Consequences of Granting Legal Status to a Fertilized Human Egg
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-10-31/consequences-granting-legal-status-fertilized-human-egg
![A June 6, 2011 file photo shows "Personhood" supporters gathering at a prayer rally at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., to concentrate their efforts to get a proposed "personhood" constitutional amendment offered to voters. The amendment offers a definition of a person not now found in the Mississippi Constitution. - (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)](http://thedianerehmshow.org/sites/thedianerehmshow.org/files/imagecache/620xH/images/headline/111031_righttolife.jpg "A June 6, 2011 file photo shows "Personhood" supporters gathering at a prayer rally at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., to concentrate their efforts to get a proposed "personhood" constitutional amendment offered to voters. The amendment offers a definition of a person not now found in the Mississippi Constitution. - (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)")
A June 6, 2011 file photo shows "Personhood" supporters gathering at a prayer rally at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., to concentrate their efforts to get a proposed "personhood" constitutional amendment offered to voters. The amendment offers a definition of a person not now found in the Mississippi Constitution.
(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
Mississippi will ask voters next week to decide whether to give legal status to fertilized human eggs. If the ballot measure is approved, abortion would become tantamount to murder. And in vitro fertility clinics and popular methods of birth control could be outlawed. Many observers deem it one of the gravest assaults on women's reproductive rights in decades. Similar efforts to redefine "personhood" are in the works in several states. Colorado voters twice defeated personhood initiatives recently. But many expect the Mississippi measure to pass. We'll talk about the latest tactics in the battle against abortion.
Guests
Robert Destro
professor of law; director, Interdisciplinary Program in Law & Religion Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America.
Jon Fasman
Atlanta correspondent for the Economist.
Suzanne Novak
senior staff attorney, Center for Reproductive Rights.
Walter Hoye
a spokesman for PersonhoodUSA; president of the Issues4Life Foundation and the California Civil Rights Foundation.
Comments
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Ethanab, you contradict yourself. Pregnancy is not complete, you say, until the fertilized egg reaches the uterus and implants. Then you refer to ectopic PREGNANCY during which the fetus, does indeed, continue to grow as a baby would if it had implanted in the uterus, but at the risk of the mother.
In such a case the baby does NOT have a chance at surviving, and the mother is at risk of DYING without medical intervention, so medical intervention would be employed to save the only one that can be saved in this situation. However, it is no less a pregnancy because the fetus failed to implant in the uterus before continuing to grow...
Wouldn't it be nice if the medical community could figure out how to save a fetus that got stuck in the fallopian tube, without risking the mother?
@ rumin8
Regarding your quoting of Exodus, Chapter 21, specifially the "soul for soul" part. If, as you interpret the scripture, "God's view of the unborn" is revealed...
...shouldn't the pregant woman be described as having TWO souls, not one?
"[I]n case men should struggle with each other and they really hurt a pregnant woman and … a fatal accident should occur, then you must give [TWO] souls for soul."
If "God" sees the pregnant woman's fetus as a "person" then there are two souls that must be accounted for, right?
Ironically, it seems the scripture you quote actually argues against considering a fetus a "soul". Instead it attributes ONE SINGLE "soul" to the pregnant woman ONLY.
Unless you're arguing that women are sub-human property without souls (as they might have been viewed at that time). That would then mean the woman has no "soul", that the "soul" referred to in the scripture belongs only to the fetus.
Is that what you mean?
Mark Nelson, you would be right if both the woman and the unborn child died in scenario spoken of at Exodus 21. However, if you read the context, you will see that it is the unborn child that dies, not the woman, and it is that soul (the unborn child) that must be accounted for with the soul (life) of the man responsible.
@ rumin8
Then please do not quote scripture out of context. Please provide the full scriptural quote here or a link that contains that passage in full context.
That's the difference between our thinking. If a pregnant woman is injured my concern is for her life, not the fetus.
I also don't how it's possible to argue (as some have) that a pregnant woman should always die, regardless of circumstance, if a fetus is in jeopardy.
