I would like to add another point (ever so slightly off thread, but anyway... ;-) )

No, once again we have no scientific proof of the soul's existence, but we can pinpoint the moment whne new human life begins scientifically. As anyone who has studied basic biology knows each parent carries half the number of gametes needed to create the new life. The woman carries half the gametes in the egg, the man the other half in the sperm. Thus neither the egg nor the sperm are individual lives in their own right as they are merely copies of the parent DNA. But when they fuse - the moment of conception - they have the full complement of gametes that create a new, unique life. It is neither the mother nor the father, but something more than the sum of the parts. The DNA that is needed to design the whole new person, the fingerprints etc., is all present. And what starts off as a single cell with its unique DNA rapidly develops into a unique human being with unique fingerprints, iris patterns etc.,

Thus we can say that a new human life is created at the moment of conception and that any deliberate termination of that life from that point on, constitues murder.

And that argument is not based on 'beliefs' or 'faith' but on 'cold' scientific facts.

The Catholic Church for one has long maintained that new human life began in the womb from conception and that every human being is a unique creation.

Not so long ago it would have been possible for anyone to poo-poo this idea and ask 'how do we KNOW that for SURE?' They could have argued that perhaps life didn't begin until we could feel the baby kick and therefore could be sure there was life in the womb or any of a dozen other arbitary milestones.

They could also have argued that perhaps in this world there might be two identical people, so that it is not certain that everyone is unique, as the Catholic church had maintained. We cannot know for sure because we'd have to compare everyone, plus science had no way of measuring things like iris differences etc.,

So it is interesting to see that science has finally caught up with old Church wisdom and we can now provide - after many centuries - scientific proof that new life does indeed begin at conception and that everyone is a unique individual, even identicfal twins. Makes you wonder what other wisdom science might have to catch up with.

As John has said, if people wish to press ahead with (intentional) abortion anyway, reasoning that a 'fetus' is not human, they are not doing so on a scientific basis.