Biologist here. I've never thought that embryos were 'blobs.' Blastulas? Yes, if you don't know what you're looking at.
As a biologist, you must also know about this elementary fact of human biology.
Like all placental mammals, human individuals begin at conception and end at death. It's a universal trajectory of physical development. One conception might result in a trajectory that spans 80 years before death from old age. Another might end after a few days with death by miscarriage. Another might end after a few years, due to fatal illness. Nobody has a lease on tomorrow, and we're all gonna die. But this fact is well established.
Where morality comes in is the choices we make. People, all too often, make choices that will result in death for other people. Abortion is not the only such choice by any means. But it is one.
And the abortions I oppose aren't the ones resulting from rape or medical problems. They're the ones resulting from people who feel entitled to Choose irresponsible sex, and also entitled to killing their progeny because they don't want to take responsibility for the outcome of their Choice.
Tom
I asked before but how do you define human conception?
Here are two often used but dramatically different definitions of human conception:
Conception: 1. The union of the sperm and the ovum. Synonymous with fertilization.
2. The onset of pregnancy, marked by implantation of the blastocyst into the endometrium.
Implantation into the uterine wall takes 5-6 days after fertilization. If it implants in the uterus instead of a fallopian tube or fails to implant at all.
Fertilization and implantation are vastly different.
We know that AT LEAST 3/4 of all fertilized eggs NATURALLY fail to survive 6 weeks of gestation. We honestly do not know how many fertilized fail to implant at all.
From your post above and others, it seems you categorize abortions into 3 categories:
1. pregnancy from rape
2. pregnancy that causes serious medical problems
Which are justifiable in your opinion.
And then:
3. Pregnancies that result from 'irresponsible sex.'
Does that include people who conceive despite using birth control correctly? ALL birth control carries some failure rate associated with IDEAL use. Real life use carries a higher failure rate. Morning after pills are not universally available and are not typically free. Even sterilizations can result in pregnancy, although this is rare. At least two of my friends were so conceived, one after his mother had her tubes tied.
Lots of people are having 'responsible sex' using birth control and still conceive a pregnancy. Lots of people who conceive this way do decide to continue the pregnancy.
But some do not. There are many, many, many reasons for this.
If we really want to prevent abortions, we need to do several things:
Improve sex education and make it universal.
Improve health care and make it universal and free for all. Including mental health care.
Improve medical leave and make it paid
Improve parental leave and make AT LEAST 3 months of it paid. My personal opinion is that it should be mandatory for both men and women. This would help to reduce the stigma and remove any hiring/workplace bias against women who are or may become pregnant
Make universal affordable/free childcare available from birth through primary school age.
I've come to realize that I do not need to know the reasons people make the choices about reproduction or any other choice nor do other people require my approval. I'd much rather that we do as much as possible to reduce the need for abortion than punish women who seek abortion or medical providers who perform abortion.
