Is a Human Zygote an Organism?

[palerider]

Being a parasite isn't evil. It's natural. Nature is filled with parasites. It's only gotten a negative vibe now cause right wing politicians are exaggerating the fact some work and others don't.

Unborns are not parasites...they exist in an obligatory dependent state for a while....parasites tend to spend their entire life cycle attached to their host.

 

[palerider]

Parasites invade the host. Babies do not seek into the womb.

There is a whole litany of valid scientific reasons that unborns are not parasites...it is a whole field of study and the reasons are to numerous to post because I don't have time to type such a long list... I gave seven reasons up in post #199....what is funny, in a very sad way is that fedor50 began this thread claiming that zygotes were not even organisms and now he is calling them parasites and I doubt that even someone as intellectually twisted as him could make the case that a parasite, even if that were what a zygote is, is not an organism....

In his biological ignorance he also misses the blatant fact that a zygote does not take anything at all from its mother...it is free floating and is living off the nutrients that were present in the egg. It will be well past the zygote stage of development before it implants and begins to use nutrients supplied by its mother. His argument is so fundamentally flawed that it would be funny if it were not an attempt to defend the largest genocide in human history.

 

[palerider]

Do you have a word for a member of the same species that acts as a parasite? Because I would be happy to use the proper word. If you don't, I will continue to say parasite, because it fits some but not all of the definitions including the two MEDICAL dictionaries that I quoted earlier. Meanwhile, it doesn't affect the point that a zygote cannot survive on its own and therefore cannot be called an individual.

You are a f'ing idiot...you know that? Tell me, how much nutrition does a zygote derive from its mother? Your obsession with zygotes, once again, is pointless because it isn't zygotes who are being aborted...ever. Zygotes don't derive any nutrition at all from their mothers...they are free floating and surviving on the nutrients that were present in the egg. We are well past the zygote stage before we are in danger of being killed by our mothers...

You started this idiotic thread claiming that zygotes are not organisms and now having failed to prove your point are calling them parasites which by any definition are, in fact organisms, while being completely unaware that zygotes in no way meet any definition of parasite because they are not attached to their mothers....they are not deriving anything at all other than their environment from their mothers. Your arguments are the same puerile, half witted, imbecilic, simple minded arguments that every other sociopathic pro choicer puts forward...a mile wide and mere nanometers deep. Go learn something.

 

[fedor50]

You are a f'ing idiot...you know that? Tell me, how much nutrition does a zygote derive from its mother? Your obsession with zygotes, once again, is pointless because it isn't zygotes who are being aborted...ever. Zygotes don't derive any nutrition at all from their mothers...they are free floating and surviving on the nutrients that were present in the egg. We are well past the zygote stage before we are in danger of being killed by our mothers...

You started this idiotic thread claiming that zygotes are not organisms and now having failed to prove your point are calling them parasites which by any definition are, in fact organisms, while being completely unaware that zygotes in no way meet any definition of parasite because they are not attached to their mothers....they are not deriving anything at all other than their environment from their mothers. Your arguments are the same puerile, half witted, imbecilic, simple minded arguments that every other sociopathic pro choicer puts forward...a mile wide and mere nanometers deep. Go learn something.

Pale Rider you have never heard my REAL reason and rational for being pro-choice.

I would say that if you were to scale pro-life and pro-choice on a 1-100 scale, with extreme pro-life being at 0 and extreme pro-choice being at 100, I am probably at 53. I could easily be swayed to the pro-life side. Here is how I would outline it:

At the moment of conception, it... whatever you want to call it, is a human. It's genetic structure matches that of everyone else of this species. Calling it anything other than a human, or denying that it is a human is dishonest. With that said, I think there is more to being an ORGANISM than simply having human dna and 46 chromosomes. You disagree with this.

I subscribe to the position that it becomes a person at the moment of consciousness, ability to survive independently (breathing, processing food, etc...), or both.

I do not take the fact that it is inside the woman into consideration of my position at all... unless the father's rights are considered equally.

I do take into consideration what will happen to the child in the future; in fact this is my main reason for leaning pro-choice.

It is human. It becomes an organism and person around 24-26 weeks (I believe). It has no rights. From the moment it becomes a person/organism, it is an individual, an my personal morality indicates that you are killing that person. Prior to that, you are not. Therefore, I am, OK with abortion prior to the moment it can exist as an individual.

