Talk:Beginning of pregnancy controversy

message: To me, these two words are synonyms, and when editing relevent articles (such as this one) I try to use both words to avoid repeating the same word over and over again.  But all of my edits have been changed to use 'fertilization' exclusively, never mentioning 'conception' in the article.  Any ideas why? Lyrl 15:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: First of all, the article is Fertilisation. Conception redirects there. But second of all, there has been an effort by the ACOG to define "conception" at implantation. TO avoid confusion, I personally use Fertilisation if I am talking about the union of a sperm and egg. However, I am not the one who changed your edits so I cannot speak for them.--Andrew c 23:22, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the clarification re:ACOG.  On spelling, the 'z' spelling gets 18 million hits on Google.  The 's' spelling gets only 3 million hits.  The Wikipedia article indicates that both spellings are acceptable, but that the 'z' spelling is more widely used. Lyrl 01:13, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In regards to spelling, its a matter of British English vs. American English. The normal convention is to pick one and use it consistently throughout the article. I personally think it is a hassle to have to add excessive code in order to avoid a redirect and get the spelling correct, by typing fertilization, so I just stick with the Brittish spelling for ease. I bet there is a big discussion about the spelling over at that talk page.--Andrew c 23:19, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes and I should add that Google results are frequently criticised for establishing prominence of a term. They only reflect internet usage and are therefore biased to Americans and especially not reflective of Indians and others who use English in less developed countries Nil Einne 12:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conception vs. fertilization

message: ...how come there's no mention of it?  are there any objections to adding a few sentences about "quickening" and how human chorionic gonadotropin testing changed the definition of the beginning in human understanding?  (it would be sort of a mini history of the pregnancy test, i guess...i think it's interesting in particular that it was not possible to medically confirm pregnancy before 7wks gestation until mid 1970s...)
Cindery 16:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that is a very good idea. This article was created because the debate was taking up too much space on the abortaficent and EC articles. I still feel this article needs work, and giving background and historical information is one step towards improving it. --Andrew c 22:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: History of the controversy of beginning of pregnancy

message: I believe the way that this is referenced is misleading (I tried to change the wording to be more accurate, but I feel it shouldn't be there). Langman's doesn't go out and give a straight forward definition of pregnancy. The citation mentions how gestational age is counted. It mentions Last Normal Menstrual Period (LNMP) (roughly a 40 week pregnancy) and it mentions counting from fertilization (roughly a 38 week pregnancy). It chooses to count from fertilization. This doesn't mean that they are defining pregnancy as starting at fertilization. This is a book on Embryology, and of course part of embryo development occurs during fertilization. No one is arguing that an embryo magically starts to develop at implantation. The focus of Langman's is the embryo, so it isn't strange at all that they start counting at fertilization. The focus is NOT on the woman, or pregnancy in general. On top of that, on page 41 they discuss contraception. They mention IUDs, oral hormonal contraception, and mifepristone (among others). They say that the pill works be preventing ovulation, they say it isn't clear that IUDs prevent fertilization or implantation, but they clearly consider IUDs contraception, and they say the mifepristone is an abortifacients . Judging by this, it is clear that Langman's does not support the arguments put forth in this article that certain forms of controversial BC are abortifacients. So a) they never say that pregnancy starts at fertilization (they say embryo development starts then) and b) they clearly say that IUDs, while possibly preventing implantation are not abortifacients. I'd propose removing that sentence, and possibly finding another medical text to replace it (if one exists).-Andrew c 00:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Langman's Medical Embryology 

message: The first sentence under the Beginning of the Controversy section, states that the word "conception" has been used in reference to the beginning of pregnancy long before the discovery of fertilization, however, when clicking on the fertilization article, it says that it is also known as conception (which is a bit confusing). Also the reference to what most dictionaries said by the 1960s is misleading, because I think it implies, at least indirectly, that that has always been the definition of pregnancy. Just my thoughts on the matter, Chooserr 02:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I suppose it would be good for Wikipedia to somewhere state when fertilization was discovered, by whom, and what the definition of "conception" was prior to that.  I'll look into it.Ferrylodge 02:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beginning of the Controversy 

