Roe v. Wade


Guyau

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A zygote is not yet an immature animal. A fertilized chicken egg is not yet a chick. I am not knowledgeable enough to know at what stage the fertilized egg become an immature chicken or when a fetus becomes an immature human animal. Perhaps when it has all its major organs and they are functional is enough for that identity. Perhaps less or more than that is required. Animal (or metazoan) has a definition, necessary criteria, and to characterize a zygote as an immature version of an animal is a big stretch. There are no reciprocating organs in a zygote, not at any stage of organ immaturity. I aim to reasonably circumscribe and accept my ignorance and to avoid any stretching to cover it.

Michael,

A human zygote is of human. A giraffe zygote is of giraffe. They are features of those mature female animals, and they are precursors of those immature animals. They are not themselves animals, not themselves immature animals.

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Stephen wrote:

A zygote is not yet an immature animal.

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From Wikipedia:

Animals are a major group of multicellular . . . . Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life . . . . Microorganisms are very diverse; they include all of the prokaryotes, namely the bacteria and archaea; and various forms of eukaryote, comprising the protozoa, fungi, algae, microscopic plants (green algae), and animals such as rotifers and planarians. Some microbiologists also classify viruses as microorganisms, but others consider these as nonliving.

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Well, I’ll be. – Jack Benny.

That old dog just learned a new trick. – Rochester.

Multi-cellular-ity is required to be a more complex animal? – Peter Taylor

So a one celled creature would be an *animal* or *plant* if its nature is to be comprised of just one cell, like a bacteria. However, even two cells would not be an animal unless its nature is to be comprised of just those two cells.

If two or more animals are aggregating, like lichens and are composed of a fungus, and a photosynthetic partner (they are also called eukaryotes) then that would be considered a plant or an animal.

A larger, multi-celled congregation of cells with the potential to become a mammal, would need to reach a level of maturity to be considered an animal.

You are right, Stephan. It’s really not a philosophical question, is it? It’s a question of accepted scientific names, definitions and nomenclature. Sorry for being an ignoramus. Even the potential of reaching a mature state does not qualify the group of cells to be called an animal.

Brant wrote:

The sperm meets the egg = human unique if carried to term. And that is a one-celled something.

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And earlier, Michael wrote:

Correct identification is the cornerstone of rationality.

end quote

Yes. Science is strange at times. A zygote is a living group of cells but not an animal yet, nor is it a human yet, and it is certainly not a *person* yet. Philosophy must use the terms agreed upon in science if it is examining a question based upon science.

Stephen gets a gold star.

Peter

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I hope Stephen will comment on the following.

Modifying one of my earlier letters utilizing Stephen’s words:

One) The fertilized egg of an eventual, multicelled creature is termed a *zygote.* Scientifically it is not yet termed an *animal.*

Two) From the time of the first cell division to about the eighth week of development, the multi-cellular assembly is termed an *embryo.* In scientific nomenclature would an embryo be considered an animal?

Three) From then until birth, all of a human’s rudimentary organs are present, and the standard term is no longer embryo, but *fetus.* A fetus is an animal.

Four) The point at which the fetus has reached biological individuality (and *viability*) is partly a function of medical know how and resources.

Five) *Rights* require a correct epistemology for their discernment. Rights are not intrinsic. They are relational.

And so to bed,

Peter

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Come on, Peter. Wikipedia?

Really?

Wikipedia is for general information, not for proof of anything. It's a starting point for research, not the research itself.

Anyway, if you like Wikipedia as an authority, look at this Wikipedia one: Zygote.

Here's a quote from that artlcle:

All mammals go through the zygote stage of life.

In other words, the zygote stage of development is a normal stage of life in an individual mammal.

I hold that calling the indiividual something other than a mammal is arbitrary simply because one does not like that stage of life, or because that stage of life does not fit a pet principle.

We are supposed to derive principles from reality, not the inverse.

Here's an online definition of zygote from Merriam Webster:

a cell formed by the union of two gametes; broadly : the developing individual produced from such a cell.

The way you know this is a fundamental fact is that an adult individual can discard some cells that have his DNA in them, like hair or whatnot, and still be what he is, but he cannot discard his zygote stage of life. Without that, he ain't around.

Think of this. You were once a zygote. Does that mean you did not exist as an indiviudal at that time? Maybe you could have become someone else, like George Smith, maybe? Or maybe become a piece, like the kidney of someone else? :smile:

Michael

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Stephen,

Like I said, we are going to have to agree to disagree.

