[Prometheus]

That's a hard one, and I'd like to contribute, but you will not find me giving any concrete answer here. I will help to scritinize the veracity of statements made here, and see if I can offer a valuable perspective.

Firstly, I will not tough upon a theological solution because my religion has no explicit information to offer on this point. Mormons do oppose abortion, but we don't claim to know when the spirit enters the body, so religion is off the table for the question in my mind.

If you don't mind, I'd like to ammend your vocabluary here, and use the term "zygote" instead of "fertilized ovum" because it is shorter to type, and more accurate.

And for the sake of simplicity, let us use the term "person" to denote a "living member of a species" - i.e. constituting murder to destroy.



First - the argument that a zygote is a person. A zygote is just a young person. Given time and the proper envoronment, it turns into something like you or me. Since the only variable is time, then the difference is only quantitative, and not qualitative, and is therefore, indistinguishable to science and philosophy. Since the only factor is space and time, then yes, a zygote is a person.

My rebuttal to that argument. The argument I proposed above is a slippery slope argument. If the only difference is space and time, then an egg and sperm are a person before fertilization. After all, a woman wastes an egg a month, and a man wastes billions of sperm. Those cells would become a person given appropriate time and conditions (proximity of other sex cells). This slippery slope demonstration invalidates the above argument.

Critique of the rebuttal. If the argument that a zygote is a person is invalid, then where do we draw the line? Before birth? Can't do that because of C sections. It seems that fertilization is a good place..

but then we go in circles don't we?