*whew*...when you get into some of these discussions, it is not good to sleep late....you get WAY behind! But Ebbie has just said a lot of how I would respond.

The thing is, John, I wasnot even thinking of late term abortions when I used the term 'fetus'....I, also, would not approve of abortion when the baby is beyond 6 months without a VERY good reason (look up 'triploid syndrome'...had to deal with that one myself)...and would have serious reservations at 4-5 months. Very few 'pro choice' advocates are in favor of parents having the right to just summarily decide at the last minute, "no, we'd rather not have a baby." Horror stories about late term abortions are usually red herrings to cloud the matter.

The **ISSUE** is mostly about fertilized eggs/embryos in the first couple of months...'usually', the first 3-6 weeks, after a woman says, "ooops"! In reality, embryos fail to develop fairly often, and nature deals with it, but those of certain religious persuasions claim that a 'soul' enters the embryo at the instant of conception...or some similar claim. Now that is the "matter that does not allow proof", and that is what fuels most of the bitterness, whether it is stated formally or not. Some are sure it IS true, some don't believe in 'souls' at all, or feel that birth, or 'viability' is the measure. In that sensem the argument IS metaphysics. And we still don't know hown many angels can dance on the head of a pin. With so many disparate notions, how do we decide? Must we always take the very most conservative position on all issues, just to avoid upsetting the most conservative believers?

The real issue is not when a set of cells becomes 'human', but who gets to decide how to approach the question, and under what circumstances. Like many questions, there are gray areas, and clever rhetoric can make gray seem black in comparison to other colors.
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Hard to tell sometimes.........