“I assert that the ovum is not any more a person the moment after it is fertilized, than it is the moment before it is fertilized, and not any less alive the moment before fertilization, than the moment after.”

I agree that the making of “life” is a gradual process, and the sperm and ovum are both alive before fertilization, and then they begin a new journey together afterward. If we all agree that an ameoba is alive, although it is very small and lives deep in the ocean, it would seem strange from a biological standpoint to say that a fertilized human egg is NOT alive, just because it lives in a woman’s womb.

Jude said, “Conception is only just one step in the nine month process.”

This is true.

Jude said, “And so I’m going to have to agree with God on this debate, we become a living Soul or a person, when we breath that first breath into our “nostrils” at birth.” “

Well, I like the fact that she has changed the discussion to when we “become a living soul or a person,” because I actually think that’s more relevant to when life begins. I i hope her argument about God breath breath “into our nostrils” will allow religious people to sleep better at night, even as necessary abortions continue to exist.

But, I tend to think there is a moral point at which a woman may find, giving her good consideration to all of the circumstances, that the kicking of her viable baby and its evident life within her overcome in her mind her desire to have done with it at the first possible opportunity.

As a political matter, the insistence that all fetuses should be subject to abortion regardless of how large and developed they are is likely to cause such revulsion toward those who insist in this that they lose the ability to reason with much of the public. However, I tend to agree that it is the pregnant woman who should make these decisions, and society should provide the medical, social and financial support, as well as education, that make the decision to abort less necessary.

Moreover, our goal as a society – through education and family planning – should be that no babies are conceived that will not be welcomed into the world.

I loved Francis’ comment. It was wonderfully written, thought provoking, and poignant.

I pretty much agree with Rikyrah on this.

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Isaiah 42:5 Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:

Ezekiel 37:5 Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: &10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.

Job 33:4 The Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.

Acts 17:25 he giveth to all, life and breath, and all things.

Genesis 6:17 And behold I, even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

Genesis 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

Psalm 104:29 Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.

Jeremiah 10:14 ?.every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.

1 Kings 17: 17 and it came to pass after these things, that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick; and his sickness was so sore, that there was no breath left in him.
&21 And he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried unto the Lord, and said, O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again. &23?..and Elijah said, see, thy son liveth.

Job 9:18 He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule. The Bible tells us in Luke 1:41-44 that John the Baptist leaped in the womb for joy when he heard that Jesus had been conceived. So not only was Mr. Baptist aware of the whole sacrificial lamb plan from fetus hood, he also had extraordinary under water hearing. However he was able to know as a fetus, he was definitely the exception. Just like Elijah who was so Holy he got to by pass death and go to heaven in a chariot of fire. All the rest of us have to live and die by the rules, which clearly are breath or no breath, according to the Bible.
Christians however do not own the exclusive rights to morality. In this 21st century there is a growing culture who have come to embrace morality as a human imperative that stands alone outside of any religious doctrine or dictate. Much like Socrates, if we are not looking to God to dictate our morality, then we must reason with ourselves. But we have another advantage over Aristotle. Modern science shows us how human procreation takes place. It mostly happens inside a woman’s uterus. Her body creates an ovum. Once it is fully formed in about 28 days, it is released to reside in the uterus. Even though modern science has proven that the ovum is truly and verdantly alive, it will not grow into a
person unless it is fertilized. Because the ovum alone and by itself cannot grow into a person, some assert that life begins at the time of fertilization or conception. But is it truly a person?
Or does it remain just as dependent on many more processes of development, just as fully alive as an unfertilized ovum but equally as not yet a person until all of the developmental stages are completed and it emerges into the world and begins to live and breath on its own. I assert that the ovum is not any more a person the moment after it is fertilized, than it is the moment before it is fertilized, and not any less alive the moment before fertilization, than the moment after. Conception is only just one step in the nine month process. And so I’m going to have to agree with God on this debate, we become a living Soul or a person, when we breath that first breath
into our “nostrils” at birth. So I plead with all people of reason. Let us stop the eroding of our bill of Rights. Let us leave the responsibility of the breath of life in the hands of God, and the private choice to host or not to host, right where it is now, the responsibility of women, who bear the entire consequences on their health and body.

We as a (global) society when discussing abortion largely focus on the act itself.

But what about the circumstances and issues that create situations where abortion becomes a viable option?

I think there needs to be more of a focus on sex education (no, not that nonsense we got in health class), a real effort to promote dialogue about sexual health issues.

There should also be more attention payed to the well being, emotional and physical well-being of children dysfunctional families. I don’t pretend know what the statistics are on pregnancies by victims of incest and molestation. But I think that trying to tackle these issues, are nonetheless important.

