Conception/Abortion

So I was watching the "Civil Forum" last night, and I've been reading some responses online about Obama vs. McCain on their views of abortion and when life begins. This is what I believe.

We know that when the sperm fertilizes an egg, that single cell will eventually grow in to a human being. That's not disputable. The question is, at what point between conception and birth do we confer human rights on those cells we call a fetus.

Let's start off with that single cell. No single cell in my current body is assigned human rights. If I slice off the tip of my finger, I'm not going to hold a memorial service and buy a plot of land to bury it in. As great a finger tip as it's been, it's not that important to assign it human rights in and of itself...it's just a clump of human cells.

On the flip side of that, if every cell in my body dies, (ie, I croak), then that group of cells that was once my mortal flesh, is a tragic loss (or so I would hope).

Back to conception... The big picture is that no single cell is important, EXCEPT if that single cell is all there is to the human at that point in their lifecycle. Once that fertilized egg splits in to more cells, (excluding the splitting that occurs when identical twins are born), no single cell is "life" as a whole. What makes that single cell so special? Well, nothing. It's just a cell. There's no consciousness inside its walls. There's no special electrical pulses going on that doesn't happen in other cells. It's just a cell that will do its job, and split to form the cells that will eventually grow in to a human body.

Going back to the fingertip. With today's advancing research in to stem cells, and regrowing human cells from them, maybe some day we'll be able to regrow my whole body just from the cells in my fingertip. When that day comes, is my fingertip given human rights because it could possibly be grown in to another living, breathing, human body? Or does that not count because it's unnatural?

But let's pretend that some rogue science lab does just this. They start growing human clones from people's fingertips. When their lab gets raided by the FBI and their experiments are confiscated, are those FBI agents killing people? Or are those "abominations" not protected?

Let's move this conversation back to this bunch of cells dying thing...if I lop off my arm, no big whoop. I'm still alive, and my arm gets disposed of somewhere. If I really wanted to, I'm sure I could have my arm buried, but I choose not to, since it's just a bunch of cells. But what happens if I'm in an accident and I suffer severe brain damage, which is later diagnosed as being brain dead. If my brain stem is still functioning, even though I have no higher cognitive brain activity, I could still be breathing, and my heart could still be beating. Am I alive?

So my parents, or significant other decide that they want to pull the plug, (which is what I would want them to do). It's perfectly legal for them to do that, as technically I'm already dead. So according to the law in this regard, I'm dead if my brain isn't alive and functioning--ie, I have no consciousness.

So when does the embryo form its brain, and when can we detect brain functioning? This is a tough question to answer. From what I've read online, the cells for all the major organs find their places in the first trimester of growth. This is also when the few cells that will become the heart start beating. But are there enough cells of the brain to qualify it as alive and conscious? Not really. You can't really prove it either way, I guess. But you can't really prove that my brain-dead brain is actually dead and won't come back to life either. It's a tough decision that has to be made by those people able and willing to make it.

This is a debate that will never have definitive proof that when X happens, life has begun. And until that proof is found and agreed upon, we have to use our power of reason to determine the best course for our society to take.

My personal belief is that abortion should be totally 100% legal and accessible to anyone while their pregnancy is in the first trimester--this includes the over-the-counter "morning after" pill. During the second trimester, there should be more restrictions on when an abortion is done, and that it should be a last option after the pregnant woman has been informed of all other options. Abortion during the third trimester shouldn't be allowed except in extreme cases where there is possibility of death to the mother or child or both if the pregnancy went forward.

This won't appease the right-to-lifers who believe conception = life. But for the majority of American's, I think this is a middle road that we can all walk on.