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Originally Posted by jayeff
Why isn't the line a while later when distinctly human characteristics begin to emerge? Why not before fertilization when both partners to the sex act are already impelled by genes and hormones to reproduce? Isn't their nature the real source of life?
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Just to add to my previous response, I'd like to point out something that seems to get missed in discussions about abortion.
When we're talking about abortion, we're talking specifically about human life. Their is a difference between human life, sperm life, and egg life. This distinction is necessary to understand why fertilization of the egg is crucial to the argument of killing a human life.
The sperm life cycle begins with being created in the testes. It remains in the scrotum until it dies and is re-absorbed into the body or it is ejaculated and dies when air dries it up.
The egg life cycle is similar. It stays in the womb until it dies.
The human life cycle begins when a sperm is connected to an egg. In other words a human life begins with a fertilized egg. The cycle continues in stages where limbs, brain, heart are formed. Eventually the baby develops lungs and is passed thru the womb into the outside world. It finally grows hair, teeth, and develops motor skills and language skills. It grows older, gets married, has kids, and then it dies.
Acts such as masturbation is not killing of human life. It is killing of sperm life. Human life requires combining the sperm with an egg. This is why the discussion on where human life begins is far from arbitrary. It's crystal clear. It begins at fertilization.
If eggs stopped being fertilized by sperm the human race would die out in the next 100 years. No new babies could be born. Why? Because that's where human life begins.
I've never heard anybody describe abortion in this way. But when I go back to first principles this is the conclusion I arrive at and it seems to make the most sense.