Here is where I come to my senses and try to organize things a little:

There are four separate debates central to the argument concerning abortion. We seem to be intertwining them which makes for a confusing debate, and usually ends up in both sides saying "fuck off." I, personally, do not believe that there can ever be too much debate on the subject as it concerns every American with the ability to procreate.

The first question is the biological one: When does human life begin? The second is the social one: What is the good/harm of abortion to society? The third is the individual/personal one which is two-fold: Woman: Why must I be forced to have a baby that I do not want; Voiceless Unborn: Why should I be denied my life because my mother does not want me? The fourth and perhaps the most ambiguous is the legal question which has not been even remotely decided: Based upon all of the evidence, biological, social and individual, whose right trumps the others'?

I believe the biological question can be answered best by the study of embryology. In order to study embryology, you must begin at conception which is the first stage of human development. Without conception no human life would exist. Regardless of whether the blastocyst implants or passes through, the first stage of human life has begun. I'll skip the legal implications to this until the end.

The social question is complicated. When the issue was first debated, abortion was looked at as a solution to overpopulation, poverty, illegitimacy and crime. I'll ignore the racist/genocidal undertones to this particular argument, but thirty years later all of these rates have gone up, the crime and illegitimacy rates in particular. Now while there are many reasons for the increases, we can be absolutely sure that legalized abortion has not improved the situation. The second part of the social debate is that most Americans support some form of legalized abortion. The flip side to this is that most Americans do not support abortion where a case can be made for the viability of the fetus, so the social debate over abortion has pretty much reached a stalemate.

The third question is the most highly charged, the most emotional, and the one that is most subject to irrationality on both sides. Everyone has a personal story about themselves or someone they know who was either been helped or hurt by abortion. While we may find them all to be disturbing or enlightening, they are not really relevant to the legal debate. There are instances where killing is justified, but that does not affect our legal view of murder in general.

This leads to the last argument - the legal one. Our laws are based upon the assumption that everyone is entitled to three basic human rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The implicit understanding is that without the right to life, the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness would not be possible. The legal question therefore is whether the life of the unborn baby is protected under the law. Since the founding fathers didn't oblige us with the legal answer to the question of when life begins and the Roe v. Wade decision decided to skirt the issue all together, this is still wide open to legal debate. Since everyone who is alive was allowed the process of conception, this should not be denied to anyone else. The legal justification for this is the fact that everyone is entitled to equal rights under the law. This means that you can't allow some people to be born and others not to be. The idea flies in the face of the most basic of our laws. The pro-abortion argument is that a woman has rights over her own body. This is absolutely true EXCEPT when there is another body involved that will lose its right to life. The pro-abortion argument is flawed also in the fact that it assumes that a baby will ruin his or her mother's life before there is any proof that this will be the case. It basically says that a woman for any reason has the right to criminalize the unborn child for crimes not yet committed. A human being who had absolutely no say over his or her existence simply cannot be held accountable for the potential crimes that he or she MAY commit or the amount of misery he or she MAY inflict on their mother.

The only real debate as far as I can see it is whether a woman can legally have an abortion if her life is in danger. I think this is a choice that can and should be left up to the woman. A person is allowed to give up their own life to save another, but they are not legally obligated to save a life if it puts their own in danger. Abortion as it is practiced now is flawed because it operates without a ruling on when human life begins. If it is ever legally decided that human life begins at conception, we as a society are guilty of not protecting over 40 million babies.

You said in your previous post that "the "pro-life" stance is not a legitimate political stance, but a moral one." All of our laws are based on morals. Too often religion is confused with morals and that may cloud the issue. But our laws against killing are based on what if not morals? The pro-life argument is completely legitimate simply for the reason that no political body has weighed in on when human life begins, so it has not been LEGALLY determined whether abortion is murder or not. Shouldn't all opinions be weighed equally especially when determining something that affects lives of every person?

I've gone on far longer than intended, but nothing is ever gained or learned without debate. Both sides of this issue have been reduced to sound bites and I haven't read or heard a legitimate debate on the subject in years, if ever. Respond any time you may feel the urge.