Home;   FAQ;   Ask Dr. Gamete;   Shop True Life;   Donations;   About Us;   Links;   Press Releases;   Contact Us

 

    .              

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: You fundamentalist Christians make me sick. What kind of wacko nonsense are you going to come up with next? Why don't you just live and let live?

A: While most of our supporters have deep religious interests, and most are theists and Christians, we have no affiliation with any Christian sect, nor indeed with any world religion. Some of our members are atheists, libertarians, even humanists, and others are Hindus, Buddhists, Taoist, and Muslims. We do not argue that ensoulment begins with gametogenesis (although many believe it does), which would be a religious argument. Our point of view is based on reason and evidence, and so is compatible with both religious and non-religious views. Yes, we do want to live; we want to live moral lives, don't you? And so we ask what does it mean to live a moral life and respect another person's right to life? Like many others, we want to "let live" all of the children and babies, born and unborn. Relatively few favor baby killing, so we have common cause with almost everyone. We beg only to differ with the current majority over when human life begins.

Q: Let me get this straight, you want women to be celibate when they are not fertile, and have compulsory sex when they are?

A: When a woman ovulates, she carries within her a human egg, separate and genetically unique from herself, that has the potential to develop into her offspring. To deliberately prevent it from being fertilized would be to condemn her ovum, her potential child, to death. Knowing this, what woman would choose death over life? No woman is expected to engage in compulsory sex, and none needs to. Any woman who, for what ever reason, prefers to not engage in sexual intercourse has the simple option of inseminating herself with donor sperm. Doing so will not necessarily result in pregnancy, but her conscience will be clear knowing that she gave her begotten egg a chance to be born. As for celibacy, we see no need for that, nor even for any woman to suffer the slightest deprivation with respect to sexual pleasure and fulfillment. Women alone bare the pain of childbirth, and for that reason deserve the compensation of sexual gratification whenever they want it. Their loving partner, appreciative of her special role in reproduction, should strive to pleasure her whenever she wants, anyway she wants, and for as long as she wants so long as doing so does not cause her lover to ejaculate inappropriately when she is in an infertile state. If her mate lacks self-control, he should develop his oral and manual skills at pleasing her. Few if any women can honestly claim that they can only be satisfied through penetration.

Q: Do you really expect guys to not whack off? Come on, get real. Okay, so let's say a guy gets his wife pregnant. You want him to abstain from sex for how long? A year? Until she's fertile again? Are you....nuts?

A: It is unfortunate that western popular culture/media has become so pervasive that most men today think that sexual self-gratification, whether through brief, frequent masturbation or coitus, is both natural and normal. Few know that true virility is not to be gained through dissipation, but through a retention of the man's precious germinal fluid. This truth has been known for millennia among most civilized cultures. In the Hindu and Taoist traditions, men aim to please their lovers while not spilling their seed. The greatest fulfillment, both vital and spiritual, is gained thereby. Health and longevity are greatly enhanced as is intelligence, creativity, and strength as evidenced by the Taoist sages and kundalini/tantric yoga practitioners. Khajuraho templesThe sexual positions described in the Kama Sutra and pictorially represented on the temples of Khajuraho were developed and practiced not to induce ejaculation, but to allow extended multi-orgasmic conjugal pleasure without the loss of semen. Sexual continence is the natural and normal practice of the mature, fully functional man, who, by preference, ejaculates only when conception is intended. It is almost impossible for the immature, perenially-drained man, who through ignorance knows only the animalistic mode of love making, to realize what he is missing. The following illustration may give some idea:

Male Sexual Potential Chart

 As you can see, far from advocating celibacy, we promote the highest possible sexual fulfillment in both men and women. It is no accident that by following the dictates of true morality, we achieve the greatest heights of love and ecstasy.

Q: So you want to ban virtually all forms of birth control: vasectomies, tubal ligation, the Pill, IUDs, Norplant, patches, rings, condoms, diaphragms, foams, jellies, withdrawal, abstinence, even the rhythm method?

