{"id":5588,"date":"2006-01-10T09:01:33","date_gmt":"2006-01-10T09:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/andrew-ramesh-and-zygotes.html"},"modified":"2006-01-10T09:01:33","modified_gmt":"2006-01-10T09:01:33","slug":"andrew-ramesh-and-zygotes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/andrew-ramesh-and-zygotes.html","title":{"rendered":"Andrew, Ramesh, and Zygotes"},"content":{"rendered":"

We blogged on the beginning of this conversation last week, then got overwhelmed by our own Zygotes-turned-Big-Men come to visit. You might remember Andrew Sullivan putting out a call to readers regarding the mortality rate of zygotes, implying that this has something pertinent to do with the right to research on\/kill said zygotes. <\/p>\n

At The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru, (whose book, The Party of Death: The Assault on the Sanctity of LIfe<\/em>, is due out in April)<\/a> responded, and exchanges ensued. At The Thing Is, Bradford Short has helpfully followed the conversation here<\/a> and here. <\/a>I believe the upshot is this: Sullivan wants to ascribe a very high mortality rate to young zygotes, but the counterargument, from Ramesh is that a large proportion of early miscarriages are, it seems, not properly-formed zygotes at all. They are anomolous – from a letter from a physician to both of them:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

His point with regard to the nature of first trimester spontaneous abortions is more on point. One-third of the products of conception from spontaneous abortions are \u2018blighted\u2019 or anembryonic: no embryo is found in the gestational sac.<\/em> In the other two-thirds of cases in which an embryo is found, approximately one-half are dysmorphic, abnormal, stunted and thus would not develop into a fetus. These unviable products likely result from chromosomal abnormalities or maternal exposure to teratogens.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018miscarriage\u2019 does not technically pertain to fetal losses that supervene after a gestational age is reached when a child is viable outside the womb. This rate is low for structurally and chromosomally intact fetuses and is more dependent on maternal health and well-being and on the availability of physician oversight and modern obstetric care.<\/p>\n

Your desire for the specific percentage of human zygotes that eventually emerge from the uterus as infants is a statistic that I believe cannot [be] empirically documented.<\/em> However, it is clear that birth, the process of fertilization, uterine implantation, and embryonic and fetal development is fraught with peril, and can be colloquially, if not also theologically, be referred to as a \u2018miracle.\u2019 (emphases added by RP) <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My fundamental point remains: I fail to see what a high mortality rate, if it exists, of very young human beings has to do with our rights to experiment on them or end their lives. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We blogged on the beginning of this conversation last week, then got overwhelmed by our own Zygotes-turned-Big-Men come to visit. You might remember Andrew Sullivan putting out a call to readers regarding the mortality rate of zygotes, implying that this has something pertinent to do with the right to research on\/kill said zygotes. At The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAndrew, Ramesh, and Zygotes - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/andrew-ramesh-and-zygotes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Andrew, Ramesh, and Zygotes - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We blogged on the beginning of this conversation last week, then got overwhelmed by our own Zygotes-turned-Big-Men come to visit. You might remember Andrew Sullivan putting out a call to readers regarding the mortality rate of zygotes, implying that this has something pertinent to do with the right to research on\/kill said zygotes. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}