If this passes, I presume that all these new little people will be counting during the next census. How many representatives will be sent to the House for North Dakota?

You're thinking like me.

they will say that sperm are people too

masturbation will become mass murder...lol

this is just plain ridiculous

I see those pro-life posters and the babies are nearly always white. What's whiter than North Dakota? I think one hidden motivator of pro-lifers is their fear of racial oblivion. They want more WHITE babies.

When men masturbate, it's only mass half murder. I say count the sperms in the Kleenex, divide by half, and prosecute for that many murders.

"This is very simply defining when life begins, and giving that life some protections under our Constitution -- the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Excuse me? Show me where in the Constitution the rights to "life," "liberty," and "the pursuit of happiness" are mentioned. What's that? You've never read the Constitution? You might want to do that before you go shooting your mouth off about it.

I am SICK of hearing people who have never read the Constitution make arguments supposedly based upon it.

As for when life begins, I agree that life begins at conception. But humanity can't possibly begin until at least the point where brain waves first appear. As far as I'm concerned, a human embryo has equal status with mosquitoes, algae, and bacteria.

in North Dakota.

... is one of the most de-populated, rural states in the union. There is not one large city, only several small ones. They used to have a strong populist farm movement, but now their only hope, they think, is raping their land and water for shale oil, now that the ICBM funnels are shutting down. Of course, there is always smuggling BC Bud across the border. But no self-respecting NoDakker would do that.

If this passes, North Dakota will provide a continuing argument for the un-democratic character of the U.S. Senate. Of course, they have made abortion illegal in most, or all, of the state already, so this just puts the ideological point on it.

Go to craigslist and click on real estate. I found a home for $7,000. There are many for less than $40,000. North Dakota has towns that some want to close down, for you've got a population of five and services still being delivered. No wonder their eggs are sacred.

You do not need a fertilised human egg to get the full Homo sapiens genome; you either need all genes from all Homo sapiens ever having been, being now and being in the future. Though, like the author of the article [and most probably the authors of the legislation to be] I am inclined to understand they want the human genome of one human being.

Unfortunately that gets us into real trouble since all somatic cells have a full set of Homo sapiens genes - meaning you should not shave nor spit or tear a hair, cut your nails, drop blood ... Furthermore, to get a necessary set of genes - and the proposed legislation is cited as caring for genes, not chromosomes or cells - you do not need the full 46 chromosomes, half do as well [as meiosis proves over and over again].

And what about viable trisomies? Are people with this conditions Homo sapiens under this law, or are they Homo superioris?

I love it when professed non-intellectuals try to come up with simple solutions.

Never mind our laws, the bottom line is that God has to be totally reevaluated if a fertilized egg constitutes a human baby with a "soul". I've heard that anywhere from 25-50% of fertilized eggs do not achieve live birth. This would mean that either God is very sloppy in his soul dealings (meaning he's fallible...that won't fly), or he's even more cruel and indifferent to human "life" than even the most chilling old testament passages would have us believe. By taking such a hard line with this stance, pro-lifers are essentially negating everything Christians and Jews assume to know about the very God they wish to defend.

Please correct me if I am wrong (entirely possible since it has been about 15 years since I took repro biology), but aren't eggs (oocytes) diploid (2 pairs of 23 chromosomes-a fully human geonome), before the final meiotic division. If so, what is my obligation to all of those unborn people left in my ovaries?

In addition to the issues you raise, there are many different sorts of cell lines that grow in dishes in the lab, derived from human cancer cells or normal cells (besides embryonic cell lines) that have human genomes. Is a single such cell now a person (I am afraid of the many holocausts I have perpetrated, if so)? Is a dish of such cells a person? If I take human cancer cells and inject them into a laboratory mouse to study cancer, have I now made the mouse a person?

The mind reels at the "simplicity".

Maybe some biologists can weigh in on this, but I've always understood an "organism" to be a living thing capable of achieving homeostasis and existing as a stable whole. In other words, to my understanding it can't be just an attachment to something else -- it must be an independent, living thing or it's not an organism.

So by defining as human any "organism" with human genes, aren't they just saying that human life begins at birth (or at least viability)?

If you believe that we're primarily souls and that our bodies are mere vessels, aborting, at worst, would be simply bothersome to God. She'd simply download the soul, whose original vessel had been aborted, into another vessel.

From an article on slate.com late last year by Linda Hirschman:

"In the absence of a robust description of the value of women's lives—their ability to develop their capacities through education, to use them to achieve economic independence and political citizenship, to take on only the relationships they can manage—there is no moral argument for their "choice" to have an abortion. Set against the sound of nothing, the smallest moral claim of the potential human life looms large."

I think that's it. The Japanese Prime Minister in 2007 said it himself - women are "baby-making machines". Women are valued most as mothers and objects of desire. Anything in between that demonstrates agency of self is completely seen as a betrayal to the gender, more specifically - a betrayal to the purpose of the gender.