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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: Re: Abortion and the taking of life.
Message-ID: <156@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Nov-84 17:37:41 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.156
Posted: Mon Nov 26 17:37:41 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 04:25:46 EST
References: <124@sdcc12.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley friesen)
Distribution: net
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 48
Summary: 

In article <124@sdcc12.UUCP> wa371@sdcc12.UUCP (wa371) writes:
>
>     If abortion is not murder when it does not involve the taking of life
>then someone please tell me when life begins.  (Facts only, no
>quotes from the Bible, or other *belief* systems, please!!)
>Since both the sperm and the ovum are alive even before joining, the
>beginning of life is not at conception either.  To place it there
>is as arbitrary as placing it anytime after (or before) conception.  It seems
>that the beginning of life for everyone who has existed or is yet to be
>conceived was in the primordial soup billions of years ago.

    A valid point, in fact one of the sharpest and most clear-cut transitions
in the reproductive process is the release of the ovum from the ovary,
which is quite literally explosive(at a small scale).  It is at this point
that the potential human being ceases to be merely another cell in the mother's
body and becomes a nutritional independant "organism"(at least for awhile).
    In fact fertilization is less than mest people think it to be, since the
genetic material contributed by the father is *not* expressed immediately,
but only after several hours.   In fact the early stages of developement
can be stimulated physically or chemically, *without* any sperm, and
it will procede normally until the point in time at which the father's
genome is normally expressed.

>     Therefore, If the taking of any life is murder:
>          Any abortion is murder.
>          Any form of birth control is murder, because the sperm
>               and the ovum will die without joining.
>          Any woman is a murderess if she does not stay pregnant.
>          Every man is a murderer because most of the sperm that 
>               he produces will die anyway.
>          Wet dreams are mass murder.
>          Celibacy is murder.
>Therefore we are all murderers.
>     So, the best we can do is to minimize the murdering.
>An unwanted child will be (emotionally) murdered
>countless times in his/her lifetime.  Is that better than one *early*
>abortion?
>Bernd

    The above is good - one problem, the definition of murder is *not*
"the taking of any (human) life", but rather the taking of human life
*unlawfully*, either according to some moral code or civil law.

      Therfor the argument boils down to: At which arbitrary dividing
line should the moral/legal concept of murder be made appplicable.
As has been pointed out several times now, *all* dividing lines during
the reproductive process are arbitrary, since all biological processes
are intrinsically gradual, and generally grade into one another.