Are you in agreement that personhood begins at conception?

Question

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10976

Defining Personhood
Colorado Court OKs pro-life ballot initiative to expand definition of personhood

Denver, Nov 14, 2007 / 10:30 am (CNA).- The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday released a decision approving a pro-life group's ballot initiative to restore legal personhood to human beings from the moment of conception.

"We fully expected this positive decision from the Colorado Supreme Court. We are pleased that they supported the Title Board's previous decisions. Plans to begin our petition drive are underway," stated Kristi Burton, spokesperson of Colorado for Equal Rights.

Colorado for Equal Rights is seeking to pass an amendment expanding the definition of "person" in three parts of the Colorado Constitution. The new definition will define "person" to mean a human being from the moment of fertilization.

http://standupgirl.com/web/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=29

I'm a Protestant.

Answer 1

Absolutely... I'm not Catholic, but I believe that everyone has a soul that exists from the moment of conception until the moment of death. I refuse to believe that a child is created, but "it's not really a baby until it's born"... WTH is that?? That'sl ike saying "well, this potato is growing in the ground, but it's not really a potato until we pull it up."

Answer 2

So in case you decrease off somebody's arm, is that a individual? this is created from organic and organic tissue with a special DNA code, yet few could argue that it particularly is a actual human. this is greater complicated than having unique DNA. Edit: definite it does, except you're being pedantic and counting the unique individual. bodily, an "unborn" is on par with an arm. It has no ideas interest, not one of the intelligence and understanding that makes a individual a individual. this is in basic terms a tiny cluster of physique factors. i'm asserting that neither stay human beings. the only distinction between an arm and an unborn fetus -- in terms of personhood -- is that one will finally exchange right into a individual and one won't. i think of the problem is which you're no longer acknowledging the version between existence and human existence. particular, multi-cellular existence starts at concept, yet that doesn't make it a individual with organic rights. look, the only beside the point element right it particularly is you quoting biology textbooks asserting "look right here, I particularly have technology", while the problem handy isn't scientific. Biology makes no massive distinction between human beings and animals, existence and human existence. the problem isn't approximately existence greater often than no longer -- we squash flies and consume cow with out a 2d concept -- this is approximately human existence. An unthinking cluster of cells is eukaryotic existence, particularly, yet at that factor this is of course no longer a human existence. once you initiate seeing rudimentary ideas interest on the top of the 1st trimester, then this is going to become a grayer section, yet till then, the preferrred court docket definition is right: it particularly is a potential existence. throughout the time of Roe v Wade, the preferrred court docket knew that concept exchange into the 1st step that brought about a individual. They knew that, from a organic and organic point of view, it has cells which will shop multiplying till it varieties a questioning guy or woman. yet they additionally knew that a predecessor and its successor are no longer a similar element. An embryo isn't a individual from now on than a newborn who will finally exchange right into a father is a father. i do no longer know how many situations I could desire to rigidity the version between existence and a individual. Biology talks touching directly to the mechanics of existence, even though it does not communicate approximately what makes a human human, and that's what we are involved by as quickly as we are speaking approximately issues like organic rights.

Answer 3

Not until outside the mother and the fetus is viable, without drastic methods to keep it alive.

Just because a group is able to get permission to PETITION for this, does not mean that it will become a ballot issue, let alone a law.

Answer 4

I agree, but not for any metaphysical or philosophical reasons (because those could be debated forever and never resolved). For me, it's purely a biological thing: human development occurs on a continuum from conception through to death. There is no dividing line between some theoretical prehuman state and becoming a person. Birth doesn't suffice for this -- there is no real difference between the foetus just before birth and the infant the next moment afterward.

Answer 5

God said of Jeremiah,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you."
Jeremiah 1:5.
This was written 600 years before the birth of Christ.
It has nothing to do with Catholicism. Also it has nothing to do with biology or science of legal decisions or opinions or cells or sperms or learned men or churches etc.
So, If you don't believe God's statement that He formed him in the womb, and not only that, that He knew him even before that, then you do not believe the bible. You are just toying with the stupid opinions of stupid people. We must take God at His word.
Obviously personhood begins before conception.

Answer 6

Absolutely not. Personhood at the very least requires structures in the brain that can at least produce some kind of rudimentary consciousness. That doesn't develop in fetuses until the second trimester.

An alternate religious argument is that personhood requires "breath" or "spirit" (pneuma) as this is what God put into Adam to make him alive (see Genesis). In this view personhood begins with the first breath.

Answer 7

That's insane.
At the moment of conception, there is about a 50/50 probability of 'personhood' (about 50 % of pregnancies end in recognized or unrecognized miscarriage).
So if we're going to go that far, we'd better just grant all my eggs personhood, since each one there has possibility too.
I'm off to count the hubby's sperm, suddenly there's many more 'people' in the house...


Talk about playing G-d;- the anti-choice people are the one's trying to decide for him when personhood begins...


EDIT- @ Q/A QUEEN- >>How can a cell have personality traits inherent in it and not be a person?

All cells have inherant traits. That is why they function as they do. Are your neutraphils people? What about your skin cells? Are they people too? Do you know what properly functioning cells do? They carry information. = inherant traits, 'personality', if you will. Is each strand of your DNA a 'person'? Replicating 300,000 x / a day? Must get crowded in there for you...

Answer 8

This new law will make life difficult for the people of Colorado though: every pregnancy that ends prematurely from natural causes (thousands per year ) must be treated as involving a dead person. Dead persons cannot be flushed down the toilet.
The costs on autopsies, little coffins, church services, burial space, little grave stones will be enormous.
Women for whom its difficult to keep their pregnancies will have to go through this several times per year, publicly!

Answer 9

No. A clump of cells that feeds of it's host, regardless of what it will become, is not a person.
If this were otherwise, the IVF program would be comitting mass murder. Every successful artificial insemination produces, on average, 20 pertalised eggs that are then destroyed.
Funny, people are against abortion, saying it's a human at the moment of conception, but the same people are not against IVF.

Answer 10

Person-hood as you said, well according to the Bible it does not begin in a mother's womb but in the loins of a man.

Hebrews 7:5 And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham:

Answer 11

No I dont.

The minute the heart or the brain starts working, then thats a person there.

Personhood is a characteristic of living creatures with an awareness--the word personhood is kinda weird but anyway.

A bunch of cells trying to form something is not called a person.

Otherwise my hair would be a person on its own. Think about it.