patrick.net

There is no point where life instantaneously begins. As a matter of practicality, we set it at the point where a fetus is likely to survive on it's own.
A fertilized egg has potential, but so does an unfertilized egg. The only thing that a fertilized egg has going for it is a definite string of DNA. It is a long and messy process requiring both the fetus and the mother to bake that sucker into a little human.

We can all agree that a baby, once born, is a living human. Some argue that an egg becomes a living human as soon as it is fertilized. But, this is silly, because the mother doesn't even know that the egg is fertilized. Often, an early miscarriage happens, and no one even knows about it, much less has a funeral for it. For some period, it is a rapidly growing clump of cells with nothing resembling a human at a macro level. It has no social connection, even to the mother to be.

I think part of how people feel on the issue depends on why they think that murder is immoral. Many religious people find murder to be immoral because it is thought that god creates life and takes it away. Humans don't have the right to do that. Most atheists believe it is immoral because of an innate sense of what is right and wrong. Philosophers try to create a logical groundwork with varying levels of success. But, mostly, there is a societal pact or agreement to follow a certain set of rules, which the vast majority agree to. If people want to avoid abortion for religious reasons, fine. But, you're going to need a pretty solid argument to legislate it, and force that standard on other people. Saying that life 'begins' at conception doesn't really have any meaning in and of itself. It's just defining that to be what life is, and using that definition to make another point about what constitutes murder.

I knew once we gave women the right to vote and that their sense of their own consciousness and self awareness was valid, we would no longer be able to convince them that they have no more rights than agricultural breeding animals who reproduce at the whims of males.

When society allows it.

When they are too hard to conveniently chunk into tasty, soft bits.

Second trimester according to the SCOTUS?

If liberals had it their way, you could abort all the way up to 18 years of age.

FortWayne says

Second trimester according to the SCOTUS?

If liberals had it their way, you could abort all the way up to 18 years of age.

That's a great idea Wayne. We could wait to see how the kid turns out before aborting it.

Strategist says

That's a great idea Wayne. We could wait to see how the kid turns out before aborting it.

Well when you put it that way...

YesYNot says

we set it at the point where a fetus is likely to survive on it's own.

Yes, but that point keeps sliding farther back as technology advances. Sounds a bit arbitrary.

Blurtman says

YesYNot says

we set it at the point where a fetus is likely to survive on it's own.

Yes, but that point keeps sliding farther back as technology advances. Sounds a bit arbitrary.

The sperm is alive. Life therefore begins in your balls.

Life begins, life ends-it is all a cycle.

oh, thank you for that! *sarcasm on* Now I am going to have "Every Sperm in Sacred" running through my head

keaton26 says

oh, thank you for that! *sarcasm on* Now I am going to have "Every Sperm in Sacred" running through my head

We need a law that says you cannot ejaculate outside the vagina. Thank God the Feds are watching our every move.

Call it Crazy says

Strategist says

We need a law that says you cannot ejaculate outside the vagina.

Oh now you did it, what's Dan going to do while watching Youtube videos?

Just kidding Dan, just kidding. It was that wine talking.

Strategist says

Just kidding Dan, just kidding. It was that wine talking.

Damn California wines. Because of the water shortage, they replace water with more alcohol.

Blurtman says

When does human life begin?

4 billion years ago. Every cell in your body is 4 billion years old. Every cell in your body has been growing and dividing for the past 4 billion years and only recently got the orders to stop.

What's important for the subject of abortion is when does the offspring become a person, not a human. For the answer, see this classic thread.

I just know that Republican & Democratic voters,as living beings,aren't sentient.

Lol

Call it Crazy says

Oh now you did it, what's Dan going to do while watching Youtube videos

Call it Crazy says

Oh now you did it, what's Dan going to do while watching Youtube videos?

Meanwhile CIC is overloading the YouSheep video site.

Dan8267 says

What's important for the subject of abortion is when does the offspring become a person

That is subjective as well, and subject to contradictions. For example, there have been cases where drivers have been charged with homicide who crashed into a car resulting in the death of a fetus that could have been legally aborted.

Apparently one has to make an assumption about when life begins, or personhood, if you prefer. And assumptions can turn out to be right or wrong. So let's say there are two assumptions: 1.) Life begins at conception. 2.) Life begins at (fill-in-the-blank) months. Then work out the ramifications if 1. is right and if 1. is wrong. Do the same for 2. So what is the worst of the four possible outcomes?

