Young Writers Society

All right @TeyaKnife, lets try one more argument.
You know what prevents abortion most effectively? Avoiding unwanted pregnancies entirely. You know what prevents unwanted pregnancy? Vasectomies. If every man had a vasectomy, their would be no unwanted pregnancies. Its an extremely low risk and relatively uninvasive procedure, and it can be reversed when the couple is ready to conceive a child. (Fact checking this, I discovered that having a vasectomy that is later reversed actually somewhat lowers your chances of conceiving, but for the sake of argument let's say that medical science improves in the next several years to eliminate this.)
If every man got a vasectomy until he and his spouse were ready to have a child, their would be no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy. If there were no unwanted pregnancies, their would be no abortions. (excluding those that are for medically necessary reasons.)
As I've mentioned, outlawing abortion will not eliminate abortions. It may or may not reduce them somewhat, but they would definitely still happen, just illegally and unsafely. So if you really want to stop all abortions, passing a law requiring every man to have a vasectomy at the age of sixteen until they are ready and want to reproduce would be the most effective way.
So my question is, if such a law were introduced, would you support it? Is it ethical to force every male in the country to undergo such a procedure, whether they wanted it or not, for the sake of preventing the abortion of fetuses? Do you think that would be a fair and just law to pass in a democratic country founded on the ideal of individual liberty and freedom?
If you answered, yes, this sounds like a good idea, let's do that, then we now have an entirely different problem.
But I'm going to assume that you said no, thats not a good idea, we shouldn't instigate a program of forced vasectomies for the male population. I want you to think about why. If we pretend that someone were actually advocating for this plan, (and just to be clear, I am not actually in favor of this), what would your argument against them be?
Is it, perhaps, because you think its unfair to force people to undergo painful and invasive surgery just because you don't want abortions to happen? Is it because passing a law about peoples reproductive health is an invasion of privacy and something that should be between people and their doctors? What argument can you make against this that wouldn't contradict your argument that preventing people from having abortions at any cost, in any situation, is the right call, and is more important than their personal choices or desires?
I also asked you in an earlier post what someone should do if they are, say homeless and get pregnant, or they can't access prenatal healthcare, or they work three jobs just feed themselves and are still barely scraping by. You responded something to the effect that "life isn't fair, and I'm sorry they are in that desperate situation, but the baby is still something they have to deal with." However, you never answered my actual question, which was what, specifically should they do.If they shouldn't get an abortion, what is their other option?
Let's look specifically at the example of homelessness, though there are many other examples you can apply this to. Suppose someone finds themselves in the situation of being homeless and pregnant. Maybe this homeless woman was raped, maybe she escaped an abusive relationship and is now homeless due to that, the specifics of the situation aren't really important. You would argue that someone who is sleeping outside, and has no access to healthcare or even a roof over their heads, and can barely get enough to eat themselves, let alone eating for two for nine months, still should not be able to have access to an abortion. But what, I would ask, is her other option? What else should she do? The question here isn't even should she have a baby, (though I would still argue it should be her choice), but how can she?
Really think about these questions, please. I see you repeating the same thing to every pro-choice argument, which is that a fetus is a person from conception, abortion is murder, and the woman should have to deal with the consequences of having sex, plus a fair bit of pseudoscience about whether fetuses can feel pain, etc. However, you don't really defend those positions much, and you seem very reluctant to address the problems that banning abortion would cause, such as the women who would die in unsafe abortions, the rise in poverty, and others. I'm not saying that you can't be pro-life because of these things, necessarily. But the fact that not only do you not offer any solutions to the suffering banning abortion would cause, but you don't even seem like you want to talk about it, is a bit frustrating to say the least.

@Vita I know you didn't ask me the question, but I just want to say this really quick:
In situations like these, aren't we valuing one type of life over another? Should any person have the right to say that one person's life is worth more than another's, even if that other is just a baby in the womb?
And also: I've worked to raise money for charities that support pregnant mothers that can't support themselves. And people come to these charities because they need access to proper health care and diapers and so many other things that the charities are more than happy to provide. When you ask the question "what is her other option?" it looks like a very bleak situation. But if we continue to teach people to rely on abortion as an answer, as the ONLY answer, then people don't hear about the charities and people that want to help. In inner city communities and other places where abortion is commonplace, it certainly seems like there is no other choice, because that is what everyone does. But I think repealing abortion legislation, even just in part, will help open up access to crisis pregnancy centers. And if the pregnancy centers aren't well funded or don't have proper staffing it's because people think abortion is a better answer. If you truly value life at all stages, then it makes no sense to push abortion as the answer to a pregnant woman's problems.

