[J. Neil Schulman]

MHGinTN wrote: "Oh my, so many faulty assertions and so little time to refute them,"

If would have been nice if you had refuted any of them. You didn't. Instead, you simply stated your opinion that the existence or nonexistence of souls -- that is, consciousness that can exist apart from our carnal bodies -- is irrelevant, then substituted for that discussion your own discussion of embryology. Which makes your entire discussion off topic and non-responsive if human consciousness is distinct from the carnal body, in its embryonic stages or otherwise.

[MHGinTN]

I purposely avoided dealing with the notion of soul (spirit) because an appeal to such is not needed, if the object is to establish the rightness or wrongness of exploiting individual human life. If you want a personal opinion, a recent offering from a respected Priest is sufficient: it is the soul that wraps the body, thus the soul is immortal thought he body return to dust. I believe the individuality of every human beings is established first at conception (and no ltaer than with first cell division, mitosis), as evidenced by the medical procedures applied to diagnose an individual's health even in embryonic age adequately support.