Sonomayor's Comparison of Fetus to the Brain Dead
Justice Sonia Sotomayor compares a fetus to brain death.
“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected the idea that a fetus that has the ability to move and react to pain is a human life that should be protected from abortion.“ https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sotomayor-compares-fetus-brain-dead-person-fetal-movement-consciousness
“Miriam Webster Dictionary defines life and animate as follows:
“LIFE
“Essential Meaning of life
"1: the ability to grow, change, etc., that separates plants and animals from things like water or rocks” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/life
Yahoo defines life as “the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death:
"the origins of life" ” https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=litmus&hsimp=yhs-3d&type=1453461-vsub-tm4&p=what%20is%20life
Properties of Life are defined by the Kahn Academy https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/intro-to-biology/what-is-biology/a/what-is-life
There are a couple of these properties I would like to list:
“1 Organization
Living things are highly organized, meaning they contain specialized, coordinated parts. All living organisms are made up of one or more cells, which are considered the fundamental units of life.”
“4. Growth
Living organisms undergo regulated growth. Individual cells become larger in size, and multicellular organisms accumulate many cells through cell division. You yourself started out as a single cell and now have tens of trillions of cells in your body … Growth depends on anabolic pathways that build large, complex molecules such as proteins and DNA, the genetic material.”
Death
"Virtually every state defines a brain death as death," Sotomayor, appointed by former President Barack Obama, said during oral arguments in a potential landmark abortion rights case Wednesday, as the state of Mississippi defended an abortion restriction law that directly challenges Roe v. Wade.
"Yet, the literature is filled with episodes of people who are completely and utterly brain dead responding to stimuli," Sotomayor continued. "There's about 40 percent of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil. There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So I don't think that a response to -- by a fetus necessarily proves that there's a sensation of pain or that there's consciousness."
Death is defined as:
“Death is the permanent, irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism.[1] Brain death is sometimes used as a legal definition of death.[2] The remains of a previously living organism normally begin to decompose shortly after death. Death is an inevitable, universal process that eventually occurs in all living organisms.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death
“the end of life : the time when someone or something dies” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/death
A baby’s development is rapid. Doctors count conception from the woman’s last cycle not from the sperm and egg joining. Therefore at week three, according to science, fertilization occurs. Most humans would consider this the start of life.
By week five, the third week from conception, “Your baby's heart and a primitive circulatory system will form in the middle layer of cells — the mesoderm. This layer of cells will also serve as the foundation for your baby's bones, ligaments, kidneys and much of the reproductive system.
The inner layer of cells — the endoderm — is where your baby's lungs and intestines will develop.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/prenatal-care/art-20045302
By week six “Just four weeks after conception, the neural tube along your baby's back is closing. The baby's brain and spinal cord will develop from the neural tube. The heart and other organs also are starting to form.
Structures necessary to the formation of the eyes and ears develop. Small buds appear that will soon become arms. Your baby's body begins to take on a C-shaped curvature.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/prenatal-care/art-20045302
Sotomayor also said that she believes “the idea that a fetus is a human life is a "religious view." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sotomayor-compares-fetus-brain-dead-person-fetal-movement-consciousness
Yet by the definitions provided by Miriam Webster Dictionary and Yahoo the presence of life. The fact that there is growth proves life.
Up till now I have used dictionary and scientific terms to describe life and death to address Sonia Sotomayor’s statements comparing the fetus to a brain-dead person.
There are other terms that are based in Gods Word.
Yahweh the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel and the God of Christians says this when speaking to Jeremiah the prophet:
Jeremiah 1:5 (NASB 1995) “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
God is very clear on two points:
1. “I formed you”
2. God knew Jeremiah before he was in the womb.
To compare the formation of a child in the womb to a brain-dead person is ignorance regardless of which terms you are speaking from.
Picture by Pixabay