[LPStar]

I've got one memory which I can place at an age of 2 years old, but nothing before that.

When you were a very tiny baby, you knew who your mother was, and you remembered who she was from day to day. So even though you might not have a conscious memory of that, you did start remembering almost immediately from birth (and probably before).

[Dog Gone]

When you were a very tiny baby, you knew who your mother was, and you remembered who she was from day to day.

I think that is more of a conditioned response than what I'd consider a real memory, but that's certainly how the process begins.

[Question_Assumptions]

There are different types of "memory" and some of it isn't conscious and more than a heartbeat is. I'm not trying to be rude but I think you are playing into the pro-abortion side's trap by even talking about pre-natal consciousness. Yes, this might buy you a good argument that abortion at 20 weeks or even 10 weeks is wrong but, at some point, your argument is going to fall apart and you are going to be left with neural activity somewhere between conception and birth. Once you start drawing lines like that, it becomes easy to move them back and forth. But more importantly, such lines are a red herring. They are artificial criteria that are easily dismissed by an opponent who doesn't agree with you. If I wanted to play devil's advocate, I could easily argue that I don't accept that basic consciousness is a sufficient criteria to make a being a "person" worthy of a right to life. And I honestly don't think there would be much you could do to prove me wrong.

The only criteria that seperates man from beast is "sentience" or the fully aware mind. That isn't present a birth but turns on around 2 years of age and why most adults don't remember much before around 2 years of age. If you limit yourself to current capabilities, you are going to be forced to draw your line at that point as. What you do is to use this to illustrate that any other line between conception and that point is a red herring and give your opponent the choice. Two years or conception. You must pick one. And, trust me, getting people to admit that they support infanticide is the easiest way to drive decent people who know better into the pro-life camp.

[Mjaye]

I've got memories of a house we moved from when I was 2 years old. I recall in detail the seat covers in the it car of the police officer who found me when I wandered off from that same house, and I remembered what my mother was wearing when they came to get me. When I visited the house as an adult, I knew where everything had been, even though it had since been remodeled.