I'm not going to keep repeating that an individual life has a beginning, middle and end. And I think it is fruitless for you to keep presenting adult images of animals and saying the first stage of development does not look anything like that, so it is not that.

We're not going to convince each other that way. We disagree on the very concept of what an individual life is.

I'm cool with that. At least it's clear.

Michael

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Peter,

I do not know the truth of the matter in regard to your 2 or 3. I could come to know it by some careful study and reflection; perhaps I will be able to return to it someday. My analysis of the abortion legal question (a, b) turned largely on rights between adults in the society with respect to each other concerning directing development of a zygote, embryo, or fetus inside, then outside, the mother’s body. No forced personal service of one adult for the sake of other adults and their projects.

Michael,

That is assuredly fine. It was a good discussion. I learned more about your views, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some readers found some new insights and previously unconsidered questions along our way.

–Stephen

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Michael wrote:

In my view, a zygote is an animal (as in the noun, "rational animal") in the very first stage of development. It cannot grow in any other manner than that embedded in its nature . . . . That's part of how I see the law of identity applied to them . . . . I still do not understand your example of horse hair or relegating the word "human" exclusively to adjective status for this phase of development in an animal's existence.

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Silently, the feline zygote pads through the jungle, absent mindedly marking its territory, as it sniffs the air for prey. Its premature skin, wet from amniotic fluid, lacks the fur or stripes of an adult tiger. Never the less, Michael claims a mass of undifferentiated cells is an animal, though the Scientists at Wikipedia disagree. How dare he! The term *animal* they insist, is reserved for the unborn only at a later stage of development.

I think it is just semantics because I can accept their terminology of calling an animal an animal after a certain stage of development if it is nearly universally accepted and I can also agree to Michael’s calling it an animal of a certain genus and species. There is no problem in calling one thing an animal, another a plant and a third a mineral, even before or a lack of conception. I am interested in eventually setting down a universal set of rules to identify mammals at all stages of development and just when a person is present inside the womb. I think I can learn from both of youse wise guys.

Peter

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I think it is just semantics...

Peter,

That's what I used to believe and hope still is.

But even if it is just semantics, the problem doesn't reside in the designation so much as the unmentioned load that comes with each term.

Calling a zyote a human being would imply that abortion is murder to some people. I don't consider it murder (as in crime), but I do categorize an abortion as killing a human being.

I don't think ignoring the killing or rationalizing around it will do any long-term good in settling abortion hostilities in society.

Marketing-wise, should my way ever get on the table, I can see the religious side eventually raising the white flag as it says to the mother, "I don't like your sovereignty over the human being inside you and I think killing it a sin, but I respect the legal status of your sovereignty."

And they may snarl a bit about answering to God.

But I just can't imagine the religious side ever saying, "I agree that a prenatal human being is not really a human being, but merely protoplasm during [set whatever term or time is in vogue at the time]. So aboring protoplasm is not really killing anything."

I think my way is a much easier sell. That's not my fundamental position (which deals with the law of identity), but it is a very beneficial side-effect.

Michael

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Rand candidly admitted that "There is an enormous breach of continuity between nature

and man's consciousness". I think this is one glaring instance.

Never taking our eye off the human aspect, we need to identify more and more narrowly what constitutes a human being. Neurobiology and new techniques push back previously-known boundaries, to the point that 'viability' is no longer definitive. Up to some limit, anyhow..

We are the one species that can interrupt the natural process: whether cancer cells - or their distinct opposite, growing new life - life for one organism may always entail death for another.

No suggestions from me, just mixed thoughts, but I find the easy "out" - invoking individual rights- not nearly enough for this highly moralistic issue.

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Abortion, that endless source of delightfully thorny questions, of men talking about things only ladies can have done to themselves ...

I will be honorary lady here and suggest that thorns will never be absent, even when no abortion is performed or contemplated.

Example one is the first map below of the law as it stands in the world. A so-called right, freely exercised, to have an abortion does not fully obtain but under a few legal regimes. The map shows Canada and America green against the red of Mexico. We know the legal regimes are different between America and Canada, that here there is and are no law or laws forbidding abortion by provinces, since federal abortion law was struck down by the Supremes. Effectively abortion is treated as a medical procedure between a woman and a doctor. It is still a national affair, and residents of Prince Edward Island have issues of access, but no law is considered even close to being thought of, let alone passed. The national affair around abortion is all wind and has zero chance of putting abortion on the Conservative government's agenda.

