“All of that is why this push to recognize that one becomes a human being at conception is most scientifically and logically sensible.”
I think you make an interesting point if you add that it is *legally* sensible, a clearly definable milestone, before which (nearly) everyone would agree there was not a human being, and after which there is a moral danger that killing would amount to murder.
Still, is it a “self-evident truth” that a fertilized egg is a human being, and to kill it is murder? That still seems to me to be a matter to be argued or a matter of faith, not something immediately self-evident.
Let’s say that fertilized egg divides a few times, and then splits into twins, a non-hereditary phenomenon. Was it always two people, or did the moment of “conception” in that case begin with the splitting? If you chemically thwarted the blastocyst from splitting, did you “murder” one of the two twins? Which one? Reasoning of that sort leads me to think of a fertilized egg as a “potential person” rather than a full fledged “person”.
I don’t mean to be argumentative; we seem to be very nearly on the same page. Ultimately, though, I don’t think appeals to logic or science are going to settle the argument about abortion. I think what will win the argument in the end will be appeals to the heart, not the head.
“I don’t mean to be argumentative; we seem to be very nearly on the same page.”
Yes, I think so.
“Ultimately, though, I don’t think appeals to logic or science are going to settle the argument about abortion.”
That is certainly the case if people do not think carefully about the issue, and consider it from several angles, as we have been.
“I think what will win the argument in the end will be appeals to the heart, not the head.”
Well, it is true that emotional appeals are compelling. God knows the left has been relying on them heavily in a near-vacuum of supporting facts. My thinking is that the most successful argument will target BOTH, linking an emotional appeal to the heart with supporting facts for the head to chew on.