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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs

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To: Kevin Rose who wrote (14892)	11/21/2006 10:00:22 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (3) of 71588

"Life begins at?" Is as much a semantic issue as a philosophical and scientific one. You could break it down to - Life begins - Biological life - The sperm and the ova are alive, and the cells they derive from are alive. In this sense life begins billions of years ago. Because any current human life is part of a chain of life going back that far. A new organism is created - conception A distinct human life begins - conception A person exists - Well this is semantic about person. So I guess it needs to be broken down. A member of the species homo-sapiens exists - conception A sensible being exists - (Sensible meaning "capable of receiving sensory impressions") - When this happens is debated. Could be as early as eight weeks. Some claim more like 20 weeks. A rational being exists - Any number of figures could be claimed. Certainly not at the very beginning of pregnancy. Embryos can't think. OTOH it could be argued that many adults aren't rational, or at least that infants and perhaps young children are not. A lot depends on the definition of "thinking" and "rational", but those definitions are complex questions. Even though a number of these points are very uncertain, if you use them (and perhaps estimate when they happen) then it might reduce the chances for the discussion to be one where people talk past each other with one person using "life starts" to mean when a distinct organism exists, and one saying "life starts" to mean when a rational being exists. I believe that an embryo is not a baby. That's why they have different names. All parts of human development have different names, embryo, fetus, baby/infant, child, adolescent, adult. The fact that different labels are applied isn't a very meaningful argument.

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