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I spent more time than I care to replicate arguing about abortion yesterday. The implications of saying the fertilized egg is a human life on par with someone walking the streets are huge.

I’m pretty deep in the pro-life side, and I don’t believe that. If you try to make it the basis of law, you will have some very unpopular consequences. For example, if delivery of the fetus endangers the mother, then logically you should kill the mother to save the infant - who has more of his/her life ahead than the mother. You should also prosecute any woman asking for an abortion for first degree murder.

"..very unpopular consequences. For example, if delivery of the fetus endangers the mother, then logically you should kill the mother to save the infant..."

I'm glad to be able to allay your anxieties about this one. First of all, maternal death due to childbirth is extremely rare, and can nearly 100% of the time be avoided by skilled pregnancy management,including possibly C-section, if necessary before full term, as explained by Feminists for Life.

A pregnant mother and baby both fare better, medically, when they are treated as natural allies and the doctor aims at safety for both; deliberately killing a patient (including a mother!) is of course never an ethical nor a medically necessary option.

It was true 30 years ago,and it's true today: anyone who says one patient or the other "must" die in a childbirth situation is clearly someone either unwilling or unable to practice modern obstetrics.

"You should also prosecute any woman asking for an abortion for first degree murder."

There's no "must" here at all. Every state in the USA had laws protecting unborn life 40 years ago; none of them, to the best of my knowledge, prosecuted the woman, whose testimony, on a practical level, was needed in order to successfully convict the abortionist.

This is the nearest approximation you can make to justice in this sort of case. It is akin to plea-bargaining in order to get a small-timer to implicate the bigger criminal: it might not be "perfect" justice but we can safely leave "perfect" justice in God's hands: prosecuting only the abortionist is the way these laws have always operated.

By the way, the laws in many states still retain fragmentary elements of "legal personhood" which existed pre-Roe. For instance, in some states an unborn child can inherit property, can be a named beneficiary in insurance coverage, can be a party in a lawsuit, can be recognized as a patient in his own right, --- all rights which will certainly be more secure when the law gets its head back on straight.

The implications of saying the fertilized egg is a human life on par with someone walking the streets are huge.

then logically you should kill the mother to save the infant - who has more of his/her life ahead than the mother.

Your two statements are contradictory. The second implies you are putting the fetus ahead of the mother and not behind. That is not real medical logic anyway. It is no less 'logical' to save the mother based on that she is more likely to survive. The baby is more at risk and less likely to recover. But as another poster pointed out, moder medicine has made obsolete these questions of 'if you had a gun to your head which would you chose?' Now they amount to strawmen arguments.

For example, if delivery of the fetus endangers the mother, then logically you should kill the mother to save the infant - who has more of his/her life ahead than the mother.

"Length of life remaining," per se, won't determine who should be saved.

We don't really know whether the mother or her unborn child would have more years ahead. Sadly, many parents outlive one or more of their children.

And what about a deadly situation (fire? flood?) in which a mother of two children, one who is a newborn and one who is 7 years old, can save only one child?

Should she use "logic" to save the newborn because the newborn would have more years ahead than the 7 year old?