Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site psivax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!psivax!friesen 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.