Is a Human Zygote an Organism?

[fedor50]

Games on top of games on top of lies...is that really all you have? According to the CDC, 600 women in the US die annually as the result of pregnancy or delivery complications with the majority of those being the result of delivery room complications...often due to the woman's own behavior...drugs, etc...So we have an actual 0.015% mortality rate for all causes related to pregnancy in the US...and liberally about 0.005 percent die as a result of the pregnancy itself. A much better argument could be made for never driving, or bathing, or changing light bulbs, or even getting out of bed.

Again Pale Rider, logic escapes your brain. You are comparing apples and ORANGES. All of the stuff that you named... "driving, or bathing, or changing light bulbs, or even getting out of bed" those are all CHOICES that human beings can decide to do. They CHOOSE to take a bath, or change a light bulk, or drive and with it, they accept all of the RISKS.

You are claiming that if a woman gets pregnant against her will (for example she gets raped) she would have to STAY pregnant AND accept (even though it is quite small) the RISK that her pregnancy causes her to DIE!

You simply CANNOT compare driving (an activity a person chooses to engage in and accept the risks) with a pregnancy resulting from a RAPE.

In one instance they are deciding themselves to risk their lives doing a particular activity but in another instance YOU ARE DECIDING FOR THEM.

And the whole tangent is meaningless as I have stated clearly and repeatedly that if her pregnancy is an imminent danger to her life, the woman has as much right to defend herself against a real and present threat as anyone else...

Again, many of these complications are unpredictable AND unpreventable and yet to stay say that these women should risk their lives against their own will.

Pregnancy in and of itself, however is not a credible threat....if you sit on your front porch, a higher percentage of passersby on the sidewalk are likely to kill you than a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman. Playing with numbers in a dishonest fashion is no more a credible argument than word games...it simply does not counter the hard scientific facts.

Again you compare apples and oranges. CHOOSING to sit on the front porch is FAR different than being FORCED AGAINST YOUR WILL to remain pregnant and risk your life.

And the fact remains that there is an 0.005 chance that any particular woman will die due to her pregnancy in the US...your argument is bullshit and again, if you are so concerned about the dangers of living to women, why not pick any of the literally hundreds of causes of death that are a greater danger to any woman living in the US today?

Because when have a say and choice in those matters... Unlike once a woman gets pregnant via raped and is FORCED to accept the risks and her life against her own will.

Should anyone be allowed to kill anyone else for reasons that need not amount to more than convenience to make your claim fair and balanced across society? If a woman is in imminent danger, she has the right to protect herself...she can no more justifiably kill someone who may be a threat to her life than you can....go out and shoot someone and tell the judge that there was a 0.005% chance that that person was going to kill you and you simply acted preemptively.....let me know how that works out for you...they allow death row inmates to write letters I believe.

Dying via pregnancy is nothing more than a matter of convenience?

Again, no matter what the stats are, a risk is STILL a risk. NO PERSON should have to forced to choose the risk of DYING for an accident (like getting raped) that they did not cause.

 

[palerider]

Again Pale Rider, logic escapes your brain. You are comparing apples and ORANGES. All of the stuff that you named... "driving, or bathing, or changing light bulbs, or even getting out of bed" those are all CHOICES that human beings can decide to do. They CHOOSE to take a bath, or change a light bulk, or drive and with it, they accept all of the RISKS.

Really? Getting run over on the sidewalk is a choice?

You are claiming that if a woman gets pregnant against her will (for example she gets raped) she would have to STAY pregnant AND accept (even though it is quite small) the RISK that her pregnancy causes her to DIE!

So now you are back to arguing that we kill a child for the crime of his father...What other crimes that adults commit should we allow children to be killed for other than rape, which by the way does not even carry a death sentence for the father.

This whole line of your argument is an appeal to emotion fedor...appeal to emotion is a logical fallacy....ever hear the term?....and you claim that logic has escaped my brain...your whole women are in danger argument falls to pieces under the actual numbers and then you pick an even more remote danger, but one which you believe you can gin up some emotional wattage on? F'ing pitiful feeder...f'ing pitiful.

Insofar as rape goes, the rate of pregnancy is about 1 pregnancy per 1000 rapes...and that is being generous in counting the theoretical numbers of unreported rapes....those women fall into the same pool as the rest of pregnancies in the US and are therefore equally likely to die as a result...care to try to calculate the extremely diminishing actual chance of dying as a result of pregnancy due to rape?....women are more likely to die from a tooth brushing accident.