A: We oppose only those forms of birth control that prevent mature gametes from living out the natural course of their lives. This would include tubal ligation, IUDs, condoms, diaphragms, any other barrier or spermacidal methods, as well as withdrawal with ejaculation, abstinence on the part of men that involves masterbation or nocturnal emissions, abstinence on the part of women during periods of fertility (from both intercourse and insemination), and yes the rhythm method is especially abhorrant and immoral, being the exact opposite of what a concienous couple would practice. This still leaves the Pill and any other method that acts by preventing gametogensis. By preventing oogenesis, a women's eggs remain dormant as they have from a time before her own birth. Without follicular maturation, no ovum is produced that would require fertilization. By a similar argument, vasectomy would be a permitted form of birth control since the process of sperm maturation, while beginning in the epididymis, is only completed in the female reproductive tract. Once their maturation has begun after leaving the testes, sperm are stored in the epididymis and the vas deferens where they await their fate: either to be ejaculated or to be reabsorbed when not ejaculated. Either fate is a natural one for sperm, although since sperm can only complete their maturation through a process of capacitation within a uterus, ejaculation into any location other than a fertile woman's vagina would be an abomination. Because a vasectomy seals off the vas deferens, it predetermines that all sperm will be reabsorbed, which is far preferable to being inappropriately ejaculated. In this way, as a bonus, some of the benefits of sexual continence can be obtained. For the sexually incontinent man, a vasectomy may be necessary if he is to lead a moral life.

Q: I've been a pro-life activist all my life, and I was almost ready to sign on, but giving "menstural exudate" funeral rights is obviously insane. Is this some scheme to create a market for one-inch coffins? Don't you realize that any unimplanted egg, fertilized or not, would have decomposed long before menses occurred?

A: One of the more glaring inconsistencies among self-styled prolifers is their refusal to recognize, intellectually or through any sort of ritual, that over half of their newly conceived embryos will undergo spontaneous abortions in their first month of life. If a late-term spontaneous abortion occurs, full funeral rights are traditionally accorded the stillborn child, but if life begins at conception, how could you not grieve and mourn the loss of a child regardless of its age? To fail to do so, as in the current tradition, is to tacitly support the pro-choice camp by one's behavior. It is nothing less than extreme hypocrisy to condemn, as a baby killer, a woman who chooses to abort an early pregnancy, but fail, when one's own days or weeks-old baby dies in the womb, to acknowledge the fact by acting the same as one would if one's full-term baby had died. Even misinformed prolifers who believe that life begins at conception should support funerary rights for all unborn babies who, for whatever reason, die between conception and birth. We would merely add that, in addition to fertilized eggs that fail to develop, the developmental failure of any egg should be acknowledged to be an aborted human life and accorded some rite of passage. Funeral rites vary around the world from burial, cremation, to sky funerals, and we have no interest in saying how the death of the unborn is to be memorialized, but surely to just heartlessly discard the corpse of one's own offspring, whether decomposed or not, is a barbaric and callous act.

Q: How can most of your supporters call themselves Christians? The Bible clearly states that life begins at conception. How can you deny the clear Word of God?

A: While biblical support is not essential to our position, it would be unexpected if our understanding were not in perfect accord with all the higher teachings. It is only through an excess of biblical exegesis that scriptural support for the relatively modern doctrine that life begins at conception (fertilization) has been found. Consider God's words to Jeremiah (1:5): "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." Before you were formed in the womb, you were what is now called gametes. Also consider that the Hebrew word for conception refers not to fertilization, but indicates that life begins with the reproductive act, a union of two ("and the two shall become one"—Genesis 2:25), and as we now know, the first step of the reproductive act is gametogenesis, the production of two functional, living, genetically distinct beings who later, if we permit them, undergo fertilization, implantation, fetal development, birth, childhood development, and adulthood. What we are doing is to clarify, scientifically, when human development begins so that we might all know more truly the Mind of God.

Q: How can you claim your views are scientific? What evidence or valid reasoning can you possibly have?

