OK, how many folks on Fluther believe that pregnancy begins two weeks BEFORE conception?

This is further evidence of the Republican war on Science.
It’s amazing how many pregnant virgins there are these days, according to the Conservatives.

Does Todd Akin think that “legitimately raped women” who get pregnant are pregnant 2 weeks prior to the “legitimate rape”?

I guess that means that a woman that does not get impregnated by a bloke after these two weeks automatically becomes a murderer by failing to fertilise the egg. Imagine that. 157 million mass murderers.

Science has already proven life begins 10–14 days before conception. It has nothing to do with being conservative, libertarian or somewhere between.

What I don’t understand is why people can’t ask a question without making it about a group. Facts are facts, has nothing to do with a political party, nothing to do with color, nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with conservative or liberal.

How about someone ask a question without all the labels. the only reason to attach a label in the question is to slant the results one direction or the other. It is bad research to slant the results by the way you ask.

I think I just found out I’m a wizard. It actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

~

Ok, I am afraid to say this here, but…

I thought this was already the way we count pregnancy. The baby is only in there growing for 38 weeks, but the total gestation time is 40 weeks, and is counted from the first day of the last period before conception. Is that not true?

@nikipedia
For pregnancy, you are correct, for when life begins add two weeks

@DrBill Ok, I’ll take the bait, please explain how that is so.

As I currently understand, I am a combination of my parents DNA. If my dad porks my mother on the 14th, how does my life start on the 1st?

I really don’t want to think of @poisonedantidote‘s dad porking his mom.

@poisonedantidote Without having done any research on the topic, my guess would be that the egg and sperm had been alive for two weeks already, before your parents screwed…?

@FutureMemory That is what I was thinking.

However, I would argue that Picard doing a facepalm.

@poisonedantidote Yeah, if were going to look at it that way, I think we should all demand to get paid the second we begin our commute to work. :D

@FutureMemory Yes, and if you go to a job interview with a billion other potential candidates, you were obviously hired for the job a couple weeks ago.

Pregnancy is calculated by the first day of the woman’s last period.

Well if the sperm is alive two weeks before conception every single man on this planet who masturbates (more simply stated every single man on this planet) and spills his seed outside of a woman is a murderer.

@DrBill Science has proven that life begins 10–14 days before conception, or our current methods of determining conception are inexact enough that we use the date of the last period to be on the safe side?

@Aethelflaed Life begins AT conception, not before. Now we are splitting hairs and commenting on how pregnancy is calculated (one formula goes from the date of the woman’s last period). It doesn’t mean she is pregnant then (she obviously isn’t because she is having a period), but it gives the doctor a way to provide a due date should she decide to carry the pregnancy to term.

I am missing something here, @Kayak8. Is your point then that the Arizona law is being deceitful by using 20 weeks as the cutoff date for abortions because the woman may only be 18 weeks pregnant?

It sure gives a different message to the statement:
“I was only a twinkle in my father’s eye.”

What the ..?!?!?
The egg zygote has been alive since the mother was in her mother’s womb.
Do we start counting life at birth plus age-of-mother years ago ??
Do we charge anyone who murders a woman with the murder of all the egg cells within her??

Does that mean I’m eligible for Social Security now ?

Oh, brother.

So, I’ve been a living being before my parents even decided to have sex?

Shaking my head.

Just to set the record straight, life begins at puberty.

Science says that things that are alive are born, reproduce and die. Children can not reproduce, so technically they are not alive yet. Kids are just glorified sterile larva.

Here is how it really works:

A sperm and egg meet, and create a clump of cells. This is the microscopic stage that I like to call the germ stage.

Shortly after we enter what I like to call the parasite stage. Were the clump of cells develop in to this nasty ass parasite looking thing.

Then comes the little freak stage, this is when you can actually start to make out that this is supposed to be a thing.

We then enter the sprog ejection stage, were the horrid little thing is shot out of the mother, so to better allow her to run from lions and survive to pump out more sprogs.

This is then immediately followed by the eating and crapping stage, intended to increase the size and survivability of the sprog.

It then enters it’s final stage of gestation were it goes to school, gets fired from a paper round, realizes it is alive, and starts to prepare for reproduction.

This is when life begins, and we should get to change out mind any time before that.

@DrBill, @Kayak8‘s post does not contain the words Republican, conservative, Christian, etc.

