"Once again there are sweeping generalisations and dogmatic-sounding assertions such as "no human brain = no person". From what authority does this come?"

Stop and think, please stop to think :) What do you call a human
body without a human brain?

If you actually do your neuroscience homework, around week 25 is
when what can be called a human brain is finally in place.

The question about the difference between living matter and a
pile of dinosaur excrement is fairly obvious too. You won't win
arguments based on an attempt at ridicule, sorry

Yes I am more concerned with living, feeling, thinking beings,
then I am with cells, even budgies! I'm not sure where you dragged
the 8 months from, at that point you would have what could in fact
be called a person, based on brain development.

If I had anything to say about abortion laws, I would keep them
quite simple. Abortion on demand in the first trimester, which
is slowly becoming accepted as standard around the world. Then
abortion for special reasons in the second trimester, like
health of the mother, abnormal fetus etc.

No silent screams in the first trimester sorry, which is when
most abortions actually take place.

My solution would neither satisfy the extremists at either end,
ie religious extremists at one end, those who claim partial birth
abortion is ok at the other end.

But then good law is about reaching a compromise somewhere in the
middle

Stop&think “Yabby states that until a child is born it is not yet a person. It is this dangerous approach which leads to all sorts of probelms for people, not least of whom, the unborn child.”

Yabby is perfectly correct.

A foetus has not developed to the point of existing separately to the woman in whose body it is developing, hence, it is not a “child” in the context that a new born baby is a “child”. that is why we have “birth certificates” but no “conception certificates”, because until the moment of birth the individual, as the child, does not exist.

Actually, the “unborn child”, in any context of individually existing and aspiring to claim any individual rights represents a statement which is best described as

a complete oxymoron.

So I suggest, with regard to “Again what I ask for is honesty - call a spade a spade.”

Please practice what you preach.

“Hypocrisy” is an ugly word but any one who deploys emotive misrepresentations like the “unborn child” and then complains about calling “a spade and spade”, one is practicing hypocrisy in its purest form.

My personal view is the only person responsible and capable of deciding if an abortion should be performed is the individual pregnant woman herself.

It is not up to the sexual partner who impregnated her, it is not his body at risk.

It is not up to parents or friends of the pregnant woman, again, it is not their body or life expectations which are being balanced and influenced.

It is not up to government or the state to interfer in the copulating practices of the electorate they are elected to serve.

And it must never be left up to the demands of minority view lobbyists, strangers and the vocal meddlers from prolife, who will bear no responsibility for the outcome of a decision they demand be imposed on individual pregnant women they may never meet.

Yabby,

A few questions:

Is 25 weeks the time we can "first describe the development of the brain" or "when what can be called a human brain is finally in place"?

There are some inconsistencies in your argument, which are not slight, given that you are drawing a line somewhere arbitrary where the being becomes a human person.

I picked 8 months because that is a time when the unborn child (I am not archaic, in error, or unreasonable in using this widely-used term), is still in the womb.

Another serious inconsistency:
"I'm not sure where you dragged
the 8 months from, at that point you would have what could in fact
be called a person" and "If its not yet born, then its not
a child."

Once again, I ask you to clarify the position.

When someone is brain dead, they die. Their brain ceases to function. A zygote has all the DNA for a brain and very quickly starts forming its brain, which will one day process large amounts of information and argue with people on online forums. You can't say that because a zygote hasn't fully developed the brain that it isn't human. What is it then? Call it what you like, but all it translates to is a young human. It's not a young cat or dog.

You may think I ridicule by referring to excrement, but realistically, you cannot follow the argument that life is continuous and never begins, or we are all truly part of some great biological blob that never begins nor ends. Look at the human as a single entity that never existed before and now does. Look at yourself. There was a time you never existed and now you do. What happened to cause your existence? The simple event of fertilisation, without which you would not be arguing with me now.

"Is 25 weeks the time we can "first describe the development of the brain" or "when what can be called a human brain is finally in place"?"

Well if you reread the sentence that I wrote, which included the
"ie", the sentence would make sense to you. But let me explain it
another way, if you are not into neuroscience, with an analogy.

A piece of steel is not a car. It can become a car, along the
line of production. But no engine, you have a chassis. When
the engine is placed in that chassis, even if the wheels are
missing, you could start to call it a car.

So its about stages of development of the human brain, which
is what makes a person. No brain = no person. A brain dead
person is a corpse.

Every cell in our bodies, contains the blueprint to build
another body, including another brain. DNA is a molecule
that replicates itself. The strings of DNA that make up
you, all existed before, in your ancestors. You don't contain
any new ones, unless a mutation occured. Thats why, babies
with 3 legs etc.

The zygote is a diploid cell, which contains the dna of
two other cells. But that dna, to build new brains, is common
as chips, ie in any cell.

As to the word child, you forgot "childbirth". Why not
use proper terminology, rather then emotive rhetoric?
The religious lobby are well known for their tactics in
trying to push emotional buttons. Semantics is one method
which they use.

As far as life beginning, as far as we know, it only began
once. Everything went from there, as dna copies itself and
uses various organisms to replicate itself. The only
thing that is passed on from generation to generation,
is dna blueprints.

There are some interesting lab experiments to begin life
all over again, using the basic chemical soup that was
around, billions of years ago. What you get is strings
of rna, which is also present in cells, like a sister
of dna.