I hate the way the term "Life" is used in discussions involving abortion and stem-cell research. [View All]

[Odin2005]

(Reposted from the Abortion is Murder thread)

IMO it's a euphemism for "soul" used in order to avoid violating the separation of church and state. Sperm and egg cells are "human life" too, each is a genetically unique haploid individual separate from the diploid unicellular individual that produced them. The whole ethical philosophy used to justify anti-choice policies is an intellectually bankrupt attempt to justify using religious ideology to influence policy. When 99% of abortions happen a fetus has the mental capacity of a lizard, yet we eat meat from animals with a greater mental capacity than that every day.

it all comes down to the essentialistic, religious notion of a "soul" that magically appears at conception. It's total nonsense.