A letter in the 4/1/23 TPP asserted that “Life begins at the time of conception. No one can deny that after a human being is conceived it will develop into the very same being as those debating the issue.” However, the claim that life begins at conception is demonstrably false. Life began over a billion years ago; human life began several hundred thousand years ago and has persisted as a continuum since then. There is human life in a tube of blood. There is human life in the sperm and egg cells, the vast majority of which never produce conception.
What the letter writer seems to believe is that an individual human life, a person, begins at the time of conception. This belief is a particular interpretation of the scientific fact that the fertilized egg contains unique genetic material, unique DNA. But a single cell containing unique DNA is fundamentally different from the “very same being” who is “debating this issue” of abortion and whom the fertilized egg “will develop into.” Is a single cell with unique DNA a person, a “being?” According to medical science at least half of the fertilized eggs that are created will not develop into such beings because of a variety of serious natural defects.
At the time of birth, the product of conception is no longer a single cell. The newborn is composed of millions of highly specialized cells that are assembled into body organs essential for life. The fertilized egg is not a person or “being” but does have the potential to become a person. Under the right circumstances, it will develop into a person. From a scientific/medical perspective, the fertilized egg is far from the “same being” who will be debating the issue of abortion, or even the same being who will be born.
The scientific community interprets the event of conception much differently than the letter writer. Medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Fertility Society, and the American Society of Human Genetics, disagree with the letter writer. These organizations submitted amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court opposing a Missouri law that proclaimed that life begins at conception. Also opposing the law were 167 scientists, including 11 recipients of the Nobel Prize, who presented scientific evidence against the notion that a human life begins at conception.
The brain most clearly distinguishes humans from other animals. From a scientific/medical standard, personhood is dependent on a level of brain function and is not based on the presence of unique DNA in a living cell. Loss of this brain function determines when personhood ends. Every day, physicians discontinue “life support,” such as respirators, on patients who no longer have this level of brain function despite the fact that they contain millions of living cells with unique DNA. This medical decision is made because the person has ceased to exist.
Consistency in determining when an individual human life begins and when it ends is imperative. The zygote, the immediate product of conception, lacks any neurologic function. It will be months before the fetus develops the level of neurologic function that, from a scientific perspective, confers personhood. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks long. Half of all abortions are performed in the first seven weeks, 90% in the first 13 weeks and 99% in the first 20 weeks. Virtually all abortions occur before the fetus has developed the function of the brain and other vital organs necessary to survive outside the womb.
Americans are deeply divided in their views about abortion. People are entitled to believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is a crime (as the letter writer claims), but they are not entitled to impose their belief on others through coercive, punitive government dictates.
ROBERT BLAKE, MD, Columbia, Mo.
Did Gene Lyons [who wrote “Academic Drama, Meet Unsubstantiated Islamophobia” in the 2/15/23 TPP about a Hamline University lecturer who was fired after a complaint by a Muslim student about the display of a 14th-century Persian painting depicting the Prophet Muhammad] catch the story in “The Onion” about the situation at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota? Here’s a synopsis: “Muslim student in more trouble for her attack upon America’s ‘academic freedoms’ … than ex US president living in luxury in Texas, who attacked real Muslims in a fake ‘war’ and killed 400,000 of them.”
Classic punching down by Lyons. Let’s focus on real problems, and stop being so terrified of Muslims and over-reacting when they do something like what happened at Hamline.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
Froma Harrop’s spritely column, “I Was a Teenage Librarian, Don’t Arrest Me [4/1/23 TPP], answered prudes according to their folly. The very notion of there being self-righteous gatekeepers deciding what library shelves contain is more asinine than worrisome these days.
In our freedom-oriented culture, what constitutes vulgarity, lewd vernacular, gratuitous descriptions of interpersonal relationships and naughty four-letter words should be a dead issue. Since the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, creativity has steadily gained ground.
Think of the farmer and his wife in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” Rather few modern folk would return to the repression and suppression “Tropic of Cancer” deserves space on library shelves.
WILLLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
With regard to the Gene Lyons “Misinformation Superhighway” article [2/1/23 TPP], Mr. Lyons referred to one man’s take on Astrology, “an ancient belief system.” Astrology is an interpretation of symbols referring to planets and stars and their positions in Our Environment. Let’s start with the moon. Ask any 911 operator if there are more calls on a full moon than any other time of the month. Ask the same of the ER room or the nurses who will tell you that more babies are delivered at that time. Then try comparing the masses of Jupity and Saturn to “little Earth.”
When your planets “conjunct,” there is a sheer gravity fore on this plant, Our Environment.” Which brings me to Jan. 6, 2021, where Mars began the conjunction to Uranus, complete on the 21st in the sign of Taurus “The Bull”! I can still picture the fellow with the bull horn hat in the Capitol and it gives me the creeps. According to astrologers, these are planets of war, aggression and the unexpected topsy-turvy.
To me, astrology is like trying to interpret God, everyone has their own opinion yet so many on this planet believe and give their interpretations. I agree with Mr. Lyons that all of those different interpretations have gone way too wacko with nonfactual nonsense. If any system of information, whether it’s a chart analysis, a projected forecast or an odds of the Facts, can advise humanity to do better in the future, I’m for it.
DALE MOTISKA, Vacaville, Calif.
Re “Israeli squatters fire guns, set dozens of fires in Palestinian town…” [by Juan Cole, 4/1/23 TPP]: Each time I read about the violence between Israelites and Palestinians, it reminds me that among the children of Abraham, no one can substitute in my heart the gentle Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai (First.Century CE), whose wisdom and sound judgment can never, in my opinion, be surpassed.
Rabbi Yochanan taught his followers that God preferred mercy and kindness instead of a temple, and that Judaism depended on loyalty to traditions rather than on possession of a particular land. However, his Judaism didn’t fit with the stern pieties of Orthodoxy or the theories of Zionism that have proven so disastrous.
And how sad to realize that since 1903, the Jews could have possessed their own country. In that year, Great Britain offered them Uganda – a large, almost uninhabited fertile land where they could thrive and be safe. {Editor’s Note: JewishAction.com says the land in British East Africa offered as a Jewish refuge is in present-day Kenya, not Uganda. However, most textbooks of Zionist history speak of it as the “Uganda Plan.”]
But the Jewish Congress refused to accept the offer. Those religious zealots insisted that the land “God gave them” was where they had to establish a nation. And the rest is history … a history of anti-Semitism written in blood, which culminated in the Holocaust.
What a tragedy! Uganda could be Israel today, if only they had listened to the wisdom of Rabbi Yochanan instead of the voices of religious extremists.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
I always appreciate Margot McMillen’s articles, especially the 3/1/23 column on reducing the birth rate to control climate change.
Since the Bellingham (Washington) Herald became a sad, zombie newspaper (see Jim Hightower on that), my spouse and I have had to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal to get a daily paper. The WSJ is a great paper, except for the editorials. They seem very ungenerous and shortsightedly materialistic. What strikes me as especially wrong-headed are the alarms raised about the aging and decreasing population in some countries.
If there were no global climate change at all, a decrease in population is desirable and inevitable: the Earth is finite. Thirty years ago, Paul Hawken wrote, “every natural system in the world is in decline.” (Yesterday’s news was that the orcas in Puget Sound are going extinct.) Still the pro-growthers raise alarms about the aging labor force, but they cannot really think infinite growth in a finite space is possible. It doesn’t make sense. A most urgent need is to reduce the human population. Immigration may address the labor issue, but not the fact that there are already too many people in the US, and in the world.
I’m 73, a professor emeritus at Western Washington University. Sad to say, I’m glad I’m not 22. I’m afraid things are not going to get better until there is some catastrophe that brings about major political, social, and economic change.
DANIEL WARNER, Bellingham, Wash.
From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2023
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