I receive enormous amounts of comments from those in favor of aborting children containing some form of this grossly ignorant argument…
“an acorn is no more an oak tree than a fetus is a human being”
First, a little carpology…
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the motherplant. The formation of the seed completes the process of reproduction in plants (started with the development of flowers and pollination), with the embryo developed from the zygote and the seed coat from the integuments of the ovule.
As you can see, a seed is a fertilized plant, just like a human embryo is a fertilized human being. Seeds cannot be compared to sperm and ovum for the same reasons human embryos cannot be compared to these cells — both plants and animals are unique individual life forms resulting from their union.
An acorn is one of the stages of life for an oak tree just like an embryo or fetus is one of the stages of life for a human being. In other words, an acorn is an embryonic oak tree just like a prenatal child is an embryonic or fetal human being.
The original argument accurately restated based on science:
“an acorn is an oak just like a fetus is a human being”
Don’t confuse stage of development with type of being. Crushing an acorn kills the oak it already was just like aborting a prenatal child kills the person they already were.
Crushing an Acorn Kills an Oak
