When do you believe human life starts?

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Originally posted by Gabriel:

And no a human is genreally defined by being an indepent human lifeform not how they feed but the fact that a embryo is fed by another being, means it is not indepented and therefore not alive.

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Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever given birth?
I have. Life begins at conception.

[ 03-03-2002: Message edited by: Moni ]

[Gabriel]

quote:

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Originally posted by Moni:


Have you ever been pregnant? Have you ever given birth?
I have. Life begins at conception.

[ 03-03-2002: Message edited by: Moni ]

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Ah, yes I made a mistake there, sorry. As stated in my first post, LIFE does exist a the point of conception and before it but an indivadal human being does not exist until after birth.
As for the first two questions, if I had been you could of been sure to read about it, what with it being the first male pregnancy and all.

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Originally posted by Gabriel:

an indivadal human being does not exist until after birth.

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That is where I disagree...a human embryo is human life from the moment of conception, through birth and into death. Every embryo is an individual.

[Epona]

This is one of those questions that I suspect people will never come to agree on!

Personally, my views are framed by the fact that I don't believe in souls - we are biological organisms, nothing more.

Life, as far as I am concerned, begins at birth - at that point when the infant can breathe independently. Before that first breath the foetus is not an independent being in its own right (although is alive).

I would be interested to hear views about contraception from people who believe life starts 'at conception' - the morning after pill for example, or the IUD (coil) which prevents a fertilised egg from embedding in the wall of the womb for development.

Someone raised an interesting question about life support - well I am all in favour of life support systems, incubators for premature babies, heart surgery etc. However, these are artificial means of sustaining life - naturally, a premature baby would be likely to die - so if I am in favour of these unnatural things to preserve life, I am also favour of unnatural things (abortion, contraception etc.) to give people a choice about when to conceive and carry a baby. Prior to many of the modern advances we have now, the natural method of contraception was starvation, which either prevented conception in the first place, or resulted in miscarriage, or high infant mortality (sadly this is still the case in many parts of the world). So I'm not in favour of letting nature (or God, if that is your belief) take its course because it is usually more gruesome than the alternatives - if we are artificially sustaining life, that must go hand in hand with responsible family planning.

[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Epona ]

[Durwyn]

oops. - EDIT-

[ 03-04-2002: Message edited by: Durwyn ]

[Evil Al]

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Originally posted by Larry_OHF:
The same is for an unborn baby. In fact, I beleive I have read reearch reports that prove that unborn babies have dreams. They did a brain scan and watched the charts and cpmared them to a person's dream state. Also, in REM sleep, our eyes dart back and forth. When the eyes of a baby are developed befoer birth, they have the same REM sleep.

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This is a very interesting thought, but what on earth would unborn babies dream of? They have no experience of the outside world. Unless of course you believe in reincarnation, you could say they dream of their past lives.

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Originally posted by Yorick
No you can't turn back the hands of time, but you can learn and grow from an experience, and then, by imparting that hard won knowledge, give others the chance to see the consequences of a decision.

I am truly sorry you carry this guilt, and hope you come to a point where you release it and accept your imperfections as part of your beauty. Positives in our negatives if you will.

I'm glad you had the opportunity to express your regret, your experience. For that may indeed help another human in time.

Thankyou Al.

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I also feel a bit better about expressing this guilt to people that will listen. It doesn't help that my parents lay on guilt about this at almost every opportunity. I think always being told that sex outside marriage is wrong, let alone abortion brought on most of this guilt.
Its getting better though, now I’m older and my parents don't force their faith on me. They no realise now that even though my religion is slightly different to theirs it is still "not too blasphemous" thus expectable (as long as I don't tell their friends or speak to their children about it).

[Epona]

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Originally posted by Evil Al:


I also feel a bit better about expressing this guilt to people that will listen. It doesn't help that my parents lay on guilt about this at almost every opportunity. I think always being told that sex outside marriage is wrong, let alone abortion brought on most of this guilt.
Its getting better though, now I’m older and my parents don't force their faith on me. They no realise now that even though my religion is slightly different to theirs it is still "not too blasphemous" thus expectable (as long as I don't tell their friends or speak to their children about it).

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That must be tough Al. If you can't feel able to relate your experiences it makes them more difficult to deal with.

[John D Harris]

I believe Human Life begins at the joining of spirit and body, no offense Espona. That joining takes place at fertiliaztion (did I get that $5 word spelled Right?) Human life ends when the spirit and body are seperated.

[Epona]

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Originally posted by John D Harris:
I believe Human Life begins at the joining of spirit and body, no offense Espona. That joining takes place at fertiliaztion (did I get that $5 word spelled Right?) Human life ends when the spirit and body are seperated.

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No offense at all - I appreciate everyone has different views on this, just because that's my view doesn't mean it's the only possibility

[Thoran]

Hi, this is the wife, David is off on the other side of the country. He told me to read all your posts, that I would find it interesting. That is am understatement!


Science lists criteria for life, including need to take nourishment, need to eliminate, procreation, etc. There is no separate criteria for humans. I guess my point here is that life begins when all the criteria are met. That would be when the egg is fertalized. But is that really the question here? It seems to me the question is more "when is life valued as human?" To humans, the 'higher reasoning' comes into play, thus creating the problem of identifying when 'life' begins. If we identify ourselves only on our reasoning, then are we human if that is not there? There are many humans who lack the ability to reason logically. Are they 'human'? Do they have a soul? There are animals which reason far beyond some humans (take a border collie, mountain gorilla, a macaw ) Which is more valid? If a fetus is not human until it is born and feeding is not the reason, than are test tube eggs human until they are placed in the womb, then are not until they are removed at term? When we have the technology to carry to term a fetus outside the mother, when does it become human?

Interesting stuff, thanks for making me think. Jen