AITA For being angry at my daughter for bringing with her an object that she knew would cause drama.

How does that old George Carlin bit go?

See, the really hardcore people will tell you life begins at fertilization. Fertilization, when the sperm fertilizes the egg. Which is usually a few moments after the man says "Gee, honey, I was going to pull out but the phone rang and it startled me." But even after the egg is fertilized, it's still six or seven days before it reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins, and not every egg makes it that far. Eighty percent of a woman's fertilized eggs are rinsed and flushed out of her body once a month during those delightful few days she has. They wind up on sanitary napkins, and yet they are fertilized eggs. So basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who's had more than more than one period is a serial killer!

The joke being that, of course life (at least, not "life" in the context we're talking about here) doesn't start at conception. Because conception rarely means a viable baby. Plenty of fertilized eggs get flushed out during a woman's period before the body even recognizes its pregnant, or she naturally miscarries, or the fertilized egg never makes it to the uterus and gets stuck somewhere else. It's estimated 20% of women's pregnancies result in miscarriage, and that's only pregnancies that the woman knew about. That's not including the multitude of miscarriages that happen in the first few weeks where the woman didn't even know she was pregnant to begin with.

Most people who understand even the most basic facts about biology don't think life begins at conception, because if it did, then there are a fuck-ton of dead babies out there!

/r/AmItheAsshole Thread Parent