Pro-lifers want to see every individual allowed to control their own life. This position includes the pre-born, who do not have the voice to defend themselves. This is why those in favor of protecting every individual's Right to Life are speaking out on their behalf.
Pro-aborts are not only "interested" in controlling the lives of babies in their mother's wombs, they are actively seeking to take those lives away.
Your reference to 'empathy' is intewresting, for that is probably the single most driving emotion with average Americans. Thank you for being so open as to share that detail.
Would it help you to understand where many of us are coming from regarding the embryo if I explain that the embryo is an organism, not merely a glob of cells? The progression of identity goes something like this: cells as subunits, organs as subunits and organism as the individual made up of subunits. Within minutes after the oocyte and spermatazoa unite, a new and completely unique organism comes into being. That organism will build its own subunits, following a pattern unique to the higher mammal known as human, thus that organism is a unique living human life. Is it fully human (from an empathetic point of view)? No, and the toddler crawling on the livingroom rug isn't either because formation, coordination and function of brain structure and 'organ subunits' is still occurring.
At some point in your search for clarity regarding the pre-born human being, you will reach a stage where empathy is insufficient in dealing with the realities, that is where science, not religion ought to aid you most, because moral choices are based (for lasting value) more on the scientific realities than on emotion. The 'fertilized egg' is a unique, individual, human life. Once this new nascent (means developing, and at 57 I'm still classifiable as nascent) human individual life IS, it is worthy of protection based on the moral choices of our society. at present our moral fabric is rife with confused notions regarding form and function of early human life. Science proves that from conception onward, the ORGANISM is human and is alive and forming organs for its maintenance and survival. Removing the life support from that organism kills that unique, individual human organism. That is abortion. If we are to make arbitrary decisions regarding when removal of support is legal or not legal, at the very least we ought be honest and admit that removal terminates a unique, individual human life, as unique and individual as you or me. Your appeal to the heinous partial birth abortion method for terminating this individual human life is telling since it is obvious that the little ones being killed by that method are easily identifiable as individual human beings. science can help you to extend that clarity to the embryonic stage as well, but try to leave your emotional evaluation system when delving into these moreobfuscated realms ... remember please, the question revolves around the differentiation between organs and organism; the embryo is a complete organism that is growing, changing, adding forms and their funtion, for that organism's continued survival. It is upon that basis that many of we freepers base our defense of the embryonic life now being exploited by others. It is to that notion of organism --unique, individual human organism-- that we point when pleading for protection to be extended to that class of individual human beings. I applaud you in your reasoned search for clarity. [Please note, none of the above offering is religious in nature, though I have clear religious convictions regarding nascent individual human life.]