Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?

[Scootle]

Is Heaven Populated Chiefly by the Souls of Embryos?

What are we to think about the fact that Nature (and for believers, Nature's God) profligately creates and destroys human embryos? John Opitz, a professor of pediatrics, human genetics, and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Utah, testified before the President's Council on Bioethics that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in women's normal menstrual flows unnoticed. This is not miscarriage we're talking about. The women and their husbands or partners never even know that conception has taken place; the embryos disappear from their wombs in their menstrual flows. In fact, according to Opitz, embryologists estimate that the rate of natural loss for embryos that have developed for seven days or more is 60 percent. The total rate of natural loss of human embryos increases to at least 80 percent if one counts from the moment of conception. About half of the embryos lost are abnormal, but half are not, and had they implanted they would probably have developed into healthy babies.

So millions of viable human embryos each year produced via normal conception fail to implant and never develop further. Does this mean America is suffering a veritable holocaust of innocent human life annihilated? Consider the claim made by right-to-life apologists like Robert George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, that every embryo is "already a human being." Does that mean that if we could detect such unimplanted embryos as they leave the womb, we would have a duty to rescue them and try to implant them anyway?

"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined," declared Michael Sandel, a Harvard University government professor, also a member of the President's Council on Bioethics.

As far as I know, bioconservatives like Robert George do not advocate the rescue of naturally conceived unimplanted embryos. But why not? In right-to-life terms, normal unimplanted embryos are the moral equivalents of a 30-year-old mother of three children.

Of course, culturally we do not mourn the deaths of these millions of embryos as we would the death of a child—and reasonably so, because we do in fact know that these embryos are not people. Try this thought experiment. A fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you have a choice: You can save a three-year-old child or a Petri dish containing 10 seven-day old embryos. Which do you choose to rescue?

Stepping onto dangerous theological ground, it seems that if human embryos consisting of one hundred cells or less are the moral equivalents of a normal adult, then religious believers must accept that such embryos share all of the attributes of a human being, including the possession of an immortal soul. So even if we generously exclude all of the naturally conceived abnormal embryos—presuming, for the sake of theological argument, that imperfections in their gene expression have somehow blocked the installation of a soul—that would still mean that perhaps 40 percent of all the residents of Heaven were never born, never developed brains, and never had thoughts, emotions, experiences, hopes, dreams, or desires.

More: http://reason.com/archives/2004/12/22/is-heaven-populated-chiefly-by

[Dok]

Thats why we call it MURDER!!!!   

[attietewd]

"If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined,"

Vaccines, food additives and medication side affects all contribute to fertility problems which the TPTB are darned well educated on.  This is population control and eugenics in action.  AND if TPTB could find a legitimate way to regard pregnancy as a public health crisis you better believe they would.  They want control of our DNA, our lives, our minds and our bodies.

[Scootle]

The purpose of posting this article was not to start an abortion or stem cell debate or a eugenics discussion. But I am genuinely intrigued what people think of the fact that so many fertilized embryos, which anti-abortion people consider to be human beings with the same right to life as living people, simply fail to implant on the womb and die naturally. And what sort of afterlife awaits them.

[attietewd]

The purpose of posting this article was not to start an abortion or stem cell debate or a eugenics discussion. But I am genuinely intrigued what people think of the fact that so many fertilized embryos, which anti-abortion people consider to be human beings with the same right to life as living people, simply fail to implant on the womb and die naturally. And what sort of afterlife awaits them.

How are we supposed to know which embryos are failing to implant in the womb "naturally" or are being thwarted from doing so by vaccines, medication side affects or food additives?  That is the point I was making.

[Kilgore Trout]

The purpose of posting this article was not to start an abortion or stem cell debate or a eugenics discussion. But I am genuinely intrigued what people think of the fact that so many fertilized embryos, which anti-abortion people consider to be human beings with the same right to life as living people, simply fail to implant on the womb and die naturally. And what sort of afterlife awaits them.

Considering that "identity" is a product of the sensual mind , and we think we as "person/self/identity" will move beyond the sense flesh that informs us who we THINK we are , do you really think an undeveloped embryo has a sense of self enough to fantasize that "it/he" will go to heaven..?

Likely that living creature will be reabsorbed back into the light body of God...if you believe in that.

[Michal Ptacnik]

Well, since the soul as it is, the mental, astral and etheric body have no time to develop in the aborted embryo, we might have SOME etheric body but not much, it dissolves in the invisible world and the human spirit gets robbed of one chance to manifest itself. In time, it will move on, but with a burden of accumulated energy that should have been used for that life. It is this way with every life terminated before it's natural ending. This, amongst other things, is why murder is wrong. The usual results are that the next life will be unusually short.

...If you believe in such things I mean.