I am pro-life and I believe that life starts at conception. Saying that life starts after birth is a completely arbitrary line in the sand and we are merely judging whether somebody is a human being based on his/her location. Even when we say that life starts at a certain IQ or level of productivity, how do we judge what intelligence level merits the right to be called a human being? What if a mother wants the choice to end the life of her 2 year old toddler? This child is clearly nowhere near as smart or productive as a 20 year old and so should an abortion be allowed in this case? In fact, we have had at least 1 case in Canada where infanticide has been justified in court because it is seen to be similar to a very late term abortion.
The only point where a distinctive change occurs in the nature of the fetus is at conception. Any other line we draw is purely arbitrary, but it doesn't make it OK. Time and time again, in the past, societies have tried to justify killing innocent people because they have deemed those people to be less than human and, thus, sidestepped the ugly label of "killing." One such example was, back in the colonial days, when citizens would trade in native scalps of men, women and even children for reward money: native people were considered at the time to be savages and so this activity wasn't seen as murder. It was a convenient line in the sand for society to draw in the 18th century when we were fighting wars with tribes but I think everybody would agree that murdering innocent aboriginal people under this pretense was just as wrong in the 18th century as it is now. One day our society will see abortion in the same way: some things are just wrong and it doesn't really matter how good society tries to make us feel about it. Killing is killing.
