A group of members of congress in Chile have just sent a project of law that search to define the beginning of human personhood at the moment of conception [1], modifying current law that considers birth the beginning.
You have to consider that in Chile abortion is currently criminalized [2] and there is an ongoing debate and tension about emergency postcoital contraception, aka the “morning-after pill”.
I’m in the process to compile resources of previous debates about this issue in order to participate in the debate and offer a humanistic evidence-based perspective.
I would appreciate references to international law, precedents, strongest secular arguments or any other resource that could help doing advocacy to stop christian dogma becoming law in my country.

[1] http://sil.senado.cl/cgi-bin/sil_proyectos.pl?8367 (in spanish)
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Chile (English wikipedia)

I hope someone else can help provide you with references. Sounds like good work you are doing.

All I can offer is my personal thoughts, because it just so happens I was thinking about that last night. Isn’t it absurd, upon reflection, the idea that somehow a human “soul” comes from somewhere out of the blue to attach itself to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception? I mean, this is such an odd notion that it flies in the face of any attempts to explain or explore how it might work.

Does this mean they’re going to go after all pregnant women then?  Something like a quarter of all pregnancies are spontaneously aborted for any number of reasons.  It shoots up to around 95% if there’s any chromosomal damage.

Linkage

FreeInKy - 13 July 2012 07:52 AM

I hope someone else can help provide you with references. Sounds like good work you are doing.

All I can offer is my personal thoughts, because it just so happens I was thinking about that last night. Isn’t it absurd, upon reflection, the idea that somehow a human “soul” comes from somewhere out of the blue to attach itself to a fertilized egg at the moment of conception? I mean, this is such an odd notion that it flies in the face of any attempts to explain or explore how it might work.

An Angel comes at 120 days after conception and breathes the soul into a fetus and it becomes a person. (Islamic version) This is not such an odd notion for persons living centuries ago without exposure to all of the information available to us today.  Today, I would characterize it not as odd, but as completely lacking in intellectual honesty.

I just posted this in another thread, but I think you’d find Rachel’s article interesting.
And there was a ballot proposition here in Colorado a few years back.
There was a repeat attempt, but, it was a stillbirth from the git’go.

citizenschallenge.pm - 02 August 2012 11:54 PM

macgyver - 31 July 2012 06:14 AM

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/30/judge-says-arizona-ban-on-abortions-starting-at-20-weeks-can-take-effect/

Curious what you think about this.

sort of monstrous

What made a fetus more important than a mother?
I’m flabbergasted we’re even having such a discussion.

here’s something intelligent on the topic

Abortion, Right and Wrong
By Rachel Richardson Smith
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2008/10/abortion-right-and-wrong-and-colorados.html

http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2008/09/colorados-proposition-48.html

One cannot conceive using dead sperm and ova.  If one is using the beginning of life as as the criterion, they would have to outlaw all contraception and even orgasms that do not have the possibility of conception. 

Using the term, personhood, does get around this.

Occam

Personhood?

I think that starts somewhere after 18years, everything below I see as property of the parents.
We should enable parents to sell annoying children into Slavery, like they did in Ancient times, so that they could replace their cheeky son/daughter with a fine new car.

“Eat your peas son or we will sell you to the Army!”