At what point, from conception does a ''phetus'' become a human being?

Mind Over Matter:

So, it's just speciesism, then, which is akin to racism. Just like saying that white people have more rights than black people by virtue of the fact that black people are black and white people are white.

I don't deny this.

In the case of abortion, we have to weigh up the interests of two human beings against one another - the interests of the human mother against the interests of her human foetus.

You have made no argument as to why the foetus must always "win" in this balancing act, such that its interests always trump the mother's interests.

You're right. Most humans don't kill other humans. But I don't see how this is at all relevant to deciding whether abortion is permissible or not.

Do you eat meat? Then every day you decide who is and who isn't to live. In particular, you decide that the animal on your plate was not to live, but to provide for your nutrition and enjoyment instead. So, why are humans so special?

I grasp it just fine. An inalienable right is one that nobody can take away from you. You have not established why a foetus has an inalienable right to life. Your only argument has been that this somehow automatically follows from being human. I say it doesn't.

What's your position on the death penalty for murderers? You must be against it. Are you?

I'm not sure who these pro-choicers are that say that a foetus is non-human. That's not my argument. Nor is it the argument of any intelligent pro-choicer that I've read.

No. It's an unsupported assertion, based on nothing.

I was hoping you could justify your position with logic or argument of some kind. Maybe it is too much to ask of you.

So, lay out the particular logic for me, step by step, that leads to this conclusion.

People abort their foetuses for all kinds of reasons. For example, a mother may become pregnant and feel that she will not be in a position to adequately support her child if it is born. Maybe the reasons are financial, or maybe the woman is a drug addict. Or whatever.

Another example might be where parents discover that their child will have a serious disability, or even not be viable at all. Some foetuses do not grow a skull in the womb. Those foetuses can grow to full term - right up to birth - but cannot survive outside the womb. Would you force a mother to go through the whole pregnancy, knowing that her child cannot survive?

What about a child with Down's syndrome, that will require extra care for its whole life? You would force its parents to bear that burden, regardless of their means or their desires.

What if the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother? You'd say "bad luck, you can't end it, even to save your own life", would you?

My question to you is: do you support any exceptions at all to the rule against abortion? If you do, then you must back away from your assertion that all abortion is wrong.