Again...if you are so concerned for the safety of women...why pick a cause of death that is so vanishingly small that it would not appear on the top 1000 causes of death to women....and suggest that an acceptable remedy is an action that makes a woman 150 times more likely to die at her own hands than if she simply carried the pregnancy to term...isn't the trauma of rape enough.....now you want to add the greater trauma of actually killing a child to her psyche?

Again fedor...your argument is fallacious in every sense....the logical fallacy of appealing to emotion is one of the most juvenile of all the fallacies.

Again, many of these complications are unpredictable AND unpreventable and yet to stay say that these women should risk their lives against their own will.

The statistics speak for themselves....and they don't support your appeal to emotion...again, if you are so concerned for the safety of women....why pick a cause of death that is so remote and unlikely to any given woman...

Again you compare apples and oranges. CHOOSING to sit on the front porch is FAR different than being FORCED AGAINST YOUR WILL to remain pregnant and risk your life.

Jump up on that soapbox...work up a few crocodile tears...tug on those heartstrings....appeal to the very gods for mercy on women...it isn't going to change the fact that you are first, making a blatant appeal to emotion...and second, suggesting that it is fine to kill a child for the crime of his father....a crime which, by the way, even the father would not be condemned to death for if he were caught, charged, tried and convicted.


Your argument...all your arguments amount to a great steaming pile of BS fedor50...scientific and biological ignorance....misinformation....outright lies....logical fallacy....and pretending to care about womens' lives and safety by choosing a topic that is so far down the list of actual dangers to women to make your very attempt ridiculous....and the whole vast steaming pile completely ignores the fact that you are advocating the killing of human beings who are guilty of nothing more than existing....you advocate for killing them for reasons of convenience...and then advocate for killing them because they MIGHT, by some remote possibility represent less of a danger than passersby on the street which you are not advocating that we kill.

Your argument is dead fedor50...be a grown up and admit it and move on. How far are you willing to drag your intellect through the sewer for the sake of a fallacious, failed argument based on nothing more than bullshit?

 

[palerider]

How about it fedor50...answer the question. If you have a genuine concern for women and their health issues, why have you chosen a topic that is so far removed from actual danger to women that it would not even make the top 100? Someone who is as clearly "concerned" about the health issues of women should be addressing the real world dangers to women before the imaginary over blown dangers of a pro choice wacko....don't you think?

 

[nytegeek]

Pro-either side wackos don't add anything usefull to the discussion of women's health.

 

[fedor50]

How about it fedor50...answer the question. If you have a genuine concern for women and their health issues, why have you chosen a topic that is so far removed from actual danger to women that it would not even make the top 100? Someone who is as clearly "concerned" about the health issues of women should be addressing the real world dangers to women before the imaginary over blown dangers of a pro choice wacko....don't you think?

Pale Rider, you still have MUCH to learn. Here the FACTS just in case you are unaware:

It is a FACT that SOME women every single year (no matter how small) DIE! that means death, the END of their existence.

It is a FACT that most of these women every year WILL die under your law since these deaths are unpredictable and unpreventable.

So let me ask you this...

What exactly do YOU say to all of these women's family members?

What EXACTLY do you tell them?

Honestly answer that question and then replay it back into your mind.

The truth? There is NOTHING you can actually say to their family since (according to you) their deaths were only a small statistic and was unlikely to happen.

[Shaking my head in disbelief]....

 

[palerider]

Pro-either side wackos don't add anything usefull to the discussion of women's health.

That's because the discussion isn't about women's health...it is about people wanting to do whatever they want to do and avoid the responsibility, and consequences of doing whatever they want to do.....including killing inconvenient human beings.

 

[palerider]

Pale Rider, you still have MUCH to learn. Here the FACTS just in case you are unaware:

We all do fedor....and what makes me smarter than you is that I know it and go about learning as much as I can whether it agrees with my feelings or not....you only look for information that makes you feel good...and reject whatever disagrees with your personal politics...that practice leaves you largely ignorant, and eternally losing no matter what the topic....my position is based on the facts...nothing more. At one time, I was a fence sitter on the topic...and didn't care one way or another. The hard undeniable, unimpeachable facts brought me down off the fence to where my position is today...and the more I have debated this topic, and seen the abject bullshit arguments people on the pro choice side put up, the more solid my position becomes....in order to move me to another position, all one need do is put up a more powerful argument than my own..

