• Question: At what stage do you believe life begins?

    Asked by glenns to Anne, Carolyn, Joe, Mariana, Nick on 16 Mar 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Devlin

      Joseph Devlin answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      I think by any biological definition, life begins at conception — that’s when the self-sustaining biological processes kick in. This is fundamentally different from the legal question of when it might be ok to terminate a pregnancy.

    • Photo: Carolyn McGettigan

      Carolyn McGettigan answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      I think human life begins when an egg cell is fertilised by a sperm cell.

    • Photo: Nick Bradshaw

      Nick Bradshaw answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      That is a very good, but very tough question.

      From the moment of conception an embryo is “alive” in the sense that is biologically working. However at this stage there is no brain or any other structure capable of thinking – which suggests they are not yet a person. My guess is that “life” probably begins at around the stage that an embryo is capable of starting to move (certianly by 13 weeks through pregnancy when they can be quite a fidget).

      That said, I’m a Christian and so believe in a “soul”, and science will never be able to answer when one of those shows up…

    • Photo: Mariana Vargas

      Mariana Vargas answered on 16 Mar 2010:

      Similar answer to previous question: This issue is very complex and I don’t have an answer for it.

    • Photo: Anne Seawright

      Anne Seawright answered on 18 Mar 2010:

      30!!! No, only joking. I think that life begins when the foetus is able to survive indepedently of its mother, so if you mean in humans then around 21/22 weeks into pregnancy.

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