What the expert scientists say vs. the religious fanatics’ version
If every female egg and every individual spermatozoa was able to become a viable living being we would be at a point where the planet would implode. But really, for each female egg there is an overwhelming ratio of sperm…those cute little one headed critters with a tail, persistently wiggling about the uterus to penetrate the egg’s wall. If each of those individual spermatozoa was to survive we would need an equal number of female eggs…and a male produces 400 BILLION! individual spermatozoa in a lifetime while a female only produces 400,000 viable eggs and that ratio my friends is enough to keep the planet bursting at the seams.
It is said that this is the world of the survival of the fittest. We see in other animal species how the fecundity of females and the prolific amount of offspring will guarantee the survival of that particular species, thus, we may have a duck lay 100 eggs per year, others, like Campbell’s can lay as many as 350 per year! Clearly, this is not the number of ducks that survive to maturity, as the eggs may not all hatch, then if they do the ducks are picked by hawks or foxes, disease of accident and the end result is a balance of the populations. Somehow, nature has placed its own controls on overpopulation…but not so much on humans.
A female of the human persuasion is born with about 2 million eggs; about 1.5 million die off, once a woman reaches puberty only 400,000 remain. However assuming she starts menstruating at age 14 (average age) and ends menstruation at age 50 (average age) she will only ovulate 480 times...so that 400,000 eggs doesn’t seem like a lot but it’s more than enough!!!! Once she has about 1,000 eggs left she will go through menopause.
While the male of the human species produces 100 million sperm cells every 24 hours and that over the course of a lifetime he produces over 400 billion. And that with the average ejaculation he "spills out" 300 million sperm. (Source: NOVA: "The Miracle of Life" - The first filmed record of human conception, photographed by Lennart Nilsson, 1982 Swedish Television Corporation).
When does life begin? Neither science nor religion can give you a definite answer on that one…yes, the jury is still out on it and it has more to do with culture and religious beliefs, geographical location than a clear-cut scientific study.
Varied views
"People might say this or that is when life begins, but it doesn't necessarily confer legal rights on that entity," says Thomas Elliott of Reproductive Biology Associates, who will present the full results of the poll next week in San Francisco at the Annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
The poll also demonstrates the wide religious and geographic spread of opinion on when biological life begins.
Not surprisingly, Roman Catholics had the highest proportion voting for "sperm-egg" fusion, around 31%.
By contrast, a third of Jewish respondents, 29% of agnostics and 27% of Muslims opted for fetal heartbeat. So too did 38% of IVF patients.
Geographically, only 13% of UK respondents opted for "sperm-fusion", with 43% choosing "fetal heartbeat". In complete contrast, 47% of Australasians voted for "sperm-egg" and a tiny 7% for "fetal heartbeat".
The spread in North America was more even, with 27% choosing "sperm-egg", 24% "fetal heartbeat" and 18% "implantation"*.
But this contentious issue has been plaguing our conscience and polluting our politics. It is being used as a political tool and a wedge issue…a part of the “CULTURE WARS” if you will. But here again, it is evident that some segments of the population that are religiously motivated want to force their opinions and their concepts on the rest of society and furthermore they want the government to help them do it.
Just as these religious fanatics have tried to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman, they are also trying to get us to swallow their concept of when life begins while they already have crammed it halfway down our throats.
I am one who does not believe that human life begins at the moment of conception…and that a fetus is a living human being…and for many practical and sensible reasons, a fetus that is not viable outside of the womb could not possibly be a human being. There are defective fetuses; there are accidental miscarriages as well as some caused by the mother’s inability to carry a pregnancy to its full term.
But for crying out loud…to go after abortion in general is bad enough because that is a woman’s own sovereignty over her body and to carry it a step further to prohibit contraception is absolutely insane and radical; yet, that is what we have in all our Republican Presidential candidates and it seems to be the consensus of how most Republicans think about where life begins, contraception and yes…they even try to tie it to morality…as Rush Limbaugh so eloquently expressed: “if this woman wants us to pay for her contraception, she is a slut” or something to that effect.
Many states have passed outlandish and radical laws to discourage, prohibit abortion and a woman in some places has to go through humiliating procedures to get one. Never mind contraception…the Republican’s war on Planned Parenthood says it all…when an organization that deals mostly with cancer prevention, PAP tests and the like is attacked this way, then there is something wrong with the picture…by denying women health care assistance only because abortion and contraception are legal is radical, insane and inhuman.
But leave it to Republicans…they are very generous in granting personhood…to a mass of cells, to a fetus that is not viable and to corporations…yes, to corporations because “CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE MY FRIEND”
SOURCES: NOVA: "The Miracle of Life" - The first filmed record of human conception, photographed by Lennart Nilsson, 1982 Swedish Television Corporation.
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