Obviously, in reviewing all the conversation I have participated in on the topic, neither you, nor any other pro choicer has come close....why?...because your arguments are bullshit.

It is a FACT that SOME women every single year (no matter how small) DIE! that means death, the END of their existence.

So what number are we talking about? Aside from the fact that your arguments on the biology of human development are bullshit and chock full of misinformation, ignorance and plain old lies, here is where the actual power of the argument becomes evident. Are we talking about 125 women, 75 women? How many in any given year? That number is up for discussion....how many actually? Does it even begin to approach the million plus human beings who are killed by abortion every year? How many people are you willing to kill to save the lives of....what?....125?....75.....50?....some very small unknown statistic? You would have been better to remain in your ignorance discussing biology.

Since you never even came close to demonstrating that an unborn, at any stage of development was anything other than a human being, you are now here trying to argue killing 100% of one group to save a diminishingly small number of lives in another group. Epic failure on your part....you have to win stage one of the argument in order to have any success at all in stage 2....especially when we are talking about killing human beings.

If you are willing to kill a million to save a number of people who are very nearly statistically insignificant, how many would you be willing to kill to save a significant number of women?...say the number of women who die of breast cancer?.....or heart disease? If we scale the numbers, it would seem that you would be willing to kill billions....is that true?

It is a FACT that most of these women every year WILL die under your law since these deaths are unpredictable and unpreventable.

It is a fact that you are taking about killing one million human beings in the US alone in order to save the lives of....what is the actual number?....125?...75?...50?...15? We are, after all, not talking about all pregnant women...only the number who want to have abortions which considering the number of abortions is a good bit smaller than the number of live births.

How do you justify killing a million plus human beings in order to save what might amount to 100 lives?...and would you be willing to do the same to address the causes of death that pose an actual statistically significant risk to every woman?

What exactly do YOU say to all of these women's family members?

Same thing I say to you....how many people would you have been willing to kill in order to save her life?....if she had heart disease...would you have been willing to kill to get her a new heart?...if she had lung cancer...would you have been willing to kill another human being to get her a new lung...or a kidney...or a liver? Are you willing to kill to get her a second chance at living with a disease that you know is statistically likely to kill her?....now, would you be willing to kill to save her life in a situation where her chance of dying is almost statistically insignificant?

Honestly answer that question and then replay it back into your mind.

I have...a thousand times and I come up with the same answer...now you answer the question....how many human beings are you willing to kill to save a nearly statistically insignificant number of lives? Exactly how many....so far, in a worst case scenario, you are advocating killing about 15,000 to save 1. The flaw in your argument is that you are working based on a completely unproven assumption that unborns are not human beings....you lost that argument....you failed abjectly at proving that they were anything other than human beings, so either you are arguing from ignorance, not being smart enough to realize that you lost part one of the discussion....or you are arguing from a lie, pretending that you didn't lose part one of the discussion, or you are arguing from the mindset of a sociopath who really believes that it is fine to kill millions of human beings in order to save a vanishingly small few. So which is it?

The truth? There is NOTHING you can actually say to their family since (according to you) their deaths were only a small statistic and was unlikely to happen.

The truth is that few, other than sociopaths would have any answer at all to the response I offered above, and the majority, would actually agree with me if they were forced to acknowledge that the unborn is an actual, living human being, rather than take the sociopathic view that a human being isn't a human being and therefore can be disposed of if it is inconvenient.

[Shaking my head in disbelief]....

Shaking my head over your abject ignorance, and the fact that you might be a sociopath walking around free. Do you have any idea how poorly you have performed in this discussion? Can you even begin to see how badly you have lost? Does losing this badly move you in your position even one small bit? Of course it doesn't, because the actual facts mean very little to you. You hold an emotional position for whatever reason and can't bring yourself to acknowledge the actual facts. In your mind, as horrific as it is, you really are willing to kill a million plus human beings in order to save a hundred or so....and you can't see what a monster that makes you....and the fact that you shake your head over someone who sees the facts and thinks it is unjustifiable to kill a million plus lives to possibly save a hundred or so makes you all the more ugly.