@Horisun If giving birth might endanger the life of the mother...why not just have a c-section? I can't think of an instance when this would not be applicable, but if the mother carried the baby this far, I don't think she would want an abortion.

@quitecontrary

Here's the thing: well choosing to get an abortion could be viewed as "Valuing one life over another" the exact thing can be said for not getting one. Especially in cases where they never wanted to be pregnant in the first place.
Furthermore, no one is saying abortion is the only answer: but it should be an option. Every case is unique, that's why we can't make a law that covers every single scenario perfectly.

To answer the question you directed right at me, sometimes its to early to get a C-section and the child to survive. This ties back to the fact that you'd have to go by a case by case basis, and it isn't a one size fits all in regards to the law.

@Horisun The biggest thing I want to fight against is people's ignorance of abortion laws in the U.S(and lack of them). I can't sift through every case and give you a definite answer, but you are using an obscure case where it's too early to get a c-section and the mother's life is in immediate danger to defend abortion. Would you use this one case to defend every other reason for an abortion? As for me, I am not the government, so when I say I would not allow an abortion in this case, it really holds no effect. But I'd argue that the unborn are protected under the fourteenth amendment("nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law") and following this that abortion would be illegal. Shouldn't we do everything in our power to save both the baby and the woman at the same time? I still think abortion is such a go-to solution, and this seems like an extremely obscure case to be using it in. If situations like these are truly prevalent enough to worry about, shouldn't we focus more funding on scientific research?
But most importantly: does this one case defend every other type of abortion that is currently legal in the U.S?

And your first point doesn't make sense to me. If a mother decides not to get an abortion, how would that be "valuing one life over another"? If she truly was in danger, she's still not valuing her child's life over her own. She's seeing it as equally important to hers, and that means taking her chances with death and allowing her baby to take it's chances with life as well. It isn't about saying "this person is worth more than me", it's about recognizing that every one should have a chance at life.

On the other hand, if it's someone else telling a woman that they can't have an abortion, I still think the same applies. The government should recognize everyone's right to life, and that means trying our best to save both the mother and the child, not one or the other. Medicine isn't 100% perfect and everything has risks, and trying to eliminate those risks should not endanger other people.

When the government allows abortion, even in very few and very specific cases, it's disregarding the unborn child's right to life. The mother absolutely matters, and we should do everything in our power to try and save everyone, but we shouldn't be taking away the rights of someone else to save someone. I think the government absolutely must respect every single person's right to life, and we really shouldn't discriminate based on age/stage of development. And that's kind of my whole point; if we can discriminate against unborn babies, who's to say we can't discriminate against other people as well?

@quitecontrary Not going to get into all your points, but in the situation you are referring to, in which the mother wants to have a child and is considering abortion due to medical reasons, no expecting parent sees abortion as "the go to." It is a difficult choice that they make with the advice of medical professionals. Unless you are a doctor, then you shouldn't be going on about when an abortion is and isn't necessary. Leave that to doctors and keep politics out of it.

