Embryo Vs Adulthood

But we know a little bit about murder, and the differences between murder and other forms of killing. And murder, in the way that we define it in all other instances, involves theintentional death of another human person. Even if we were to assume that every embryo or fetus were just as sentient and just as much of a person as any other human being, an argument that is not

worried. If one was once an embryo or a fetus, then what type of mental properties did they hold? Lynn Baker contrasts this view in her reply to Olson.

He emphasizes the important of embryos’ life and right to develop to be a mature human.

The topic of abortion is heavily debated. One of the major controversies surrounding abortion is whether or not the embryo is a human life and able to receive the same rights as any other human. Is the embryo mentally developed enough to be considered as a human life? It is medically proven that after conception, the human brain takes many months to develop, so the “personhood” of a fetus cannot begin until about the seventh month.

With every advance come greater restrictions, a greater sensitivity to society. It is only recently that there has been a differentiation between a fetus and a

Dresser analyzed ethical and policy issues using her own views and focused on “different possibilities for implementing an approach incorporating the position that human embryos have an intermediate moral status”(Dresser, R. 2005). Dresser encountered many boundaries that limit her article because she does not touch the topic of religion and this enables her to make a stronger statement. Such if embryos are considered to have moral status of a person “based on the view that conception is the point that a person begins”. This limits Dresser’s opposing viewpoint because some of her audience are “religious”. Although Dresser is not able to present concrete religious viewpoints, she is able to express her point in different parts of the article.

So when we take the life of a fetus, we are taking the life of another human being.

The next position that Noonan (2012) disputes is that humanity is defined by experience. Someone has to have lived and formed memories to be considered human. He disputes this belief in several ways, with varying successfulness. His first argument is that an embryo feels and reacts at eight weeks gestation (p. 470). This argument is strong in supporting abortion bans after 8 weeks or 10 weeks (when the embryo is considered a fetus). It is not as strong in supporting abortion bans altogether, which is his argument. It does not support Noonan’s theory that an embryo becomes “human” at the moment of conception. Few could argue that a blastocyst (the bundle of cells that will form the embryo) is having experiences.

Lee and George support their argument by providing three important facts that differentiate a human embryo is, in fact, a human being. First, they say that sex cells and somatic cells are part of a larger organism while the human embryo is a complete or whole organism, though immature (14). Secondly, they say that the embryo is human and has all the characteristics of a human being but the sex and somatic cells are genetically and functionally different because they cannot develop

Some people believe that an embryo is human, but also believe that a human has a virtue in the ability to be self aware of their choices. Since the embryo can’t have the ability to be self aware that means that they don’t fit or qualify as having rights as another person in society might have (Haugen 24). People like Orrin Hatch make the debate that since the embryo was made outside the human body and in a fertility clinic, then the embryo is not a human being. Because life actually begins inside the mother's womb and since the baby can't grow until it's in the womb, then it should just be

“it is said that to draw a line, to choose a point in this development and say ‘before this point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person’ is to make an arbitrary choice… It is concluded that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. But this conclusion does not follow. Similar things might be said about the development of an acorn into an oak tree, and it does not follow that acorns are oak trees” (Thompson 1971).

Finally, there are the issues concerning the embryos. As previously stated, whether or not an embryo can be considered “human” is a classic argument. Although there are many valid arguments on both sides, the argument is focused on and designed for abortion. The embryos

Going by the norms of the world, the status of adulthood is conferred on a person, on attaining a certain biological age, but to be an adult in the real sense of the word, requires more than the passage of a fixed number of biological years! For adulthood is a state of maturity of mind, that one cultivates as years pass. And the concept varies in different cultural contexts.

However, there are important limitations to this approach, as data suggests more than two-hundred and twenty-million spontaneous abortions occur worldwide each year (Ord, 2008). To assume that embryos were in fact persons would be to assume that the greatest death toll of our generation is a result of natural embryo death (Douglas et al., 2009)

Evasions and misstatements have entered the public debate to obscure this moral issue. At a recent Senate hearing, even the scientists who published articles about their success in "cloning human embryos" tried to avoid the word "embryo" and even the word "cloning" to hide the reality of what they are doing. The fact remains that when somatic cell nuclear transfer is used to initiate embryonic development, a new human embryo is created with the same genetic constitution as another human being. While some may wish to debate the moral status of this new human