Originally Posted by hannukah harry

i'd say no. it may have a heartbeat, but if we were to take it out of the mother and hook it up to machines, would it live? could it breath?

there seem to me to be two issues in the whole thing. one is the mothers rights and the other is at what point does a zygote/fetus have rights?

as long as one of them may not live through to the birth (you don't know the baby will live until its' born), i say you have to err on the side of the mother. it's her body. you may not agree with it (so don't have one yourself!) but you can't tell others what to do with theirs.

if the baby is an accident, a life that wasn't supposed to start, then whats the harm in having an abortion? no life was intended, no life ends up.

one last thought... if we give rights to an embryo (that's what's formed by the merging of the sperm and egg...) (correct me if i'm using the wrong terms, it's been a while since bio)... why are we stopping there? the argument pro-life movement uses is that it is alive. well, so is sperm. and the egg. and i know i murder millions of sperm daily. in essence, i'm aborting one or two babies a day because i'm killing living cells that would otherwise grow into one if given the opportunity. same thing with a womans period.