@quitecontrary the whole point of being pro-choice is well, the "choice" part. Obviously I think its a good thing to provide support to women who find themselves pregnant and want to keep the baby. They should be able to make that choice for themselves.
But not everyone will want to keep the pregnancy, and either way, I hope we can both acknowledge that with the current state of society, there isn't enough help out their for every woman going through an unplanned pregnancy. If abortion were outlawed right now, our foster systems, charities, etc. would be completely overloaded, and that doesn't benefit anyone. A few charities aren't able to compensate for the sheer number of women in poverty and without access to healthcare.
We have a lot we need to fix in society, and abortion is not only the least of our problems, its a solution to many of them. It might not be the best solution, certainly. I'm not happy at all about the number of women forced into the situation of making that choice by desperate circumstances. But until we can fix problems like poverty and lack of healthcare, it's the best solution that causes the least amount of suffering.
At the end of the day, there aren't enough charities out there to provide the kind of welfare that would be needed to help every woman lacking the resources to have a kid. I wish their were, but their aren't. I absolutely believe that women should be aware of their options before getting an abortion, but its just not going to work for everyone.
If it were up to me, every pregnant woman and baby would have access to healthcare, everyone would get comprehensive sex ed and free birth control, there would be paid parental leave, the foster system and education system would be well funded, and no one would have to go hungry in the richest country in the world. All of this would be better for society in general, but these things would all reduce abortions as well. On a related note, it has been shown that countries where abortion is legal have lower abortion rates. Here's an article: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/abortion-rates-go-down-when-countries-make-it-legal-report-n858476
On what you said about valuing one life over another: A fetus really isn't a life. Its just not. It doesn't breath on its own. It has no brain activity or nervous system or ability to feel pain, at least not until the third trimester, during which the only abortions that are performed are medically necessary ones. I doesn't have emotions, it doesn't know that it exists or have a will of its own. I can't survive outside the womb. I does have a heartbeat, but if you grow heart cells in a petri dish, the clump of cardiac tissue will beat on its own. Nobody argues that that constitutes a life. Its really not alive by any meaningful definition of the term.
A mother, however, is undoubtedly a life, and a self aware person, and a person who likely has a family and dreams, and is very much able to have emotions and feel pain and make decisions. I believe in minimizing pain and suffering. A fetus cannot feel pain. It does not suffer because it is not alive. A woman can suffer, and forcing a woman who does not wish to be pregnant to go through with her pregnancy will cause her to suffer. Forced birth laws cause suffering. Abortion does not cause suffering, and often it prevents it. To me, it really is that simple.

Here's a really good article written by actual OBGYNs about whether or not abortion can be medically necessary:https://www.acog.org/news/news-releases/2019/09/abortion-can-be-medically-necessary
"There are situations where pregnancy termination in the form of an abortion is the only medical intervention that can preserve a patient’s health or save their life.

'As physicians, we are focused on protecting the health and lives of the patients for whom we provide care. Without question, abortion can be medically necessary.' "

@Vita As for your article, I'm not a doctor so I'll have to go with the doctor's word that it can be necessary. But it's only necessary to save the mother's life. It's not necessary for the baby. In that situation you are making a choice on valuing the mother's life over the baby's.

I've already defended the point that a fetus is alive. It is a full human being because it develops on its own. The mother really only provides nutrients and shelter, but everything else is done by the fetus. It isn't becoming a human being, it is one. And a heart is only one part of a human, and I agree that just because it lives doesn't make it a full human. The developing tissue and cells together fully constitute a human, so any argument otherwise ignores this fact(what about people who have birth defects? Still human: birth defects are acquired, they aren't there from the start)(and people with extra chromosomes? If you've met anyone with down syndrome, you'll know that they are a human life). I would absolutely argue that a person in a coma or "vegetative" state is still a human life; if you clone a person(it's unethical but if you do) it's still a human life. The medical definition of a human life does not require self-awareness or knowledge of existence or feelings. (you might actually call this response to stimuli: a fetus can do it to.)

A fetus is a baby from eight weeks until it is born; it has a large chance of surviving outside the womb at 5 and a half months. Ability to survive on your own does not make you human. (And plenty of birds and other animals develop in eggs; just because a human needs constant nutrition to develop and the shelter of a womb doesn't mean it isn't a full human life.)

But for the rest of my argument, I still hold that a fetus's life has the same intrinsic value as another person's. When I say I wouldn't allow abortion, it is because I think it is unlawful murder. And we don't agree on that.

And honestly, I'm the type of person that can't make the decision to choose one person's life over another. Even if someone had murdered my whole family I still wouldn't take an eye for an eye. I imagine you could agree with me that minors really should have to at least notify parents that they are having an abortion, because it is a medical procedure akin to surgery. And you might even agree that doctors should be evaluating every abortion on a case-by-case basis. But for my argument, even if you are poor you shouldn't get an abortion; just because you have difficulties doesn't mean you get to break laws as you wish. If you truly believe life matters at every stage, then the government should protect that life and hold it precious. There's a quote: "if wombs had windows". Imagine that,,,. Is you position based on the fact that you really can't see what's happening, therefore it doesn't matter?

It's a fact that a fetus is a human life. You can't argue the medical definition; but it boils down to philosophy when you ask if a fetus is worth the same as a human adult.