Now that is head shaking material.

 

[nytegeek]

That's because the discussion isn't about women's health...it is about people wanting to do whatever they want to do and avoid the responsibility, and consequences of doing whatever they want to do.....including killing inconvenient human beings.

I'm sure you fell emboldened by what you view as moral high ground, but that doesn't make you right.

 

[palerider]

I'm sure you fell emboldened by what you view as moral high ground, but that doesn't make you right.

The facts are what make me right....what I "feel" is as irrelevant as what you "feel".

 

[nytegeek]

The facts are what make me right....what I "feel" is as irrelevant as what you "feel".

You have posted opinions of facts, but not really anything that shows you to be more correct than your opposition. Facts are not something that you decide to be true based on ideals or personal philosophy. That is opinion.

 

[palerider]

You have posted opinions of facts, but not really anything that shows you to be more correct than your opposition. Facts are not something that you decide to be true based on ideals or personal philosophy. That is opinion.

Do feel free to bring any errors my part forward for discussion. I don't interpret as my opposition quite often does, and apparently you do. The facts need no interpretation...they speak for themselves. Everything I have posted shows me to not only be more correct than my opposition, but to be patently correct...and my opposition to be patently wrong....but again, if you think I have made some error, by all means bring it, or them forward and we can take another look.

 

[nytegeek]

Do feel free to bring any errors my part forward for discussion. I don't interpret as my opposition quite often does, and apparently you do. The facts need no interpretation...they speak for themselves. Everything I have posted shows me to not only be more correct than my opposition, but to be patently correct...and my opposition to be patently wrong....but again, if you think I have made some error, by all means bring it, or them forward and we can take another look.

I will get into some points and counter points when I have more time. I have to be honest, I do appreciate your engagement and that you try to add to the discussion even if I don't agree all the time.

 

[palerider]

I will get into some points and counter points when I have more time. I have to be honest, I do appreciate your engagement and that you try to add to the discussion even if I don't agree all the time.

"Counter points" does not sound like a response to the factual errors you seemed to be claiming that I made....counter point sounds like the sort of tripe that fedor50 was shoveling in an attempt to get around the undeniable facts....but I look forward to seeing what you have, anyway.

 

[nytegeek]

I do not believe that abortion is something that should occur, but I am neither pro-life nor pro-choice. I also am not going to step in and interfere with somebody choosing to have or perform an abortion, but I am not pro-choice. As I read through this topic and do research online for some upcoming responses I need to write I am discovering that things are not necessarily the way I previously thought they were. There are responses I need to prepare for what I believed to be factual errors, when in fact I was just responding to my perceived interpretation of those facts by the writer without realizing it.

What I have found is that there are multiple issues within this topic that do have middle ground not recognized by either pro-choice or pro-life groups and that the labels of pro-choice and pro-life are not wholly accurate. I do not like the idea of abortion but you can not accurately call me pro-life, there are circumstances in which not allowing abortion or even allowing it preserves one life in favor of another. You are not pro-life if you come down on either side of the issue. It is a bad label.

Many pro-choice people would trample on the choices and freedoms of others to protect what they believe and can not accurately be called pro-choice. The issue isn't about choice in the way some would have you believe. In many cases, though not all, it is about choice after making poor choices beforehand. People that want a redo.

This isn't just a political or moral topic with a simple for or against answer to pick from. It is a philosophical matter. Philosophy is simply put, stepping back from a topic and determining what you believe to be the right way to think about it. I'm still doing that.

It is a much more complex issue than the title of the topic. There is more to it regardless of whether a zygote is an organism or not. Deciding a stance based on the status of a zygote or any other single and simple point is just reductive and not useful.

 

[palerider]

I do not believe that abortion is something that should occur, but I am neither pro-life nor pro-choice.

In the legal world, silence implies content....therefore you are pro choice.

I also am not going to step in and interfere with somebody choosing to have or perform an abortion, but I am not pro-choice.

Do you also believe that it is improper for the law to step in regarding....oh lets say a parent strangling her 3 year old?....and again, your stance makes you clearly pro choice....since you believe you have no right to oppose a parent killing her child for reasons that rarely rise above the level of inconvenience, you clearly content to the act and therefore are pro choice.

