U.S. Congress - H.R.227 Sanctity of Human Life Act
H.R.227 - Sanctity of Human Life Act
To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization. view all titles (4)
All Bill Titles
- Official: To provide that human life shall be deemed to begin with fertilization. as introduced.
- Popular: Sanctity of Human Life Act as introduced.
- Short: Sanctity of Human Life Act as introduced.
- Official: Sanctity of Human Life Act as introduced.
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Displaying 1-30 of 35 total comments.
I am firmly OPPOSED to this bill.
Life does NOT begin at fertilization – absolutely ridiculous.
Life begins around the third trimester when the fetus develops a fully-functioning heart and brain.
It cannot live outside the mother host before the third trimester independently and autonomously. Hence, life doesn’t begin until the last three months.
I am not convinced that human life begins at fertilization. However, the embryo’s heart is usually fully functional and beating by Week 8 of the pregnancy. The brain continues to develop well past 20 years, but the nervous system has already developed by the end of the first trimester, the embryo can hear sounds by the 17th week, and can experience touch and taste by the 22nd week.
External viability is usually achieved around the 24th week, more than a month before the beginning of the third trimester. There have been some cases of successful premature births as early as the 21st week.
I support this bill. The statement that life does not begin until the third trimester, is wrong. I gave birth to twins in 2007 that were born alive. They were 5 1/2 months along- still in the second trimester. They did not survive very long, but they both have birth certificates and death certificates. As far as I can tell this means that they are recognized as human beings that were born, had a life, and passed away. They have names. There are people. They have rights. I can tell you, right now I am in the middle of my third pregnancy with my fourth child, and as of right now, I don’t have any living children. But, each time I became pregnant I could tell. I could feel the life inside of me long before I was far enough along to have a positive pregnancy test. No pregnancy of mine has as of yet gone into the third trimester, but each time I could tell I had a life inside of me that was separate from mine. Recognize life for the unique and special thing that it is.
I, too, do NOT support this bill.
On the development of a human organism and a threshold it must cross to gain entitlement to protection of rights, I think there does not exist objective criteria for determining the existence of such a threshold, let alone the point at which one should be placed.
All such notions like that of a soul entering the body or an instance of consciousness or self-awareness or capacity to suffer have been argued convincingly against. In any case, we know for a fact that a small clump of cells, let alone a single fertilized egg, does not have the capacity for consciousness or suffering, and the ‘soul’ idea belies an ignorance not worthy of further comment.
I am firmly against this bill because of the things I know. I know that the benefits of stem cell research could prove enormous and drastically outweigh any “suffering” of a small clump of cells that don’t have the capacity for meaningful experience anyways. I know this bill is an attempt based on irrational, self-righteous, religious indignation to prevent that research. If it was anything other than hypocrisy, the genital mutilation of Christian males in America would have been made illegal long ago under more convincing argument of suffering (Do they suffer or not? It can’t be had both ways). I know this bill is an attempt to outlaw abortion, despite its benefits.
Drafters of this bill and others similarly motivated deserve fierce rebuke and dismissal for incompetence.
Not a good piece of legislation. Congress has no right to legislate an issue like this. When you really get to the bottom of it, it’s a matter of opinion and Congress shouldn’t feel free to legislate national opinions.
They do it every day.
It is the most heartless thing I have ever seen reading these comments. This needs to be passed. I speak from experience! At 16 years old with out my parents permission (at that time it was the LAW to have parent permission & what they did to me was ILLEGAL!) I was a VICTIM of the abortionists and worse, my child was murdered because I was not told the truth about what I was doing & it was all masked by their “clump of cells” BS! Had I known the truth then, I would not be consumed with guilt still…30 years later. Life DOES begin at conception…Period. The abortionists (who had my best interest at heart LOL) performed a saline abortion with student doctors watching the whole process while I was fully awake & hours later I delivered a dead FULLY DEVELOPED BABY @ 4 mos burned alive inside me. I saw it hanging from me, burned bright red & dead! I screamed & they told me to be quiet!
Now you try & tell me a baby is not developed until 6 mos. The pro-choicers say that a baby inside the womb is not a baby because it can not survive on it’s own. Well, give me once instance of a newborn baby that can survive “on their own”. They can’t. They need to be fed & taken care of to survive…right? Can they feed & take care of themselves? NO.
So please, unless you speak from “experience” on this issue you have no right to say anything about it! And if a woman tells you she was just fine with an abortion…she is outright lying or she is heartless & cold.
