quote: If the fetus is not at a stage where it could live outside of the womb without "life support" from the mother or a machine then it is not alive.
quote: Until the human can live without the support of the mother and without some artificial device it is not alive
quote: It cannot live without the support of it's mother/machine, so by the definition you gave it is not alive.
quote: Also note I am not claiming to be an arbiter of that, you are inserting language into my posts I didn't use and attacking your own language, which is a straw-man fallacy.
quote: An unwanted child is better off alive then dead.
quote: I agree that some people are not good parents and don't want their children, or mistreat them throughout the child's life. However that doesn't justify killing the child.
quote: What does our composition have to do with absolutely anything? You are factually biologically ALIVE when as soon as you are conceived.
quote: Many people cannot effectively care for themselves let alone another human - so if a few of these inept would-be mothers are SMART enough to acknowledge this and decide to end a pregnancy before it spawns a problem
quote: Furthermore, whether or not it is alive is irrelevant. To humans, the value of life is evaluated on a sliding scale based on relatively ambiguous observations and perceptions. An embryo falls below insects on this scale because an insect is, at least, a fully developed creature.
quote: You said that human life begins when the human in question can survive without the environment provided by the mother's body.
quote: No one agrees that killing a human being not convicted of any crime is moral. It is rather difficult for a fetus to commit a crime.
quote: You are accusing me of judging the value of human life, then you claim that you know what constitutes a life quality index below which death is preferable.
quote: Actually a human being at any stage of it's development is still biologically a human being. Life is a continous process that begins at conception and ends at death
quote: Plopping an embryo on a table and have someone observe it is entirely beside the point. We are not discussing the appearance of a human being, we are talking about what biologically constitutes a human being. Nice red herring.
quote: Actually, whether someone is alive or not is very relevant. Which humans are worth less than others by your ambiguous observations and perceptions? I believe that any member of the species homo sapiens is worth as much as any other. I'm curious to hear which ones you ambiguously perceive to be worth less than others.
quote: The difference between a car and it's parts and a human at it's zygote stage and adult stage is that the car parts DO NOT SELF ASSEMBLE INTO A CAR.
quote: The fact that the difference between the zygote and toddler stage of a human being is 'irrelevant' is only so to one who hasn't the foggiest idea that a continuum has no breaks
quote: Does incomplete assembly mean non-human? I dunno, as someone born with no legs if they are human.
quote: Folks see killing retards and whatever else society deem the unfit as horrible because they can see those individuals. There is no logical difference between that and abortion, so I'm starting to think you are indeed a moral freak.
quote: If you take me out of the environment I am designed for (and that comprises an extremely tiny % of the universe) I would cease to function.
quote: There is absolutely no difference between James Cameron in a submarine at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and a human baby before its born.
quote: I'm too pro-science to be pro-choice. Except your definition is totally bunk, because you cannot prove that a zygote is a non-living organism.
quote: whether or not it's alive doesn't even matter to me because based on my "life valuation scale" it falls below insects
quote: . As I said, your subjective opinion. Not scientific fact. As cited above.
quote: We can accept that the embryo is a living thing in the fact that it has a beating heart, that it has its own genetic system within it. It’s clearly human in the sense that it’s not a gerbil, and we can recognize that it is human life… the point is not when does human life begin, but when does it really begin to matter?
quote: "The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter – the beginning is conception."
quote: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
quote: "I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception."
quote: "After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being. [It] is no longer a matter of taste or opinion...it is plain experimental evidence. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception."
quote: "It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception."
quote: religious idiots