What would change me to pro-life? Two things. Since my concern is exclusively for the well-being of the child, if the woman did not want the child, not only would all care for the pregnancy need to be paid for from an outside source, but there would need to be a positive environment for that child to go and live once it is born. No foster care, no orphanages. I have yet to see ANY pro-lifer (you included Pale Rider) offer a viable solution to how to care for all of these unwanted children. Since unwanted children are more likely to be subjected to abuse, neglect, or some of our less positive social systems, since I am primarily concerned with the well-being of the child, I adhere to the statement, "it's better to have a horrible ending, then to have horrors without an end." Better for it not to be born, then for it to live in misery.

Secondly, if there was some sort of conclusive evidence that it could live, independently, from conception, this could sway me, also... though it is not anywhere near as important as the first situation. The concern for the child is paramount.

So, there you have it Pale Rider.

 

[fedor50]

What else could it possibly be...and the whole abortion debate is about lazy irresponsible people wanting to do what they want to do without consequence to themselves, even if it means killing another human being to have what they want.

Pale Rider, according to the definition of organism a human zygote does not respond to stimuli. Environmental conditions, yes - but then, everything responds to environmental conditions; that's like saying paper 'responds' to heat by catching fire.

 

[Jason76]

Even if you accept some view that the more humanoid a being is, then the more we should pity it, you still run into problems. For instance, what would be the exact time when an unborn baby is human enough to see an abortion as murder? Given this situation, again, the best call is to view it murder if it occurs after conception.

 

[UEGxSeth]

There is a whole litany of valid scientific reasons that unborns are not parasites...it is a whole field of study and the reasons are to numerous to post because I don't have time to type such a long list... I gave seven reasons up in post #199....what is funny, in a very sad way is that fedor50 began this thread claiming that zygotes were not even organisms and now he is calling them parasites and I doubt that even someone as intellectually twisted as him could make the case that a parasite, even if that were what a zygote is, is not an organism....

In his biological ignorance he also misses the blatant fact that a zygote does not take anything at all from its mother...it is free floating and is living off the nutrients that were present in the egg. It will be well past the zygote stage of development before it implants and begins to use nutrients supplied by its mother. His argument is so fundamentally flawed that it would be funny if it were not an attempt to defend the largest genocide in human history.

I'm just going to quote from the end of the page here. I've been looking into the topic of abortion for a while now since middle school (now 17) and what I learned from school, by the very basic law of biogenesis we know that the offspring of two humans must be of the human species. It can't be a cat or a dog or a monkey or something. It has to be a human and nothing else. I also know that where you are doesn't determine what you are. A newborn human is a human just like I am a human. The newborn human is smaller then me, less developed then me, in a different location, and more dependent then me. We don't use any of those things to determine a entities species membership.

Anyways here is some information from my moms embryology textbooks that all agree that a human begins to live at fertilization.

''The scientific answer is that the embryo is a human from the time of fertilization because of it's human chromosomal constitution. The zygote is the beginning of a developing human.''

Keith L. Moore, T.V.N Persaud, Mark G. Torchia, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 8th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2013. p.327

“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct human individual.”

Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)

“A Humans life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote a new human'' (i.e., an embryo).”

Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.

“In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. … Fertilization takes place in the oviduct … resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point… This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development.

Essentials of Human Embryology, William J. Larsen, (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998), 1-17.

“The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.''

Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3

See how I put them in that order year wise from the newest to the oldest one I could find? For well over 40 years in the fields of biology, phylogeny, organism life, genetics-DNA, anthropology, human embryology are all in scientific consensus that the unborn are humans throughout all stages of development. You either are a human from the zygote stage or you never are. Nothing more to say to that.

That's the problem with some pro choice people (not all pro choicers) on the wing though, is that they can employ subterfuge in their argumentation, complete with sophistry, to blur the very real distinction in terms and to run from the biological reality that abortion kills a human (the noun obviously lol) everytime by hiding with the emotion of it via intellectualizing.

ONCE when pro choicers can accept the fact the unborn are humans just like the rest of us, the personhood debate can then finally begin. Should humans be considered persons based on what they are? Or should they be persons based on various mental characteristics like theory of mind, rationality, sense of self, functional IQ etc.

 

[palerider]

I subscribe to the position that it becomes a person at the moment of consciousness, ability to survive independently (breathing, processing food, etc...), or both.

