Showing posts with label human life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label human life. Show all posts

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Should A Human Ovum Be Granted Legal Personhood?

A human ovum in and of itself is no more than a female germ cell or egg. It is not a "person" and should not be granted "legal personhood". Since we are including the word "human" here, that would seem to grab the conscious of some people and make them think that we were talking about a human life, not a "human ovum".

Human reproduction cannot take place using only a female ovum any more successfully than it can by using only male sperm. It takes both.

In order to determine an approximate due date in a pregnancy, the doctor normally counts forward 40 weeks from the woman's last menstrual period. This means that the woman's last period is actually counted as part of her pregnancy when she actually wasn't pregnant.

Since I am not a doctor or biologist, I had to get some expert advice on this topic and I chose the Mayo Clinic and according to them, pregnancy begins with a fertilized egg (ovum). When the egg or ovum and sperm unite, they form a one-celled entity called a "zygote", so you see, it isn't called an "ovum" anymore. The chromosomes in the zygote contain genetic material that will determine the baby's sex, eye and hair color, height, etc.