When does life begin?

Yazata said:
A fertilized egg is alive in the cell-biology sense. It's a living cell. Sperm and egg cells are alive in exactly the same sense. If we look closely at the human (or any other biological) reproductive process, there's never a single instant in which life is absent.

I think that there's only been one origin of life, seemingly way back in pre-Cambrian times, and life has been spreading into new ecological niches and elaborating continuously since then. (Actually, it's possible that there may have been several early origins of life, but apparently only one lineage has survived down to the present day.)

That implies that the search for the initial origin of life in each new generation is probably misguided, at least from the biological perspective.

But there are several closely related questions that we can ask. Each of them has a rather different answer. Which ones we choose to be definitive in things like abortion law is a matter of taste, I guess.

There's the question of when the new generation's unique genetic individuality begins. The answer to that one seems to be at cell-fertilization. The fertilized egg and all of the cells that it generates by subsequent division are all genetically distinct from the parental generation. That's a brand new genetic individual, but it isn't new life.

There's the question of when a newly forming fetus becomes viable, in the sense of being able to live on its own apart from its mother's womb. That's in late pregnancy sometime.

And there's what might be the most difficult question of them all to answer, when does a new PERSON appear? That's what I sense a lot of respondents to this thread are really thinking about and why they perceive this life question as a philosophical issue as opposed to a biological one. I'm not sure how to answer it, though I'll offer the opinion that personhood is somehow associated with reflexive awareness, with our sense of ourselves as selves. That probably appears at some time in early infancy.
Click to expand...

Yes, I can agree with every bit of that. However, the way I took the OPs question to be is "when does NEW life begin." And that takes me back (still) to your very first sentence - which is what I've been saying all along. :)
 
If you agree with the idea that the Cell is the smallest unit of life, then ANY cell could therefore be considered life and includes gametes.
 
Not until five days after conception according to the FDA:

"... Watson Pharmaceuticals, announced today {1Dec10} that ella (ulipristal acetate) 30 mg, a novel oral emergency contraceptive, is now available for patients by prescription in the U.S. ella was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as safe and effective in helping to prevent unintended pregnancy for up to five days after unprotected intercourse (UPI) or a known contraceptive failure. ..."

More at: http://pharmalive.com/news/index.cfm?articleID=747428&categoryid=69

I have no problem with 5 days delay as that, I think, is about how long a fertilized egg needs to implant in wall of uterus and start to divide. Recall from my post 51, that AFAIK and believe, that fertilized egg is not alive until it can demonstrate that it is by dividing into two viable cells. Most, (>80% I think), can not do that, and are just flushed down the toilet without anyone ever knowing they existed.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
thall53 said:
I’m here to voice a thought and am looking for intelligent responses in effort to debate this position. The question is: When does life begin?
Click to expand...

I've never understood why it is that people think that this is relevant to the 'abortion debate'.

Why does it matter at all at what time something can be identified as being "alive"?
 
glaucon said:
I've never understood why it is that people think that this is relevant to the 'abortion debate'.

Why does it matter at all at what time something can be identified as being "alive"?
Click to expand...

Good pont... when "life" begins is irrelevent to a womans rite to choose.!!!
 
cluelusshusbund said:
Good pont... when "life" begins is irrelevent to a womans rite to choose.!!!
Click to expand...
ah-ha! Tis a very good point you raise. Here is the crux of the issue, isn't it? I think this is what the OP is getting at, trying to make a case to legislate what is, in the end, a question of spiritual growth, not a matter of law.

You can't force someone into your version of enlightenment. :cool:

Every Sperm is Sacred
 
Last edited:
Note: I have only read to post #5. If you think I should read a specific post, please tell me.

cosmictraveler said:
Birth, IMO, happens when anything takes its first breath of air.
Click to expand...

The first breath of air of an infant is merely the first time it receives oxygen and expels carbon dioxide and moisture on its own. Before that it does those activities through the Umbilical Cord. Realizing this, one could say that is has been "breathing" through it's mother's breaths.

Also, I believe life started long, long ago. We are merely continuations of our parents, as they are continuations of theirs. We call ourselves individuals based on the simple fact that we do not share tissue anymore.

However, I do believe that calling ourselves individuals allows us to achieve much more in society, especially since that notion is connected to our emotional grasp on life.
 
In my view, a fetus is alive when it can survive outside the mother's body. It's a moving target these days.
 
thall53, human life begins at conception. The new life hasn't yet gained consciousness, though, and that means it's not yet a human being. One way to look at it is that we lose human beingness when we sleep, also. I believe we ought to to revere human life from conception to death.
 
to answer the question you need to first define what you mean by life if you mean just alive conception( prior to that they are a part of the mother and father

now if your talking about when it get rights after birth. before hand it has all the right of a parasite
 
According to evolution, life began with the first simply replicators or at least the first simple cells. With creationism, life began when the first human or when Adam appears; 2nd day of creation. Relative to abortion, the definition of life, by pro-choice, tends to be closer to creation than evolution, since it assumes life is not life until it takes on the form of a complete human; baby Adam. Whereas those against abortion, tend to use the evolutionary standard of when life began; simple cell. It is quite an irony that the atheists use something closer to the bible standard and the bible people, use something closer to how evolution defines life.
 
Since I have been witness at length to several hundreds of such "Where does life begin" discussion forums, with the same arguments always raised and the same conclusions drawn, with little headway on any precise consensus proven...,it is my observation then, that life begins after such debate concludes.
 
I don't really think there is a precise answer to this question. It depends on the criteria you use to define something as being 'alive', but in the case of humans complex religious and metaphysical doctrines which don't really clarify the debate come into the question. To me human life begins when the baby is actually born into this world; the embryo and fetus are potential human beings. Even an infant recently born though is very different from a mature adult. The human body develops and changes over time, which makes a static concept of personhood fairly useless for ethical discussions.
 
keith1 said:
Since I have been witness at length to several hundreds of such "Where does life begin" discussion forums, with the same arguments always raised and the same conclusions drawn, with little headway on any precise consensus proven...,it is my observation then, that life begins after such debate concludes.
Click to expand...
It begins about 3.8 billion years ago, and the pharmaceutical companies/birth control manufacturers are trying to stop it.
 
Mind Over Matter said:
It begins about 3.8 billion years ago, and the pharmaceutical companies/birth control manufacturers are trying to stop it.
Click to expand...

Probably longer, since it entered this atmosphere...floating in the winds....

"Control-of-life initiation means/distribution" is a profit-making enterprise that is greatly shadowed by, and made counter-productive to, the greater profit-making enterprise that is "Elderly-life-care means/distribution".
 
In biological terms, life appears to have originated in some as yet poorly understood events way back in pre-Cambrian times.

It's propagated itself continuously through time since then. Life forms itself into individual organisms that in turn reproduce new generations of organisms, but there isn't any point in time in that process in which life is absent. Seeds are alive. Sperm and egg cells are alive.

What we in our daily lives are aware of and concerned with, what we individually are in fact, are the fruiting bodies continually being generated by our particular branch of one temporally continuous life process that's spread itself into every nook, crevice and ecological niche of this planet.

So the whole question ("when does life begin?") appears to be confused and misleading from a biological perspective.

Better questions might be -- When is a new generation's genetic individuality established? Or perhaps -- When does a new individual human personality begin to form?

What people are going to have to do is determine what it is about individual living organisms that they most value. The answer to the question of when that valuable thing first appears is going to be extremely variable and highly dependent on how the 'what's valuable' question is answered.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top