@quitecontrary so what you're saying here is that we should let women die who could be saved? Seriously? First of all, in many situations, both the mother and the baby will die if the pregnancy continues. And if you're making the decision to deny a woman abortion to save her baby at the expense of her own life, aren't you then putting the life of the fetus ahead of the woman's? That's still valuing one life over another. Any choice made in this situation is choosing one life over another (if you believe a fetus is a life. I don't, but for the sake of argument, let's not get into that), and that's a cruddy situation to be in. The only one qualified to make that call is the woman who's life is at risk. Not the law.
"The mother only provides nutrients and shelter"? I think that's a rather minimizing description of pregnancy and childbirth. Also, conditions in the womb such as the mothers diet, etc. effect what genes will be expressed and how they will be expressed, as well as other things. One of the articles I'll link later goes into that, its the one on defining when life begins.
If what constitutes a full human being is a collection of the right tissues and cells, then is a dead body a human being? I mean, sure, a dead body is a human, I guess, but its not alive. It doesn't have rights. You wouldn't prioritize it over a living human.
I do not know what birth defects and down syndrome and clones have to do with this, I really don't. Obviously they are human and you can't kill them, but what does this have to do with abortion?
A person in a coma or a vegetative state is a human life if they have a chance of waking up or if they still have any brain activity. Some people however, become brain dead, in which their body may be kept "alive" by machines and pumps, but their brain and nervous system is effectively dead. They cannot recover or wake up, and their consciousness/sentience no longer exists. They are still a human, but they are not a human life. Someone with no brain stem is actually legally confirmed dead and viewed as such by medicine.
So clearly, vague things like growing, breathing, having living tissues, "developing", etc. aren't good measures for whether or not someone is alive. What makes someone a person is based on whether or not they have sentience, consciousness, the ability to feel pain etc. That's the only definition that makes sense. (Obviously, someone in a coma from which they can wake up from, who still has brain activity, is still a person. Sentience that has been temporarily interrupted is not the same as sentience that has either never existed or has ceased to exist permanently.)
If you can't make the decision to choose someone's life over the other, don't get an abortion. Abortions aren't for everyone (They're like having children that way). But by outlawing abortion, you're not just making that choice for yourself, you're making it for other people.
If someone had murdered your whole family, your family is already dead. Killing the murderer won't save them. If you could kill the murderer before they killed our entire family, you probably would (I certainly would, and if you did, you would be well within your rights to do so under self defence laws) Abortion in cases of medical necessity would be comparable to self defence, not an eye for an eye, even if you do believe that abortion is murder. (I obviously do not.)
If life begins at conception and a fetus or embryo is a person, and there is no distinction between them, that raises some serious ethical questions. Let's say a fertility clinic is on fire, and you're a firefighter rushing in to save everyone. You see a young nurse cowering on the floor trying to escape the smoke, and next to her you see a canister labelled "1,000 frozen embryos". Let's say that you had to choose which one to save, which would you choose? Lets say that an evil sadistic super-villain is holding a baby in one hand and a petri dish with a fertilized embryo in the other, and this super-villain is going to drop one of them into a pit of lava, and is making you choose which one, what should you choose? If its really impossible to value one "life" over another based on stage of development, these choices should be impossible, or in the case of the fire, you would choose the canister, because 1,000 embryos are more than just one nurse. But I really sincerely hope you can see why one is a person and the other isn't.
You also said that you imagine I would agree that minors should need parental permission to get an abortion. I do not agree. I don't believe that anyone has the right to tell a woman, whether she's a teenager or not, what she should or shouldn't do with her body. I looked into the legislation around this and found that while some states do require a parental signature, the supreme court has ruled that minors cannot be entirely dependent on a parents. In states that require parental permission, there is a judicial bypass program to allow minors to receive an abortion without their parent's knowledge or consent. Citation:https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/parental-involvement-minors-abortions#
To address further why requiring parental approval is a bad idea for everyone involved here's an article from the ACLU :https://www.aclu.org/other/laws-restricting-teenagers-access-abortion I really recommend you read it, it does a better job explaining the issue than I could here.
My position is not based on the fact that we can't see whats happening. I don't know where you got that. Wombs might not have windows (It would be pretty weird if they did) but thanks to modern medical science, we do know pretty well what's going on in there. Nothing I've seen has convinced me that abortion is wrong.
On that note, and in response to what you said about the medical definition of human life, I want to direct you to this article https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/when-does-personhood-begin about the medical consensus on when life begins. The answer is that there really is no consensus in the scientific and medical community. The article also points out some really interesting things about the science of reproduction and genetics that you might find interesting. Seriously, read this. It taught me some stuff I didn't know, and it might give you some real food for thought.
Please, consider my points and questions, and read the articles I've linked. Let me know what you think.

