The idea of life at conception

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The super-short version is that the doctrine developed in the modern period based on developments in embryology that showed the Aristotelian distinction between formed and unformed flesh to be untenable. Mainstream Catholicism has been consistently anti-abortion but it wasn't always seen as homicidal.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm trying to think of things I care less about than "Greatest I am"'s thoughts on abortion, and I'm coming up blank.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Thought-experiment.

Technically, both the egg and sperm cells are "alive" as defined by the definition of a cell. Mono-cell organisms are clearly "alive" and therefore, both the sperm and egg are living beings as well. We don't consider them to have rights, as they have very short lifespans (at least the sperm do), and do not grow into full humans on their own. However, the idea that life begins at conception is technically wrong. Life exists through conception, it is simply a transformation between two completely random interacting human cells.

The question you really need to ask is "when do people intrinsically have rights?" At the moment that the sperm and egg merge, some time after but before birth, or only upon birth? Secondarily, at what point does the right of the mother to agency over her body, and the chemicals she ingests, become secondary to that of the fetus?

I'm not saying I have a clear answer, but I think the framing is wrong. "Life" doesn't begin at conception, it changes. Rights and agency are the topic at hand.

This strikes me as semantics. People generally have a pretty clear idea of what's being asked with this question.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Thought-experiment.

Technically, both the egg and sperm cells are "alive" as defined by the definition of a cell. Mono-cell organisms are clearly "alive" and therefore, both the sperm and egg are living beings as well. We don't consider them to have rights, as they have very short lifespans (at least the sperm do), and do not grow into full humans on their own. However, the idea that life begins at conception is technically wrong. Life exists through conception, it is simply a transformation between two completely random interacting human cells.

The question you really need to ask is "when do people intrinsically have rights?" At the moment that the sperm and egg merge, some time after but before birth, or only upon birth? Secondarily, at what point does the right of the mother to agency over her body, and the chemicals she ingests, become secondary to that of the fetus?

I'm not saying I have a clear answer, but I think the framing is wrong. "Life" doesn't begin at conception, it changes. Rights and agency are the topic at hand.

This strikes me as semantics. People generally have a pretty clear idea of what's being asked with this question.

I have to disagree. The fact that this question is so often used as a proxy for support or opposition to abortion rights strikes me as inherently tendentious, because it poses life (as opposed to other notions such as personhood) as the relevant criterion. Obviously, under this unspoken assumption, pro-lifers will akways have the high ground, because it's scientifically obvious that life exists after conception. Pointing out that life exists before conception too is a good way to challenge this assumption.

But you could say the same thing about skin tags or gut flora (indeed, some posters have). Maybe I just think this because I'm pro-life, but it strikes me as trivially obvious that there's some ontological difference between a skin tag that's been cut off and a zygote, and representations otherwise come across as either bad-faith or indicative of some sort of ultra-modern or possibly postmodern divorce from long-received notions about ontology that I really don't know how to argue against. Al, I think, said something similar once about the futility and impossibility of coherently arguing against a poster who genuinely failed to see why creating new life forms was different from other avenues of biochemical exploration.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

*snip*

This isn't really an "argument" I'm interested in having at great enough length or in great enough detail to respond substantively to a seven-paragraph post any more, because I've realized that I'm not familiar enough with either the life sciences or (obviously) what it is like to be pregnant to discuss it for more than a paragraph or so at a time (I know, I know, I probably should stop discussing it at all), but I just wanted to say that you've always been one of the voices on the forum whose ideas on this I've read with the most interest, and this post is no exception. Thank you for weighing in.

I only came back into this thread to correct what I think is an obviously false equivalency, but if I can't adequately explain why I think that then there really isn't any point.