(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Going off on a comment in the NYTimes, with apologies. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-28 @AKJersey - perhaps it was a recognition of the biological reality that a new member of the human species comes into existence at the moment of conception, and that the denial of personhood and legal protection to such a human being inherently threatens the life and rights of any human being who is small, dependent, weak, or burdensome. I felt it necessary to respond, and to share my response here. Casual Observer, Western US @James The "biological reality" is that a potential new individual has come into existence, but that potential is not realized until the point where the new entity can survive after being separated from the mother. Most living things reproduce by laying eggs or scattering seeds or spores (look up "r reproductive strategy"). Even so, most of those eggs, seeds, or spores never result in a full-grown individual member of the species. Mammels have adopted a different reproductive strategy (look up "K reproductive strategy") - where more energy is focused on fewer offspring (it might be argued that males continue the r reproductive strategy whereas placental females follow the K reproductive strategy.) However, there is still a considerable attrition of embryos at the early stages. Roughly 2/3 of human embryos do not make it to day 5 (the blastocyst stage). If "life" begins at conception (fertilization), then 2/3 have died in the first week. It is reasonable to try to define the point on a developmental continuum where the interests of society should intrude on the interests of the mother regarding the developing fetus. One thing is clear: the moment of fertilization is not that point, regardless of the intensely-held religious beliefs of a loud minority of people. Let me reiterate: the biological reality is that far more seeds, eggs, and embryos never survive to become an individual, regardless of what you believe. I reached the character limit for that NYTimes response, but thought it might be worthwhile expanding on my thoughts. And with recent exhortations for kossaks to write more, I thought I might give it a try here. I’ve always wondered at the notion that “life” begins at “conception”. Are the egg and the sperm that fertilizes it not “living” cells? Are the eggs that are never fertilized or all the sperm that never fertilize an egg not living? What the purveyors of the notion that “life begins at conception” are really suggesting is that “the life of an individual human begins at conception”. I agree with them that conception is a necessary step in the creation of a new human individual, but it is neither the first step, nor is it the last necessary step. Rather, the creation of a new human individual is a process that is better thought of as a continuum with lots of necessary steps and lots of places where the process aborts for one reason or another. At this point, I want to separate myself from the human-centric perspective of the purveyors of the “life begins at conception” crowd. There is nothing special about humans in this process. Humans are living beings just like sea urchins, cockroaches, blue-green algae, dogs, and (begrudgingly) cats. The human-centric perspective is a thinly-veiled conceit derived from outmoded religious notions. Even a brief peep into the sciences of embryology and comparative anatomy will show that humans are no different from any other vertebrate in the development from a fertilized egg to an independently-living individual. I think that we need to challenge the religious conceit about when “life” begins and to replace it with an argument about when society has a legitimate interest in intruding on the private choices of the mother. We need to counter the fallacious arguments with facts: On the order of 1/4-2/3 of human embryos do not live to 5 days and are spontaneously aborted (see www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/..., for example) For embryos that do survive for 4 weeks, somewhere between 12% and 24% will perish before birth (Table 3 of the above reference). Let’s do some math: 100 fertilizations (new nascent human individuals) minus 50% that die before 5 days (down to 50) minus 20% that die before birth leaves on the order of 40 births per 100 fertilizations. If we were to try to track all of these nascent individuals from conception to birth, the paperwork would be tremendous. Then there are those who keep insisting that abortions are performed right up to the moment of birth. That needs to be countered by facts (see, for example, www.kff.org/...). The argument, as all arguments by the opponents of abortion are not based on facts nor supported by data; their appeal is to emotions and not to rationality. Those who insist on granting personhood to fetuses are often most willing to deny that personhood to actual persons: women, people of color, immigrants (legal or illegal), members of the LGBTQ+ community, etc. We need to expose their prejudices and fight their disinformation with facts. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/28/2178152/-Going-off-on-a-comment-in-the-NYTimes-with-apologies Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/