[J. Neil Schulman]

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.

[MHGinTN]

Okay you arrogant ass, first you chide me for not offer an opinion regarding soul--and I did that because the soul need not be appealed to, if the issue is whether as human beings we will decide what is the value of human life, life of the individual human being--then you chide me for offering my personal opinion, and then you speciously assert that my personal opinion is what I based my argument for valuing the individual human being. You lack both insight and understanding. [You wouldn't happen to also be 'demosthenese the elder' would you, you arrogant self-aggrandizing donkey?] Now, try reading what I wrote, objectively, for content.