@Vita Right now I'm just going to answer what isn't in that last article, so I'm making the assumption that life begins at conception. Don't worry, I'm not ignoring the article, I just need a day or so to process it.

Your first point I kind of already answered--I'm not valuing the fetus's life over the mother's, I'm valuing them as equally important. If you kill the fetus, you're valuing the mother's life; if the mother is going to die, by not going through an abortion are you actually valuing the fetus's life more? No, you aren't. I'm not sure if I can explain this better, but what about when the mother refuses an abortion? Are the doctors just going to stand there and let her die? Is that seriously what happens--or do the doctors try other methods to save her? That's kind of what I meant by a go-to solution; obviously we don't have a specific case to go by in which an abortion is the only medical solution to save a mother's life, so I don't think we can say more on that thread.

What you said about being brain dead is correct; I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that I would defend their right to life. I was supporting my argument in favor of the fact that a fetus is a human person; but to continue that argument I have to get through the article first.

But by outlawing abortion, you're not just making that choice for yourself, you're making it for other people.

I'd argue that by getting an abortion you're deciding life for a fetus(or another person). That's why I think the government should outlaw abortion, so people aren't making life-or-death decisions for an innocent fetus.

The article regarding parental notification was interesting and I wasn't aware of the statistic that "following enactment of Missouri's parental consent law, the proportion of second-trimester abortions among minors increased by 17%". It also mentioned the issues of not-perfect families, and I was expecting that. Maybe you would agree to notifying/getting consent of a trusted adult? I don't think teenagers should just be able to get an abortion, because it's a huge commitment to do that, and there are links between increased mental illness rates and a history of abortion(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6207970/)
Bodily autonomy is important, but there's also a reason why we have parents/trusted adults inform children and teenagers on medical desicions as well as require consent to doctor's treatment of teenagers. It's like a third-party verification; it should support the teenager's decision or it should make them realize this might not be good for me. And, well, I wouldn't call abortion an issue of bodily autonomy: no matter what science says on when a person's life begins, a fetus is not your body.

I'll respond to the last article by tomorrow hopefully. I gave it a preliminary read and here's my first impression:
If scientists can't come to a consensus on when personhood begins, shouldn't we opt to protect all stages of life instead of just ignoring valid scientific claims that might point towards the start before birth?
I'm still processing it, and I'd appreciate it if you gave me a day before coming back at my other arguments. I don't think my definition of when human life begins will change, but I'm open to the argument and I'd like to verify it first.

EDIT: You can ignore my first impression bit, just realized that you could totally argue that as it should be a personal choice at that point.

Okay, so, first impressions aside he(Howard A. Schneiderman) seems to have a pretty tough argument. He ties it back to science a lot and his science is right. But his reasoning is off.

The first thing he made sure to point out was that DNA does not define you. And I agree; you are shaped just as much by your environment(womb) as by your DNA. DNA does not equal a soul or personhood, and I think that's a very important thing he pointed out. We aren't machines with a set code(DNA) that only function by that code.

...certainly obstetricians and gynecologists know all too well that the fetus is not safe, the embryo is not safe within the womb, and that most conceptions, most fertilization events do not come to term as babies, and Michael Sandel when he was brought before the President's Commission on Bioethics said, "If the embryo lost that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death," in other words, if the zygote is a person, "then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem cell research combined."

The problem with the quote he uses isn't that he states that natural zygote death is the equivalent of infant death; it's that he then morally equates natural death with someone intentionally killing a fetus. Natural death isn't a moral problem, but abortion is.

When religion and science are separated, economics wins, but when they're together I think that there's very little that can stand between them.

Well, I'm about to use religion to support my argument; would he still agree??

Bioethicist Robert Green says, "But twinning and fusion events suggest that, even well after the formation of the zygote, biological individuality is not firmly established. Only at gastrulation can we say that the lengthy process of individuation is complete."

Here's the point where you ask the question: are biological individuality and personhood the same? And they very well could be; after all, we each have a unique fingerprint, don't we?

It's incredibly rare, it's reportable, but they[chimeras] do happen, and you don't get a two headed individual. You get one person who acts like one person.

