a delicate and critical process. Perhaps you should worship the gonad rather than fertilization...?
Does 'life' begin at conception? Well, obviously the egg and the sperm are alive, so it depends on which cell's life we're focusing on and which is ignored. What happens when the one lucky sperm among millions reaches an egg first? What are the steps that can go right or wrong after that? What does the term conception cover?
Some bullet points:
- The head of the sperm binds to the outer coating of the egg
- The tip of the sperm head then releases enzymes that chemically burn a hole through the outer layer of the egg
- The sperm head moves into the opening thus created and binds to the plasma membrane further inside of the egg
- The membrane around the head of the sperm and the membrane around the egg plasma fuse
- The inner contents of the sperm, including the genetic components, are delivered into the cytosol of the egg
- The egg plasma releases substances which thicken the outer wall, preventing the other zillion horny sperm that arrived slightly late from getting in on the action
- The nucleus of what's left of the lucky sperm swells, forming a male pronucleus
- At the same time, the egg completes meiosis II forming a second polar body and the female pronucleus
- The male and female pronuclei move toward each other and their nuclear membranes bind, fuse, and dissolve
- The centriole in the sperm remnant replicates, and a joint structure called a spindle is formed, where the first full set of diploid chromosomes begins to assemble
Based on extrapolation, the sperm and the egg will make it through the above steps between 25 and 50 percent of the time. After the formation of the first diploid set, the fertilized egg, now called a zygote, is ready for its first regular divisions to begin. After about seven or eight divisions, when the zygote is made up of around one-hundred identical cells, a differential starts appearing between the cells that will become the fetus and those that will become the placenta. This stage is called a blastula. A few more fertilized eggs will be lost during the change from a single celled zygote to the blastula.
But wait! We're not home free, not by a long shot. The blastula has to successfully implant in the uterine wall and avoid being rejected as the proto-placenta begins growing into the uterus. Perhaps another 25 to 50 percent will be lost in that process.
Note: If anyone thinks I'm beings overly technical above, trying to dazzle the pro-lifer with physiological terms or whatnot, I'll bet twenty bucks there are biologists out there reading this who are groaning in pain at the gross oversimplifications. Because I just crammed about 4 semesters of advanced molecular biology and early fetal development into a few pitiful sentences.
Oh and by the way, speaking of science and genetics: Fellas, the last time abortion was illegal and birth control virtually non-existent, there was no such thing as genetic paternity testing and certainly no court mandated child-support based on it. Keep that in mind if you think restricting abortion or birth control isn't going to affect your life. But look on the bright side; whether it's an affair, a girlfriend, or just a little out of town fling on a business trip or on Spring Break; sure, it might ruin your life or your marriage, you might have to drop out of college, and it won't do your paycheck any good to have a big fat deduction taken out before you get your hands on it. But hey, you might like being an unexpected daddy!
Anyway, the point is that less than half of all the blind dates between sperm and egg make it successfully through the above steps. And that's a conservative estimate. In most cases when the sperm strikes the egg's surface, the sperm dies, the egg dies, and/or whatever stage the embryo or pre-embryo is in, dies. No doubt this is far beyond the format constraints of talk radio or cable news (And significantly above the heads of the proudly ignorant right-wing ideologues). So for the soundbite answer, it would be perfectly accurate to respond to the question of "What happens at conception", to say, "Usually, death".
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morning after pill, Terri Schiavo
Both these issues have the same intractible problem, which is the religious reliance on an article of faith to support it's argument, and a (the?) primary tenant of science, which is to rely on only that which can be proved. No comprimise is possible (unless someone creats an experiment that successfully proves or disproves the existence of God or the soul), so I find myself left with proving the inherent contradiction in the religious argument.
If a fertilized egg is a human, and only 1 out of 4-5 fertilized eggs attaches to the uterous and is then brought fully to term, then God designed the human uterous to be a death factory, killing 80% of the humans that begin there. So without break in logic, if you feel the morning after pill (which simply prevents implantation) is unethical, then you believe that God designed a woman's very inefficient reproductive system to doom 80% of the souls that were to come to this earth straight to Purgatory (where the unbaptized go). Doesn't seem very fair to me.
