Abortion, yo.

[ballin4life]

No human can survive without food or water. All humans can survive and grow without combining with an egg. This is objective fact. You could say that while the need for food and water is true, it is not a criterion for being human. In that case, the fact that babies need food and water, which you brought up, for development is completely irrelevant.

Clarification: babies need to be GIVEN food and water - they aren't going to survive by themselves. That's what I meant.

 

[Ocean]

All humans can survive and grow without combining with an egg.

but every human when it was first a sperm had to combine with an egg. it was an essential part of survival at one point in our existences.

t is a futile effort to debate what makes something human.

then why are you still posting in this thread?

 

[T-block]

ballin4life, I still don't see how that refutes my point.

Ocean, why are you talking as if we were sperm and then jumped into an egg and started growing? Sperm and egg are half and half.

I can debate that sperm cells should not be considered humans without getting too deep into what makes something human.

 

[ballin4life]

Babies need to be given food and water to continue development. Sperm need to fertilize an egg to continue development. Everything is just another stage in development.

A mature human does not need anything to continue development (since development is complete).


Anyway, it all depends on your definition of "human" so whatever. I use "sapient/intelligent" as my definition. A sperm, an egg, an embryo, a fetus, and a baby all will become sapient/intelligent if and only if they are put in certain conditions.

 

[Savon]

Babies need to be given food and water to continue development. Sperm need to fertilize an egg to continue development. Everything is just another stage in development.

A mature human does not need anything to continue development (since development is complete).


Anyway, it all depends on your definition of "human" so whatever. I use "sapient/intelligent" as my definition. A sperm, an egg, an embryo, a fetus, and a baby all will become sapient/intelligent if and only if they are put in certain conditions.

A mature human may not need anything to continue development, but a child or even an adolescent sure do. Hell, in some cases that food still has to be given to them since they cannot obtain it on their own.


This is my own opinion in reference to abortion and a fetus and all of that good stuff.
If I recall correctly something is considered to be alive when it exhibits most of the following qualities.

1. Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
2. Organization: Being structurally composed of one or more cells, which are the basic units of life.
3. Metabolism: Transformation of energy by converting chemicals and energy into cellular components (anabolism) and decomposing organic matter (catabolism). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
4. Growth: Maintenance of a higher rate of anabolism than catabolism. A growing organism increases in size in all of its parts, rather than simply accumulating matter.
5. Adaptation: The ability to change over a period of time in response to the environment. This ability is fundamental to the process of evolution and is determined by the organism's heredity as well as the composition of metabolized substances, and external factors present.
6. Response to stimuli: A response can take many forms, from the contraction of a unicellular organism to external chemicals, to complex reactions involving all the senses of multicellular organisms. A response is often expressed by motion, for example, the leaves of a plant turning toward the sun (phototropism) and by chemotaxis.
7. Reproduction: The ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism, or sexually from two parent organisms.

A developing embryo exhibits all of these qualities besides the 7th, which they will gain as they develop overtime.

Throw that in along with human DNA being a part of what they are, and I am not sure how you can make an argument about a fetus being alive OR human.