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Abortion Referendum

Vixen said:
It has to be the moment there is a fusion of ovum and spermatozoa to create that spark (electrical nerve impulse) to create a new life.
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What 'electrical nerve impulse' is there at the 'moment there is a fusion of ovum and spermatozoa'? :confused:
 
Vixen said:
Well, you won't like this, being an atheist, but I think this Psalm sums it up well
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Isn't Psalm 137:9 a metaphor where God expresses support for abortions.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Or are we supposed to wait until they are born before smashing their cute little heads in?
 
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Vixen said:
Sure, all these people were really heartbroken.
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I have no idea and - I'm guessing - neither do you.

I know a couple of women who have had abortions, and in my experience - yes they were heartbroken. It was an incredibly difficult decision, but they made it in a considered and rational way.

I would not claim to understand how they arrived at their choice, but I support it, and I would never trivialise it.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Soul. It's obvious they are talking about a soul without the intellectual honesty to use the term.
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Yep when the story was misreported much of the religious media ran with it being a sign of ensoulment, for instance:

https://www.catholic.org/news/hf/family/story.php?id=68661

Spark of Life: Scientists discover moment souls enter eggs at the time of conception

...snip...

Researchers discovered the moment a human soul enters an egg, which gives pro-life groups an even greater edge in the battle between embryonic life and death. The precise moment is celebrated with a zap of energy released around the newly fertilized egg.

...snip...
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The article I linked to previously explains the unfortunate errors in some of the rather excited reporting.
 
Darat said:
Yep when the story was misreported much of the religious media ran with it being a sign of ensoulment, for instance:

https://www.catholic.org/news/hf/family/story.php?id=68661

The article I linked to previously explains the unfortunate errors in some of the rather excited reporting.
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Thanks, though it was painful to read ;)

Some actual science, from Nature.com :

"... the progression of the gamete from a cell arrested in prophase of meiosis I into a mature egg arrested at metaphase of meiosis II - is accompanied by a substantial (50%) increase in total zinc content that is required for proper meiotic progression. At fertilization, however, total zinc levels must decrease and within minutes of fertilization, zinc is released from the zygote in a secretory event termed the “zinc spark”. Physiologically, this zinc release closely follows calcium transients and is necessary for cell cycle resumption via pathways that include modulation of the cell cycle regulatory protein EMI29,17."

And there is no actual flash:
" The “flash of light” only refers to the “inorganic signature” of the “zinc spark” detected with fluorescence microscopy in the laboratory—an analytical technique."
 
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Vixen said:
The claim 'a woman's right to get rid of an unwanted foetus' is just an empty slogan, designed to make us believe it is pure sexism that constrains it.
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The woman is the person who life and health is risked by being forced to carry a pregnancy to term.
 
Vixen said:
A foetus shares exactly 50% of its chromosomes with its father and 50% with its mother. It is a unique being in its own right.
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But not genes. Because the X chromosome carries about 850 genes, whereas the Y chromosome only about 50 (there are also 37 genes in mitochondria) a child receives only close to half of the genes from the father and a little bit more than half of the genes from the mother.
 
Vixen said:
I tend to agree with removing the Amendment in question in genuine medical circumstances.
What annoys me are the mindless slogans and the idea that women are being somehow being liberated. The problem with sloganising means people fail to think. They just go along with whatever is trendy, as though protection of the unborn child is an abhorrent suppression of 'women's rights'.

Let me know what your definition of a person is and I'll give you an answer.
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Please let us know what these "genuine medical circumstances", in you opinion, are. Perhaps you could answer my previous question regarding the additional risk to a woman's life before a termination is, again in your opinion, justified?
 
Vixen said:
Well, you won't like this, being an atheist, but I think this Psalm sums it up well:



Or, in plain English:




Choose life, Giordano.
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Like most people here I rate facts and evidence over bronze-age superstitions.
 
As mentioned up thread, a caution about being too casual about denying an "electrical" event at fertilization. Resting oocytes, in common with almost all living cells, have low calcium ion concentrations in their cytoplasm. Sperm entry induces a transient increase in this cytoplasmic calcium (both by release from intracellular stores and by influx from the outside of the cell). This calcium increase is a signal for inducing changes in the surface of the cell to block entry of any additional sperm (in part by release of zinc) and for the zygote to begin cleavage.

Given that calcium ions (and zinc ions) are charged, some anti-choice groups have chosen to deliberately distort this movement of atoms into a magical "electrical spark" that represents God placing a soul into the fertilized cell and making it a human being. And they use this distortion to fool their scientifically ignorant followers.

