Are you Pro-life or Pro-choice?

[Final-Fan]

[edit: Post corrected for blindness.]

elprincipe said:

Final-Fan said:

elprincipe said:

Final-Fan said:

[edit: Looking back, it seems that elprincipe has no problem killing fertilized eggs as long as they haven't been "implanted". Why the distinction, elprincipe?]

Easy, many eggs are fertilized and never implanted in the female and start to grow. I don't mourn these as lost lives because they never began life as a person; they were merely fertilized eggs. Once a fertilized egg is implanted in the female and begins to grow on its own, that is a separate, distinct, unique person and not just the two building blocks of a person together.

OK, but [edit: never mind this part, you never said what I'm arguing against. I'll leave it in though.] what does the survival rate of the fertilized eggs have to do with anything? Back in the middle ages when infant mortality rates were just ridiculous would it be OK to have abortion? (I seem to recall that way back when they didn't even name infants in many cultures until a certain age, presumably because so many died soon after birth. I could be wrong though.)

Why does successful implantation into the female make the fertilized egg MORE separate, distinct, and unique? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Cell division begins to occur immediately; the growth is already underway. Why is a blastocyst human after successfully burrowing into the uterus and not before?

Repeat: Growth begins BEFORE implantation.

Simple, because before that happens there is a good chance that the cells will die naturally. Once what you've described happens, at some point the cells become a human being, no? If that is true, at what point? What other logical point is there, except the point we are talking about? Babies develop at different rates, so you can't say after X weeks of development. I suppose you could argue after heartbeats or brainwaves start, but these are semantics; children's brainwaves are different than adults, their bodies are different, yet they are human beings just as much as an adult, so I don't see how smaller children are somehow in a different category.

OK, now I guess I have to reinstate the part I took out:

What does the survival rate of the fertilized eggs have to do with anything? Back in the middle ages when infant mortality rates were just ridiculous would it be OK to have abortion? (I seem to recall that way back when they didn't even name infants in many cultures until a certain age, presumably because so many died soon after birth. I could be wrong though.)

As far as I can tell you've abandoned the idea that implantation actually is some kind of starting point and gone to, "well, it's just a good spot to pick." You seem to be admitting that at some point the developing tissue develops to the point that it is now considered a child, which is very different from what you have argued up until now. Are we now indeed down to arguing over the proper stage in development that that occurs? I want to make sure before I spend a few paragraphs on the brainwaves thing. (It's NOT semantics.)