A: Consider the following thought experiment, one which could actually be performed, but need not be because the outcome is completely foreseeable. You label six petri dishes 1-6: in the first you place sperm, in the second ova, in the third both sperm and eggs, in the fourth fertilized ova (zygotes), in the fifth epithelial cells, and in the sixth cancer cells. You incubate under optimal conditions. What would the outcome be? In #1 you would note that the sperm would exaust themselves in several days and die. In #2 the ova, without being fertilized, would die in a day. In #3 the ova would be fertilized and continue their development into morula, which unless emplanted into a womb, would soon die. In #4 the outcome would be the same as in #3. In #5 and #6, cell growth and development, normal and abnormal, would occur as cells proliferated until waste products and lack of nutrients killed them. It is, of course, #3 and #4 that are of interest. By nearly universal consent, all pro-life advocates agree that human beings, or potential human beings, are undergoing development in #4 and must be accorded an inviolate right to life. Yet the potential for human development clearly exists in #3 in no lesser degree than in #4. Does it really matter whether a potential human being is in a haploid or diploid stage of development? After all, the epithelial cells have the same full compliment of 46 chromosomes as the zygotes, yet they do not develop into human beings, while the gametes, with their 23 uniquely human set of chromosomes will, given a chance, undergo human development. Since both #3 and #4 have exactly the same potential, and #3 represents the earlier stage of human development, it follows that human life begins not through the process of fertilization, but through the process of gametogenesis. You are born as two unique beings whose purpose in life is to fuse, to become one, so as to continue their development into a multicellular person. The potential for human development obviously begins when mature gametes are born. Consider that spermatids and primary oocytes placed together in a petri dish could never develop into human beings, since immature sperm are incapable of penitrating an egg. Furthermore, even a mature sperm could not fertilize an immature egg. Science irrefutablly points to the fruition of gametogenesis as the begining of human life.

Q: If life begins with gametogenesis, then why don't you tell people the truth—that life begins when the primary gametocytes undergo their first meiotic division to produce the secondary spermatocytes and primary oocytes?

A: This "question" is obviously from one of our former members who joined the apostate PRtL Movement back in 1984 when a few of our members created a schism in the ranks and split off to form their own splinter group. The PRtLM maintains the untenable claim that sperm retention violates the right to life of sperm. They believe that sperm retention is a sin and that all fertile men should be required to regularly ejaculate into a fertile woman. Women members are urged to accommodate as many men as they can during their fertile periods. Of course, since most of their women are pregnant at any given time, there's quite a demand for and upon fertile women. A moderate faction argues that regular sperm donations are an acceptable alternative to sexual intercourse, but extremists fear, and not without reason, that all sperm donated might not find their way into a fertile woman, and insist on the low-tech "traditional" approach. In order to be logically consistent in arguing their cause, some members have recently begun to promote the preposterous claim that spermatids and primary oocytes (as soon as they begin meiosis while still in prophase in the fetal ovaries!) have a right to life. While such is the earliest beginnings of gametogenesis, one has only to consider the absurd implications of this belief to realize how false it must be. If what the extreme faction of the PRtLM believes is true, then all forms of birth control would have to be banned. Women would have to be impregnated at menarche and immediately after each pregnancy till menopause. Incredibly, some members are talking about the moral necessity to superovulate all women, so that the greatest possible number of their oocytes can be fertilized! We have even seen a confidential memo which indicates that they want to fund research for the development of artificial wombs to accommodate the harvested eggs! By their works you can know them, and these people are obviously insane. The principle here is that if a belief leads to absurd consequences, such as compulsory pregnacy for all women, then perhaps you need to question that belief's premises. Our point of view, by sharp contrast, is amply supported by the many beneficial consequences that follow its adoption. Through observation and analysis—through good science and reason, we discovered an essential element of the moral life that has hitherto been overlooked. By embracing it we have found our lives have been immeasurably enhanced. It is because our view is both reasonable and conducive to the good and benefit of all that we accept it. It is our fervent wish that others might also know the joy and gratitude that we live in daily by following the dictates of true morality. Please join the True Right to Life Movement today.

© Copyright 2003, True Life Foundation. Site design by Meralee Productions.