It certainly is not an electric spark in a scientific sense or as anyone else might use the word (is it an electrical spark when we sprinkle salt into a soup?). But a poet or someone trying to be cute (as in the Nature citation above) might use "spark" as a flowery metaphor. So I would not bother arguing spark or not. Instead, the argument of it being magical and representing creation of a human being breaks down immediately for other, more important reasons:

1. The very same type of cytoplasmic calcium ion increase is used to activate downstream events in many cells in the adult in response to many different signals. It occurs in our muscles as a signal to contract. It occurs in many of our endocrine glands as a signal to secrete hormones. It occurs in a wide variety of other cells in our body as a pro-growth and pro-migratory signal. It is used by cancer cell and contributes to their ability to invade normal tissue. There is nothing special about it occurring in oocytes: calcium is one of the most common "secondary messages" in cells in all of biology and is used throughout the body and throughout one's life. This is true not only of human beings but of virtually all animals and plants.

2. Even more damning to the argument that the calcium ion changes (and/or other ion movements) at fertilization are a magical divine spark that is the beginning of a human being, the entry of a human soul: the very same thing happens at fertilization for all animals and (apparently) for at least some plants. In fact this process was discovered and first worked out in sea urchin fertilization, then studied intensely in frog fertilization. Do sea urchins have souls? Do poison ivy bushes?

Anti-abortion fanatics often desperately try to change the argument from "when do a sperm and an oocyte become more than a clump of human cells and become a human being" to "when does the embryo become alive?" or "when do the cells in the embryo become human?" or "when do the cells in the embryo get chromosomes from both mom and dad." None of these are relevant.

Obviously the sperm and oocyte are alive, as are all the subsequent steps in development; Duh? We kill living things all the time ("Watch out! A black widow spider is behind you - kill it!). We even eat other living things all the time: apples, lettuce, or, for some of us, fish, chickens, cows. We have to to stay alive ourselves.

Obviously the sperm and oocyte are human cells even before they meet- no argument there. But all of our cells are human cells, and we discard billions all the time naturally. Brush your teeth and you will spit hundreds of human cheek cells down the sink. Nothing special about being a clump of human cells. And all of these have two pairs of chromosomes, so that is not a sign of being special, having a soul, being a human being. Even cancers are big clumps of human cells. A few rare cancers (teratomas) even go through incomplete differentiation and have teeth and other parts of an adult-like body embedded in them, yet we don't give these tumors funerals when they are surgically removed from patients.

So the key question, again, is when do a sperm and an oocyte develop the special characteristics that we consider to define a human being, rather than a rose, a sea urchin, a fly, a fish, or a mouse. It is not the calcium wave. It is not being diploid. It is not even having a beating heart. It is not even developing a crude nervous system: fly embryos have those too. And being a continuum, the answer has to be decided by each of us individually, with the pregnant woman's opinion having the most important say in the matter.

It is fine by me if Vixen looks at all this and decides on fertilization representing "the moment" based on reading between the lines in one English translation of one version of one religious book. But she has no right to impose her own, somewhat eccentric, minority (in Ireland and many other places) views on all the rest of us.
 
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Vixen said:
I tend to agree with removing the Amendment in question in genuine medical circumstances.
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That makes no sense. The Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution cannot be "removed in genuine medical circumstances".

How do you remove part of a national constitution "in genuine medical circumstances"? :confused:
 
JesseCuster said:
That makes no sense. The Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution cannot be "removed in genuine medical circumstances".

How do you remove part of a national constitution "in genuine medical circumstances"? :confused:
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Well you can, as the Supreme Court did interpret it.
 
Giordano said:
It is fine by me if Vixen looks at all this and decides on fertilization representing "the moment" based on reading between the lines in one English translation of one version of one religious book.
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Vixen's psalm doesn't even say anything about a "moment of fertilisation". It describes a process of development in the womb, or in some figurative secret place.
13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.​
Is this ancient text to be our moral guide anyway?
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.​
 
catsmate said:
Please let us know what these "genuine medical circumstances", in you opinion, are. Perhaps you could answer my previous question regarding the additional risk to a woman's life before a termination is, again in your opinion, justified?
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If having a baby is so incredibly life threatening, how come 85% of the population indulge in having children, the average (2.5) suggests people go back for a SECOND and even THIRD time. Yet lived to tell the tale. Fancy that.
 
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