I don't think that word means what you think it means

[avram]

Technically I’ve missed Blog for Choice day, but it isn’t really tomorrow till after I’ve slept, and there’s something that’s been bugging me.

Why do people, even those who support abortion rights, talk about conception? It’s a pre-scientific concept. The Feast of the Conception dates back to the 7th century, long before anybody had any notion of how the mechanics of reproduction worked at a cellular level. It was clearly just a word that meant something like when life begins, so people who say “life begins at conception” aren’t actually saying anything meaningful.

People who try to nail conception to a particular stage of cellular reproductive development can’t even agree on which stage it is. Same say it’s fertilization, some say implantation, some say the whole period from fertilization to implantation.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to use actual scientific terminology when discussing matters of science? Personally, I think anyone who places the point of individual life beginning prior to gastrulation just hasn’t given the matter any serious thought.

Comments

[solarbird]

Personally, I think anyone who places the point of individual life beginning prior to gastrulation just hasn’t given the matter any serious thought.
The fundamentalist movement has decided that it's at fertilisation of the egg by sperm, and they lean on the diploid state of the cell ("a complete set of genetic code!!1!") as a crutch to support it. It's deeply stupid, but there it is. That's also why they've been making such a fetish about what they call "snowflake" children - "adopted" extra zygotes from fertility clinics left over from IVF - and is why they can get themselves worked up about RU-486 and emergency birth control, and the lever they use to assert that most forms of birth control secretly cause abortion. (C.f. Concerned Women for America and their TRUTH ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL screeds.)

If these groups weren't so politically connected, it'd just be sad. As it is, well, Focus on the Family's James Dobson is on the national top-level weekly Republican strategy calls, and Tim LaHaye writes and sells millions of copies of those lovely Left Behind books where TEH QUEERS bring the antichrist into the world, and they're pushing young-earth Creationist books at the Grand Canyon and park rangers aren't allowed to say how old the geology is anymore. So there we are.

Not that you need to be told any of this, of course. It just makes me go AGH.

[avram]

park rangers aren't allowed to say how old the geology is anymore

Wait, what's up with this?

I looked around for some references, and all I found was one bit of exaggerated rhetoric from a guy named Jeff Ruch ("It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is 'no comment.'") Are park rangers really not allowed to tell people how old the rocks are? I have a hard time believing that.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

No; Ruch duped Skeptic Magazine and the lie spread from there. Skeptic is pissed about it.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

See response to Avram above.

[redbird]

"Conception" is deep in the culture, and not just for actual physical bodies: ideas are "concepts," and some of this nation's best rhetoric includes the phrase "conceived in liberty."

[solarbird]

That's neat; Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) are the ones I heard it from. (Not this particularly line; that they were being told to STFU about park ages.)

[polydad.livejournal.com]

"Life begins when the children graduate college." And diploma-mill divinity degrees don't count, so most of those preachers are still abortable.

best,

Joel

[avram]

"When it graduates med school" goes the old Jewish joke.

[avram]

Ruch is Executive Director of PEER.

Here's Skeptic being pissed about it.

[polydad.livejournal.com]

Same joke, Reform version.

best,

Joel

[solarbird]

Right, then. Note in next CWU, and don't take PEER releases as valid.

Assholes.