Why do some people believe life starts at birth? Is this proper?
I've yet to understand why some people believe life starts at birth. As a person who believes life starts at conception I have trouble grasping this concept.
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I believe that this belief is a particularly misguided one, and I am thoroughly convinced that this is not a 'proper' viewpoint (whatever that is supposed to mean). That said, there are numerous explanations as to why one might believe this. First and foremost is that it's intuitive to the outsider; even though a baby bump is visibly obvious in most cases, and we're able to see vaguely humanoid shapes via ultrasound, that's still not the same thing as actually seeing a baby. For those in this camp, I believe it's simply a case of drawing a misguided conclusion from evidence that, while real and tangible, is not exactly related to the conclusion drawn. This isn't the only side to it though- there is also a camp that are being torn, somewhat, between two different moral problems; this is primarily those who are pro-choice, without caveats as to when abortion should be performed. Their dilemma is that no developmental changes occur during the process of birth- the trauma of birth itself temporarily halts or stalls most of these processes; as such, there is essentially no difference in terms of development or awareness between a fetus at the beginning of labor and the same infant just after birth. Most objective criteria one would use to differentiate between stages of development would not differentiate between a late term fetus and a newborn- herein lies the moral dillema; they want to advocate a womans right to choose, do not want excessive limitations placed on this right, but they also do not want to advocate infanticide, even indirectly. Even if it's a fundamentally flawed place to mark the beginning of life, it serves as an important 'divider' so to speak- and it works for many, particularly due to the previous camp I mentioned. I'm sure there are exceptions to these and other reasoning that causes someone to arise at this point, but I do believe that these two cases (with some overlap) cover the majority. 1
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Odd. You didn't even direct me to a specifc link. In fact you nearly lead me to a link that counters your position. This Link here that you nearly lead me to counters your position 1
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Life starts at conception and birth is the start of a specific species life. The being inside the body is unfortunately defined as a parasite (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/parasite). After birth, it is defined as a creature of its own species (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ I don't believe they disregard that a zygote and fetus are comprised of living elements and possibly even 'living' in and of themselves. Instead, it appears to be more of a rationale people use to excuse the termination of something that is evidently living put lacks a quality which would make it immoral to terminate. In the same sense, we can consider a tumor living, as it is composed of living cells, but it is not immoral to terminate a tumor because it doesn’t possess the extra quality that would otherwise make it immoral. This extra quality has been labeled as “life” by proponents of abortion. There are several definitions to the word, but perhaps a different term ought to be used in order to avoid semantics arguments. |