Sinsull "I do not equate a parcel of cells unable to survive outside the womb to a child"

But the fact that that 'parcel of cells' is a human life is central to the question. It's been gone over at length in another thread so I won't bore by going over it in detail here. But there are two central planks -
1) every human life is sacred and a God-given gift and we should do what we can to preserve it
2) (the more secular argument) If we allow ourselves to decide that this person or that person is not really a person at all, but some form of outlaw - that is literally, someone outside the protection of the law - it soon becomes a matter of degrees of difference by which ALL our humanity and right to life is undermined.

We can decide that handicapped people are 'not viable' that they are a 'parcel of cells' that are not capable of independent life (without support and care). We can extend that argument to old people, the terminally ill, and so on - basically anyone we like or that's too weak or defenceless to fight back for their rights.

Similar arguements have been used to kill off classes of unwanted people, again I won't bore by going over old details. But it's enough to say if we allow it to happen to others, at the very least we make it harder to explain why it shouldn't happen to us too.

And so instead of protecting the most vulnerable in society, we would victimise them.

If a young girl is pregnant, that is unfortunate and not they way we would wish things, but once it's a fact we can't un-do this (we can terminate the pregnancy, but we cannot un-do what's happened - the creation of a new unique human life). All we can do is try and mitigate events. If the preganancy threatens the life of the young girl, of course, as I already said, abortion is an option. Obviously if the mother is to die, the baby will die too, so it makes no sense to proceed. But if she's capable of carrying the child to full term, then this is what should be done, whether we like it or not. No-one would advocate the death penalty for the boyfriend that got her pregnant, but that's what we advocate for the unborn child if we propose abortion for any reason other than the one I mentioned.

Anyway, I think I'm drifting off-thread again....