Quote:
Originally Posted by driveway
My 70-year-old, biology-teacher father posted this to Facebook today:
"With all the anti-abortion laws being passed by states south of the border I want to correct a misconception that is prevalent in almost all the arguments both for and against. That is "when does life begin?" The answer is: several billion years ago, and we still don't know how.
Many of my ex students will remember the second part of the modern cell theory: all cells arise from pre-existing cells. Any new individual is the continuation of the lives of its parents (or parent in the case of asexual reproduction). Eggs and sperm are living cells, as is the zygote that their fusion can produce. There is no "gap".
Whether that zygote will go on to produce a healthy baby 9 months later is not guaranteed. Turning one diploid cell into a viable infant made up of about 26,000,000,000 vastly different cells is an amazingly complex process that often goes wrong.
Among women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is roughly 10% to 20%, while rates among all fertilisation is around 30% to 50%.
Think about that - 30% to 50% of all conceptions end in the death of the baby without any active interventions. For those that believe that babies are a gift from God, your God is the greatest abortionist ever."
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The key question is when does a
human life begin. Generally, there's a scientific consensus that a new human life begins at conception. At this point the zygote, though possessing the DNA of its mother and father, is genetically distinct as an individual from both of them.
Do miscarriages happen. Absolutely. However, there's a difference between a pregnancy that is ended due to natural causes and one that is ended deliberately.