message: *I broke up the one long sentence in the introduction into two sentences for easier readability.
*I changed "are considered" to "might be" abortifacient, since most of the proposed post-fertilization mechanisms have not been proven.
*I added a wikilink to the fertilisation article (which uses the British spelling)
*I re-added the modern dictionary definition "from conception until birth" that had been moved from the "Definition" section to the history section.
*I removed the commentary on how implantation "makes more sense" out of the "Definition" section and back into the "detectable pregnancy" section where it is more obviously commentary and not a definition.
*In the history section ("beginning of the controversy") I changed "more generally" to "originally" and removed the tangent about contemporary definitions.
*I renamed "Claims of abortion" to "Birth control - mechanism of action" which I believe is more descriptive - the section is mainly describing how birth control works.  I also did a copyedit on the first paragraph in this section.
*I changed "Birth control methods that are alleged to be abortions" back to "Possibly affected birth control methods" for two reasons:
**"Possibly affected..." is shorter
**Whether or not one defines pregnancy at implanation, these methods are still "possibly affected" by having postfertilization mechanisms.  I believe focusing attention on the question of the existence of postfertilization mechanisms (with the "possibly affected..." title) is better than focusing attention on the morality of preventing implantation (with the "...alleged to be abortions" title).
*I re-added the deleted section on the ethics of preventing implantation. I don't understand why it was deleted.
*I deleted "acting as an early sign that a pregnancy may occur" from the paragraph on EPF - it implicitly defines pregnancy as beginning at implantation.  NPOV dictates that this article only describe the different definitions, not offer statements (either explicit or implicit) about which definition is correct. 
*I removed the qualifier "fertilized" from "zygote".  One, it is the ovum that is fertilized, not the zygote.  Two, I don't think zygotes resulting from processes other than fertilization (cloning?) are at all relevant to this article.
*I removed the commentary on chemical pregnancies (those that can be detected with hCG blood or urine tests - "chemical" tests - but never grow large enough to be seen on an ultrasound - a "clinical" test).  One, it did not add anything to the article.  Two, a woman's personal feelings about the significance of an early miscarriage will vary widely from woman to woman, and implying that all chemical pregnancies are not worthy of "notice" is possibly offensive.
Lyrl    Talk     C   17:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  4-March-2007 edits 

message: Why does this "controversy" even matter. We should be focusing on when LIFE begins, not when PREGNANCY does.
Beginning of Pregnancy ≠ Beginning of Life
Junulo 00:57, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That is covered in the article on Abiogenesis. Zodon (talk) 06:14, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this person may have been referring to when an individual human life begins, not when pregnancy begins.  The Abiogenesis article is about when the first life of any kind emerged from the "primordial soup", i.e. the beginning of all life on Earth.  This gets to the point of the pro-life claim that, "Life begins at conception," which maybe would be better phrased as, "A human life begins at conception."  Then again, perhaps people who want to understand the four word slogan do understand it, in context.  71.242.7.208 (talk) 17:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Why even care?

message: AFAIK, there is no scientific basis for the claim that "scientists generally avoid describing facts using terminology with emotional or political overtones."  In my experience, scientists very commonly use terminology with emotional or political overtones.  If someone can find a scientific study to support the claim, please feel free to reinsert it into the article, with an appropriate reference. NCdave (talk) 21:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Likewise, "The latter question [of when life begins] also has no scientific definition since, from a biological standpoint, life is a continuum without a discrete starting point" has the same problem: AFAIK, there is no scientific basis for the claim that life is a continuum with no distinct starting point.  Rather, that sentence is an editorial comment, arguing the POV that those wacky pro-lifers who talk about life beginning at fertilization are unscientific. NCdave (talk) 21:54, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I have removed the editorial comment. NCdave (talk) 23:47, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Reverted the edit, then redid most of it, in order to refine the one bit that got removed, but still seemed worthwhile.  i.e. The distinction between the analog view of life as a continuum, vs. the discrete (the individual starts here - e.g. Legal problem).  Removed the no starting point part (clearly irrelevant), however life comes from life is quite common view in biology and elsewhere. Tried to neutralize some of the language around the bit that put back to address concerns here.  Zodon (talk) 06:54, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Scientists generally avoid describing facts using terminology with emotional or political overtones" 