Regarding Teri Schiavo - the actions of the right in this case were deplorable, and more than any other, left me feeling the religious right is without principle. Of the hypocracies overlooked for a good sound byte and to defend the idea of the existence of a soul: 1) making the argument against the primacy of the marriage as the family unit 2) the complaint that conservative judges, to whom the law was clear, ought to be removed because they were being "activist" by conservatively following the text of the law, and not reading between the lines 3) deciding that the State's right to determine this matter was no longer of any relevance. Let's not even get into all the "she responded to visual cues!" though she was blind, and our esteemed leader of the Senate diagnosing her from the Senate floor without ever having seen her.
Science and religion may be on different pages with this argument, but a priest can still point out where a scientist says 2+2=5, and a scientist can still point out where a priest says all A's are B's and all B's are C's, but -- no A's are C's because I don't like that answer.
Not silly at all
It's awfully silly to privilege one event among many as the sole source of humanity
It's not silly at all. It's no sillier than choosing an age of consent. We could weigh up each case individually, "this person seems mature enough to be having sex with whomever they want but this person seems too immature". But it's pretty clear that this is not a workable system. So instead we 'privilege' one event, a certain birthday, among many others. The important thing is that once we stick with an age we need to stick with it otherwise the whole system falls apart. The actual choice of age is arbitrary, so each country chooses a different age and implements the rules with zealousness branding those whoe violate it as perverts, even though in the next country along it might be set at a younger age. Despite the apparent arbitrariness this system makes a lot of sense.
Same goes for picking an age when life 'begins'.
Not A Scientific Question
It is a mistake to believe that this is a scientific question at all. It is purely a value judgment. It depends on a whole set of beliefs about the status of being human. It is a collective social decision. Medicine and biology can offer insight into the nature of development, but that is relevant only to the extent that the community decides that an entity's status depends on things such as "full set of genes" or "capacity to feel pain" or "viable outside the womb" etc.
Only those with a belief system that grants some metaphysical significance to human status would be inclined to assign the beginning of life (and therefore, the beginning of the rights and protections due to all humans) to any early stage in the process of development. That is why most of the nonreligious are comfortable with the idea of abortion and see the issue primarily in terms of power (control over reproduction).
Dr. C. Célèbre
"Still Too Controversial..."
Yes, it is a scientific question
Ethically, no position except self-awareness is defensible, which is why serious ethicists talk in terms such as "rational being." You could debate what constitutes evidence for self-awareness, but the actual scientific debate is constrained into a range of a few weeks during pregnancy, with a few outliers, like 22 weeks (viability, a shaky concept but still one that's far more rational than conception or quickening). Debating whether a 31-week-old fetus is considered self-aware can be done on a scientific level; debating whether a 1-week-old one can is like debating Noah's Ark.
I Think We Are In Agreement
As I said, I think that science can offer information about development that can guide these decisions, but ultimately, there will be no scientific answer to the question. If no position other than self-awareness is defensible, that is itself a value judgement, not a scientific conclusion. Now, I happen to agree with you regarding self-awareness as the most satisfying criterion upon which to base this social policy. As a sociologists, I would just point out that the collective decision to endorse that position will be based on social and political factors, not medical or psychological ones.
Those who oppose abortion often also oppose birth control. It is a view of sexuality that places great weight on imagined metaphysical properties of our material existence. Those arguments are completely barren to anyone who rejects the metaphysics. That is why the two sides of this issue can't find any common ground. Religious conservatives will never be persuaded by any analysis of the biology of psychology of human development. Daniel's appeal to science in his post is just a fig leaf covering his faith-based motives.
Dr. C. Célèbre
"Still Too Controversial..."
Self-awareness?
Don't you think self-awareness is itself a vexed subject?
Well, I do...
...but in general I think it works very well at least as an intuitive guideline; in practice, I've found lines such as "what matters is not whether a fetus has human DNA, but whether it has higher brain functions indicating consciousness" very effective. There are a lot of different tests for consciousness, but in general the ones I know of point to a gray area starting around week 30 of the pregnancy and ending shortly after birth.
Anyway, the main point of this is to rid people of the idea that personhood is based on having human DNA, or on being photogenic on anti-abortion posters.
