this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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Progressive Politics, Gun Control, Single Payer Healthcare and Free Abortions for All!
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It doesn't. Life is a continuum, it doesn't care what artificial labels we try to put on things. A fertilized egg is just as alive as an unfertilized one, or a sperm cell, by any scientific definition of life, highlights how useless it is to try and use that definition to argue about abortion.
Source?
From the National Institute for Health
The article as a whole elaborates that even trying to pin down a single definiton of life is a bit of a fool's errand, much less trying to use such a definition to support arguments about when life starts or stops.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which actually is just re-quoting an entirely different article, one of many discussed within)
From a University of Minnesota Introduction to Biology course
In short, there really isn't any unified definition of life. Comparing different definitions, there's common themes that emerge, but nothing that supports saying conception is when it starts. If you're going to use that definition, you can't support it by saying that "science" defines it that way.
I guess my thing is those descriptors don't apply to unfertilized embryos.
The definitions you provided exclude both egg and sperm from being classified as a living organism. They can not reproduce or replicate themselves.
Considering those quotes talk about defining "living systems" or "groups of organisms", as opposed to individual cells (and again, elaborated on even moreso within the full linked articles), I'm gonna have to say "no, they're not really excluded at all." Their entire purpose is to meet up and initiate replication. An egg and sperm cell are each one small part of a much larger system of ongoing life. The same can be said for a fertilized egg, an embryo, and so on for most stages of development in a womb.
If you want to insist on a definition that says egg and sperm cells aren't alive, or aren't an organism, you're gonna have a hard time saying that a fertilized egg or an embryo are. They don't replicate on their own, either, not without a very specific environment and set of stimuli.
Also, sperm cells DO replicate, to an extent. They undergo forms of mitosis and meiosis, during their growth. And an egg cell absolutely replicates. Like any other type of cell replication, it needs certain stimuli to initiate it. I.E. it needs to be fertilized.
An embryo goes from a single cell to multiple genetically identical cells, that is replication. Sperm cells do not replicate into more identical sperm cells, eggs do not replicate into more identical eggs.
I would argue that the mitosis process sperm cells undergo splits the cell into two genetically different cells and the genetic difference ia not a mutation so it's not replication. Egg cells don't replicate they don't copy their DNA, they fuse with sperm at which time they become an embryo and start to replicate.
And you think embryo can reproduce/replicate itself? Lol
Yes an embryo does replicate. How do you think an embryo goes from one cell to multiple cells?
Thru cell division. Didn't know you were referring to DNA replication, which was not mentioned anywhere in the articles you replied to.
You should probably read the articles before you comment on what's in them. It may also help to know what replication means.