Murderers! We're All Murderers!

infertile, murder, tiller, abortion, sex, egg, sperm, pregnant, prochoice, prolife,
(Except you infertile people. You're free to go.)

In the wake of the murder of Dr. Tiller, and subsequent closing of his clinic, I thought I would mention something about the "life begins at conception" meme. (I believe it was PZ Myers who said this first. I'm just riffing off of it, because it really can't be said enough.)

"Life begins at conception" is an incorrect statement because of the word begins. The use of the word begin implies that prior to this beginning, whatever it was that began wasn't there before the beginning. To put it simply, if I told you that the episode of House we are watching began at 8:00 pm (EST), you would correctly assume that prior to 8:00, this episode was not airing.

Saying that life begins at conception implies that there was no life prior to conception. So what are sperm and eggs, dead? Eggs do just float around, but have you ever seen a sperm? Busy little suckers, aren't they? Don't exactly look unalive to me.



A more correct statement would be that life continues at conception, if you happen to equate the potential for things with the things themselves. (Which is like regarding a canvas and some paint as great art, but whatever.)

If you're being intellectually honest, and you actually do believe that life continues at conception, why aren't you up in arms about the billions and billions and billions of "lives" being lost every day? Every month during a woman's cycle, an egg is released from one or the other of her ovaries. If she doesn't get pregnant, that egg dies. Why aren't the "life continues at conception" people crying "murder!" over that. I would be a murderer about 120 times over.

You know why they don't say that? Because if they did, they would have to insist that every girl have sex with the intention of getting pregnant from the moment she got her first period (though at that point, she would already be a murderer). Which would mean insisting that 9 year old girls have sex.

What about men? They're even more prolific murderers. Each ejaculation contains millions of sperm, millions of little lives. If those sperm don't combine with an egg, they die. Well, you might say, that's why I'm against masturbation. Sorry, no. Even if a man impregnates a woman, only one of those sperm continues on. The other million or so die.

That's right, even a successful pregnancy results in death. Lots of death.

Clearly, the only way to prevent such wanton slaughter is get one man to ejaculate two or three times, castrate that man, and all other men on the planet, then use the sperm, one by one, to impregnate every woman every time they produce eggs, including 9 year old girls.

Any suggestions as to which man we should use?

Redefining Optimum

homophobia, homosexual, ivf, childless, children, babies, infertile, infertility, lesbian, gay, prop 8, stupid,
I won't bore you with the entire post, mostly because it just makes my stomach hurt, but the salient details in the back story are: Lesbian couple in Scotland wants the same access to government sponsored IVF that hetero couples in the UK enjoy. Government says "go have sex with men." Lesbian couple sues and wins.

Now for emissary's conclusion on all this:

The regrettable part of this story is that the board eventually changed its mind after being sued. It sets a bad precedence for two specific reasons. The first is that it forces the taxpayer money to pay for children who will be given to a home without a mother and a father. The second is that, since IVF is so expensive, the government may not be able to help as many heterosexual couples who could provide a more optimal life for their children.

First of all, it sets a bad precedent, taxpayers will pay, not taxpayer money, and the children will be born in the home, not given to the home.

Now that I've corrected the basic English, let's review emissary's argument. Basically, if the government pays for IVF for homosexuals, less heterosexuals will be able to have babies, and heterosexual couples are automatically better parents.

The first argument is patently false on its face. The UK health care system (socialism!) views infertility the same as any other medical condition and pays for a certain number of treatments over a certain time period. For everyone. If more people need IVF, more IVF will be paid for, they won't ration it any more than they would ration bypass surgery. They may well raise taxes to pay for the increase in IVF, but heteros will still get the same amount of IVF as they always were.

The second argument relies on debunked research into same sex parenting. Hetero couples are not automatically better parents than gay couples. (Research does show that children do better with two parents instead of one, but that has to do with economics and the time available with the child, not the sex of the parents.) According to emissary, a man and a woman are automatically better parents, even if the man is a pedophile and the woman is a junkie. When you find yourself making that argument, you need to admit that you're a homophobe, and that you don't really like children all that much.