Only for lack of a better word. DC's post 33 does a good job of expressing why "embryo" is not an adequate description of the things we're talking about. If you look up "embryo" in the dictionary, parthenotes don't really fit any of the definitions offered.
With all due respect “setting aside the morality of it for a moment” & “middle ground” are not acceptable with this subject.
Certainly they are. WRT to my post 58, you are ignoring the context of what I said, which was an attempt to explain why people were interested in researching fetal stem cells, without attempting to address the morality of such research. If I may be permitted to expand on that a bit, while it may be convenient from a political standpoint to ignore why people actually do what they do, and instead paint stem-cell researchers as Doctor Victor von Doom, twirling their moustaches as they engage in the twisted pursuit of forbidden science, that is hardly a truthful portrait. Whether their acts are objectively evil or not, nobody does things like that simply for the sake of being evil. There are practical reasons for fetal stem-cell reasearch - the question is whether those practical reasons justify the acts being done, which is not answered by pretending that those reasons don't exist.
As for whether a middle ground exists or not, it certainly does, but whether you choose to avail yourself of it is entirely up to you. This strikes me as a fine place to compromise, because it doesn't involve actual or potential human beings for the research subjects. Now, if you still choose not to accept this research as worthwhile or morally valid, that is certainly your prerogative, but you will have to find some grounds for rejecting it other than as a defense of the sanctity of human life - that argument is not applicable here, because we're not talking about a human life when we talk about the product of parthenogenesis.
Also—if you could please let me know what your position on abortion is, that would give me a much more clear understanding as to your general fundamentals on Bio-ethics.
I'm sure it would, but you'll have to settle for evaluating my argument in this area on its own merits. As I said, I don't believe one's position on abortion is really relevant here, since this is a different set of issues - I believe it's entirely possible for you or I to oppose abortion, and yet not object to parthenogenesis on the simple grounds that the product of parthenogenesis is neither an actual nor a potential human life. And human life is, after all, the ultimate subject of interest in the matter of abortion.
Here's something for you to flame on: I apply the term 'abortion' even to the killing (via dismemberment or flushing) of embryos held in labs, because that act of ending the already alive, individual being in embryo age along its lifetime continuum is killing an individual already existing, alive individual, expressing its individual life through mitosis. Those wishing to obfuscate the truth of killing individuals prior to birth will now jump up and cite the zygotes lost during a menstrual cycle and claim that even God doesn't count these embryos as individual humans else why does God allow so many to be lost without implantation. If you try that tactic, you do so at your own risk of lecture, and not from me, though I would love to, but I try to confine all my disagreement with exploitation of individual human life to the areas of science and human moral ideals. I don't try to question God's sovereignty, only humankind's treachery.