The reason religion is so powerful

[Angrboda]

...and you want to tell us that science and medicine say something relevant to abortion.

Right; there's a worrisome catchphrase in moral psychology: Moral intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

This behavior has been exemplified by the thread. People are willing to rationalize all sorts of peculiar views in order to bring embryology into harmony with their moral intuitions about abortion.

Science, which does it's best to carve nature at her joints, ought to inform our moral views on the subject, not the other way around. I stand by that.

How can science inform an intuition? That seems like an obvious stolen concept where you're trying to apply reasoning after the fact after asserting you can't reason after the fact.