Photo Credit Viviana Rishe on Unsplash Psychological approaches to personal identity are normally used to argue that since an embryo doesn’t have a psychology (doesn’t have a mind), it doesn’t have a continuous identity with more highly-developed, “smarter”, stages of the organism that will follow the embryo stage; and that therefore if you kill an […]
The phrase “life begins at conception” is too ambiguous. People can use it to mean conception is the starting point of an individual human organism, but also to mean it’s the starting point of a morally valuable human person. Those are two very different claims. For the most part I’ve stopped using the phrase “life […]
I was recently reading Forever connected: the lifelong biological consequences of fetomaternal and maternofetal microchimerism (published in Clinical Chemistry, February 2021). This post contains my notes on the paper. [Read similar information in non-technical language in the Smithsonian article “The New Science of Motherhood“] The lifelong consequences of the exchange of cells between a mother […]
The First 56 Days of You: How Your Human Journey Begins is children’s book written by Brooke Stanton and Christiane West, illustrated by Francesca Rosa, and published by Mascot Books. Why 56 days? Because that is the timeframe covered by the Carnegie Stages of human embryonic development. In this charming story, a school bus full […]
The way I see it, there are three keys to fetal pain. The IASP’s revised definition of pain, 4D ultrasound studies of fetal behavior, and The diminution of cortical necessity. Last time, I discussed the International Association of the Study of Pain (IASP)’s revised definition of pain, which discarded the requirement that a patient describe her pain verbally in […]
If you’ve ever heard of abortion pill reversal at all, you’ve probably heard dichotomous views on its safety, efficacy, and basis in science. Planned Parenthood, NPR, and ANSIRH all caution on how reversing a medical abortion may not be possible, may not be scientifically supported, and may not be supported by rigorous medical studies. On the other side, you […]
Today at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, SPL Executive Director Monica Snyder is giving her presentation “Deconstructing Three Pro-Choice Myths.” Below are all the sources she used for today’s version of the presentation. Myth #1: Biologically, we don’t know when human life begins. Articles claiming the myth Biology and embryology textbooks and relevant quotes International […]
Example: [This article is a Spanish translation of “If SCOTUS wants to stay out of religious debates, it should overturn Roe v. Wade” courtesy of volunteer Pablo Mestrovic. If you’re interested in volunteering to translate our content, please complete our volunteer survey.] Esta publicación fue escrita originalmente por Monica Snyder. Este artículo lo escribí originalmente […]
[Post-publication update, 4/23/23 – (1) I clarified the results of the 2018 Delgado study. Previously I had stated the study found up to 68% success rate for APR. The average rate was 48%, with different methods of progesterone administration having different success rates up to 68%. (2) I added a note about method limitations in […]
In the Guardian’s notorious article “What a pregnancy actually looks like before 10 weeks – in pictures,” Senior Staff writer Poppy Noor implied that images of decidua and pulverized embryos after an abortion (and, for some reason, after being rinsed of all blood) were what a “pregnancy” looks like before 10 weeks. She further suggested […]
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