Question

Ok, nice little question. At which point (do you believe) does a child have life from conception to birth? Also no fighting on this one please, its only a question

Answer 1

ummmm nice one ............. Well ummmm the embryo can be alive ..........but I think at a point where the brain brain develops enough to respond to senses . One of my friends had a preterm labor and had a child in 5 1/2 months . The baby looked too tiny ,responded , breathed she was alive then and thanks to neonatal care she is fine now..................Now it is more like the point where you can take a foetus out and help it through the rest of the development but that frontier keeps changing............. Its difficult to tell the point one consdiders a child is alive..........
Are we taking about physiologic --------------then it should be embryo.....
But if we are taking acceptance of a child to be alive ?-------------I am not sure . It is somwhere between conception and the reaslization that the child transcened from being a preprogrammed cell in ur body to a individual being ...........but that I think it is varied for people.
Just think out loud :)

Answer 2

I meant thinking out loud :)

Answer 3

fertilized egg is alive from biological point of view! it has characteristics of an alive organism! maybe your question is about consciousness! that goes to nervous system (cns and pns development) .

Answer 4

Its tricky aint it :) when you try to think bout it it gets hard, more so when you throw abortion into it

Answer 5

yep it is . And im pretty sure it is for someone who has to make a decision like that too.

Answer 6

Yup, too true

Answer 7

I guess from a biological point of view it has to be at the moment of fertilization. Once a zygote is formed it's potential to become 'alive' is achieved. By that reasoning, you might say, every time a man masturbates or a woman menstruates that potential is lost so we are killing millions of lives everyday. However, a gamete alone has no potential of becoming alive on its own.

By that I don't mean that a zygote is conscious or deserves any more human rights than a skin cell on your left ear. It's merely that it has the possibility of becoming what we call 'alive'.

It's a hard one though. Asking the exact moment in which it becomes alive... That becomes more of a philosophical argument. Biologically, I think the argument from potential makes some sense.

Answer 8

when sperm and eggs meet

Answer 9

Implantation. There's not even the potentiality for any biological process prior to the implantation of the fertilized egg.

Answer 10

Interesting question, depends how you determine life, is it:

A) The point of fertilization and then the formation of a ball of cells which are biologically alive but would you say it is a life? A cell or ball of cells such as skin grafts grown in a laboratory have the same genes (obviously these cells are differentiated and some genes are inactive) but would you say a skin graft was a life it has all the genes and the potentially form a life but is is still just a ball of cells.

B) The point where the central nervous system develops and the organism can feel pain. Foetal pain is unlikely before the third trimester ~27 Weeks*

C) The point at which the foetus is viable outside the body. There is a 50% chance of the foetus surviving if removed from the mother after 24 Weeks (and this percentage increase as time passes).

This is the tricky part there is cross over between B and C which forms a grey area where the foetus can not feel pain but is potentially viable (50% of the time)! Is the ability to react to environmental stimuli life? (coma patients?) or is it the ability to survive outside the mother? There we go food for thought, and a very interesting and tricky question!

* http://jama.ama-retrice.org/content/294/8/947.ful