The reason religion is so powerful

[Neo-Scholastic]

Personhood appears to be a legal term. You don't find evidence of personhood, you have to legally describe it. Perhaps no different from legal adulthood being 18+.

In biology, human is the category—that's our species. And embryo, fetus, infant, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, late adulthood—these are all our developmental stages. That's all there is to it.

And the embryos that don't implant and get flushed, what human rights should they have?

You raise an important point. I do wonder why should I care so much for something that Nature seems to care so little for. So many attempt at life and so few survive. On its face you are saying, that yeah, life is cheap so why care about inconvenient and vulnerable ones. It's not wrong. Life is cruel. Does that mean I have to be cruel?

Now maybe there is a certain developmental milestone, somewhere between conception and delivery, where both personhood and 'quickening'* proceeds. I would love to end this abortion debate with some compelling compromise that truly satisfies the extremists on both sides - from every sperm is precious to grab a fork it's done for. Because, yeah, life is cheap. Many are conceived then still-born...expelled by the body as naturally as if it were on birth control. Buuuuttttt....only a sick mind could pull babies out of the womb leaving, only their tiny little heads inside, and jabbing a pair of scissors in their spines.


* quickening was the only semi-thelogical word I could find. Like the point at which one's distinctiveness, or soul/formal cause, becomes manifest in an otherise generic material cause...to just spout some Scholastic gibberish.