Strategist says

The sperm is alive. Life therefore begins in your balls.

You are correct Strategist
It has been scientifically proven that sperm is alive and it responds and navigates through the uterus by chemical attraction. I think we should make sure that any abortion restrictions in law equally applies to any male who masturbates. That way we could maintain our ideological and spiritual consistency regarding our anti abortion position. I would not want to knowingly be a hypocrite.

No, we can not agree.

A baby just before bith, is as alive as a baby just after birth.

If you had been present at a birth, you would be ashamed to think otherwise.

YesYNot says

Some argue that an egg becomes a living human as soon as it is fertilized. But, this is silly, because the mother doesn't even know that the egg is fertilized.

There are some cases in which the mother gives birth without ever knowing she was pregnant. Hard to find a clear line, isn't it?

Blurtman says

For example, there have been cases where drivers have been charged with homicide who crashed into a car resulting in the death of a fetus that could have been legally aborted.

Also addressed in that classic thread.

LarryPatrickMaloney says

A baby just before bith, is as alive as a baby just after birth.

Whether or not you call the offspring a baby is irrelevant. The sperm and egg before joining are both alive, but they are not persons. A brain-dead human body is alive, but there is no mind and thus no person.

Are the multitude of living cells of Henrietta Lacks a person? Would it be immoral to let those cells die? Would that be murder?

Living cells do not a person make. Human DNA -- whatever the criteria for that is -- does not a person make. A social security number does not a person make. Only a mind maketh a man. (Or woman, but I couldn't resist making it sound like Shakespeare.)

FortWayne says

If liberals had it their way, you could abort all the way up to 18 years of age.

I'm not entirely opposed to this..

FortWayne says

If liberals had it their way, you could abort all the way up to 18 years of age.

Only in the case of you.

Misrepresenting your opponent's position is a sign you believe your own position is undefendable.

Strategist says

The sperm is alive. Life therefore begins in your balls.

Now there is a real conversation starter :)

Dan8267 says

Living cells do not a person make.

You have made your assumptions. You can even define what is human life and what is not, so that your conclusion fits with your assumptions. That is not unusual.

But others will make different assumptions - for example, that human life begins when a sperm joins an egg - and they will reach different conclusions - that abortion is murder.

Others will assume that as technology can keep a fetus alive at 5 months outside the womb, that human life begins at five months. Of course as technology allows the fetus to thrive ex vivo at three months, and two months, then the definition of when human life begins must change, and is therefore arbitrary.

So all I suggest is to examine what happens if your assumptions are indeed correct, and what happens if they are wrong.

The Reasonable Man says

There are some cases in which the mother gives birth without ever knowing she was pregnant. Hard to find a clear line, isn't it?

Agreed. I take a different approach than Dan, who argues that the solution is to define personhood. My approach requires figuring out why we think that killing other humans is wrong and applying those things to the fetus, so see if it is still applicable.

Even if we were to agree that aborting a fetus was wrong, it still might be called something other than murder. The reason for calling it murder is usually rhetorical, as it invokes a particular emotion. There is no word for inducing an abortion against the mothers wishes, and there are no laws on the books for this with a suitable punishment. People argue in the courtroom that this is murder, because that is the law that allows them to seek a suitable punishment. One of the primary reasons that killing is bad is because of the damage that it does to loved ones. That is why we react so strongly to the aborting against the wishes of the parents (mother in particular). I said 'One of,' and that implies that I know there are 'other reasons.'

I wouldn't presume to be able to solve the issue if I tried, and don't have the time or inclination to try. I'm simply pointing out that there are issues at work outside of the definition of personhood or trying to figure out when 'life' begins.

Blurtman says

You have made your assumptions. You can even define what is human life and what is not, so that your conclusion fits with your assumptions. That is not unusual.

I make no assumptions, and nomenclature is irrelevant. Renaming a thing does not change its properties.

Blurtman says

But others will make different assumptions - for example, that human life begins when a sperm joins an egg - and they will reach different conclusions - that abortion is murder.

Assumptions do not change reality. Neither does defining the word human to including or exclude a fertilized egg change reality. In fact, the act of a sperm joining an egg does not eliminate the problem of ambiguity because fertilization does not occur in an instant, the Plank time. Fertilization is an extremely long process taking over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 instances. That's more instances than there have been nanoseconds since the Big Bang. Exactly when in the long process of fertilization does the sperm-egg system cease being a non-person and becomes a person? Any answer you give would be arbitrary and meaningless regardless of what nomenclature you use.

