When the little assholes can pay rent and feed themselves.


But in my case, my life didn't really begin until I climbed Mt. Fuji and I learned the truth about love and friendship.

The latest I would put the beginning of life is the detection of brain waves. I believe brain wave detection begins at 40 days from conception. As I earlier stated, I think the debate should shift to whether or not it is ethical to prohibit a zygote/embryo (human entity) from developing. 

Answer: @30

RealMafoo that is actually a pretty good rationalization in you OP.

 There is an actual set criterion list for whether or not an organism can be considered to possess "life." Simply being able to respond to stimuli and having all the characteristics of living cells (in a very general sense here) does not mean it is actually alive. A virus is not considered to be alive for example, but contains most if not all the features a sperm cell does. What is or is not alive (amoeba versus sperm) is a very different arguement than when an organism that is alive first can be considered to have come to life.

So, the cells in my body aren't alive?  Last time I checked the sperm in my body were just modified cells, thus making them only slightly different (they are haploid rather than diploid), from every other cell in my body.  And if those aren't alive, looks like I am pretty fucked.

I think it really comes down to how we feel about this stuff.  Do we define life scientifically or spiritually.  What's funny to me, is the switch in positioning.  A doctor who performs abortions would say that it's not the same life while a religious anti-abortion person would say that the life is the same.

   Ironically (or maybe not ironically if you know the judicial history) you picked the EXACT defination used by Roe v Wade originally.  They set the bar for when abortion was legal at the point of viablility.

    Of course this led to problems that were badly solved in later cases because there's a question as to what viability means.

    For example in the 1970s viability was more or less the last month to 2 months since medical technology was primitive by todays standards.  Now we could keep a 5 or 6 month old baby alive with incubators and medical treatment in scinereos like the untimely death of the mother.  I'm sure in the next 100 years we will have the technology to invent a fully functional artificial womb that the fertilized egg could be placed in immedietly with complete "viability".  Would that mean that morally the acceptable window for abortion depends on science?  Oh the irony!

   I would determine the "viable" window in the mothers favor whenever possible.  If she doesn't want the baby and it can't live on its own (no ventilator, no artificial womb) she can choose not to have it.

   Alternately I would accept banning abortion.  The caveat is that this ban must be accompanied by a new government program.  This would be the "give unwanted babies to crazy fundamentalists who oppose abortion on purely religious grounds" program.  In it every fundamentalist pro life wingnut who talks about the "choice" of Sarah Palins teenage daughter in the same sentence as they advocate denying such a choice to everyone else must take an unwanted baby for each house they own.  In McCains case he would get not one, not two, but something like a dozen new bundles of unwanted joy to spice up his life.  I'd like to see how long it would be before Bill O'Rileys was out on the street.

   That's a really bad answer that would in effect stop all abortions.  Very very few women know they're pregnant until after a minimum of a month unless they're methodically checking with tests.  Besides basic brain activity that only arises from having a brain (which ALL creatures above the size of microorganizims do in some form or another) is quite different then complex human thought and emotion which takes months to develop, not 40 days.  If brain waves are all it takes for you I hope you're a Janist who advocates absolute life for all creatures including bugs and spiders.  Make sure you walk around sweeping the ground in front of you like they do so you don't accidentally crush an ant which has the same quality of brain waves (probably more brain waves actually) as a 40 day old fetus.

I think people are forgetting what brain waves actually are. Brain waves are a way to look at the activity of your neurons. More accurately brain waves represent pattern of electrical signals from one neuron to another. Just as the sperm and the egg are already alive but are not considered alive humans so too are the neurons just simple cells, they just happen to connect and when they connect they do what they are meant to do, that is send out electrical signals to other such cells. A sperm swims an egg floats, they all do what they are meant to do, but that doesn't make them living humans. Just because a brain wave exists it really does not signify anything other than the fact that neurons are getting fired off. My computer is sending out astronomical amounts of electrical signals, just like neurons, but do you want to call it alive as well?

Another point is the whole response to stimuli. In cells the general response to stimuli is actually very basic. If you push a hammer off a ledge and it hits a plank which flies off, you've basically simulated basic response to stimuli. Just because a cell or a clump of cells responds that doesn't actually mean that they thought about it. For instance, you push on something, the pressure inside the cell increases, which sets off a chemical reaction, and voila it moves away from the push so that it can rebalance its pressure back to normal.

For me human life begins when there's evidence of conscious thought, anything else and it's just a lump of cells doing what they do with potential to become a living human. Potential is the magic word there. Potentially the ceiling will fall on me and I won't finish this post, potentially we will get hit by a meteor tomorrow and we will all die, potentially the clock will fall off my desk and I won't wake up in time for my test tomorrow. Just because it is potential it does not mean that it is. It is when it is, and what makes a person a person or any other animal an animal, is a conscious brain, not just some electricity and basic cells working together at the most basic levels.

Now back to studying so that maybe I can get an hour of sleep before said test.

   That's more or less what I meant with the ant thing ;) I had just already gone on so long I didn't want to get into neuroscience fully.