@Mariah
I did not say it did

@poisonedantidote
At the time of conception, the egg is a vessel containing the mothers DNA and RNA, and does not contain any detectable life signs. The sperm contains the fathers DNA and RNA, and has been alive for 10–14 days. You can look at the sperm under a microscope, you can see they are a living entity, and the sperm is not mature enough to cause pregnancy till it is about 10 days old, and dies at about 15 days, being the most likely to succeed at 14 days old. When conception occurs, the living sperm is already 14 days old.

Remember there is a difference between when life begins and when pregnancy begins.

@DrBill By the logic, any future children a woman has have been alive as long as she has, as women are born with all the ovum (also, living entities) they will ever have.

Right, but then I don’t understand your point about singling out groups. Plenty of questions are guilty of that, but not this one.

@Aethelflaed
Women have an egg, with the “potential” for life, the sperm “are” alive when deposited in the woman

Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted,God gets quite irate.

@Mariah
The question did not but the first few answers were

Are people really arguing now that sperm are alive? Then why isn’t it murder when men masturbate?

?? have never heard of such thing as this.

I guess they are using gestation age, as opposed to fetal age, to shorten the amount of time an abortion can be done. It’s stupid. Isn’t it bad enough that people are totally clueless about a woman’s cycle? Now uneducated extreme Christians can walk around saying conception starts the first day of a woman’s cycle. You know there will be people who are extremely misinformed who will somehow make sense of this information in their own fantasy and twist it around into ridiculousness.

Next thing you know they will be blaming the woman for not producing a male offspring.

I would assume Gestational age is a much older way of calculating an expected due date. You know, from before science probably really understood when a woman was most fertile.

There seems to be confusion between conception date and implantation date (unless every sperm and egg is sacred…)

@RocketGuy The confusion is not conception date and implantation date.

@DrBill Where do you get your information from? I thought sperm take 60–70 days to develop.

Could someone point out the actual portion of H.B. 2036 that justifies this article? I can’t seem to find even the word “conception” in it. Is this another case of “bold print must be true”?

@digitalimpression I don’t understand. The new bill is not dealing with conception it is dealing with counting from the 1st day of the menstrual cycle.

So from birth we’re all technically in arrears, suffer the children.

@JLeslie, counting from the first day of the last menstrual cycle is how a woman’s pregnancy is calculated.

@bkcunningham That’s what I said. That is the gestational age. That is what is most commonly used I think. There is also fetal age, that is counted from conception, which is when the fetus was actually created. I don’t understand why you are pointing that out?

Is that how the legislation is worded, @JLeslie? Does it state that abortion is allowed up to 20 weeks gestation?

I’m trying to figure out what the big deal is here? Where did the author of the blog and @kayak8 get that Arizona law states pregnancy begins two weeks before conception?

@bkcunningham You got me thinking that maybe that part of the legislation was not the recent change (the amount of weeks) just the other parts of the law and some liberal took it and twisted it. I tried googling and I found this that shows changes in legislation and it seems AZ did recently have legislation to move the age to 18 weeks fetal age.

It actually was not simple to find the old law and how it is written compared to the new, and I kind of gave up trying. But, everything does indicate the time abortion is legal is reduced. But, the twisting the pro-abortioners are doing is wording the whole thing as now the state wants to make it illegal to get an abortion before a woman is actually pregnant. I don’t know if abortion law is typically written in gestational weeks or fetal weeks.

I forgot the tilde on my sarcastic remark above about science, is that what triggered your question to me? Although, gestational age as a way to count pregnancy was created before science determined a woman only ovulates once during a cycle, and before science pinpointed when a woman’s most fertile time is. But, throughout history there are indiciations that traditions in culture and religion demonstrated some awareness of when conception was likely.

I was responding to your remark to @digitalimpression, @JLeslie.

Previously, Arizona’s abortion law was considered vague and allowed abortion until “viability” which is usually considered 22–24 weeks.

I’m still interested in how this got turned into the statement made in the OP that Arizona law states pregnancy begins two weeks before conception.

@bkcunningham Oh. Because @digitalimpression mentioned conception, and it is not necessary to use the word conception if they are using gestational age in the bill/law. Gestational age starts counting before conception.