Furthermore, you could define murder as "drinking water" in which case we would all be murderers because everything we drink has water in it. If you define murder as such, there is no reason for me to believe that murder, by your definition, is immoral or should be illegal. Changing definitions does not change whether or not something is moral or whether or not something should be illegal.

The one and only thing regarding abortion that I or any other moral, rational person will accept as being illegal is "the intentional killing of a person against his or her will". Call that murder if you like as I do or call it bunny-hopping. It does not matter. It's the definition, not the word assigned to it that carries the moral and legal weight. The key part of the definition is the meaning of "person". I don't give two shits if a living creature is human -- whatever the fuck that means. The term human is meaningless and ambiguous. You can't draw a line between our human ancestors and our non-human ancestors and it would have no meaning even if you could. All that matters is personhood, not human-hood.

What makes a person is a mind. I don't care if that mind is contained by a hairless ape or a dolphin or an extra-terrestrial or a Turing machine. Sentience is what makes a person a person, nothing else. And if you think I'm wrong, prove it. Remove your brain, except for its stem, from your body and see if you are still you. This is something that can be verified experimentally very easily.

As for abortion, any mental model that divides the world into persons and non-persons with no ambiguity does not reflect reality. Like it or not, nature is fuzzy and nature has no obligation to fit into the narrow and rigged categories you create for it. Nature does not give a damn what you think, it will just continue doing what it does. You, I, and our entire species, our entire world is utterly insignificant. The affairs of man are naught to the universe. If our world were to suddenly cease to exist, the only effect on the universe would be a thin ever expanding and weakening bubble of electro-magnetic waves ignored by the rest of the universe.

YesYNot says

Agreed. I take a different approach than Dan, who argues that the solution is to define personhood. My approach requires figuring out why we think that killing other humans is wrong and applying those things to the fetus, so see if it is still applicable.

The only reason why it's morally wrong to kill other "humans" or anything is because you are destroying a sentient being, even if it's not sentient enough to meet the arbitrary threshold for personhood. If this were not the case, the killing itself would not be immoral. That's why it's OK to kill a banana and eat it.

The problem with your approach is that there can be "bad" reasons for human behavior. For example, one of the reasons that killing other humans is considered unacceptable is that they are carrying copies of your genes, so you are hurting your tribe's genome by killing other tribe members. However, by this logic, it becomes moral to massacre other tribes because you're eliminating the competition and increasing the survival likelihood of your tribe's genes. Pretty much all of human history illustrates this point.

Dan8267 says

That's more instances than there have been nanoseconds since the Big Bang.

Sure, I know you believe this. And you can rationalize as well. In fact, you can refuse to even acknowledge you are making assumptions at all. And folks on the other sides of the issue can do the same. So I will perform the thought exercise for you:

1.) Life begins at conception. Let's make abortion illegal.

a.) If true, that life begins at conception, making abortion illegal prevents the murders of millions of humans.

b.) If false, and life does not begin at conception, making abortion illegal ruins the lives of millions, including women who die from back-room abortions, and millions of unwanted children are brought into the world.

2.) Life begins at 6 months. Let's keep abortion legal for six months and beyond.

a.) If true, than the lives of millions of women are not ruined, no one dies from a botched back-room abortion, and millions of unwanted kids are not brought into the world.

b.) If false, then millions of humans are killed.

For many, 2.b is the worst possible outcome.

For many, 1.b. is the worst possible outcome.

Dan8267 says

The only reason why it's morally wrong to kill other "humans" or anything is because you are destroying a sentient being, even if it's not sentient enough to meet the arbitrary threshold for personhood. If this were not the case, the killing itself would not be immoral. That's why it's OK to kill a banana and eat it.

Plenty of animals are sentient (the ability to feel). This can't be the test for murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

Blurtman says

Dan8267 says

That's more instances than there have been nanoseconds since the Big Bang.

Sure, I know you believe this. And you can rationalize as well.

Whether or not "I" believe this is irrelevant. Reality does not change according to your beliefs. You can believe that George Washington rode a dinosaur to fight the Soviets in the French Revolution, but that doesn't make it so. The statement that you are trying to discredit is a cold, hard, indisputable fact. Who presented this fact and who believes it is irrelevant. It's still a fact.

You can disagree with my value judgements all you want. A value judgement is not right or wrong. I cannot prove that raping babies is evil; I just accept it as such. However, facts are indisputable. If you disagree with my facts, then you are simply wrong, twice so in fact. You are wrong about the fact being incorrect and you are wrong about it being "my fact". There are no "my facts" and "your facts". There is only "the facts".