Down with you guys in America that unbroken green is toned up or down in relation to a raft of law devoted to ovaries and their products. Virginia, home of the Transvaginal Express state law, is a counter-example to the green. With you menfolk, it is still a national and state affair and gynecological lawmaking has been furious and sadly closely correlated with, you guessed it, Republican state assemblies.

Anyone care to guess how much Roe v Wade means to 'accessible' abortion in Montgomery, New Orleans, etcetera? I think we have a certain red/blue map in our minds.

When will Republican men stop their snuffling and poking at parts of the body that do not and never have belonged to them? Why does this amorphous entity Gawd have so much say with you people, speaking of lawgivers and nosy crotch-snufflers?

I am now off to volunteer hosing down the abortion clinic sidewalks of blood.

UAlz.png

This added map makes graphic the degree of USA ovarian-product crotch-snuffling obscured in the 'green'- as-Canada map above. This map explores the patchwork crazy-quilt of so-called parental-consent strictures governing abortions performed on minors.

UACo.png

Edited by william.scherk
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Thanks for the information, William. I just wanted to mention that there are millions of Americans who are of the Christian or Jewish faiths and who concur with the legal framework that is Roe and who disagree with a good deal of the anti-abortionist maneuvers these last four decades. One has a choice of which church one will belong to. Belief in God does not entail being anti-abortionist (nor anti-evolutionist) nor does it entail that one be part of the political right.

Dissent from the religious right will be there always, even concerning the first trimester. The important thing for the intermediate legal future is that the Republicans did not retake the Presidency and will not be increasing the number of anti-abortionists on the Supreme Court in the next four years. The religious right continues beating the drum against gays and lesbians as well, but in my lifetime, we have rolled over them in the wider culture and in the law, and the wins on that are more surely for keeps. With the results of the election just passed, I expect elective abortions to remain legal in the US.

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  • 2 months later...

Robert Tracinski in (the_daily_debate@realclearpolitics.com) on 4/03/13 wrote:

The left, and particularly the academic left, likes to emphasize the central importance of "race, class, and gender." Well, we've spent a lot of the last few weeks discussing these issues.

The Washington Post just published an op-ed noting that mass shootings are disproportionately committed by white menand assigning a kind of collective blame to whites.

James Taranto picks apart the op-ed's dubious claims (including taking Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan as representative of "white men"), and also notes that it is politically correct to say things about whites that no one who isn't dressed in a sheet would dare to say about blacks.

end quote

And that got me thinking about the Constitution and Americas historical record of equal protection under the law. The Constitution was written in such a broad way as to protect the rights of all Americans including blacks and women, but in most states they could not vote. The Constitution was NOT being upheld. They only possessed partial citizenship. After the Civil War, and because of several amendments, court cases, marches, protests and calling in the Federal Government to protect every citizens rights, blacks and women were still considered less than equal. To this day they are in some ways less than equal.

Are Gays granted equal protection under the Constitution? Historically if they were male and in the closet they were considered equal white men. If they were out of the closet and successful they were distrusted but a blind eye was turned to their peccadilloes. (as in one of Kevin Spacey's portrayals of a gay man in the south.) If they were out of the closet, and not living in an enclave like Soho, San Francisco, Key West, or Rehoboth Beach, Delaware then America was not the safest place to be. And that is just not right. I recently saw a Yahoo article about the worse places to travel because of safety issues. What a horrible circumstance it would be if one of the freest places on earth were one of the most dangerous for gay people. What if a gay person from France felt like they were walking among grizzlies when they visited rural Mississippi? A few years ago, locally, in Rehoboth Delaware a gay man was maimed by three high school boys.

Should equal protection under the Constitution extend to some form of gay marriage? Of course, but I still insist that a union should NOT BE part of the governments business nor should a state be required to use the term marriage, for a civil union. Gays should have equal protection under the Constitution. No State of the Union SHOULD BE able to usurp a persons rights because of any circumstance of birth, inclination, or life style.

I just can't sugar coat my next leap of thought so I apologize in advance. I am still uncertain whether gays should be allowed to adopt. Lesbians have the capability of having children on their own and I am not suggesting that their right to their own bodies be infringed upon. But adoption is another issue. There will always be exceptions but are gays as capable and rational *in general* to raise children successfully in the mental sense? I wonder. Does anyone know of any studies that examine and quantify the incidence of mental illness, bizarre behavior, and unworthiness of gays as parents in the general population? Have children of gay couples grown up to be OK? Should I wear a high collar to hide my red neck?

Peter

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