Irving's Argument Essay

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.

In 1973, American philosopher Marry Anne Warren created a list of five different characteristics that a person should have, known as Warren’s Basic Criteria for Personhood (Warren 2). Since the creation of this list, people have added to it or slightly adjusted the list but it is still pretty relevant. Warren initially created this list to verify that a fetus should not be considered a person, but it ended up raising a question about infants. If you analyze her criteria, you begin to notice that infants shouldn’t be considered a person either (Warren 7). I will argue against Warrens claim that a fetus cannot be considered a person.

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.

human from usually two months after conception to birth. It defines an embryo as a human or

One important topic debated by many pro-choice and pro-lifers, is: at what point does a fetus become human? This is one of the determining factors of the controversy surrounding abortion. Pro-life activists claim that life begins at conception, stressing the idea that a human embryo is self-developing. And since it cannot become anything other than human, it is a living human. Albeit a fetus may technically of human origin, it does not have the ability to conduct a conscious thought. At that point, the biological qualities of an embryo are equivalent to a sesame seed, or an egg. Can we really say that every time we eat an egg, it is like eating an unborn child? According to pro-lifers, yes, and they are technically correct. An egg is a completely fertilized, undeveloped infant. Yet the average American eats them on a weekly basis. How can that be justified by the pro-life campaign? It cannot. For one to truly LOSE a life, one must be aware he or she is alive. Thought and emotion are

If a fetus was not born it cannot be considered a being because it has no physical existence outside the female. Up until close to birth, the fetus is not entirely developed and does not yet obtain all the essential qualities to being a person such as the ability to be self-aware.

A fetus is made of everything that it needs to survive and become a human being with a distinctly human conscious, yet a fetus doesn’t have this conscious (Pro-CAN). Science has proven that the fetus doesn’t have a conscious during the standard time of abortion because a fetus doesn’t develop a nervous system or brain until the last stage of pregnancy. This following quote supports this claim: “Since consciousness depends on the development of the nervous system, and since it takes many months for the nervous system to mature, we can conclude that consciousness emerges gradually.” (Smith). Without a nervous system or a brain a fetus can’t feel, think, have emotions, memories, or awareness (Pro-CAN, and Smith). Thus, a fetus is as alive as a plant, a plant that can’t survive by itself. Furthermore, it is important to define human life before determining if a fetus experiences human life. The fetus is a live, and it is human, but it doesn’t experience human life because of it’s lack of human conscious. An actual human being experiences human life, therefore a fetus only has the potential to have a human conscious and does not actually experience human life (Pro-CAN). All of these statements conclude that a fetus doesn’t experience human life at the time of standard abortion, so consequently abortion isn’t

From the moment of conception an unborn baby has genetic makeup that determines its sex, appearance, and personality, all this baby needs now is time and space to grow. This baby develops rapidly in the womb. At week 5 his heart is already pumping blood, At week 11 the baby is hiccuping, kicking, and stretching. at week 17 his little skeleton is beginning to form. And the amazing thing about this baby is it’s an individual, yes unborn babies are not

When an embryo should be considered an actual human has a variety of answers, “some have sought to reject that the early human embryo is a human being, according to one view, the cells that comprise the early embryo are a bundle of homogeneous cells that exist in the same membrane but do not form a human organism because the cells do not function in a coordinated way to regulate and preserve a single life”.(Siegel)

I agree completely that the fetus, or the human embryo, is in fact a living being. Moreover, human embryo is the “same” as human beings except, the difference between these two is that the embryo is not a full human person because the fetus is not fully developed yet. Every new life, whether it be animal or human, begins at conception. With this being said, no matter what the circumstances of conception, no matter how far along in the pregnancy, abortion, in my opinion, always ends the life of an individual human being.

It has a genetic make up from the time of creation, therefore making it a living thing. It was argued that the fetus was just a mass of tissue that wasn’t really alive, but it has been proven that it is indeed a human being.

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

Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.

“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).

“Before they see any brain activity, I don’t consider what is developing fully human life yet. So, a zygote is not human life. When the sperm and the egg fertilize is not human life. It is a form of life but it is not human life. Human life, to me involves brain activity and consciousness and so that doesn’t take place early on in pregnancy. And not until the brain stem develops a brain, do I consider