So yes, you can disagree with my stance on abortion by having different value judgements. For example, you could consider murdering babies to be a good thing. I cannot disprove your value judgements even in principle. However, I can disprove factual statements that you use to justify your conclusions. If you state that you are against abortions because they cause earthquakes by angering god, I can call your argument bullshit. This is exactly how I disproved all of the arguments both for and against abortion in the classic thread I referenced.

Furthermore, it is not rationalization to state a fact. Rationalization is using false rational to justify a value judgement or a conclusion based on value judgements. I have done no such thing. Ironically, rationalization is exactly what you have been doing.

Blurtman says

So I will perform the thought exercise for you:

1.) Life begins at conception. Let's make abortion illegal.

1. Your statement "life begins at conception" is meaningless without a definition of life.
2. The sperm and the egg are alive before conception.
3. Life is not the same thing as a person.
4. If you are arguing that abortion should be illegal because it ends life then so should hunting and farming be illegal. The entire human race would starve to death.

Blurtman says

a.) If true, that life begins at conception, making abortion illegal prevents the murders of millions of humans.

5. The concepts of "life" and "human" are not synonymous any more than "human" and "person" are. Just because something is alive does not make it human. Just because something is human does not make it a person. You can define these terms any way you like, but then you lose all your power. Once you define a term, you have zero control over the implications of that definition. So you might want to put the effort required to honestly, precisely, and clearly define these terms. They effect the validity of your arguments, but not what the truth is.

6. In addition to defining "life" and "human" and "person", you also have to define "murder". I'm more than willing to accept whatever nomenclature you want to use for your arguments, no matter how ridiculous or unorthodox. However, once you define a term, there are NO ASSUMPTIONS about statements using that term. For example, you can define "murder" as "petting a puppy" in which case I would argue that murder is a good thing and should be legal. Redefining a term does not give you the power to change reality or value judgements. All it does is rephrase the expression of facts. The facts themselves DO NOT CHANGE as a result of changing nomenclature.

For example, the 14th Amendment guarantees equality under law, all law, including marriage law. Therefore, the state cannot legally treat same-sex unions different from opposite-sex unions regardless of whether or not these unions are called marriage. There is a practical reason for changing the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex unions because the only other legal alternative is to immediately repeal all laws that use the word marriage and then re-implement them one-by-one. Doing that would take decades and cause enormous hardships to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples including causing the widows of soldiers to not receive survival benefits for decades. But the end result must be the same whether you call same-sex unions marriages or stop using the word marriage all together in legislation.

Similarly, if you redefine murder or human, the statement murdering humans is bad is no longer an established agreement. By changing nomenclature you invalidate applying any material outside your specific nomenclature to support your arguments including, for example, the Bible and works of philosophers, crime statistics, etc. So the only reason to use your own nomenclature is if it can provide GREATER CLARITY, because your choice of words has ZERO IMPACT ON PERSUASION in a rational debate. Word trickery might work on the masses of dumb asses in the world, but not against a rational opponent.

Blurtman says

b.) If false, and life does not begin at conception, making abortion illegal ruins the lives of millions, including women who die from back-room abortions, and millions of unwanted children are brought into the world.

Regardless of whether or not a fertilized egg meets your definitions of life, human, or person, making abortion illegal will ruin the lives of millions of women and cause women to die in back-room abortions. The negative consequences happen regardless of how justified your position is based on yours or any one else's value judgements.

Blurtman says

2.) Life begins at 6 months. Let's keep abortion legal for six months and beyond.

A fertilized egg is clearly alive. The sperm and unfertilized eggs are also clearly alive. The zygote resulting from the fertilized egg is also clearly alive.

There are two problems with your approach to this subject matter. The first is that you assume there is a clear distinction between living and non-living things. This simply is not the case. Luckily for you this flaw is not important because it does not apply to the abortion argument. No one has ever, ever, LIKE EVER argued that the offspring isn't alive at any stage of development. What's important is when does the offspring become a person, not when does it become alive. Your muscle cells are alive, but they aren't a person.

The second, and critically important, problem with your thinking is that you assume there is a clear distinction between personhood and non-personhood, and there is no such dividing line. Personhood is an inherently fuzzy state of being. This is the uncomfortable truth that neither side of the argument wants to admit because doing so means that the legality of abortion has to be throttled, not made absolutely legal or illegal. I've already handled that problem and its solution in the classic thread. I will not repeat it here. Go to that thread if you want to debate the issue.