message: Some of the issues this article covers aren't neatly described by when pregnancy begins.  Would it be better to title the article as a controversy over what is contraception (vs. abortion)? LyrlTalk     C   01:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: What issues do you mean?  In rereading nothing struck me as obviously unrelated to that.  (Not saying there isn't anything, just not sure what bits gave rise to the question.)  This issue also would apply to other procedures (like in vitro fertilization/fertility treatments, etc.), so don't think it is just about definition of contraception.  (If want to retitle it, new title should encompass that as well.) Zodon (talk) 05:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Partly that the HHS draft regulation avoids the issue of pregnancy altogether in defining abortion.  Wikipedia's abortion article also does not mention pregnancy in its definition of abortion.  When some people involved in the argument aren't arguing about pregnancy, defining the controversy as over the definition of pregnancy doesn't really cover it.  I'm not sure what a better title would be, though. LyrlTalk     C   21:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of contraception controversy? 

message: I would like to make these changes to the article:
*Remove the statement about chemical pregnancies: as I explained above, while these studies were important in understanding how IUDs work, I do not believe they have particular relevance to this article.
*Re-integrate the IUD into the "possibly affected" list.  I am open to stronger wording on spermicide/ovicide being the only known mechanism, lack of medical community support for the idea of secondary mechanisms, etc.  But I do not believe the current sources support a "no possibility this method is affected" categorization.
Any comments? LyrlTalk     C   00:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed changes