Edit: it would be suspicious if the previous wording was fetal age, and the new law had gestational age. It would seem like they were trying to slip it past people while getting other parts of the new law passsd. I have no idea if that is the case though. I think most men would be clueless about the difference between the two, and a whole bunch of women too.

@JLeslie My point wasn’t that the specific word “conception” should be included in the law. I was imploring as to the actual portion of H.B. 1036 that includes the claim made in the OP. I couldn’t find it. I was hoping that someone more versed in this sort of thing could point out the damning material/verbage. If no one can, than this article doesn’t mean anything.

My underlying point is that we shouldn’t immediately believe what we read on the internet.

@digitalimpression I assume the bill uses gestational age, and that is where this all sprang up from. Just an assumption.

I’m really missing something here. Sperm live for 4 days in the woman. Isn’t conception the fertilization of the egg? Ah @JLeslie that makes more sense. It’s still a piece of law passed by cretins.

@JLeslie Therein lies the problem.. it seems everyone is making assumptions. I like cold, hard facts.

It never ceases to amaze me.

@Adirondackwannabe What does the sperm’s life have to do with anything?

@digitalimpression I’m with you on that. Why is it so hard to google it? I tried. Frustrating. @bkcunningham said the old law was “viability” which is a term often used in abortion law.

@JLeslie So if I make a date with a woman for this weekend, we have sex, she gets pregnant I became a father and she became a mother last week? We need to get the right terms in place for this. Gestational age is different then conception.

@Adirondackwannabe Huh? If you ask a woman how many weeks pregnant is she, there is a good chance she will site the gestational age. That is not really how long she has been pregnant. Not technically. If she is 10 weeks pregnant by gestational age, she has only really had a life form in there for 8 weeks.

So in your example if she gets pregnant this weekend, she is already two weeks pregnant gestational age (assuming a typical 28 day cycle).

Page 17, is the specific gestational age reference.

@bkcunningham Thanks for hunting that down. Do you know if that is a change in wording from the old law?

@JLeslie As long as we get our terms correct I have no problem with using gestational age as a measurement. But I have a problem with saying life begins with the egg preparing for release.

The only place that has been said or implied is on this forum, @Adirondackwannabe, and in the OP. It isn’t said in the Arizona legislation.

@Adirondackwannabe I don’t think the law is saying anything like that. I didn’t read it through in it’s entirety though. I think some people think that. The Catholic church seems to sort of think that way, or at least think of the egg as “potential life” and so that is good enough for them that you should not screw around with the egg. Your not not supposed to prevent it from releasing or keep sperm away from it if you happen to have sex. You can avoid sex. I don’t really see the difference, you are still planning to purposely avoid pregnancy.

@JLeslie, the entire law is included in the legislation. The changes are in EDIT blue.

@bkcunningham I haven’t read the bill. I was going from the discussion. I’ll check out the bill.
@JLeslie Same.

@Adirondackwannabe Many people are ok with birth control, but not ok with preventing implantation, which the morning after pill can do. It is also possible with the IUD to have conception and not implantation. I would think the Catholics would be ok with condoms, I don’t get the argument against that, I understand with some of the other forms of birth control.

@bkcunningham I see, so then that wording was changed.

Yes, @JLeslie. I changed my post to say the changes are in blue (not red). But anyway, yes. That is how you can tell the progression of the changes. Lines are drawn through language that is being taken out and the new language is in a different color. It is pretty standard.

@JLeslie I understand those concepts. I don’t know when life begins, but if those are someone’s beliefs okay, I can accept that.

@Adirondackwannabe For me viability is a reasonable cut off. If the baby can survive outside the mother it is an independent life. But, viability is a complicated messy description, because some people will try to save a baby born very early while others wouldn’t. Medical intervention also affects our perception of viability. If the baby needs medical attention to survive after birth was it really viable? I contradict myself in my own arguments on this topic, because I feel not a woman nor a man should be ordered by the state to support another life. But, as I said I agree with viability cut-offs, so it is tricky and a little ilogical. Exceptions to viabilty in my mind would be something very wrong with the fetus or a mother who is in grave danger maintaining the pregnancy.

@JLeslie My family knows how complicated this one is. My nephew was born weighing 1 pound 15 ounces. After a lot of care and a huge price tag, he’s a beautiful happy little guy. I don’t know who has the wisdom to make the call when life begins.

I better start preparing for my coming child. Not much time left.

WHY?

Seriously though, why?