[beavus]

In this instance, I consider "playing God" as determining what is alive and what isn't.

I know what you mean. My high school biology teacher tried to tell me that bacteria were alive and rocks were not. He was playing God. People shouldn't be so judgemental. You're right, animists do have a point.

[ArGee]

You're right, animists do have a point.

Idiots rarely do.

Shalom.

[pgyanke]

You're being deliberately obtuse. You have a separate life when it is viable without further volitional human intervention.

As I said earlier, there comes a point where we can either observe the development of life or arrest it. When we can add nothing to it, it is unique. Just as in the case of Terri Schiavo, it is not mercy or any other euphamism to withhold that which all of us needs for sustenance... it is murder. The applicability to the womb is that this life would develop into a baby/child/adult (regardless whether it's one nanosecond after conception or 14 days) unless we take volitional action to ends its life.

Egg and sperm are cells. Left to their own and barring fertilization, they will remain and die as cells. Fertilization is the last volitional act required of man before the development of a new human being.