What if your pregnant wife was murdered (God forbid) Would you consider your unborn baby murdered as well. If so, then you are a hypocrite.
How anyone HUMAN lives with themsleves thinking this is ok, is just beyond anything I can imagine.
Just think of how many more of me are out there! Maybe your daughter/wife/sister & you dont even know it!
I’m so sorry you were coerced to have an abortion at 4 months. What a terrible story, coming from a man who has lost 2 to miscarriage at 3 months (I held them and they look like very small little babies) I know how awful this is.
OK, so the thing is, there are very negative consequences to passing this kind legislation. This is not the way to reducing unwanted pregnancy. Any path to criminalizing doctor-assisted abortion leads directly to back-ally and coat-hanger abortions, period. We will never eliminate unwanted pregnancy, we are animals programmed to procreate and the urge will be irresistible to some who are not in a ideal position to see the consequences through. I believe everything should be done to educate women about this decision, but the decision is ultimately theirs and there should be a safe option for them. Believe me, if I could persuade every mother to carry out their pregnancy I would in a heartbeat. I think most Pro-choicers would agree, but for each woman and for each doctor, this is a personal choice.
I’m sorry to say that many of the comments from pro-choicers on this and other abortion bills seem to prove your last sentence wrong.
The fact is, criminalizing ANYTHING will lead to a dangerous and possibly vicious black market for that activity. Should we legalize crack and heroin because of drug-related violence? Should we legalize sex with minors because of human sex trafficking? Should we eliminate the health code because of the lengths some restaurants will go to in circumventing the health code? Of course not. And your coat-hanger argument holds just as much weight as those ideas do.
Homo sapiens have actually evolved to give birth to premature babies. No other animal living on this planet does this. This is because of the size and growth of the brain during the final periods of pregnancy.
So before the third term what is happening is magic? If a woman miscarries before then, it just a thing that is no longer in her? Life is life. The bill needs to be passed.
THANK YOU CW!
A few cells does not make it a life. The fetus cannot exsits without the host,its mother. If the mother dies the fetus dies. We know that skin cells contains all the DNA to make a person is this then considered a person too? Keep your ideology out of my government!!! Keep your religion and its dogma out of my government.No a fetus cannot survive on its own. When parts of the body are not developed enough or at all to sustain life outside the womb it cannot survive on its own. Get it? If the lungs,brain kidneys or any other vital organ is not developed it cannot live outside the womb!A full term child has this advantage most of the time unless something went wrong.
So a person who uses a pacemaker (whose heart is not fully functional) is not alive? It doesn’t appear to be the fact that a fetus is dependent (be it on someone or something) that causes it to be considered less than a human person, but the fact that the fetus happens to be dependent on someone who does not want that dependency.
I oppose this for what it is – an attempt to reverse the right of a woman to choose. It is dreadful to choose to terminate a pregnancy – at any point in the pregnancy. Almost all women agonize over such a choice. Education, openness and understanding CAN lead to fewer.
That we could find a way to not get there in the first place seems our only hope.
Abortion is consequence avoidance. News flash, if you don’t want to get pregnant, don’t have sex. If you choose to have sex, you choose the possible results of that act. And to glumly suggest that murdering the result of that act is OK, is asinine. A woman’s right to choose ends the second she says yes. Have you ever seen the videos that show how a baby squirms in the saline solution? It looks like a worm being put on a hook. You can’t tell me that the baby doesn’t suffer. I can’t imagine having my eyes burned out like some sadistic Nazi experiment, but that is exactly what happens to hundreds of thousands of innocent babies each year. The inhumanity of abortion advocates is nothing short of sickening. Again, I reiterate, if you don’t want to have a baby, don’t have sex. Sadistic murder is not the answer.
I wonder why anyone would oppose this bill. If their mother had aborted them, they would not be able to oppose it. Life… what a wonderful gift from God.
A fetus is made of human cells.
These cells meet the biological criteria for life.
These cells have DNA distinct from the mother.
Therefore, the fetus is a living human being distinct from the mother.
Common sense.
This bill must be supported!
I find it very interesting that most of those so rabidly pro-life are male. Wonder if it would be the same way if they were the ones having their right to choose what happens to their body taken away.
I find it very interesting that most of those so rabidly pro-choice are adults. Wonder if it would be the same way if they were the ones having their right to LIVE taken away.
