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A Question For Pro-Lifers

We know fertilization takes place in the Fallopian tube. The zygote, when cleaved becomes a morula, which migrates along the tube to the uterus for implantation. But the majority of fertilized ova don't make it to implantation. According to religious orthodoxy human life has been conceived and a soul is present.

According to this logic, the majority of God's heavenly creatures never made it to the blastula stage of embryonic development.

That's gotta suck for any newbie who St. Peter smiles upon. For one thing, all of these tiny balls of cells all look alike and most don't even have a name (I would imagine.)

Any thoughts on this worry of mine? When I go to heaven (as I plan to recant my evil ways at the last second) I don't want these noisome microscopic humans hopping around all over the place. It's bad enough we have to worry about bacteria and slimy fungus here on Earth—but in heaven.

And what about the morulae that cause an ecotopic pregnancy and the mother dies a horrible, painful death? They're fuckin' murderers and they still get to go to heaven anyway. No fair, God should come along and tell these unicellular bastards a thing or two. Perfect justice, ya know.

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Comment by Jason Spicer on March 6, 2010 at 12:47pm: Well, Jo, if it were actually a fucking bible, like the Kama Sutra, it might be worth reading.

Comment by Jo Jerome on March 6, 2010 at 11:58am: When I see the anti-choice crowd also demanding that blood and organ donation be mandatory, (risk your health, put your life on hold, to save the life of another 'person,' then and only then will I take them halfway seriously.

Until then, they are hypocrites who can't read their own fucking bible.

Comment by Jo Jerome on March 6, 2010 at 11:55am: Even the Xians own bible does not speak out against abortion, condones forced abortion, and both bible and cultural tradition of those writing it defines a person as becoming a 'person' when they take their first breath outside the womb.

Yet as with so many other issues, the Xians are masters of making the sheeple believe their bible/god says something it doesn't, or doesn't say something it does.

Pursuant to the points you bring up, we can trace 'life' down the cellular line ad nauseam. But in this case, I think the bible actually got it right. When it can survive without being physically attached to that particular womb, it has rights. It might still need caring for, but at that point anyone can do that (say, an anti-choice hypocrite who I'm sure is eager to adopt an unwanted newborn?).

Prior to that it's a parasite. Yes, a parasite that is a potential human being. Yes, it sucks that a woman might use abortion as birth control. Yes, it sucks that said woman might have gotten pregnant because she failed safe sex 101. But she might also have a damn good reason for giving up the fetus and it's not anyone else's place to judge or decide.

Life ... includes a lot of death. And a lot of life-cut-short. We can't save every cell, every zygote, every person with a terminal illness who is better off dead than on life support. The Xians and the anti-choicers need to stop playing 'god.'

Comment by Rich Goss on March 5, 2010 at 5:59pm: Agreed. I work in two humanist groups to try to prevent a shift to the right next election. I sold my shares in STEM and ASTM, two budding research companies. They'll be set back another eight years if the Christian regain power.

Comment by Tom Thompson on March 5, 2010 at 5:07pm: @Richard, I didn't mean to imply we shouldn't be concerned about rights or the effects of fundamentalist resistance to scientific research. I just don't understand why we allow them to enter a debate on this subject with the argument "a soul is created at conception". Define what a soul is. Prove that it exists. As long as this argument is tolerated THERE IS NO DEBATE. We may as well respond with "nah uh!"

Comment by Rich Goss on March 5, 2010 at 3:20pm: "Who the hell cares when Christians say a soul is created"

Tom, I'm afraid we should all care. Millions of people suffer the horror of diabetes, for instance, but if stem cell research would have been supported by the government and the AMA decades ago, the disease might have been cured already.

Beliefs determine behavior. When you think it's going to rain you carry an umbrella. Weird beliefs like Christianity are at the bottom of untold misery in devious ways.

Thanks everyone for the fun comments on this abortion issure that shouldn't ever exist. Right on, Jason.

Comment by Tom Thompson on March 5, 2010 at 10:57am: Any definition of "human" is arbitrary. Who the hell cares when Christians say a soul is created? Let them prove it in court, or that souls exist at all. It's a waste of fucking time to even debate this shit with them.

Comment by Secular Sue on March 5, 2010 at 4:21am: If god knows that Missy will abort her zygote, and he gives her a zygote anyway, isn't it god's will that that zygote be aborted?

Comment by Jason Spicer on March 5, 2010 at 2:46am: Shane, you have been very, very busy.

PRG, I would save the adult woman. Unless there was ice cream in the fridge with the embryos. Then I'd have to think about it. I'd at least want to know what flavor. Perhaps the woman and I could hide in the fridge and stay cool until the fire department took care of the problem.

Loren, I think as long as the failure to implant is natural, religionists write it off as the will of God. It's humans playing God that they object to. Especially since doing something about unimplanted embryos would be expensive and difficult, and that would get in the way of things like blaming Haitians for earthquakes.

Richard, humans are naturally promiscuous, though apparently not usually in the same league as Shane. (Just teasing, Shane. I know what you meant.)

I've thought of this argument as well. If you think about it, God is the most prolific abortionist ever. There are under a million abortions in the US each year (a big drop in the late 90s, the result of the introduction of Plan B, maybe?). There are roughly 1.3 million spontaneous miscarriages in the US each year (300,000 or so after the sixth week of pregnancy, and as many as 975,000 before the sixth week), based on these estimates, a conservative number for the US population of 300M, and the CIA birth rate stats (and you thought they just spied on terrorists). And that's not counting the embryos that fail to implant, so add a few more million "ensouled" products of conception.

Clearly, however, this God character doesn't like the competition, because when humans get up to no good, including, presumably, allowing abortion doctors to run around killing fetuses, God has a habit of just drowning everybody and starting over with a drunk boat-builder and a big dose of incest. Presumably, many of the people God drowned in Noah's Flood were innocent infants and fetuses, though I'm sure the mommies deserved it. After all, they had been having sex. Naughty, naughty. Well, if you're doing it right.

No, it's quite clear that God doesn't give a shit about embryos. But then, "do as I say, not as I do" is a time-honored practice in every religious tradition.

Comment by Rich Goss on March 4, 2010 at 7:14pm: Quite right, Shane, an average human male produces trillions of sperm cells (gametes) over a lifetime. A female on the other hand is one of nature's most barren creatures, perhaps 250 ova in a lifetime. But zygotes are another case, this is the union of spern and egg on conception. They are rare in comparison.

There's an interesting book on this, Sperm Wars, where the authors claim only a few sperm cells can fertilize an egg. The vast majority are soldier cells that guard the entrance to the cevical os. (Like termites or army ants).

Leads to the conclusion that humans are naturely promiscuous.