tecoyah said:
Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.
Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.
By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.
Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible. [/I]
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http://www.2think.org/science_abortion.shtml
Please find the article...in its entirety in the link above^^^^^
I read the entire piece and the additional information at the several links.
As far as I can see, Mr. Sagan, a giant in his field, has attempted to mediate, as it were, the disagreement between opponents and proponents of abortion.
He realizes that the conflict involves the clash of the physical and the political and agonizes over both.
However, rather than come down definitively on one side or the other, he settles for the middle ground with an attempt to give something to each side. He drew a line and said, in effect, earlier, OK; later, no dice.
What he failed to consider is that when Solomon offered his life or death solution, he knew that the real mother would choose life for her child even though doing so would cause her much pain and distress. Sagan's solution considers the death of one out of three unborn children as a reasoned and acceptable compromise.
Sagan suppresses the physical argument that the continuum of human life begins with conception and continues seamlessly through many stages of life until it ends in old age, and endorses the political argument that a particilar, but inexact point in brain development causes the transformation of a human non-person to a human person. He contends that the humans who are not yet persons are 'expendable'.
One might expect that a person well trained and experienced in one physical science discipline, astronomy, would be a bit distressed if others, similarly qualified in other disciplines, or none at all, seemingly trashed their life's work in favor of a political view of reality.
What Mr. Sagan fails to appreciate is simply this. While middle ground compromise may have applicability in certain situations, abortion is not one of them. Where is the middle ground between allowing a child in the womb to peacefully wend its way toward the journey through the birth canal, and suctioning it out?
Every abortion ends a human life. Therein lies the problem.