I am a pro-life male, and while I have not been pregnant (obviously), I have had six kidney stones. I have been told by women who have gone through both events that kidney stones hurt at least as much as labor (some say more). My kidney stones generally last for several weeks (up to 5 in one case), and on multiple occasions have required surgery to remove. I am also a father, so I understand the reality of the effort and commitment involved in raising children. And I can honestly say, that I would go through the pain of passing a kidney stone many, many, many times over before I would consent to have an abortion. To me, at the moment of conception, the child is a child, and if I have decided to have sex, I have decided to take on the responsibility that goes with it, including the possibility of creating life. To destroy that life, because it is inconvenient, is totally unthinkable, despite the pain, discomfort, or anything else. Your argument simply holds no water with me!
The argument on abortion rest between two basic philosophy’s Humanistic (we are the center of the universe) and Divinity (we answer to a higher power). After 30 years in emergency medicine I have shifted from Humanistic to Divinity so my views have shifted as well. There are two things I can say to some of the `pro-choice/abortionist’. No one knows when life really begins for certain, and would you have a different opinion if your mother was considering this prior to your birth?
As for the constitutional rights issue of free choice. The choice of the unborn is canceled by the choice of the mother in this issue. We were established as a Christian nation, without a state religion to end religious persecution, but not to abandon Christian morality. Regardless of your point of view the axiom of majority rule is still the standard, so as long as Christians are majority it will be guided by those moral standards
This bill is ridiculous. These same people that sign on to this bill are the same ones who voted against SCHIP and hate Welfare.
Until all you fundies realize that the primary reason for abortion is economics, you will never see a great reduction in abortion rates. Abortion has been around FOREVER, just with herbs and potions.
I refuse to value any opinion that places the potential for life above that of life that is already here. It’s simply ignorant.
I’m sorry, but this isn’t something that Congress has the right to legislate.
The problem is that, regardless of any philosophical discussion, there must be some legal guideline as to what constitutes a person. Without such a guideline, laws referring to persons can easily be circumvented on the definition of person. Laws must be precise, and for precision’s sake, society must define a “person.” If Congress doesn’t legislate it, then the abortionists will decide it for us.
A woman’s right to choose begins and ends in the bed. I support legislation banning abortion except when the mother can show a police report or a doctor’s opinion showing danger to herself.
I’m not convinced that life really begins at conception. At present, the legal definition is that a person begins at live birth, and not a moment before. Anyone can see that human life clearly begins at some point prior to live birth. There is no fundamental distinction between a baby five minutes before birth or five minutes after, but current law would have us believe that the former is not a human life, while the latter is. So if not at birth, where do we draw the line?
A measure such as external viability is variable between pregnancies, and is difficult if not impossible to test without an actual premature birth. Other measures, such as detecting a heartbeat, may depend more on an abortionist’s skill and on equipment used than on the actual presence of a heartbeat. And to be blunt, since the abortionist only gets paid if they don’t hear the heartbeat, I just can’t trust that they’d be entirely honest…
…So it seems that we’re left with two options. On the one hand, the status quo, which denies human rights to obvious humans. On the other hand, we can draw the line at conception, which certainly grants human rights to all humans, but may also grant human rights to some things that aren’t quite human, but are at the very least “potentially” human.
In deciding between these two options, I think the constitutional precedent is clear in provisions such as innocent-until-proven-guilty. It is better to grant rights to those who may not deserve them than to deny rights to those who clearly do deserve them. And while life-at-conception denies the “right” of abortion to pregnant women, it clearly does NOT deny the right of reproductive choice to those women. The woman has the same choice that the man has in reproduction.
I unequivocally support this bill.
Here is another option:
Human life doesn’t begin at conception and it doesn’t begin at birth. It is a gradual process over the 9 (really 6-7) month period. The cells produced from conception have the potential for life so they have some value but clearly the cells could not be considered a human being and should not have human rights. Likewise a fetus 6-7 months old is no longer a clump of cells and should be considered a full human. Its not a linear process, more of an S curve with major progress in the 3-4 month period.
Why not create laws that punish based on the percentage of human life being taken?
It would allow for stem cell research and other life giving technologies but would make abortions illegal with punishments based on the age of the fetus when the abortion was performed.
I went to vote “Nay” on this issue, on this site. It registered my vote as “Aye” and offered me the opportunity to comment on why I “support” this bill.
I DO NOT support this bill.
The Republicans keep telling us how they feel we should have less government intervention in our lives. How about staying away from my body. It is between a woman, her doctor and her God. Leave it alone. It will cost the taxpayers absolutely nothing.