Yeah, yeah, libs and leftists love to kill little babies in the womb (or approve of it), but rush to save brutal murderers from the death penalty. Whatever helps you sleep at night. (See, it can go both ways. )
(Not all atheists are libs or leftist, either. )
Please let us agree to have medical science determine when a human life's personhood begins. According to Wikipedia's article regarding the beginning of human personhood,
"In the years since the designation of brain death as a new criterion for death, attention has been directed towards the central role of the nervous system in a number of areas of ethical decision-making. The notion that there exists a neurological end-point to human life has led to efforts at defining a corresponding neurological starting-point. This latter quest has led to the concept of brain birth (or brain life), signifying the converse of
brain death. The quest for a neurological marker of the beginning of human personhood owes its impetus to the perceived symmetry between processes at the beginning and end of life, thus if brain function is a criterion used to determine the medical death of a person, it should also be the criterion for its beginning.
Just as there are two types of brain death - whole brain death (which refers to the irreversible cessation of function of both the
brain stem and higher parts of the brain) and higher brain death (destruction of the cerebral hemispheres alone, with possible retention of brain stem function), there are two types of brain birth (based on their reversal) - brain stem birth at the first appearance of brain waves in lower brain (brain stem) at 6–8 weeks of gestation, and higher brain birth, at the first appearance of brain waves in higher brain (
cerebral cortex) at 22–24 weeks of gestation."
Why not just follow the science? This seems reasonable to me.
I trust in medical science to establish when an embryo could consciously experience pain. According to a study study published by the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), "a fetus is not capable of experiencing pain until 28 to 30 weeks after conception, when the nerves that carry painful stimuli to the brain have developed. Before that, the fetal reaction to a noxious stimulus is a reflex that does not involve consciousness, they write" (
JAMA 2005; 294:947-954)
Please reference:
Fetal Pain
Based on the criteria of personhood involving being capable of consciously feeling pain, personhood doesn't begin until at least 28 weeks after conception.