And a large helping of personal opinions that you try to gussy up as scientific facts.
I have personal opinions on the matter, but I've spent very little time in this thread talking about them. I am not the one confusing matters of opinion with matters of fact.
No comment on my post noting that the US National Academy of Sciences generally, most of its members separately, and biological development specialists particularly, disagree with your "scientific facts".
I'll comment on it if you like. My first comment is that there's a reason I've been asking, "what does science say," and not, "what do scientists say?" Because scientists are apparently just as prone to same errors in thinking that are rife in this thread: They erroneously conflate factual statements about the beginning of human life with the beginning of personhood, or assign it some other moral value that they are unwilling to admit, and they think admitting that conception is the beginning of human life is inconvenient for conclusions they've already reached and are unwilling to let go.
The testimony to Congress in 1981 is actually a perfect example of that.
http://www.nytimes.com/...i-abortion-bill.html
As Senate hearings on the abortion issue resumed, Dr. Lewis Thomas, chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, testified that the question of when human life begins could be resolved only ''in the domain of metaphysics.''
''It can be argued by philosophers and theologians, but it lies beyond the reach of science,'' said Dr. Thomas, leadoff witness at hearings of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Separation of Powers, whose chairman, Senator John P. East, strongly opposes abortions.
Those statements are absurd. Whether or not something is alive is not a matter of metaphysics, philosophy, or religion. It is a matter of biology. The
definition of biology, for crying out loud, is the study of life and living organisms. As I've been saying, whether or not a human organism is a person, or whether it has moral value, or whether or not it has a soul, and when or if any of that actually happens-
those are matters of philosophy and religion, outside the realm of science. Whether an organism is alive, though- straight science.
Dr. Ryan, echoing the views of several other witnesses, told Senators East and Max S. Baucus, Democrat of Montana -the only two of the five committee members who attended the hearing - that ''when Congress equates cellular life to personhood it is taking a substantial leap beyond the current views of the medical and scientific community that will have a major and lasting effect upon the health care of women in this country, the practice of medicine in this country and the personal health practices of a large portion of our population.''
Dr. Ryan was right that equating cellular life to personhood is taking a leap beyond the current views of the scientific community. It's a substantial leap beyond science altogether, as science has absolutely no competency to address the issue of personhood, and never will. Science can't say whether a zygote is a person or not, and it can't say whether a fetus with brain waves is a person or not, and it can't say a baby is a person or not, and it can't say
you're a person or not. For that matter, science can't say whether your cat is a person or not.
Notice, though, that Dr. Ryan's answer takes the fact of cellular
life as a given, and that's the issue we've been talking about.
Senator East clashed at the three-hour hearing with Dr. Mary Ellen Avery, chief physician at the Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston, who said that, if pressed on the issue, she would express the belief that life probably began - and that fetuses were ''viable'' - at the end of the second trimester of pregnancy.
Laughable, obviously. That's not a scientific judgement about when biological life begins. That's just a personal opinion on when abortion should be allowed.
Dr. Avery is entitled to that opinion, but don't try to pass it off as some kind of confusion about when life begins. She knows full well that the fetus is alive before viability, as do we all.
That's the difference between asking what scientists say, and what science says. The science is clear. The zygote IS alive. (Inane statements that it's living tissue but not alive notwithstanding.) It IS human. It IS a whole organism. It IS a human life- a new, individual member of the human species, in it's very earliest stage of development.
If you want to dispute any of that, dispute it using science, not the personal opinions of scientists about peripheral moral issues. Explain how and why the zygote is not actually alive, or not actually human, or whatever.
As to the morbidity rates of fertilised human ova, if people really held the view that each is a life just as valuable as a born child I would expect their actions to be more congruent with their claimed values. As many as 2/3 of potential/actual humans (do you say "people", or just "human beings"?) die before birth. If they are just as valued as any person, this is an surely an ongoing catastrophe.
Again, you're bringing values into a discussion which is properly confined to science. Whether or not I think each life is just as valuable as a born child is not relevant to the question at hand. Whether or not it's a catastrophe I should be horrified by or just another confirmation that Mother Nature is a bitch is not relevant to the question. Whether or not I'm a hypocrite for not working ceaselessly to prevent spontaneous abortions is not relevant. The question is a matter of science.
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."