Yes, going micro and looking at families and other factors that lead to situations where abortion is the most attractive option for a woman,is more difficult than debating abortion in and of itself. But it is key in at least lowering the number of abortions (legal or otherwise) that happen.

The question shouldn’t be when does life begin, but rather how do we provide/garantee a certain quality of life for all.

This means women need to be in control of when they have sex and with whom, in control of contraception (but not bear the entire burden of it), in control of the choice to terminate a pregnancy as well as in control of the choice to continue one even if she is poor, ill, or the father does not want a baby.

The right to all kinds of reproductive health care, and make no mistake, medical and surgical abortions are HEALTH CARE – whatever you think of abortion, is a moral right for both women and men.

For too long women (and women of the African diaspora) have not had implicit or explicit control of our bodies. Moralizing abortion, considering it outside of health care, and stigmatizing women who make the choice to end a pregnancy are parts of the problem.

Yes, we can all agree that abortion should be rare, but it will NEVER, EVER be non-existent. We may disagree as to when a new life truly takes hold, and we may mourn those lives which never come to fruition, but the real, tangible lives of women must be put first.

Women are not merely vessels through which more life comes. We are mothers, sisters, wives, friends, lovers, workers, bosses, politicians, teachers…PEOPLE. People upon whom society rests its collective head, from whom we get our food, our companionship, our values, our consumer goods. They deserve, WE deserve to have control over what happens to our bodies.

Anything less is immoral.

Last Thursday, while I was riding the subway I saw a statistic about black children. The AD stated that there were almost 50% as many children aborted as had been born. This ad was by an anti-abortion group. I was incensed, because the first impression I got was this is another case for saying black women are more sexual than any other race. When I got to a computer and looked up the state statistics it was almost as large,40%, as the add had said. Then, I was pissed off, because I wanted to know why were these many women getting pregnant. Our rate was larger than any other group. I couldn’t see it all being a failure of birth control, bad circumstances or health.
It seems there is a schizophrenic attitude about sex in the black community and also a lot of mythology. When does life begin is a philosophical issue doesn’t deal with the issue of why we have abortions and doesn’t deal with the life ending HIV virus.

Would I personally have an abortion? Outside of rape, I don’t believe I would. If I were raped, absolutely. I will not perpetuate my violation by carrying to term the child of the man who attacked me. Never.

I sympathize with the man who wants the child and the woman doesn’t. But, all things aren’t fair in this world, and in 98% of the cases, the responsbility for the child is placed upon the mother. So, whatever is best for her is what I’m willing to live with as a society.

We don’t help women with children after they get here, so if a woman has honestly assessed her situation and says that she simply cannot handle that responsibility, it’s not up to me to tell her that she’s wrong and force her to do it.

If doctors and medical researchers were so foolish and blind by ideology as to believe that babies were not “alive” in the womb, then they would also have to conclude that efforts to preserve the lives of the fetuses – efforts like prenatal care – were inappropriate. Why would we “care” for something that is not alive? As a matter of well-known biology, human life begins begins before conception, with sperms and ova.

The tricky part is when we try to draw political conclusions from scientific observations. Does the fact that my sperm are “alive” mean that I should be imprisoned for masturbating and killing thousands of sperms at once? Have I committed genocide? Should women be compelled to conceive to prevent ALL of the eggs in their ovaries from dying, which would compel them to give birth hundreds of times during their lifetime?

Obviously, the question of whether abortion is wrong cannot turn on whether pre-born life is “alive” or not. When posed in that way, that’s a rhetorical argument, not scientific question that can be answered with scientific inquiry. The science itself is already clear.

Once we accept that life begins when the individual cells of the sperm and ova begin separately to multiply (or even before, perhaps) then we realize that the question of abortion must be decided on other grounds, because that scientific inquiry and established facts do not and cannot compel answer the essential moral and ethical questions involved here:

In what cases should society tell women (and men) what to do with what is inside of them, for example, sperm, ova, and fetuses, but also including testicles and ovaries? Counting the baby’s age from the average of the birth of the sperms and the birth of the ova, at what age, or at what point in the baby’s growth, should society tell a woman how to treat the fetus?

Most of us agree that once the baby passes through the birth channel and enters the operating room and begins to breath, his life must receive all of the protections that any other living human person does. Our laws are clear on that point.

But, before the point of “birth,” when the fetus is capable of living independently were s/he liberated for the womb, there remains considerable debate as to whether s/he should be offered the opportunity to do so. I think most of us would also agree that there is very little moral difference between killing a child that is two minutes out of the womb and killing a child that is two minutes from being born. Yet, there are some people who say that a woman has a right to an unquestioned right to an abortion, even if she runs to the family planning clinic at the last minute, racing the baby to see whether she can kill him before s/he is born alive and becomes her lifelong responsibility. There are virtually no cases where that occurs in practice, but it is worth mentioning the possibility to demonstrate that even those of us who believe we are solidly pro-abortion have limits to what we can morally stomach.

