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Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by tzs on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @05:25AM (#42059428)
Huh? Since when is a zygote not alive? It has a cell membrane, contains genetic material, has metabolism, can maintain homeostasis, and can grow. That's pretty much the definition of life.

Do you also think neurons, muscle cells, etc are also not alive?

The abortion debate is not about whether or not the thing that gets removed during abortion is life--I doubt you can find any competent biologist who would say it is not--but rather whether that particular cell or group of cells should be treated different than other cells or groups of cells in your body.

E.g., why should abortion be any different from removing tonsils or from circumcision, both of which also involve the removal and death of living cells from the body?

Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by ruthmarx on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @05:40AM (#42059644)
> Do you also think neurons, muscle cells, etc are also not alive?

There is a difference between something being 'alive' (although I think the examples you give are dubious), and being a 'life'.

Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by dspillett on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @06:02AM (#42059968)
By that logic, we should also consider banning antibiotics. In a world where we consider a cell or a small grouping of cells to be a life (rather than just alive) antibiotics are essentially a tool for genocide.
Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by joshuaissac on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @08:27AM (#42061944)
The whole purpose of antibiotics is to kill life, and the term itself means 'against life' in Greek.

That does not mean that it is necessary a tool for genocide; conversely almost anything can be a tool for genocide depending on how it is used.

Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by dspillett on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @10:33AM (#42063862)
That is exactly my point. People are conflating being alive (explicitly in this thread in the sense that a single cell is considered alive) with having a life that should be preserved. Complaining that if we found single celled life on Mars that we'd protect it even to our great inconvenience, but we will end a single cell or small group to save a host body, are making their argument based upon a false equivalence. Any life that might be found on Mars isn't ever posing a risk to a sentient host, and those defending harsh abortion controls because “all life should have a chance even single cells” don't extend “all life” to, well, all life.
Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by imtringued on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @08:35AM (#42062048)
How long until you guys ban periods...
Re:Former President Trump is projected to win the presidency by tzs on Wednesday November 06, 2024 @09:23AM (#42062708)
Why is this attached to my comment? My comment has nothing whatsoever to do with abortion. (Which I not only do not want to ban, at the very least I'd like it to go back to how it was under Roe v Wade).

My comment was about people misusing the terms life and alive. The correct way to argue that abortion should be legal is not to redefine life and/or alive so that some living cells or collections of living cells do not qualify rather than trying to redefine common terms used by biologists.

The correct way is to argue that we only only protect some cells or collections of cells and not others and then to argue that fetal cells belong in the not protected group. The question then comes down to deciding what it is that makes some groups of living cells protected but not others. Probably the best argument would be something along the lines that before that collection of cells has grown and developed to the point that it has a brain that can think and feel it is not really different from a tumor or other collection of cells that we don't protect.