Yabby, I see you're now reduced to name calling. That's an admission you've lost the debate.

You're quite welcome to your "belief" systems regarding human life. I prefer to follow science and medical fact.

Michael B

To my mind, the central issue in the argument about abortion is whether a foetus is a fully human person with the rights and protections that personhood entails. You, and the author, and posters such as Rudy, simply beg this question, because you assume your conclusion – that a foetus is fully human - in your argument. But this is precisely the point on which other posters disagree. Stezza and McReal, for example, argue that personhood emerges with the development of self-consciousness and the capacity to feel pain.

So you ask, rhetorically, whether it is possible to justify the deliberate killing of another human being. I’d reply to this that while a foetus is both alive and human, it is not a fully developed human person. It certainly does not have its “own consciousness” until it has developed for several months.

So in answer to your question – no, I do not support the death penalty, because the killing of a fully self-aware person who can feel love and pain and fear, and knows what the loss of a potential future means, is indeed the deliberate killing of another human being. But in certain limited circumstances I would support assisted suicide or even euthanasia for someone who through illness, age, or accident has an irredeemably unbearable existence, or who is permanently unable to be any of those things than make us human persons.

Rhian 
I would say this has been a pretty good discussion so far. Though I would agree with Rudy that name calling ('stupid', 'dishonest') doesn't add to it.
 
I believe those taking side with Rudy have given their reasoning. Maybe you just haven't read the whole thread.

The belief that human life begins at conception is incompatible with other moral positions that are uncontroversial in our society, although it is more likely that people compartmentalise or just follow trusted religious leaders, rather than deliberately being hypocritical.

The Bible has nothing to say about abortion. The majority position among early Christians was that ensoulment (personhood) did not occur until the fetus was formed enough to have human faculties. They still believed that early abortion was wrong, but not for reasons that would make sense to an outsider. We know this from the writings of Church Fathers such as St. Augustine and from early manuals for priests, which recommended much more severe penances for late abortions.

Problems with the moment of conception position include the fact that there is no one to one correspondence between surviving embryos and people until Day 14. Embryos can split to form identical twins, and two embryos, formed from different sperm and egg cells, and sometimes of different sexes, can fuse together and cooperate to form a single individual. There is also King Hazzard's fetus in fetu example, which the anti-abortion people here are evading.

The vast majority of zygotes never end up as live babies, even without any deliberate interference. Secular people and early Christians could shrug their shoulders over how Nature works, but Rudy believes that the embryos are people. If they really are all people, why do we feel no obligation to save them, but only to refrain from killing them? If something were killing half of all puppies or kittens, there would be a huge research program to do something about it. Why do anti-abortion people evade addressing the ethics problem of having to choose between saving 5 four year olds and 500 "snowflake babies"?

Given the right conditions, an embryo may be able to grow into a thinking, feeling human being, but so could countless millions of Rudy's cells, given that cloning works in many other mammals. Scientists have even cloned mice from induced pluripotent stem cells made from reprogrammed adult skin cells, with no egg cell required.

(Cont'd)

Cont'd

In other areas of life, the view that no mind = no person is uncontroversial. Very few people object to the concept of brain death, allowing hospitals to shut down life support systems and even take organs to save other lives, with the donor family's permission (no functioning brain = no person).

A murder would not be regarded as less serious because the victim's DNA lives on in a surviving identical twin. ET or Commander Data would almost certainly be granted full human rights if they actually existed. (It is mind that determines personhood, not DNA.)

Late abortion is more controversial, even among secular people, but the moment of conception position is a help to those who have concerns about demographic competition or keeping women in their place and would like to impose their beliefs on others. It is significant here that pro-life people picket abortion clinics, but not hospitals that give the morning after pill to rape victims or factories that make IUDs, even though one IUD can destroy several "innocent human lives" a year. The focus is definitely on the guilt of the woman and not the life of the embryo or fetus.

Rudy,

Considering that you spend much of your time on this forum calling people names, you don't have a leg to stand on.

The debate on right to an abortion centres around whether society has the right to determine what a woman does with her body. If she chooses not to be an incubator for a human being that will then be dependent on her for decades, no one can force her. The issue of whether the clump of cells is human is therefore secondary, and really only raised by the anti abortion lobby.

These scientific and medical "facts" you bandy around are merely your opinion. The foetus is a genetically complete clump of cells, but then so is a finger. As and when the foetus is sufficiently developed to be considered human is still a point of debate.