"yet you seem to want to define exactly when the soul takes residence!"

Nope. You are exactly 180 degrees mischaracterizing what I said. I said quite clearly that if we DO NOT know when the "soul takes up residence", it is up to those who wish to kill it to prove that it has not "taken up residence". The burden of proof (as I've said, not five times) as to when "the soul takes up residence" should fall to the ones who wish to do the killing. That is how every other case in our legal system is handled/proscuted. We cannot put anyone else to death without making a case that they deserve death (where that is an option, or imprisonment, if that is the only option).

You and I can afford to take a more reasoned stance to this problem as I strongly suspect WE will never have to make the choice ourselves.

Again, I'm sure that those who owned slaves had good reason to keep the status quo. And the fact that I may not have owned slaves did not disqualify me from doing my political best to see to it that the slaves -- even though I did not own any -- or even though I may not have been one -- were freed.

You are assuming that:

1. the baby deserves no consideration.
2. the woman had no other choice than to get pregnant
3. there is no better means of dealing with it than abortion.

I don't assume any of those three.

I can have compassion for a murderer. I can even say that, if given the same circumstances, there but for the grace of God go I -- I'm just as evil at my core as anyone. But I can't allow as how it's okay for law to be based upon my feelings of compassion...

...Law should be based on the best probability for the protection of the innocent.