There are degrees of personhood and any just law regulation abortion must therefore reflect this inconvenient truth by establishing levels of illegality and punishment for abortion starting with absolutely legal and no punishment and going up to murder. Most so-called pro-choice people, the vast majority of Americans, understand and accept this even if they are too uncomfortable to openly state it.

Blurtman says

For many, 2.b is the worst possible outcome.

People who want to ban all abortions performed at the mother's consent hypocritically ignore the multitudes of abortions forced on women by polluters through the mechanism of miscarriages. When corporations pollute the environment, it causes miscarriages which are functionally forced abortions against the mother's will. More offspring, or babies as you would call them, are aborted by polluters than by expecting mothers. Yet, the "pro-life" crowd has no problem letting corporations pollute. That is pure hypocrisy.

YesYNot says

Plenty of animals are sentient (the ability to feel). This can't be the test for murder.

Which is exactly why I said

The only reason why it's morally wrong to kill other "humans" or anything is because you are destroying a sentient being, even if it's not sentient enough to meet the arbitrary threshold for personhood.

I clearly am not defining murder as the killing of any being with any degree of sentient. I explicitly defined murder as

"the intentional killing of a person against his or her will"

I have also acknowledge that the threshold for personhood is arbitrary.

The killing of a being with a mind becomes increasingly immoral as the mind being killed becomes more sentient at least up to a threshold representing a maximum value of sentience. This is obvious. It's wrong to kill a bird for shits and giggles. It's more wrong to kill a dog for shits and giggles. It's even more wrong to kill a human for shits and giggles. [Note: I'm talking about developed animals in all of these cases, not embryos.]

Any law seeking to ban such evils must acknowledge these gradients in order to be a just and well-written law.

Dan8267 says

For example, you could consider murdering babies to be a good thing. I cannot disprove your value judgements even in principle.

Right. Infanticide is accepted in many cultures. And there are good social reasons for it.
A newborn baby has no more personhood than an adult monkey

Dan8267 says

Whether or not "I" believe this is irrelevant. Reality does not change according to your beliefs.

I know lots of people who believe their way of looking at things is "reality." I really don't need you to continue to justify your beliefs. I do believe you believe what you say you believe. Just as I believe folks who believe life begins at conception and abortion is murder believe this, and believe this is reality. You can continue to shout "I am right! I am right! and you can continue to state why. This is a normal approach. I really don't need you to argue for why you are right. I believe you believe you are right. And suggesting that you may be wrong, and also suggesting that the life begins at conception folks may be wrong, and that the result of being wrong has consequences, I believe also falls on deaf ears. But anyone can be wrong, it is folly to state otherwise.

Blurtman says

I know lots of people who believe their way of looking at things is "reality."

And they are wrong. Reality is objective and verifiable. It is a fact that the Earth is round. Your perception of its flatness is irrelevant. It is an opinion that chocolate ice cream tastes better than horse shit. It's not provable and therefore not a fact. Value judgements and facts are entirely different things.

Blurtman says

I really don't need you to continue to justify your beliefs.

I am explaining my beliefs. I am not attempting to justify my value judgements, although I am freely and honestly disclosing what they are. As I stated, you can disagree with my value judgements all you want, but if you disagree with the facts I present, you are simply wrong. George Washington never rode on a dinosaur and no subjective perspective is going to change that. To argue that is simply insanity.

Blurtman says

Just as I believe folks who believe life begins at conception and abortion is murder believe this

You are confusing two separate and incompatible colloquial definitions of belief. To hold a value is not a belief in the same way as to accept a fact. A fact is a truth, whereas a value judgement is an opinion. It is simply a failing of the English language that we use the same word, but entirely different meaning, to represent both. Surely you are smart enough to understand this. The statement "I believe raping babies is evil" is not analogous to "I believe the square root of two is an irrational number". The former is a value judgement, which like all opinions is neither correct nor incorrect. The later is a fact and is either absolutely correct or incorrect regardless of who you are and how you feel. Even children can understand this concept.

Blurtman says

You can continue to shout "I am right! I am right! and you can continue to state why.

I have not done any such thing. You are making a Straw Man argument. My facts are correct and my reasoning are unflawed, but never have I stated that my value judgements are the truth or "right". I would never do such a thing because it's illogical. It would be like saying Coke tastes better than Pepsi and anyone who disagrees is wrong. I have repeated stated that by definition, opinions cannot be right or wrong and that value judgements are opinions. Either you have poor reading comprehension skills or your own personal biases are interfering with your listening skills.

