[OnyxCougar]

religioustolerance.org
The media, religious leaders, and others often emphasize uncompromising differences between pro-life and pro-choice beliefs. But, in reality, the two sides agree on almost everything: An ovum is alive and contains human DNA. Thus, it is a form of human life.
An ovum is not a human person.
Similarly a spermatozoa is a form of life.
A spermatozoa is not a human person.
At or shortly after conception, a fertilized ovum is a form of human life. It is alive and has human DNA.
A pre-embryo is a form of human life.
An embryo is a form of human life.
A fetus is a form of human life.
A newborn baby is a form of human life.
A newborn baby is a human person.
Somewhere during the nine months between the ovum-spermatozoa stage and the newborn baby, human personhood begins.
After human personhood has begun, an abortion should not be allowed, except under very unusual circumstances, such as to save the life of the woman, or perhaps to avoid serious long-term injury to the woman.


The only real differences between pro-lifers and pro-choicers involves two questions: "When does human personhood begin?" Most pro-lifers believe it happens at conception.
Most pro-choicers say that it happens later in pregnancy, or perhaps at birth.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus of when human personhood starts.

Science can tell us, with increasing detail, the processes that start with a sperm and ovum and end up with a newborn baby. But it cannot tell us:

Does the fetus have a soul?
When do the products of conception become a person?
Does a zygote have a full set of human rights?
Is an ovum and sperm a person?
Is abortion murder?

These are questions with philosophical, religious and political aspects. Science cannot contribute a great deal towards resolving them. And because these questions have a religious component, there will always be a wide variety of beliefs among persons from different faith groups.

3 months the fetus begins to "look like" a baby. The recent development of high resolution 3-D ultrasound equipment provides incredibly detailed pictures of the fetus at this stage. These photographs are convincing many people that the fetus is a human person at this stage because it looks like one -- even though none of its higher brain functions are operating. 9
4 months when the fetus' face has developed to the point where one can tell one fetus from another.
About 24 weeks, when the fetus becomes viable, (i.e. able to live outside the womb). When medical ethicist Bonnie Steinbock was interviewed by Newsweek and asked the question "So when does life begin?," she answered: "If we’re talking about life in the biological sense, eggs are alive, sperm are alive. Cancer tumors are alive. For me, what matters is this: When does it have the moral status of a human being? When does it have some kind of awareness of its surroundings? When it can feel pain, for example, because that’s one of the most brute kinds of awareness there could be. And that happens, interestingly enough, just around the time of viability. It certainly doesn’t happen with an embryo." 8