[MHGinTN]

Genetic identity is a strawman, in most cases, especially when the debater has already taken as axiomatic that it is 'sentience' that defines someone as sufficiently human to be afforded protection as a fully alive human being. The reality is, it is the already alive individual human being who builds the organs of its survival across a lifetime. It is the individual human that seeks to survive by burrowing into the uterine lining.

At this stage, the 'genetic identity' arguer usually tries to hoist the 'that's nothing but a chemical exchange, with no will behind it' assertion. Fact is, as the organism grows larger, the more the molecular actions give way to organ actions and responses, but the chemical/molecular exchanges still are the basic life support activities of even an aged individual human organism. The embryonic individual human being builds its own organs (including the first one, the placenta) to allow for the spreading out of life function, as the cells differentiate into more and more specific organs and more and more venues (organ systems) in which to operate the chemical exchanges.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Genetic identity is a strawman, in most cases, especially when the debater has already taken as axiomatic that it is 'sentience' that defines someone as sufficiently human to be afforded protection as a fully alive human being.

In fact, 'sentience' is generally the difference between humans and animals. Didn't you ever read C. S. Lewis?

You speak of the embryo as if it possesses a conscious human will. Yet all of your commentary in this paragraph can just as easily be applied to chipmunks as to human beings. None of the processes that you name are what makes us human.