“I Think We Need to Have The Talk”
This is the much-dreaded conversation expected around the age of 12 which changes every kid’s life. But this country needs a refresher because people are once again questioning what constitutes anything as alive.
Procreation is nothing new to mankind. In fact, there are 8 billion lives to prove that without including each one’s genealogy. Therefore, it is ridiculous that we even have to question whether pregnancy equates to life if 8 billion times it has led to that exact thing. But here we are!
This topic was the very first topic addressed in a University’s Life Science lab. The question read: “What determines something to be alive?” The teaching assistant (TA) handed out a powder-like substance to each lab group. The students were to determine if this substance would be considered alive or dead and why. Most came to the conclusion that consumption and growth determined life.
Now to the average person, a powder could never be considered alive, but then they were wrong. The class ran an experiment where they mixed the substance with water and glucose, then measured how much gas the solution produced. The solution with the powder released a great deal of gas and thus, the students found out the powder was in fact yeast. Does this mean yeast is alive?
Yeast consumed and grew, thus it fulfilled every student’s criteria for something to be alive so, therefore, it is. But, it’s just yeast, which all of the sudden makes our lives a little more confusing. The TA then explained the way science determines something to be alive or not is based on whether it has a metabolism.
Metabolism is the ability of cells to undergo chemical reactions, AKA turning food into energy and releasing waste. If science can say yeast is alive, then how can people argue that the early stages of human life aren’t “really” considered alive?
Sperm meets egg, they introduce themselves to each other, reveal their gene code, then become one. This is known as a zygote. They develop and grow, props to chemical reactions, into something we call a blastocyst. The blastocyst then travels through the fallopian tube and implants itself into the uterine wall where they consume their nutrition in the woman’s body.
That’s all the criteria to prove something is alive and we have not even gotten to the embryonic stage of life yet. In the early stages of human life, we see the sperm and egg coming together to undergo chemical reactions together as a living organism through the breaking down of whatever food the mother produces. Therefore, when the two collide, there is metabolism, and there is life.
All of this talk about how an embryo is not “truly” alive until it becomes a fetus is simply not true at all! Life is evidently shown at the very beginning stages of procreation before the embryo is even developed. We cannot excuse people for believing the opposite because it is scientific fact.
So, the next time somebody says, “it is not murder because it is not ‘alive,’” approach them with this timeless truth to say, life starts when the sperm greets the egg.
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Life begins at conception in that it is the miracle that combines 2 substances which creates the chemistry needed to grow. It needs all the elements of what we call human life, oxygen, food, warmth, to turn into what we call human birth. Is the egg of a fertilized butterfly alive, is the larva that grows into a butterfly alive? If we crush the egg we also kill the butterfly. You cannot separate the life cycle without also killing the final birth.