I also believe that very few people are really “pro-abortion” just as very few people are “pro-suicide.” No one gets pregnant for the express purpose of having an abortion, just like no one intentionally becomes depressed for the joy of subsequently committing suicide.

No one says, “I am glad that I am pregnant because now I can have an abortion.” No one says, “I am glad that I am alive, because otherwise I would not have this opportunity to kill myself.” No one is really “pro-abortion” or “pro-suicide.” We are not in favor of abortion in the abstract. Those of us who insist on the continued existence of the legal and medical option of abortion do so because we believe that, among the alternatives that present themselves, there are cases when abortion is the best among a group of bad alternatives.

We are in favor of each person having the right and assuming the responsibility to make the best decision they can under the circumstances that present themselves, with respect to their sexual organs and the fruits of their sexual organs, for at least so long as those fruits remain within our bodies.

Is that right? If I am two months pregnant, does the fact that the fetus resides inside of me give me the right to intentionally and knowingly and purposefully modify the DNA of my fetus so that it will have one eye in the middle of its forehead, or two horns and a tail, or so that it will be born and live mentally retarded? Once I decide that the baby will be born at all, don’t I have some responsibilities to that baby even when s/he is inside the womb? Don’t fetuses have rights at least against knowing and willful acts done intentionally for the purpose of destroying what lives they can have after they are born?

(My wife thought this example was too absurd to be included here, and yet I do so to demonstrate that all freedoms and liberties must, at least morally and ethically, be recognized to have some limits.)

Our obligations to each other are first moral and ethical ones, that we sometimes decide to legislate into legal obligations. One of the requirements of criminal law is that the acts we are forbidden to take must be clear to us beforehand, so that we know what behavior may result in loss of life or liberty. Criminal laws are designed and intended to define and delineate for society those acts that society believes to be so clearly wrong that they are impermissible. And this is why abortion must not be outlawed: The situations in which abortion is clearly wrong and clearly appropriate are too fact-specific for any one law (or compendium of laws and exceptions) to apply to all or even most cases.

For example, a friend of mine who is a church-going conservative evangelist told me that she is unalterably anti-abortion. So, I recounted to her the situation in which my grandmother and grandfather found themselves when my grandmother was pregnant with her sixth child. My grandmother was sedated in the delivery room when the doctor informed my grandfather, “I can save your wife, the mother of your five children, or I can save the baby, but not both.” The doctor asked my grandfather to choose between the life of the mother and the life of the infant.

Astoundingly, my grandfather chose the life of the infant, just as all those who are unalterably anti-abortion would be compelled by their abstract beliefs to do, were they to follow their logic to its ultimate conclusion in this particular case. In many countries, and even in the United States, it is still all too common for women to die in childbirth or as a result of continued pregnancy (e.g. preclampsia).

We are morally outraged that my grandfather would choose the life of the infant over the life of the mother of his five children, and yet this would seem to be required by a position that always rejects abortion, regardless of the circumstances. And so even the most rigidly anti-abortion among us are compelled to admit that the morality of abortion – the rightness and wrongness of abortion – is sometimes situationally specific.

It is precisely because the morality of abortion depends upon the particular circumstances – the varied multiplicity of circumstances that confront human beings everywhere – that I believe that abortion ought not be illegal. Instead, we must rely on information, education and moral suasion to compel men and women to make the best decisions with respect to their own sexual organs and what resides inside of them.

As individuals, we also can refuse to accept employment and participate in activities that would compel us to engage in behavior that we believe is morally wrong.

We must limit certain procedures involving the fetus; intentional acts taken for the purpose of causing fetal abnormalities (retardation, horns and tail) should be illegal, because they would burden the life of the fetus after he is born, and for so long as s/he lives, and so such procedures would exceed the SELF-determined authority of the individual to control his/her own sexual organs.

In the case of my grandmother, the doctor thankfully did that which he believed to be consistent with morality and reason and my grandmother’s “informed consent” to her medical treatment: the doctor saved the life of my grandmother, even though this compelled him to terminate the life of the unborn fetus. I approve of the decision that the doctor made, with my grandmother’s informed consent. Thankfully, they properly had the legal freedom and obligation that we all must have to such decisions, on a case by case basis, based on the circumstances that present themselves.

Lol, Asa, another point where we will disagree is in your comment when you said that it is dehumanisation. I would not see it like that because I believe that the foetus is still developing prior to the 24weeks until one can have an abortion in Britain anyway so I don’t think you are dehumanising if you are choosing to have an abortion.
Congratulations again Asa and keep us up to date!.
Aulelia