Challenge: Point out one fact I stated in this thread that isn't true. If you can't do that, then stop bitching.

Blurtman says

And suggesting that you may be wrong, and also suggesting that the life begins at conception folks may be wrong

Depending on what wacky ass definition you are using for "life", it may or may not begin at conception. But it is an indisputable fact that by the biological definition of life, life does not begin at conception. It begins four billion years before conception. The sperm and the egg are alive and are cells that have been growing and dividing for four billion years.

The second and more important flaw in your reasoning is that regardless of your definition of life, whether or not abortion should be legal has mother-fucking-nothing to do with whether or not life begins at conception. If you want, I'll even give you that premise, false as it may be. It's still not an argument in any way that abortion should be illegal because it's irrelevant to both questions of morality and questions of rights. As far as the law is concerned, what matters is when do RIGHTS begin. Simply being a living entity does not give you any rights even if your DNA is human. The cells of Henrietta Lacks are every bit living human cells, but they have absolutely no legal rights.

To illustrate how ridiculous your argument is, killing a sperm or an unfertilized egg would have to be considered legal murder by the very criteria you suggest. After all, the sperm was created way after the father was born and the egg was created well into the mother's fetal development.

The third flaw in your reasoning is that there isn't simply "before" and "after" fertilization. There is also "during" fertilization. Since we're talking principles here, it's perfectly reasonable to ask exactly when during the fertilization process the egg goes from being just an inanimate object to being a person. This third flaw shows how foolish it is to even attempt to avoid the issue that there are degrees of personhood. And it's a question you don't have the balls to even attempt to address because clearly there is no litmus test, even in principle, that one can make to put objects into distinct and disambiguous categories labeled "person" and "thing". That's a very uncomfortable truth, isn't it? Unless your philosophy addresses this truth, it's immature and laughable. And yes, that was a value judgement.

When does human life begin?

I have no freakin idea. I do know, this question can only be answered by science and biology. Religion has no place in this debate.

Dan8267 says

The only reason why it's morally wrong to kill other "humans" or anything is because you are destroying a sentient being, even if it's not sentient enough to meet the arbitrary threshold for personhood. If this were not the case, the killing itself would not be immoral.

Does one only become "sentient" after they are pulled through a vagina?

My babies weren't all that sentient the first few months of their lives, but of course it would be a horrible evil crime to murder them, carve up their bodies and sell their organs like Planned Parenthood does. Same thing with elderly people or coma patients.

Our brains aren't fully developed until our early 20's. So where exactly is the cutoff?

socal2 says

Does one only become "sentient" after they are pulled through a vagina?

My babies weren't all that sentient the first few months of their lives, but of course it would be a horrible evil crime to murder them, carve up their bodies and sell their organs like Planned Parenthood does. Same thing with elderly people or coma patients.

Our brains aren't fully developed until our early 20's. So where exactly is the cutoff?

Heh. 90% of the people I've known aren't "sentient."

It's a tough question. All I know is that everyone I have ever known, read or heard about, seen or heard, everyone on this blog, and I, were all fetuses at one point. No person who ever walked on the planet was not a fetus. Even Democrats were once fetuses. There's no clear line. If there's no clear line, it's a mistake to arbitrarily kill off life which, just maybe, might be people.

socal2 says

Does one only become "sentient" after they are pulled through a vagina?

Of course not, as you would know if you actually read my posts. The process of birthing is every bit as arbitrary as the process of fertilization. Hence, both all the pro-life and all the pro-choice arguments are invalid as shown on that classic thread. The dirty secret that neither side is willing to admit is that personhood doesn't happen in an instant. There are degrees of personhood and therefore there should be degrees of legality in abortion.

socal2 says

My babies weren't all that sentient the first few months of their lives

I would argue that they are certainly sentient enough. To compare the level of sentience of a newborn baby to a zygote without even the beginnings of a brain is ridiculous. We can therefore place a very safe lower limit on when abortions should absolutely be legal and considered moral. No brain, no neural connections means no mind and no person. No one has even attempted to refute this point.

I would also argue that if it is immoral to kill a newborn baby, then it is at least as immoral to kill ANY being with at least as much self-awareness including dolphins, whales, and non-human apes, and for the exact same reason. And if we make the former illegal, we should do the same for the later.