"Rapaire was making a valid point that you cannot blanket widely various situations with one overwhelming prescriptive moral tenet and expect to acheive the optimum "goodness" of result."

But in so doing (given the benefit of the doubt), isn't it more logical to conclude, from the way he wrote it, that it was he who was making the blanket statement? After all, he was trying to make the case that, because some fetuses might be acephalic, then all fetuses might be, and, as such, should not be the concern of people who might be motivated to value fetuses as something more than "harvestable tissue". Seems to me that his point is that it is an extreme to be trying to protect blastocytes, furthermore, it is equal folly to seek to protect fetuses as well.

"Some folks simplify their thinking by accepting some moral tenet or dogma as the definition of goodness in all cases. This makes thinking easier, because you only have to think as far as that one stable answer. Some folks even go so far as to bend the facts so as to preserve the integrity of their stable answer regardless of the ground-truth of the situation."

Yup. I don't like that kind of reasoning either. It sure is easy to assume that those with whom you disagree participate in that kind of reasoning.

"But that is not an ethical use of the mind, in my opinion; I think it is the mission of thought to seek the most rational answer possible in each situation, menaing that answer which will bring about the greatest well-being for the greatest number of efforts."

Yup. Though I still believe in the rights of the individual -- even, sometimes, when it means that a whole lotta people don't get to have something they want.

" I have known many individuals who lost their start-up bodies before birth and shrugged it off and went on about their business, and got another. "

Sorry, I don't get what a "start-up" body is.