Oh Really?
Interesting idea you have there. Let's examine it for a moment.
A fully formed human is born with an IQ below that of an ape. This individual is so mentally deficient that he does recognize his own reflection in a mirror. The mirror test is commonly used in debates about self-awareness. If a creature can look into a mirror and realize that it sees itself rather than a completely different being then it can be argued that said creature is self-aware.
Given that this human fails the first, most basic test of self awareness, does this classify this individual as inhuman?
I say no. I also say that anyone who answers "yes" is an inhuman monster.
However, given your argument as you have presented it this person is in fact, inhuman. Therefore, by your argument we are free to kill this person for convenience. We are also free to perform experiments on this person that are normally relegated to animals because, hey, he's not REALY human. In fact, just about any atrocity you can think of is acceptable because this person lackks the sentience to be considered human.
Your argument only works if you are willing to go so far as to take the mentally deficient and relegate them to the staus of of dogs, cats, pigs, or clams. Last I knew, no credible ethicist has taken such a position, if for no other reason than the instinctive revulsion such an idea creates in persons of conscience.
This debate was at the core of the Terry Schiavo case, and the mosters certainly came out of the woodwork there. One such monster was the unethical judge weho decided that any doctor who's position was different from his own preconcieved notions was not credible in his courtroom. This o syet another eason I consider jusdges to be a non-source as far as anything other than the letter of the law goes.
Let me guess. You wanted to see a crippled woman killed, and you are happy to do everything I have stated as conditions of behavior to the mentally deficient.
www.ravingconservative.com
Three things
First, Terri Schiavo had no functional brain; having a working brain stem is not enough for personhood, since all mammals have more or less the same brain stem functions, the difference between humans and the rest being in the neocortex.
Second, the mirror test is just one test for self-awareness. It is used to test animal intelligence because it may indicate that certain animals can achieve IQs of human adults, but only works on the species level, as opposed to the individual level. And even so, it's imperfect, since gorillas hate mirrors and thus fail it even though they're no less intelligent than other non-human great apes, who pass it.
There are other tests for self-awareness, which many more animals pass, but which humans in general start passing right after or right before birth. For example, the ability to feel pain, which even zebrafish have, requires a certain level of brain complexity that human fetuses only develop at week 31. Many ethicists thus believe that more animals than humans, or even than great apes and dolphins (the species that pass the mirror test), deserve some moral status - frequent candidates include pigs, dogs, cephalopods, and cetaceans other than the bottle-nosed dolphin.
Third, part of the question about which animals should have moral status and which shouldn't relates to convenience, or the cost of giving the animals moral status. For example, granting 3-year-olds moral status causes fewer problems than granting adult pigs moral status, even if adult pigs are more intelligent (which they're not). This is part of the problem with great ape personhood: it deprives people of the ability to research diseases of humans, who are certainly more intelligent.
The same can be said for granting retarded humans personhood, but even the most severely retarded human is more intelligent, and in particular more self-aware, than the most intelligent non-human great ape; therefore, in the case of retarded humans the sentience argument outweighs convenience, which in the case of great apes it does not. This is why human personhood is said to begin at birth: not only do the new experiences cause a sudden surge in sentience, but also the lack of an adult woman enveloping the baby causes a sudden drop in inconvenience. This is also why primitive societies engage in infanticide: the lack of abortion and adoption makes giving newborns moral status very inconvenient, so mothers who can't raise their children abandon or kill them immediately after birth.
Hmmm . . .
I see we have reached animpasse in basic morals. To your way of thinking the living body is unimportant if the brain is not functioning to your satisfaction. t is not life that you value at all, but rather it is intelligence.
I on th eother hand, operate on the understanding that all humans are comprised of three parts. The body, the mind, and the soul. The body, being a vessel for the mind and the soul should not be willfuly destroyed while it can still breathe and have a heartbeat without the aid of machines. Prior to birth the living body still contains an active brain, and also a soul. While you will undoubtedly dismiss this argument I stil call it valid. Blame me for being religious, people like you always do.