message: Reading this article in full, I find that while it contains some good facts and explains some relevant arguments, the overall philosophical approach of the article is . . . wrong.  No more specific word seems to quite fit.  The article, while not explicitly stating so, seems to have in its basis (in a sort-of for-the-most-part kind of way) the idea that whatever the definition of the word "pregnancy" is can have some bearing on the moral acceptability or unacceptability of abortion or abortifacient contraception (that is, contraception that secondarily sometimes has an abortifacient effect).  That is simply not true.  The morality of abortion depends on whether what is killed is a human person with a right to life like the right of an innocent adult human not to be killed.  There is no valid logic, nor any popular fallacious logic I know, that draws a line between what is a human person and what is not, depending on whatever the word "pregnancy" is chosen to mean.  The period we call pregnancy could begin after the life of the child as a distinct human person begins, with no conflict—but with a departure at least in part from the conventional usage of the word "pregnancy" to date.  Words do not make reality, reality is and words try to describe it.  (Or else, words are twisted to betray their right purpose.)  Sometimes, words serve better purposes redefined as other words, sometimes not.  Through all linguistic events, reality marches on unimpeded and unphased.
Redefining a word means you have to use it differently, not that what was said with it before has changed in meaning.  If I said I bought a mouse for my computer and you later redefined mouse in the computer field to mean an eye-tracking device that watches the computer user's face with a video camera and moves the on-screen pointer according to where the user looks, it doesn't change the fact that A.) I bought a plastic thing that fits in the hand and slides on a horizontal surface to move the pointer proportionately, and B.) that was what I said I did, despite the fact that those same words now mean something different.  When I used them, they meant I bought the thing that slides with a hand on it, so that's what I said, and if I spoke truthfully, it's what I did.  If I actually bought the new eye-tracking thing, then I lied, but it's still what I did--bought that eye-tracking thing and lied--despite the fact that my words reinterpreted with the new version of the language are now true.  I wasn't speaking in this new, modern, current language (I couldn't; causality would have been violated, as the new version of the language didn't exist yet when I spoke), I was speaking in the old language, in which I lied.  If you quote me today, you are still quoting a lie, albeit one that's more difficult to recognize since the current, new meaning of the (lexically or phonetically) same words wouldn't reveal it.
So, even if someone defined that a human life starts at the start of pregnancy, if they meant pregnancy as "the condition of a woman who has inside her a fertilized ovum", and if that was an accepted definition at the time, then that is what they said, what they meant, and what they would reassert now (perhaps in different words) if their mind hasn't changed, though they may have been misunderstood.  And if they were right or wrong, that doesn't change with the meaning of the words either.  There is a fundamental difference between an idea and a linguistic expression of it.  Where a definition is ambiguous or disputed, the solution for clear communication is to rephrase using different, more clearly defined words upon which there is more semantic consensus, not to resolve their assertion according to a new consensus on the words they used.  Confusion over controversial definitions does not involve defective ideas but errors in communication, to be resolved by re-communicating.
No pro-life position rests on the concept of pregnancy.  If pregnancy were defined to start when the baby (in the fetal stage) reached a mass of one pound or when it was observed to have fully separated fingers and toes, it wouldn't change what both pro-life and pro-choice people believe and argue about.  There seems to be a . . . troubling . . . undercurrent of credulity running through this article that a semantic victory over the word "pregnancy" or the word "conception" could actually get one side of the debate to concede defeat and go home, which I'm positive is ludicrous, even presuming that both sides sincerely hold positions founded purely on formal logic and so are subject to self-acknowledged defeat if their logic is disproven.  Their logic simply doesn't rest on words, but on the concepts those words represent—and that some other words could be substituted to represent should these words be rendered unavailable to represent those concepts.  To deny this is to imagine that the abortion controversy is much more shallow than it is.
Putting it in real bottom line, plain terms, even if pregnancy was defined never to exist at all, there would still be unborn fetuses in some women's wombs, some of those mothers would want to kill those fetuses (some believing and some not believing that the fetuses were human beings), and others, believing they were fully human beings, would want to protect those fetuses against that action.  And they would find words to express their beliefs and reasons.  The only thing that is really at stake in the definition of pregnancy is whether some people will be misled by a word that one person is using to mean one thing and that they understand to mean another; a woman may be told she is not pregnant when in fact, by her understood definition, she is, and so be misled to do something against and harmful to her own intent.  (Note, that is not free choice.)
For the article, what all of this means is that a general overhaul edit is needed, because the majority of the article subtly violates logic and NPOV.  A neutral point of view can only look at things rationally—and the thread of presupposition that this definition could actually be critical to the cause for the pro-life or pro-choice camp, or determine what is or is not abortifacient, is not logical.  Over and over, the article assumes that a human life begins at the start of pregnancy, a dubious point that I have not heard many people arguing in support of, and that is not cited in the article.  (A cited reference is made at the end of the introductory paragraph to the idea that some people hold this opinion, but I didn't find further explicit mention of the opinion in the rest of the article, with or without citations.)  There are statements like, "Birth control methods usually prevent fertilization. This cannot be seen as abortifacient because, by any of the above definitions, pregnancy has not started."  That is illogical.  The truth is, birth control methods that prevent fertilization cannot be seen as abortifacient because, by any contended definition, the life of a new human person, i.e. a human person distinct from the mother, has not started [before fertilization].  Whether pregnancy has started is, again, irrelevant.  The entire "Ethics of preventing implantation" section seems predicated on the same flawed premise that human life begins with pregnancy, that if you're not pregnant, it's not a baby.  Pregancy is not the determinant of what is a baby, the presence of a baby is determinant of pregnancy.  (Or, it should be, I think most people, if only for the sake of simplicity and of utility of language, would agree.)  Alternately, what some group of people choose by consensus as criteria for the application of the term is determinant of pregnancy, but not of what is a baby.  Pregnancy is a concept, a baby is real.  The article needs to at least tacitly acknowledge this point, s it now tacitly underwrites the theory that a human life begins whenever pregnancy is said to begin.  The whole "Ethics of preventing implantation" section seems tangential to the subject of when pregnancy begins, because the people arguing that some "contraceptives" are "abortifacients" aren't arguing against preventing "pregnancy", their arguing against preventing implantation, regardless of how you define pregnancy.  Again, the thing vs. the word.  Elsewise, I'm not sure that a definition that was included in a draft version of a law but deleted before the original law passed is significant enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia article on this subject; I suppose it is, as an example of a definition that did not achieve cultural consensus.
71.242.7.208 (talk) 17:14, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semantics as a means, not an end 