This is so maddening but just a logical extension of the antichoice rhetoric. ALL of it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, not just under the 9th (?) ammendment which states "All persons BORN"... (are given citizenship), but also against the FIRST Ammendments establishment of religion and separation of church and state! To propogate ANY law which limits a womans choice, and especially to state into law the viewpoint that a life begins upon conception, is to PROMOTE one religious view over another which is clealry against the first ammendment. In this instance, to promote a particular Christian view over, say, the Jewish view which says life begins when the head out.
We only need to look to Nicuaraga (I believe) to see what the consequences of this law will be: woman dying for etopic pregnancies and other conditions which are preventable. (Report on NPR last night.)
This is horrible!
I get such a kick out of the same old blah, blah, blah arguments from the left. Here are two thoughts:
First question I have never had an answer to ... in any pregnancy/abortion situation, there are three interests at play; the doctor looks out after his interests, the woman looks out after her interests, but who speaks for the unborn dead?
Second point. During the campaign, then Senator Obama spoke in reference to teaching evolution in schools and man made global warming and insisted that "science trumps ideology". Now, my question is, in very late-term abortions, including patial birth abortion, in most cases science (medecine) shows us that the fetus is perfectly capable of surviving outside the womb. So I ask you is permitting abortion in those cases based on science ... or ideology?
If I understand Scriptures, God breathed life into a fully formed Adam, outside of the womb. Life was not breathed into Adam inside a womb. Man became a living soul in Gen 2:7.
If an embryo has rights then who protects these rights BEFORE a possible death top insure its safety?
Must a gynecologist mandate and track every pregnancy and report any potential abuse that might be the result of his/her patient...for example, lack of nutrition, too much work, not obeying bed rest instructions....in effect, does the gynecologist become an officer of the law?
The implications of this boggle the mind - If all those embryos frozen in liquid nitrogen are people, how is the Census going to count them? If the Census does count them, do they count towards congressional districting? Will in-vitro centers with thousands of frozen embryos in storage suddenly become high density population areas eligible for federal relief? Will they pay taxes? Can they inherit? If they have been sitting frozen for 18 years, do they have the right to vote, or be drafted?
This strikes me as a colossally bad idea...
Pat217, actually a sperm cell carries 1/2 the chromosomes of a cell, likewise an ova carries the other half. United they are one....however, this lasts for a very short time,lol. Almost immediately they divide. So for a millisecond, he was medically right that an embryo is one celled. But, I think his "error' is more about how he portrays his knowledge through speach than a lack of expertise. We really need to stop getting caught up in the details of the spoken word and try and get the point of what another person has to say.
Further response to Mark Nelson.
Israelite women were highly regarded and protected compared to women in the surrounding nations. God specifically created law to protect them. When those laws were followed, women received protections that were not available elsewhere, and when they were not, there was much suffering.
When we learn about those laws we are helped to understand how much God cares about people - men, women, and children (including the unborn). A complete understanding of what life was like for people living at that time (especially women and children) is necessary to put Scripture in the proper context.
For instance, a woman who had a husbandly “owner” was assured of care and protection, and was by no means degrading to them.
Somehow it doesn’t seem to me that women are better off now, with the proliferation of “women’s right”, or that families and society have benefitted from flexible morals, or the explosion of single-parent families where it is difficult for anyone’s needs to be properly met.
Keitha,
Yes God breathed into man, because he did not create an embryo first, Then God gave the capability of man and woman to create life together. It is irrelevant that God breathed into a fully formed Adam. God is the creator of Adam's sperm and Eve's ova.
This is a case of the chicken coming before the egg. And a viable egg is a chicken (just not big enough to eat yet)
rumin8 wrote:
"Israelite women were highly regarded and protected compared to women in the surrounding nations. God specifically created law to protect them."
Well put. See Book of Ruth.
If a person is a fetus, then can people sue to get medical and welfare benefits as soon as they are pregnant.
Responding to Mark Nelson.
I'm sorry if my comments were confusing and seemed to indicate that a woman's life is less important than that of the fetus. God values all life, but sometimes (as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy) the pregnancy needs to be surgically ended to save the mother when the fetus would not survive anyway.