As I read through this topic and do research online for some upcoming responses I need to write I am discovering that things are not necessarily the way I previously thought they were. There are responses I need to prepare for what I believed to be factual errors, when in fact I was just responding to my perceived interpretation of those facts by the writer without realizing it.

I am confident that everything I have stated regarding the biology of human development is factually accurate and unassailable by any claims to the contrary, but feel free to try. I have researched the topic in depth for decades and the more I learn, the more wrong and indefensible the pro choice position becomes.

What I have found is that there are multiple issues within this topic that do have middle ground not recognized by either pro-choice or pro-life groups and that the labels of pro-choice and pro-life are not wholly accurate.

Of course the term pro choice is not accurate, but the true name, "pro killing children because we want to do what we want without consequence to ourselves" is to unpalatable for them to ever speak....pro life is an accurate name since we are opposed to killing children for reasons that rarely amount to more than convenience.

I do not like the idea of abortion but you can not accurately call me pro-life, there are circumstances in which not allowing abortion or even allowing it preserves one life in favor of another. You are not pro-life if you come down on either side of the issue. It is a bad label.

Of course you can't be accurately called pro life....it would bet a blatant lie to call you pro life.... You don't "like" abortion, and yet, you consent to it by your silence...quite the indefensible philosophical position. The use of the word "like" or "not like" in relation to killing children for reasons that rarely amount to more than convenience says all that need be said about how much real thought you have put into your position because anything approaching deep thought might make you uncomfortable with your position. After all, standing by silently while millions of children are butchered is not a desirable position to be in....which is why there is so much misinformation, misunderstanding, and outright lying on the topic...Who wants to know full well and admit in their own mind that they condone the killing of children?..other than sociopaths of course.

Many pro-choice people would trample on the choices and freedoms of others to protect what they believe and can not accurately be called pro-choice. The issue isn't about choice in the way some would have you believe. In many cases, though not all, it is about choice after making poor choices beforehand. People that want a redo.

Pro choice is pro killing children and one would expect sociopaths to trample over anyones rights without thought. And we all make poor choices in our lives...then we are faced with more choices...those being how we are going to live with the consequences of our choices....killing children in an effort to avoid living with those consequences is....quite simply....sociopathic behavior.

This isn't just a political or moral topic with a simple for or against answer to pick from. It is a philosophical matter. Philosophy is simply put, stepping back from a topic and determining what you believe to be the right way to think about it. I'm still doing that.

Of course it is a moral topic...one human being killing another is always a moral topic. You have some interesting psychology going on there...how much thought do you require to know whether you believe killing a child because it is inconvenient is right or wrong?

It is a much more complex issue than the title of the topic. There is more to it regardless of whether a zygote is an organism or not. Deciding a stance based on the status of a zygote or any other single and simple point is just reductive and not useful.

It is as simple as a topic can be...we, are, at any stage of our development, undeniably human beings....there is no factual biological argument to the contrary. If you believe that you were at some point in your life something other than a human being, exactly what species do you believe you were....the only way you could not be a human being would be to have been a member of some other species than homo sapiens sapiens....which species might you have been if not homo sapiens sapiens?

Arguing that a human being, is not a human being is avoidance of the issue in the greatest degree. And arguing about zygotes is the most useless argument in the whole topic as zygotes are never aborted....even plan b does not abort zygotes....children have proceeded well beyond the zygote stage by the time they are aborted. The issue is not complex at all...it is a fact that at any stage of our development we are human beings, therefore, unborns at any stage of development are human beings...therefore abortion is killing a human being.

The only complexity in the issue for you is under what circumstances to you believe it is acceptable for one human being to kill another. For me, that issue is easy...when one is an imminent threat to the life of the other, killing is acceptable. That position doesn't leave me hanging out in some gray area at any time in either one of the two people's lives....from the first moment they come into existence till they are old and crumbling....if they are an imminent threat to someone else's live, then that other has the legal and moral right to kill them.

Now if you believe it is ok to kill them when they are very young, but must change your position based on their age, and level of development, then you are in an indefensible philosophical position...arguing that it is ok to kill these, because they are very young, but not ok to kill those because they are a few years, or months, or weeks, or minutes older leaves arguing from the position of a sociopath. Either you think it is ok for one human being to kill another for practically any reason at all or you don't....that is the extent of the complexity of the topic...anything else is rationalization...and consent.