Cell-icide: drawing a line in the sands of abortion

What bothers me is that if a rover
on Mars discovered a single cell organism,
the science world would be abuzz
about the discovery of life.

But discover a single cell organism
in the human uterus, and they refuse
to recognize it as life.

Hypocrites.

--Repeated again and again on the internet

I recently saw (for the thousandth time) this comment on Facebook. This pro-life argument lacks steam because it's not that I don't recognize the fertilized egg in a uterus as life, it's that I don't recognize that it is human. So terminating its life is no different to me than pulling a carrot from the ground, using anti-bacterial hand wash or squishing a mosquito. The true hypocrites in this are those that refuse an abortion to 'save a life' when the mother may die or the child, when born, may die an early death anyway from some terrible debilitating disease. Who are you to sentence a mother to death or another human to lead a life that he never would have chosen to live?

I think we can all agree that killing humans is bad. The big question then becomes, "What is a human?" The North Dakota 'Personhood Amendment' would define that a fertilized egg, or zygote, is human and therefore unlawful to abort. I think they could go farther. Even human egg cells are alive. They respirate just like any other human cell. Human sperm cells are alive as well. In some religions it is already unlawful according to God's laws to 'spill seed' or masturbate. Enlisting a federal ban on masturbation might help prevent killing all these innocent sperm. We should also take this procreation debate one step further and ensure that no human egg cells are wasted; we should ban menstruation. It would be required for all women of menstruating age to become pregnant to prevent the loss of the precious life of these human eggs.

Sound a little bit crazy to you? Me too.

I don't know a man alive who would vote on a *secret ballot* for a ban on masturbation in order to 'save seed.' Maybe publicly they would support a ban, but not when it comes down to the actual vote.  And I am sure that all pro-life women would support a ban on menstruation requiring them to be constantly pregnant to save their eggs from certain doom and destruction.

Let's get real. We need to draw a line in the sand, but let's do it with logic, not emotion; science, not god.

What IS the difference between the amoeba on Mars and a human zygote? Potential. The amoeba will not grow into a multi-cellular, intelligent, life form. I am going to pull a fast one and swap out that amoeba for a chimpanzee zygote. Now, both will grow into multi-cellular, intelligent, life forms. The only difference is that one will grow into a human and the other a chimpanzee. Since we kill chimpanzees all the time, it is okay to abort a chimpanzee embryo. Wait! We kill humans all the time too....

If we use DNA to compare the difference between the human and chimpanzee zygotes, we find that we share 98.7% of our DNA in common with chimpanzees. So we are really close. At the zygote, blastocyst and embryo stages, I am pretty sure that it would be impossible to tell a chimpanzee from a human. Well other than the obvious fact that chimpanzee embryos grow in a chimpanzee uterus. It should be possible to find some point at which it is obvious that a human fetus is really a human fetus by observation.

Just because it looks like a human does not necessarily make the thing a human. Can it sustain life outside of the uterus? If no, I would still argue that it still has a parasitic relationship with its host. Why didn't I say mother? Because theoretically we could come up with some machine that could serve as a host to a fetus. Doctors can already keep a fetus alive long before the 40-week mark.

We can take this too far in the other direction too, though. A one-year-old child cannot survive on his own. He requires food, shelter, protection, and love. That sounds like a parasitic relationship to me. So really only independent adults are human. You don't like your needy teenager? Abort him!

It turns out that we can really draw a line in the sand anywhere from pre-conception through early adulthood. Almost all using the same logic. The saddest part of this is that while we debate this, people are dying; people are getting killed. Abortion clinics are getting bombed. Teenage girls are dying from back-alley abortions gone wrong. Where is the humanity. I don't care if you believe in a god or not. Do you love your fellow humans? Maybe you don't believe that it is right to have an abortion. So don't have an abortion. But understand that maybe someone else has a different point of view on what a human is. Maybe you are not human to them.

Personally, I don't believe that abortion is a good practice. If you don't want to have a baby, don't have unprotected sex. But I can't fault a person for drawing the line at 10 or 20 weeks because I really don't know if that is a human yet. Because there is so much gray area in this matter, it is hard to say exactly where to draw the line. I don't want to snuff out human life, but I don't yet really understand what it means to be human. I am on a journey of learning to find that answer for myself. In the mean time, I don't plan on killing anybody: pro-life or pro-choice.