message: [Following up my previous long contribution (as if it was too short and needed to be beefed up), I have a final thought that isn't quite tied to the "semantics" point about words vs. reality, and so I thought was better made separate.  It's actually a thorough overview of the subject(s) of this article (the title has one subject, the body has that one and a few more) that's surprisingly compact, especially coming from someone that wrote the epic (but, I hope, useful epic) above.]
Overall, there is a lot more "what they believe to be"-type language in this article than there needs to be, making the issues at hand seem more complicated than they are.  Either pregnancy is defined to begin at fertilization, at implantation, or at some other time.  Either one believes that a human life starts specifically at whatever is defined to be the start of pregnancy, with absolutely nothing more to be said (a minority position if I ever heard one), or the start of life is marked by some other, more concrete event, such as fertilization or implantation (the meanings of which are not much debated), which may happen to also coincide with or determine the defined start of pregnancy.  The abortifacient and other moral, social, and political issues can then be decided, or framed, in terms of whether a human life exists in the zygote, blastocyst, or fetus, not in terms of the shakier concept of the clinical definition of pregnancy.  The concept of pregnancy mainly and properly belongs to obstetrics, the division of the medical profession concerned with caring for pregnant women (whom to treat they must identify, for starters); the clinical definitions of pregnancy were established by and for the obstetrical profession.  Medical professionals, as scientists, have no particular qualifications to decide moral and philosophical questions, such as what is a human person, and therefore their definitions of medical terms should not influence non-medical judgments of moral and ethical questions.  By framing and covering the question of pregnancy properly and accurately, the abortifacient and other related issues can be left to be covered in their own articles, on the basis of whether a human life exists, with only a brief mention (without details and permutations) of the relationship here.
71.242.7.208 (talk) 17:28, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  It doesn't have to be so complex 

message: Just a thought: It might be useful to consider what are the motives for defining pregnancy in the first place, and how do various definitions serve those motives.  In other words, what purpose does the word serve?  Who needs it, and what do they want it for?  This is a sort of engineering (or reverse-engineering) analysis approach.  If anyone could find some sources that address this, I think it would make a very useful improvement to the article, particularly by giving it some context and a frame of reference.  Maybe there's something relevant in the article on pregancy?  (I haven't looked there after getting this idea.) 71.242.7.208 (talk) 17:51, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  For future resarch and addition 

message: In defense of an edit I had made and just restored:
In vitro procedures showed that fertilization and pregnancy are not inextricably linked.  However, it requires artificial effort to prevent the one from naturally following from the other, so the verb phrase "can be separated" is appropriate to describe this relationship.  To say that fertilization "does not automatically result in pregnancy" presupposes a certain definition of pregnancy, i.e. that it begins at implantation, which is precisely the controversy that this article is about.  Furthermore, it is false: fertilization does automatically result in pregnancy, unless someone interferes by either undermining the healthy function of the female reproductive system or causing the fertilization to occur in an unnatural place (a piece of laboratory glassware).
The real issue with whether petri dishes being considered pregnant is in considering to which nouns the adjective "pregnant" may be applied.  There are plenty of words in the English language (and I'm going to go out on a limb here and say most other languages as well) that can only be validly applied to certain other words; if a computer's hard drive starts losing data, we don't say the computer is senile, even though it is exhibiting memory failure, the chief hallmark of senility.  If a car gets rotting leaves accumulated inside the fender, we don't say it has an infection--though the same thing inside a living organism would be an infection.  Some plain sense about language is in order here.  71.242.7.208 (talk) 23:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd actually like to see the section deleted - it's awkwardly worded, but more to the point, it is unsourced, and smacks of original research.  Are there any sources available showing that there is notable concern out there that that petri dishes are being called "pregnant"?  I doubt it.  Dawn Bard (talk) 23:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I deleted it - the fact that it was unsourced is really reason enough.  Dawn Bard (talk) 23:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

text: If I may add to this very belatedly - fertilization does NOT always result in implantation/pregnancy.  A *large* proportion of embryos will fail to implant.  See two citations http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.queensu.ca/science/article/pii/S1521693400901214 and http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.queensu.ca/science/article/pii/S1521693400901214Absolutezero273 (talk) 07:52, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fertilization can be separated from pregnancy 

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