The Atheist Obsession with Insulting Christians

[FatAndFaithless]

CL, that's your definition of life.  Not the definition of life, and yours certainly isn't based on any scientific reasoning (brain activity, ability to feel pain, consciousness, etc).  So no, I don't have to think that aborting an early term fetus is 'killing a human', thank you very much.

In any case, bodily autonomy is paramount for me in this issue.  The rights of the woman to use her own body as she likes supersedes the rights of anyone else, even if we were to agree that a blastocyst had the rights of a human being.  You're not asking for equal human rights for an embryo, you're asking for special rights above those that we would give ANY human, from a toddler to the Pope.  No human in any situation can claim another's body to use as their own, and there's no reason we should give that 'special' right to a fetus either.

I agree that you don't have to agree with that definition.  

I emphasized the above because you don't really believe that the fetus claimed the woman's body to use as their own out of their own volition?  You do understand the only reason for it's existence was out of a choice that the mother made (not counting cases of rape)?  You don't think that if the mother makes a conscious choice to have consensual sex knowing that pregnancy is always a possibility, she bares no responsibility for the consequence?  And the embryo, fetus, blastocyst (however you want to categorize it) is also equally part of her willing partner.  Does the woman's rights supersede his as well?  Look I've said repeatedly this is not an easy topic so there are not easy answers.

It might not be an 'easy' answer, but there is a simple one: Bodily Autonomy rights should be paramount in these discussions.  What about cases of consensual sex where contraception fails? Or consensual sex with a partner you believed to be sterile but happens to get pregnant?  

Consent to sex is NOT consent to becoming pregnant, and consent to becoming pregnant is NOT consent to staying pregnant.  If one puts bodily autonomy of the woman first, it doesn't matter what the 'intent' of the act was, nor does it matter that an embryo has no 'intent'.  The fact that an embryo has no intent is completely irrelevant to the matter, because you'll notice I said 'no human in any situation' has the right to another's body.

I'm also curious as to your reasoning for letting rape victims abort, if you do indeed believe that human life starts at conception.  You said yourself that the embryo had no intent of coming into existence, so why should the mother be able to abort an embryo/'human life' that resulted from a rape?