So by your standard a child born with anencephaly is not a person....and does a person lose their personhood by your standard if they suffer a brain or bodily injury that makes them unable to "perform" to your standard?

It is human. It becomes an organism and person around 24-26 weeks (I believe). It has no rights. From the moment it becomes a person/organism, it is an individual, an my personal morality indicates that you are killing that person. Prior to that, you are not. Therefore, I am, OK with abortion prior to the moment it can exist as an individual.

It is A human at the time it comes into being....it can be nothing else and our constitution says that all of us are created equal...not born equal.

 

[palerider]

Pale Rider, according to the definition of organism a human zygote does not respond to stimuli. Environmental conditions, yes - but then, everything responds to environmental conditions; that's like saying paper 'responds' to heat by catching fire.

Of course it does...in fact it actually communicates chemically with its mother's body to prevent her immune system from attacking it....

 

[fedor50]

It is A human at the time it comes into being....it can be nothing else and our constitution says that all of us are created equal...not born equal.

Pale Rider you continue to ignore my point and evidence. According to the law an unborn is NOT a human being until it is born.

Human Being - Person - Individual Defined

[1 U.S. Code § 8 - “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant

Current through Pub. L. 113-100. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this section, the term “born alive”, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being “born alive” as defined in this section.


By the way “Human Being” is NOT a species so you are wrong about that as well.

 

[fedor50]

Of course it does...in fact it actually communicates chemically with its mother's body to prevent her immune system from attacking it....

Pale Rider an unborn does not respond to stimuli but none of this matters anyway since the people have already decided the issue - it becomes a human being when it's born

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

By the way Pale Rider, do you believe 9/11 was an inside job? https://www.houseofpolitics.com/threads/do-you-believe-9-11-was-an-inside-job.18760/#post-237692

Also who are you supporting for President of the United States? Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

 

[palerider]

Pale Rider you continue to ignore my point and evidence. According to the law an unborn is NOT a human being until it is born.

Human Being - Person - Individual Defined

[1 U.S. Code § 8 - “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant

Current through Pub. L. 113-100. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this section, the term “born alive”, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being “born alive” as defined in this section.


By the way “Human Being” is NOT a species so you are wrong about that as well.

You have no point...and you have no evidence...you have what you feel...and that's it...and your reference from the US code is post Roe...find yourself a copy of the US code prior to roe and see the difference...altering the law to protect the worst decision the supreme court ever made is hardly a stellar defense of the decision.

 

[palerider]

Pale Rider an unborn does not respond to stimuli but none of this matters anyway since the people have already decided the issue - it becomes a human being when it's born

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/8

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

Sorry guy...the "people" don't get to decide biological facts...and the biological fact is that we are human beings from the time we come into being...the people can twist the law to support genocide...which they have done throughout history...congratulations on your support of the worst genocide in the entirety of human history. You must be so proud...

 

[UEGxSeth]

Pale Rider you continue to ignore my point and evidence. According to the law an unborn is NOT a human being until it is born.

Human Being - Person - Individual Defined

[1 U.S. Code § 8 - “Person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual” as including born-alive infant

Current through Pub. L. 113-100. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

(a) In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person”, “human being”, “child”, and “individual”, shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

(b) As used in this section, the term “born alive”, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.

(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being “born alive” as defined in this section.


By the way “Human Being” is NOT a species so you are wrong about that as well.

Palerider is correct in saying that the unborn are humans throughout all stages of development. The unborn human can fit the definition of "a human BEING" depending on what definition of being is used. He is however, not interested in semantics.


You then go on to list what a few humans have to say on the matter that were put into office. Are you saying they're correct? If so, you should be able to defend there decision where they made it legal to kill humans in the earliest stages of their development.

 

[UEGxSeth]

Sorry guy...the "people" don't get to decide biological facts...and the biological fact is that we are human beings from the time we come into being...the people can twist the law to support genocide...which they have done throughout history...congratulations on your support of the worst genocide in the entirety of human history. You must be so proud...

Overall true. Some seem to think that people that were elected to a position of power should be allowed to twist and ignore science whenever they want. If that's true, then I guess those people would have no problem if those elected into office made infanticide legal and arbitrarily declared human infants "non humans" because they lack a functional IQ of 50 for example.