Yeah, I just needed something to take a break from combo but not really take my time away. This topic seemed perfect.

It may prohibit some abortions, but it would still allow for the "morning-after pill" and other such things.

Also, I do not see how advocating this would prohibit me from stepping on a bug. Your whole premise seems silly to me. If I take your approach, then I am equating a bug's life (good movie) to a developing human's life. If you wish to do this, you are more than welcome. I, however, do not equate the life of a bug to the life of a human. Whether that human has been developing for 40 days, 40 months or 40 years.

I still believe the focus should shift to whether or not it is ethical to prohibit a human organism from developing.

I know cells are alive, in fact I didn't mention the word alive. I think that at fertilisation, you have created a new genetic code, for a new human being, sperm egg cells try to create a new genetic code, but obviously rarely suceed. However I believe that as soon as the full DNA has been made, that is when it is a 'human', and should not aborted. As at that point genetic tests would reveal the zygote (?) is human, as opposed to an egg or sperm.

life begins when you can be described as a mature, moral, and good human being, up until then your parents are free to abort you no matter how old you are.

 Read what I am saying please. The definition of what is or is not alive cannot be used on a single part of a living organism. If your cells were taken out of your body they would not be considered alive. Taken literally you could use the definition of life to argue that children are not a live for a variety of reasons. You cannot compare a sperm cell to an amoeba and say if we consider the one to be alive we must consider the other to be because it is two different concepts that share a name.

   What makes a human life worth more?  Most likely, our humanity right? 

   Well what is humanity?  I would say its our ability to reason and form complex thoughts that make us different then base animals such as bugs.

    When does that kind of thinking humanity arise?  Not until the last few months of pregnancy.  Thus we are no different then base animals until the home stretch of the pregnancy.  We even have gill slits and fins early on, hardly human characteristics.

   There is no difference in the morality of aborting a 2 month old collection of cells and killing a fully developed insect.  They are both very similar in terms of complexity of structure and thought (with the ant probably being more thoughtful and complex at that point).  To say that anything with the most rudamentary thoughts and the most basic faculties should be protected at all costs is to say that anything and everything must be protected at all costs, they are equivilant.

    Now you might say the human fetus has the POTENTIAL to grow smarter and be more complex then most animals, and that is very true, but we aren't talking about potential now are we, we are talking about actuality.  In actuality there is very little substantive difference between a collection of cells in a womb and any insect, if one can be killed, both can be killed. 

Also who the hell are you to say what someone, anyone, can and cannot do with their bodies?  These are women we're talking about not friggin incubators with legs.  If someone doesn't want a baby taking their nutrients and living in their belly it sure as hell should be their choice whether it stays or goes.

    Also bringing up crazy crap like the quickening under a different name (brain waves) is not the same as actual science.  Yes, where you are getting your 40 days from, is not science, its Catholic theology from Thomas Aquinas who cribbed the idea from aristotle who had NO way of knowing anything about brain waves. Also it was only 40 days for males, for females it was 80 days.

Not only that but the Bible does NOT say abortion is wrong, in fact on several occasions God DEMANDED the death of the unborn.  in Numbers it is said, by God, that if a woman is unfaithful to her husband he should give her the "water of bitterness" to aid in an abortion.  If the woman has in fact been unfaithful, the water would "make your uterus drop, your womb discharge". Num. 5-21,22, and 27.  God would, it seems, prefer abortion to bastard children. Similarly in Jewish law (as put forth by the bible) killing a fetus and not the pregnant woman was punishable only by a fine since the fetus was NOT human and thus life for a life did not apply (See Exodus 21:22).

   There is really no basis, religous or otherwise, for banning abortion.  God doesn't want the baby, the mother doesn't want the baby, if YOU really want the baby as a fundamentalist then we need to toss in a provision to any law banning abortion that makes all fundamentalists take the unwanted babies into their own homes.

Contrary to your meandering rant on Thomas Aquinas, there have been non-religious sources that have said the same thing. I do, however, accept the contentious nature of that issue. I also find it asinine and puerile of you to go off on a fundamentalist rant when I never once mentioned God or the Bible as a reasoning for my stance on abortion. I advocate many policies that are antithetical to the fundamentalists and my own religious beliefs are quite different than those of the fundamentalists. I hope the next time you engage in discourse with someone that you will not make baseless presuppositions.

The point of our conflict is that you and I disagree on what makes a human special and worth more than an animal. You believe it is the actual development of certain traits. I believe what makes us humans unique is our genetic code which allows to develop complex brains capable of abstract thought and et al. That is why I view an embryo or a fetus as inherently human and deserving of the most basic human right...the right to life. Personally, I think a right to life supersedes a right to choose. However, I would allow abortion in certain instances and I may even bend on abortion if it allows for a reasonable consensus between both parties.

When the baby is born. Essentially, as soon as it starts breathing in the air of our world, it is alive.

I hate to break it to you, but even as you are just standing you are losing a countless number of cells with your genetic code, and each cell is dying horribly on your floor, or wherever it falls. Our genetic code is the same as everything else's, we just have the sequence in a different combination of 4 elements than everything else on this blue planet, but it is fundamentally the exact same thing. Humans are animals and there is nothing different between us and the dog next to us. In the grand scheme of nature Lions got claws to tear us apart with and we got brains to make guns to shoot them with, fair tradeoff. Thinking we are something special based purely on material evidence is a folly because we are not. Just because we are able to reason slightly more than other living beings does not make us anything special, it's just our unique trait. A cheetah runs faster than anything else but it still qualifies as as animal, right? Same way with us, we're just animals whose trait is the ability to think. Without the ability to have advanced forms of thought we are no better than the other living creatures on the planet, in fact we are under them because if someone loses the ability of conscious thought they naturally die.

Because of that ill-conceived rant the only way to charactarize a Human as a Human is the conscious thought, because anything without such thought is just simply some other type of biomass. Maybe it can be human with given time, but at its state it is not.

I also wanted to comment on another point, that is the one about a fetus being potentially human. I have heard a lot of people that since it had the potential to be human then we are effectively killing the future human. Well that's just a load of bull, just because pregnancy is a much more certain thing than other situations it doesn't make it different. There are many situaations where certain actions will affect others in some way, shape, or form. It just so happens that no one can see how their current actions will affect the future in general. If abortion is illegal because the fetus has the potential to be a full grown human, then hell, so should people be banned from talking to their friends and telling them they shouldn't get pregnant due to one reason or another. They are effectively stopping the potential of a new human being, it just happens to be a little bit further back. Another thing is that a fetus isn't necessarly going to live long enough to be born, even that is not 100% certain. I'm just saying that acting based on potential is just outright stupid and it has no logic, if we start doing that then we should restrict a whole lot of things, everything chains together in one way or another. Remember the Butterfly Effect, and not the movie though that was good too?

You and I simply disagree. I disagree that the only way to characterize a human as a human is the development of conscious thought. I would characterize a human as the fusing of two human gametes (sperm and oocyte) to create an entirely new human. Also, I do not see how banning abortion is the same as banning a person from talking a friend out of getting pregnant. You cannot punish someone from stopping the development of something that does not even exist. That would make no sense. An embryo, on the other hand, exists and will continue to develop as a human unless someone takes an action preventing it from doing so.