Life begins at conception.

[konradv]

Define "Life"

Anything that can reproduce itself.

So if by your logic, if I go kill my kid right now.... she hasnt been able to reproduce life yet, so therefore she is not a life as of yet?

Wow... how silly!

I will jut tell the authorities it was a late term abortion, not murder.

That wasn't meant to be applied to an individual, but to "life" as a whole. If you take that line, men aren't alive either!!! I'm talking species, not specifics.

 

[Sheldon]

LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION.
A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken. It is a fertilized egg. A potential chicken but not yet a chicken.

I would be interesting to know the DNA of eggs. If each is different? Can you take the DNA of an egg and identify it’s owner?

What did GOD mean when he said "I saw the embryo of you?"

To the bolded: I'm not 100% certain, but would willingly bet that is correct.

It is. Same goes for sperm--catching rapists--and every other cell in the body except red blood cells. In profiling you can't be literally one-hundred percent certain the DNA belongs to the owner but you can be one-in-about-a-billion certain.

 

[Cecilie1200]

LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION.
A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken. It is a fertilized egg. A potential chicken but not yet a chicken.

I would be interesting to know the DNA of eggs. If each is different? Can you take the DNA of an egg and identify it’s owner?

What did GOD mean when he said "I saw the embryo of you?"

To the bolded: I'm not 100% certain, but would willingly bet that is correct.

It is. Same goes for sperm--catching rapists--and every other cell in the body except red blood cells. In profiling you can't be literally one-hundred percent certain the DNA belongs to the owner but you can be one-in-about-a-billion certain.

Yes, of course you can track the DNA of reproductive cells to their owner, just the same as you can track the DNA of any other cell in the body to the owner, and just as you can track the parentage of a child through his or her DNA. Of course, this is all dependent on certain factors, like the quality of the sample you're working with.

 

[Cecilie1200]

I would be interesting to know the DNA of eggs. If each is different? Can you take the DNA of an egg and identify it’s owner?

Let me see if I can clarify the whole DNA question a bit. Bear with me if you already know this, because it's apparent that many people on these boards know only some, and others don't know any.

Each cell in a human's body - excepting the reproductive cells (sperm and ova), called gametes - has 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. These chromosomes are exactly the same in each and every cell (we are assuming here a normal, healthy human being).

The exceptions, the gametes, don't have paired chromosomes. Instead, they each contain 23 single chromosomes, which are a copy of one or the other half of that parent's pairs. Since, with few exceptions, no one else on Earth is going to have that exact same chromosome, it is possible to match it to a near-certainty (nothing's perfect) to the owner.

Now, when the ovum and a sperm meet and combine, the individual chromosomes of each combine to make the 23 pairs found in a regular human cell. And then they start replicating themselves at a prodigious rate. At the point when those chromosomes join into pairs, a new individual comes into existence, with a unique genetic structure belonging to no one else on Earth (with certain exceptions). That is why pro-lifers keep pointing out that an embryo or fetus is NOT part of his mother's body: because his cells have chromosomes and DNA that hers do not. Thus, they are not the same organism.

If there are any questions on this, or there's any other confusion on this topic I can clear up, let's hear it.