I respect your belief, but I do not share it. I believe that human life is much more than just physical, it is also spiritual. The human being gains his/her eternal spiritual life at the moment he/she takes his first breath outside the womb. Before that moment, it is a life in potential. That is my personal religious belief.
If a society really accepted that ALL fertilized eggs were FULLY realized human beings, then why do not the churches baptize all stillborns, all miscarriages, since Baptism is required for “eternal life”? Why did not early, staunchly Christian Americans give names to and record stillbirths in their Bibles?
I do not scorn your beliefs at all. I do respect them. But I do not share them. And, furthermore, your beliefs (and mine) about the beginning of human life are at core theological. Thus state and federal governments should keep their clumsy paws off this personal, ultimately religious issue. It must be resolved in the court of public opinion.
I also believe human life is spiritual as well as physical. For example, check out the description in the Book of Luke about Elizabeth’s baby leaping in her womb.
It isn’t whether or not we breath air that determines our status as living human beings. Nothing in nature changes species, even when outward physical appearance changes radically. Tadpoles become frogs, and caterpillars become butterflies, but they remain the same species. No one would argue that a butterfly is literally a different entity than it was when it was a caterpillar earlier in its life. Likewise, our birth is a change of location, not of species, and involves adaptation to a new environment. IOW, an entity which existed already moves to a new locale (outside the womb as opposed to within) and must adapt to the new surroundings by, as an example, breathing air.
There is no such thing as a POTENTIAL life, as inanimate material does not come to life. Human life (and indeed all life) is a continuum. Within that continuum are individual lives, billions of them, countless zillions if you factor in all the animals, plants, micro-organisms, etc.
But we’re talking here about human life. Two existing humans, with their own unique genetic codes, come together to form a new human. That’s accomplished when living genetic material, sperm and ovum, combine. Each contain half of a DNA strand. When they combine, a new full strand is created and a new, specific human life begins. Your life began that way and so did mine. We didn’t just pop into existence at birth. We existed for nine months in the womb before that.
Various religions may have different ways of treating stillbirths, for example, but that’s not based on any scientific reality. Much of it is a holdover from years past, when reproduction wasn’t fully understood. It was widely believed until the 19th century that the unborn weren’t alive until a spirit enlivened them, for example.
I appreciate the polite manner in which you are handling this debate!