Green Tea and Nachos

We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.

--David Richo

I needed to use the facilities. I walk to the nearest location, but lo and behold, they are closed for cleaning.  I turn around and hit the down button on the elevator. I was planning on only going down one floor, but a lady walks up to use the elevator too. Guessing that it is more likely that she is headed to the ground floor, I press that button because there are facilities that I can use on the ground floor too, right next to the elevators.  Once I have finished with my business, I head to the café, thinking that while I am down there, maybe I can grab a cup of tea and let my brain unwind a bit. Tea instead of coffee both because of the hour and because if I choose green tea, it is zero calories instead of half-and-half plus sugar in my coffee. I get a cup of green tea (which tastes like alfalfa hay in my opinion,) and run into a co-worker while waiting for the tea to steep. We talk for 15 minutes, during which time I empty my cup. As we are leaving, it turns out that the café has out a table with complementary DIY nachos. I can't say no to free nachos. I get some. So green tea and nachos for me because I had to use the facilities at exactly the time they were closed and happened to have a fellow elevator passenger that was probably headed for the first floor.

Was I meant to get tea and nachos today or was it just a coincidence? No matter what you believe, I thought it was an interesting cascading chain of events.

Ethical Omnivore

I was poking around on the interwebs and found a New York Times article encouraging readers to write a 600-word essay on why eating meat is ethical.

I am only a year late for entering the contest, but I still felt compelled to write something.

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I was once a Christian who believed that God created mankind and gave us dominion over the beasts of the field.  We were to be good stewards over the earth; being kind to the animals and only using them prudently.  My family raised beef cows for food and as part of our family's livelihood.  There was nothing wrong with this picture.  When I grew older and realized that not all cows lead as happy lives as the ones I raised, I tried to buy meat only from local, more trusted sources instead of CAFOs.  I also started eating less meat when I realized how wasteful (in terms of energy) meat is compared to plants.  I was at peace with my food habits; eating mostly plants, but some meat too.

Then I lost God.

My basis of morality was suddenly no longer on the shoulders of an omniscient being; it was mine alone to bear.  When I realized that for the most part nothing changed, it was not too bad.  Then I realized that I am not a vegan.  I kill (or more correctly, pay others to kill) animals for my food.  Killing is wrong; that is one of my morals.  Knowing that my nine-year-old daughter has a way with reasoning, I put the question to her:  "Is it okay to kill animals for food?"  She answers without hesitation, "Yes.  They kill each other for food too."  So we can kill them, but they cannot kill us, I think to myself.  I ask, "Is it okay if an animal kills a human?"  Her head cocked to the side, with a quizzical look on her face, "Yes."  Obviously a stupid question.

From the mouth of my family's ethicist, it *is* okay to eat the flesh of other animals so long as they are allowed that same privilege.  When a mountain lion mauls your child and eats him for breakfast, there is no need for alarm.  Run!  Don't shoot unless you need to eat breakfast too.

Is eating meat unethical because it requires the death of another animal?  All animals die.  You are an animal and you will die too.  Eating plants requires us to kill living organisms too; does that make eating plants unethical?  A cow that lead a happy life, eating grass and resting in the shade of a tree does not care a whit what happens to his muscle tissue after he dies.  Really, what is so different between plants and animals?  We are all made of the same DNA.  We are all alive because of the energy of the sun.  We are all cousins; trees, fish, monkeys, humans, grass, lichens, etc.  If eating animal flesh is wrong, I would argue that eating plant flesh is every bit as wrong.

Or is eating meat wrong because we *kill* the animal?  If I were that cow, I would certainly rather die at the mercy of a gun than be torn apart by wolves.  Just because death by wolves happens in nature does not mean it is the best end.

I believe that you should be vegan not because it is more ethical, but because it is a more healthy lifestyle.

You know what really is unethical?  Treating animals poorly.  The pain and suffering that animals in so many CAFOs and slaughter houses go through is unethical.  A quick, painless death is not so unethical; it is the most that I can hope for when my time is at an end.