The question of whether a fetus is a person, or at what point it becomes one, is the only true (or at least, honest) question in this debate; and it isn’t entirely ludicrous.
Well, that's funny, because "Maternal Child Nursing Care" published by Mosby in 2002, says the following about the fetus:
"The fetal stage last from 9 weeks (when the embryo becomes recognizable as a human being) until the pregnancy ends."
Note three things:
The book I've quoted treats abortion like just another day at the office.
It's used to train nurses all over the U.S.
Surgical abortions are performed on fetuses, not embryos.
Oh, and I forgot to note that you referred to embryos as "unicellular." Well, not so much. The zygote has 16 cells by the 3 day mark, and you can just imagine how many cells an embryo has at the fifteen day mark, not to mention at nine weeks when it is characterized as a fetus.
So, I think you need to go get some real education on this issue before you jump in again.
Sigh.. I don’t think you’ve said anything I disagree with. Of course a human being is human being from the point of conception.
The question was: is there a stage at which a human being is not yet a person, and thus not yet entitled to the full rights of personhood?
The answer to that question is not obvious to me. Fetal development timelines do not answer it. Fetuses may dream and cry, but that doesn’t answer it either. (Puppies dream and cry). I don’t really have the patience to debate this point, as I think it ultimately boils down to belief or disbelief in the soul, which is the domain of religion.
I support the pro-life position because I’d rather live in a society that views all human life as sacred, even if i find that view irrational.
P.S.: Okay, I was wrong to call embryos unicellular. I should have said “zygote at the moment of becoming diploid” i.e. conception.