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It IS MADE a dilemma by attempting to make an abortion an act of murder.

Is this really how you see the issue, tpaine? Gosh, but I just don't see it that way. The way I see it is:
If it's alive, and it's human,

Eggs & sperm are alive, - as are embryos, -- but they are not persons yet, thus their deaths are not murder.

and it lives in America, then it is entitled to the equal protection of the Constitution of its right to life and liberty.

Persons are entitled to protection, not unformed, unviable beginnings of persons.

The woman's "right" to "control her body" becomes a secondary issue.

Not for the the woman.

For life is the preeminent right protected by the Constitution.

Many people would rather be dead than be a slave, Betty - Perhaps even a slave for nine months. - Liberty may be our preeminent right.

All other rights flow from just that one right. This isn't a narrowly "religious" question per se. It is a Constitutional question. And given what the Constitution requires, there is only one valid answer: And it must be in favor of life.

And our Constitution definitely favors the existing life of the mother, over the possibility of one for an embryo.

I may be a "simple-minded" person; but this question is actually starkly simple. If you wish to argue that somehow a person has a constitutional right to induce the death of any other (innocent) human being, then I am all ears.

I don't want to argue.
Too bad you can't 'hear' that embryos are not persons, --- in the eyes of our constitutional rule of law.

Eggs and sperm are not organisms - they are not individual members of the species of Homo sapiens - while embryos are. The embryo is formed - as is the sperm and oocyte - and he or she is viable in the proper environment, as are the infants, toddlers and adults of the species. The specialized cells such as sperm and oocytes are not viable for more than 48 hours or so, no matter where they are, as they are at the end of their differentiation and life span. This is simple Biology 101.

There is no distinction in the Declaration of Independence between men who are persons and those who are not - or those who have the right not to be killed and those who do not. And, as I've shown, the DOI is incorporporated in our Constitution as law. The Constitution did not specifically name only those which men are persons, it only named which persons are citizens. There is only a bias toward the rights of citizenship for those who are born or naturalized, not a discrimination between who has the right to live.

The heirarchy or pre-eminence of rights has always been life, liberty, and property - in that order. As long as there is life there is a possibility of liberty, etc., but there cannot be liberty without life. (Back to that discussion of necessary and sufficient)

It's too bad that you can't discriminate between the law concerning an unborn child in the womb of a woman and the unborn child in a laboratory, because the law obviously and currently does.

Many people would rather be dead than be a slave, Betty - Perhaps even a slave for nine months. - Liberty may be our preeminent right.

A dead man cannot benefit from liberty, tpaine. Only the living can.

Therefore, LIFE is the preeminent right, the single most basic right from which all other human rights justly flow.

I think this is what our Constitution says. Which is why I love and honor and try to uphold it.