However, I will dispute you claim that the human cannot feel pain prior to week 31, naerly 8 months after conception. The are studies that have shown that a fetus can feel pain almost as soon as thebrain becomes functional. This is, depending on who you ask, anytime between the minute it becomes a seperate organ to sometime early in the second trimester. By ignoring this research you have demonstarted either a functional lack of knowledge on this subject, or a willful disregard fo science that you don't want to agree with. either one is sloppy, and thesecond is an idological attenpt to keep ohers ignorant. Oh, wait, that's what you accuse religions of doing.
www.ravingconservative.com
Partly Factual, Partly Values
This is partly a dispute about values and partly a disagreement about cognitive science.
As I said, the collective decision to invest in a particular characteristic the significance of personhood is a values process. It may be that the ability to feel pain is such a characteristic, and that some consensus could be reached that the law should respect.
As to when that characteristic is present, that is a matter of science. Feeling pain certainly requires a certain level of brain complexity beyond stimulus-response. There is, for example, the emotional component. I'd like to ask that commenters give citations along with the claim that "science says..." before making accusations of ideological malfeasance.
As the the mind-body-soul categorization, I doubt that it has any validity outside of religion. There is some interesting discussion about how the mind maps onto the brain, but I don't think you could find a scientist arguing that the mind is separate from the brain. (So that without certain brain functioning there is no mind.) The notion of a soul is entirely religious. (Although it is true that is has a poetic usage that is not strictly speaking religious.) If science is going to inform the debate about reproductive rights, I don't see how arguments about the soul will contribute anything.
Dr. C. Célèbre
"Still Too Controversial..."
Right.
All of this goes to the point that self-awareness is not a particularly useful for this issue. By any definition of self-awareness, a human infant (and certainly an unborn fetus!) is less of a person than an adult chimpanzee. So really what you have to do is say that your requirements for personhood are humanness + self-awareness, and then you have to agree on a definition for the latter and when it begins.
Call me old-fashioned, but a much simpler marker for human personhood is birth. It's simple and unmistakable. When an organism is no longer physically attached to the mother's body, it's a distinct person.
I agree
As I said, I don't think that science can clearly define when a person becomes human. It has more to do with our values. The virtue of using birth as the blessed event, rather than conception or some developmental milestone, is that it respects the autonomy of both the mother and the new child. When the person joins the community, he or she is invested with the rights and responsibilities that go with membership. (For the newborn, of course, it is more a matter of rights than responsibilities. Though come to think of it, how could infants do any worse in electing a president than adults have done recently?)
Dr. C. Célèbre
"Still Too Controversial..."
Self-awareness is difficult to define...
By most working definitions of the term, newborn infants are not self-aware. Self-awareness develops gradually in the first months/years of life; without the right hemispheric capacity to store long-term memories, it's arguable that a continuous sense of self is unavailable for children under the age of 1 year or so.
A broader definition of self-awareness that would cover newborns and late-term fetuses would also cover most non-human animals.
In this matter
I totally concur with your opinions on this subject Alon. Sentience is my criteria for any abortion cutoff...
Now to convince the rest of the country...
Life at Conception
I know you will disagree wholeheartedly to this, but the life at conception ideea CAN be reasonably supported.
First, let us examine the germ cells, the sperm and the eg. While both are alive, niether one can be considered human. Any genetic testing will show tha each has only half the genetic material to be a truly formed human. As such, they have no intrinsic value as human life individually despite the fact tht they are alive.
The formula changes slightly, but significantly at fertilization because now the cells have combined to form a cell that is provably completely human in genetic structure. Niether cell died along the way, but both living cells have fused to form an entirely new one living cell. At this point the newly formed human embryo ( I shall use the term embryo for all early stages of development for the sake of simplicity ) may or may not actually implant. At this early stage the is certainly a chance of emyonic death or simple failure to implant, and it does happen.
Even after implantation there are a myriad of things that could go wong and result in embryonic, and later fetal death, both of which are typically followed by spontaneous (natural) abortion. However, the emphasis here is on the word "natural". it happens without the conscious intervention of man. This natural early death is no different from natural death at later stages of life from birth to death at a hundred years old or more.