Such a decision must be very painful for the parents, but the scriptures encourage us to use good sense and be reasonable. Philippians 4:5: Let your reasonableness become known to all men.
Whatever laws man may enact, the scriptures are clear that we each have a responsibility - Romans 14:12: So, then, each of us will render an account for himself to God.
Sharon Harvey, your first doctor was an idiot. And while I am not a proponent of suing, I would assert that this sounds like a viable case of aml practice. One not two people almost died that day. Ignorance iw hwhat happened here, not a result of sound pro-life issues....if your doctor was pro-life, he would have valued yours as well. Sadly, Doctors like this give the rest of us pro-lifers a bad reputation. A true pro-lifer cares about the mom, the unborn baby AND the father. Which this dialogue seems to have forgotten....no baby comes to be without a father.
Again, in the interest of biological accuracy: the chromosomes from the sperm & ovum do not "almost immediately", unite to form a zygote. It takes hours for this to occur, not "a millisecond" .
Nature does provide an answer to the question of whether or not a fertilized egg is a "person" at conception. It does this in the case of identical twins. If a fertilized egg is a "person" and we name it "Tom", and then after 7 or 8 days or 7 or 8 cell divisions, the embryo splits and becomes two "people", now we could call them "Tom" and "Jerry", the "person" has now become 2 "people". Which one would be "Tom" and which one would be "Jerry"? Or would each of the new "people" be half "Tom" or would they be completely new people and "Tom" no longer exist?
The idea that a fertilized egg should be called a "person" should no more be true than calling any human eggs or sperm a "person". A fertilized egg should be called a "potential person" or "persons".
A typical human female produces over 400 eggs in her lifetime and a male 250 million sperm per day after puberty. This provides for a whole lot of "potential people" and the earth already has 7 billion people (+ or - 15 million) on the planet today!
Nature does control human population through disease (50 years ago 7 million people were killed every year from malaria), food availability, disasters (tsunamis) built in lifespans,
etc. Even 20 to 25% of human conceptions spontaneously abort.
Humans, using their thinking ability and knowledge, should also control earth's human population by common sense and not by an unscientific definition of "a fertilized egg is a person".
If we want to have the maximum number of humans to experience a quality lifetime on earth we should concentrate on spreading out the number of "potential human beings" over a very long period of time instead of overpopulating the earth by trying to get as many as we can all here at the same time. In fact, the more our population is spread out, the more likely the earth will produce and sustain a human population. bio-jim
Having personally had an ectopic pregnancy, I am appalled with this. I was within an hour or so of bleeding to death. It was an intended pregrancy and I was devastated. It was tramatic enough without having to worry about being prosecuted for murder.
Could someone please speak to this proposed amendment in relation to the facts that, compared to other US states, Mississippi has
1) the highest percentage of children and communities in persistent poverty (meaning 20 years or more of poverty); 2) the lowest educational rates and literacy rates; 3) the highest obesity rates; 4) one of the highest rates of food insecurity; 5) one of the lowest per capita incomes; and so forth down the list of almost every economic, health, and well-being indicator.
If I understood the speaker correctly, Mississippi is the most "religious" state in the US.
How do all these factors fit together?
Nature does provide an answer to the question of whether or not a fertilized egg is a "person" at conception. It does this in the case of identical twins. If a fertilized egg is a "person" and we name it "Tom", and then after 7 or 8 days or 7 or 8 cell divisions, the embryo splits and becomes two "people", now we could call them "Tom" and "Jerry", the "person" has now become 2 "people". Which one would be "Tom" and which one would be "Jerry"? Or would each of the new "people" be half "Tom" or would they be completely new people and "Tom" no longer exist?
The idea that a fertilized egg should be called a "person" should no more be true than calling any human eggs or sperm a "person". A fertilized egg should be called a "potential person" or "persons".
A typical human female produces over 400 eggs in her lifetime and a male 250 million sperm per day after puberty. This provides for a whole lot of "potential people" and the earth already has 7 billion people (+ or - 15 million) on the planet today!
