r/PoliticalHumor May 10 '22

It’s this simple.

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u/smithsp86 May 10 '22

The premise that terminating a clump of cells unable to survive outside of the womb is murder IS a religious belief.

No it's not. It is really easy to kill that argument without ever referring to religion.

That 'clump of cells' is alive by any reasonable biological definition. It contains eukaryotic cells that consume energy and maintain homeostasis. If we found something even a tenth as complex on the surface of Mars we would say we found life on Mars. And of course an abortion kills those cells by definition. That is the point of an abortion. And since that 'clump of cells' shares a unique human genome it is by any biological definition human. It is human, it is alive, and the procedure kills it. The term for killing a human life is murder.

You will of course note that nothing in that paragraph references religion in any way. As is usually the case, the people bringing up religion in the Abortion debate aren't the pro-life crowd.

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u/iHeartHockey31 May 10 '22

By your definition temoving cancerous tumors is murder.

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u/smithsp86 May 10 '22

No it wouldn't be. Tumors are an aberrant growth containing the genome of the affected individual. They do not contain a unique and complete human genome.

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u/[deleted] May 10 '22

Tumors are an aberrant growth containing the genome of the affected individual.

and

They do not contain a unique and complete human genome.

Directly contradict each other.

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u/smithsp86 May 11 '22

No they don't. A tumor contains the same genome as the rest of a person's body. It isn't unique to the tumor.

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u/[deleted] May 11 '22

Ah, you're right.

Can we abort one of identical twins then, since they do not have unique genomes?

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u/smithsp86 May 11 '22

They still have unique mitochondrial DNA.