"Egg" Term is Unscientific for Personhood

Washington D.C.'s National Museum of Health and Medicine, established in 1862 by the U.S. government now houses 24 million specimens and artifacts in its collections, some of which are maintained in its Human Development Anatomy Center. NMHM publishes online a research project of the Carnegie Institution for Science, the authoritative Carnegie Stages of Early Human Development for sexual reproduction (i.e., from fertilization) which has become an international system for universal comparison of the embryonic development of most vertebrates. Deceased human embryos were collected from around the world, beginning with those from the hospital at John Hopkins University. The narrative for sexual reproduction begins with Stage 1 which is described as follows, omitting terms which have "no scientific usefulness:"

Embryonic life commences with fertilization… when a spermatozoon makes contact with an oocyte… and ends with the intermingling of maternal and paternal chromosomes… The three phases… will be included here under stage 1, the characteristic feature of which is unicellularity… The term “egg” is best reserved for... the breakfast table.

Yet, for example, Secretary of State Jerry Brown published wording on California's official 2010 personhood petition stating that the term person would be defined, "to include fertilized human eggs." Aside from the term egg being unscientific, a "fertilized egg" is itself a contradiction, for after conception, it ceases to be an "egg" and becomes something new - a distinct, living human being separate from mom, often with a different blood type, and half the time, it's a boy, and his Y-chromosome is certainly not part of the mother's body.

NBC's Denver affiliate 9News is even more embarassing for its ignornance of basic biology when it reported on Feb. 12, 2010 that, "Personhood Colorado... collected nearly 4,000 more signatures than the 76,000 needed... The proposal would change the definition of humans in the state constitution to include fertilized embryos." A fertilized embryo? Is that really what they meant to say? To millions of Americans abortion is the most contested issue in the country, and yet the liberal media can't even get the basic terminology correct. (If Mark Cornetta, the general manager at 9News, gets this corrected ARTL will update this report.)

Don't call Dred Scott a fertilized egg. Confusing an egg with an organism is inexcusable. RH Reality Check allowed this headline, "Anti-Abortion Activists Push New, More Radical Egg-As-Person Measures." Those who advocate killing unborn children use such ignorance. In war, terms like japs and gooks dehumanize the enemy; and abortionists call their targets POC (products of conception) and tissue to dehumanize their enemy, the unborn child. "Abortionists refer to the fetus as a mass of cells," said Lolita Hanks, nurse practitioner and spokeswoman for American RTL. "They even refer to the baby as a tumor, in attempts to dehumanize, but I've never met anyone who has taken their tumor home from the hospital." The U.S. Supreme Court referred to black slave Dred Scott as chattel and likewise, those who are "pro-choice" speak of "fertilized eggs" only to dehumanize kids. But abortionist George Tiller's murder was not merely a very late-term abortion and Dred Scott was not a very old fertilized egg.

The essential truth of personhood exposes the lies. The resurgent personhood movement is seeing that abortionists will become more hesitant to use terms like POC. For while establishing personhood has no effect on contraceptives that only prevent fertilization, personhood will prohibit any chemical abortifacient that kills the tiniest boys and girls. So when Planned Parenthood says that personhood would outlaw contraceptives, they are either lying now, or they were lying then, for the abortion industry assured women for decades that abortifacients did not kill a living embryo. A woman should know whether or not a chemical would abort her child. Personhood educates, and helps to end the lies. Thus, as stated in the Carnegie Stages, "The term “egg” is best reserved for a nutritive object frequently seen on the breakfast table."

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