By saying that an embryo or fetus is not "alive" and therfore suitable to be killed is itself a contradiction in terms. You cannot kill that which does not have life. And since the human fetus is provably human through genetics, and since it is in fact a living organism, what makes killing it any more acceptable than murdering the elderly? The elderly die at an increasing rate with every year of age. Would you advocate simply euthanizing them when their mortality rate reaches an equal plane as the natural mortality rate among the unborn?
Put simply, the argument put forth in your post is a pseudo-scientific staw-man. Ideologically driven rather than being driven by pure science and sound reason.
www.ravingconservative.com
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel...
You say:
"By saying that an embryo or fetus is not "alive" and therfore suitable to be killed is itself a contradiction in terms. You cannot kill that which does not have life. And since the human fetus is provably human through genetics, and since it is in fact a living organism, what makes killing it any more acceptable than murdering the elderly? The elderly die at an increasing rate with every year of age. Would you advocate simply euthanizing them when their mortality rate reaches an equal plane as the natural mortality rate among the unborn?
Put simply, the argument put forth in your post is a pseudo-scientific staw-man. Ideologically driven rather than being driven by pure science and sound reason."
Your logic and reasoning are so circular, I think you should rename your website www.ragingcorkscrew.com.
First--My fingernails are provably human through genetics, and they grow, so they must be alive. Am I guilty of murder if I trim them?
Second--I agree that we let "pure science and sound reason" dictate the answer to this question. How about we let science determine the exact moment (we can even predate this moment for 7 to 10 days, I don't think anyone with common sense would argue against that) that a fetus can be removed from it's dead mother (she died from a traffic accident, or an overdose, or cancer, or even a hunting accident, it really doesn't matter) and continue to live and develop into a child. Now, we have a human being. Using sound reasoning, at any point in time before this, we did not have a human being. It was in a human being, but not quite yet a human being in it's own right (sort of like my fingernail). Are you saying that the human being that this undeveloped human life is in should somehow lose her rights to choose how she lives and what she does with her life because there is a "prospective" human being within her? What if she was raped? By her father or brother? Or her priest? What if she is just too immature and uninformed to be able to raise a child? How about if she's a junkie and did it to get drugs? Is this really a life you would want that child to endure?
My guess is that you are a member of a religious organization that frowns on birth control and abortion (they really need those new members very bad), and you feel that if you have to put up with those unwanted brats, then everybody else should have to also.
"One man's theology is another man's belly laugh." Robert A Heinlien
RE:
Once again you have tossed up a psuedo scientific straw man.
Your fingernail is make of Keratin. The only human genetics you will find on it are from skin cells that slaugh off onto it. Your hiar is also DNA free save for the root, so don;t waste you reffort on that argument either.
However, the more important thing to consider is individuality. Any part of your body is you, genetically speaking. A newly concieved child is genetically different from the mother, and therefore proveably a seperate, though dependent body. The fact is that by aborting a child you are actually removing a foreign body from the mother, one different enough that it must be shileded from direct contact with the mother's immune system or her own body will attack and kill it.
Once again, your argument lacks any scientific credibility.
Who cares for genetics?
Identical twins share the same DNA. In fact, twinning occurs after conception, so if personhood begins at conception, identical twins are one person. In reality, so much of individuality depends on development, in particular on neurological development, that basing personhood on mere genetics is irrational.
funny
Funny, and here I thought I was establishing HUMANITY with genetics and personhood by establishing that the mother and child are sperate bodies.
www.ravingconservative.com
When does life begin?
I one day decided to think about this question in deep. When does life begin? It's not at conception. It happened, once*, about two and a half billion years ago. Since then, it's just been one big continous cycle, one long chemical reaction that has spread over most of the surface of the globe.
While I'd already been convinced that until born, a fetus is a parasite and as such certainly not a human being and therefore also not in need of protection, this really made me sure in my arguements. Those in the anti-choice camp seem not to understand the difference between a living individual and a living unit.
* Once, or twice? What about those sulpher-based life forms around undersea vents? I'd find it humbling to know that just on one planet, live could begin not just once, but twice.
Of course, after implantation...
...there's again a risk of miscarriage, especially if the woman is relatively old. Globally, there are 130 million births every year, hence 460 million miscarriages (counted from conception, not implantation), versus 46 million abortions.