Nature does control human population through disease (50 years ago 7 million people were killed every year from malaria), food availability, disasters (tsunamis) built in lifespans,
etc. Even 20 to 25% of human conceptions spontaneously abort.
Humans, using their thinking ability and knowledge, should also control earth's human population by common sense and not by an unscientific definition of "a fertilized egg is a person".
If we want to have the maximum number of humans to experience a quality lifetime on earth we should concentrate on spreading out the number of "potential human beings" over a very long period of time instead of overpopulating the earth by trying to get as many as we can all here at the same time. In fact, the more our population is spread out, the more likely the earth will produce and sustain a human population. bio-jim
Responding to Ecgberht.
You are right, the book of Ruth is an excellent example of God's laws working to protect the poor, women, alien residents, and proselytes. It's interesting to note that Ruth and Boaz bore Obed, who became a forebear of the Christ. So two women of the nations, Ruth and Rahab (hid Israelite spies in the City of Jericho), who became worshippers of the "True God" became ancestresses of the Christ.
That’s an excellent reminder that "God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him." Acts 10:34, 35
After listening to the explanation of the definition of this amendment, I was wondering who has taken the time to understand birth control including ru-486 which prevents the embryo from forming.
You put this in a much kinder way than I was going to... this man seemed incredibly ignorant and just doggedly stuck to the same line. Not only is this a horrible idea to put into practice as it will cause so much harm, the supporters can't even give a reasonable argument as to why this would be a good idea. Hopefully the people of Mississippi are smarter than this man.
It is clear that those who support this bill have not considered the consequences at all, and have a limited knowledge of how birth control works, and even how babies are made.
The notion that "personhood" is, by definition, theological in nature - as it prospective relationship tot he soul - is nonsense. If viability is the standard of personhood, where and ow do you draw this line? Does this mean that late term abortion (8th month and later) is homicide? If not, why? If it is morally and legally acceptable to terminate a fetus of late gestational age - perhaps a fetus bearing "viability" - how then does this action bear a higher order of moral action that the execution of a condemned prisoner?
Granting legal status to a fetus has nothing to do with defending unborn babies. It is an assault on women's rights and it is about control. Men trying to control women. anybody who says differently is a liar.
Two thoughts that seem companionable to this measure... 1) More complete education regarding human sexuality (physiology of female and male reproductive systems; female, male, and couple fertility) would be helpful. 2) Culturally respecting sex as an activity that is potentially inviting a new being to join the human family, but that can also be enjoyable.
I would be shocked but pleased if the backers of this type of bill agreed reproductive education (teaching girls and boys, age appropriate throughout ~5th-12th grades, about what is biologically normal in female AND male reproductive systems; when females, males, and couples are fertile) should be available to all who have a human body. I personally think this education should be available publicly and at the same time some choose to enter into sexual activity...earlier and earlier these days. Having such an education, and in concert with encouraging personal responsibility, might preclude the need to have much of this discussion.
I would also appreciate seeing our society's views shift towards respecting sex as primarily reproductive that is, by design and necessity, also enjoyable--rather than an act that is primarily for enjoyment that, almost as an afterthought, might result in conception. Perhaps with this view, it would become more popular for all human beings to take some personal responsibility and more serious consideration for their actions within our culture.
"Kelly Kicherer wrote:
Why does the fetus' personhood take precedence over the woman's personhood?
October 31, 2011 - 10:57 am"
Good question.
Here is another side to the Equal Protection Clause.
There are many, many cases in which the interests of Parents and Families are subordinate to, "The Best Interests of the Child" which sometimes work terrible hardships on Children, Parents and Families.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
Ben Cromwell wrote:
"Granting legal status to a fetus has nothing to do with defending unborn babies. It is an assault on women's rights and it is about control. Men trying to control women. anybody who says differently is a liar."
Hey numbnut. How about this:
Permitting the abortion of the unborn has nothing to do with women's "choice". It is an assault on the rights of the unborn and it is about the ability of women to have indiscriminate sex. Women trying to have their cake and eat it too. Anybody who says differently is a liar.
Both of those statements are stoopit. But yours was stoopit first.
IDIOT!!!