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.
MHGinTN wrote: "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."
You're begging the question, assuming your conclusion and attemting to prove your premise with it. If the value of a human life comes from its soul -- if there is consciousness that precedes the carnal body, or outlasts it, or can exist out of it -- then a body without a soul is an empty vessel, carnal rather than sacred. It is a fact to be determined before coming to certain moral conclusions.
MHGinTN wrote: "If you want a personal opinion"
And I'll stop you right there. You are entitled to your personal opinion. You are not entitled to use your personal opinion derived from faith as the basis for imposing law on someone who does not share your faith-derived premise. That is theocracy.