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Pro-life, pro choice matters:

I am neither of the above. I have pro and against views for both approach. A few, not in order of importance, just randomly:

1. As a surgical resident I was rotating through ICU for 3 months. It was an unimaginable horror. Many people were literally tortured, before their body resisted any further "treatment" and finally died. Some of course recovered, but we doctors pretty much knew ahead of time, who has a realistic chance and who doesn't, but under the current views, we must tried even those who we knew has no realistic chance to survive. Eventually I exited surgery and became an ob-gyn doctor (deals mostly with new life, not death), but that was my selfish and personal solution. The only time when I saw a sparkle of true humanity, when they called code in the emergency room, a 92 year old man was brought in, in cardiac arrest, the medical history contained inoperable terminal cancer with metastasis all over his body, and the code team tried to resuscitate him. Finally the team leader arrived and called off the code saying "you people are insane" (referring to the rest of the team). He was right.

2. Do we really know when life begins?

In single cell life forms there is meosis and mitosis, then two cells become. There is no literal end of life or beginning of life. Ever. One life splits into two lives, and while one life ends somewhere along the line, the other cell can live on, and split further. Which is the original? Which is the "later product", there is no way to tell, thus it would be fair to conclude that among single cell beings there is no "beginning of life" as such.

In higher level life forms the same thing happens, only "deferred" in space and time. The sperm, the egg, is halving the genetic product (meiosis equivalent), which fuses later (mitosis equivalent). Neither is exactly the same, but the concept is either the same, or very very similar. In which case there is no "beginning of life" even in higher level beings. The sperm and the egg, is life the same way the single cell beings are life at the stage of meosis.

Before someone would protest, that "yes, but in higher level beings after the fusion of the genetic material there will be one final individual (opposed to two), it is not exactly true either, since identical twinning is possible (splitting of the zygote, or even the conceptus after several cell divisions. Therefore, not even the zygote is an absolute single individual per se.

What did I want to say with all this? That mankind haven't reached the knowledge yet, to know where and when life begins, if there is such a thing at all, and life is not continuous, as it is with single cell beings.

Many other thoughts, but let see whether anyone will respond to this one first.

Gabor

In which case there is no "beginning of life" even in higher level beings. The sperm and the egg, is life the same way the single cell beings are life at the stage of meosis.

This is nonsense and a testament to the poor state of the academy in todays America. Genetics tells us quite clearly that new human life, a diploid organism, is extant after fertilization completes.

The twinning argument is supercilious nonsense that goes like this. Because the zygote may split into two distinct human organisms it is OK to kill that human life. IOW's two for the price of one justifies killing human life.

The science of genetics is clear, the problem is that college level developmental biology books are rife with ideology stepping all over the science. Your tome is a prime example of that.