In this part he's talking about chimeras, which(for the most part) happens when one twin dies and the living twin absorbs the other's DNA. The way he talks about this makes it seem like two living people fused into one, which is an entirely different medical condition(conjoined twins--but they are still separate people). But chimeras aren't two people in one or "a two headed individual". I think the argument he was trying to make was that a fetus at this stage cannot be ascribed personhood because it just absorbed someone else, and if twins have two separate personhoods then it also absorbed the twin's soul or personhood. Absorbing another person's DNA is not the same as absorbing another person, and we already established that DNA does not equal personhood.

Now, Renfree, an embryologist says, "Assuming that monozygotic twins have separate souls," okay. He's going to that notion of ensoulment now. "Assuming that monozygotic twins have separate souls, it follows that ensoulment, whatever it must be, must occur after cleavage, at least 12 days after conception."

This is actually a much more persuasive argument than the one about chimeras, which makes me wonder why he spent so much time on the other argument. He argues that because monozygotic twinning can happen fairly late, "12 days" isn't a good indication of when a zygote becomes a person.

There's all sorts of corollary arguments to this, and this one is important, because you'll see in the literature of the personhood movement that once are you a human, you are a person. Well, corpses are not considered persons, even though they are considered humans. Neither is counted in a census, neither can inherit, neither has moral agency, but they're both given respect. You don't eat a corpse if it is human. Even though it's considered human, it's not considered a person. There's the argument of respect, that they're treated with respect because of they're human condition, even if not given the rights of personhood.

This bit here is a little confusing, but I'll try to clear it up. The personhood movement states this: once you are a human, you are a person. He's arguing against that by saying corpses are humans, but are not persons. "Rights of personhood" is a weird phrase because he uses it like "rights of citizen". But personhood and citizenship are not at all the same thing. Is personhood and being human the same thing?
The word "human" does not only describe a corpse, so when he says that neither a human nor a corpse has a moral agency, he's equating one part of being human with the whole of being human. No one says that a dead corpse has a moral agency, but neither do people assert that the whole(human, dead and alive) equals the part(human, dead).
So his premise is false.

Now, there's a position five, which is the gradual acquisition of personhood, and in the scientific literature, it was put forth by very well known biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who said, "The wish felt by many people to pinpoint such a stage," when personhood begins, "probably stems from the belief that a soul, conceived as a preternatural entity, descends upon a formally soulless living stuff, and suddenly transforms the latter into human estate. I hope that modern theologians," he's talking 1976, "can accept the idea that the transformation is not sudden, but gradual." And interesting, that was the point of many Roman Catholic theologians, including Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, that the transformation is not sudden, but gradual. You got different souls when the anatomy changed.

This is his grand finale, that personhood is acquired as we move through life. And I think @Vita you agree with this. And using this premise it seems that you can argue that a zygote or a fetus is less of a person than the mother, and in that case you would absolutely value the mother's life over the child.
However, this is where I think he makes the most important mistake; because here he equates gradual biological change with gradual soul change. I'm going to break the reply here cause this is getting kind of long.

Here I'll defend the position that a human is a person from conception.

And interesting, that was the point of many Roman Catholic theologians, including Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, that the transformation is not sudden, but gradual. You got different souls when the anatomy changed.

Thomas Aquinas had very little knowledge of embryology. He didn't know about DNA, and his knowledge of how a baby developed was based off of empirical evidence, i.e. what he could see(I suppose my point earlier about wombs having windows was off ). I'm using this article to interpret his argument.

What we need to do now is to distinguish the perennially valid metaphysical principles that undergird St Thomas’s account from his antiquated embryology. We have seen that the first metaphysical principle at stake is that material things must be ready to receive a new form. In this case, the form is a rational soul and the requisite disposition on the side of the matter seems to be that those bodily organs needed for thinking must in some way already be present. Now, this is the really critical point: what does it mean for these organs to be present? At least three possibilities present themselves:
(a) the organ is present and mature (it is operative).
(b) the organ is present but immature (so not operative).
(c) the power to develop the organ is present.
...
St Thomas, as we have seen, thought that the development of the body to the level corresponding to option (b) was brought about by the semen acting on the menstrual blood as an instrument of the father. It will be remembered that the principle underlying this was that an effect (the development of a human body) will always be proportioned to its cause. We now know, of course, that the semen does not act as an enduring instrumental cause of the soul of the father. Yet, having stripped away the defunct embryology, we still have the valid metaphysical principle: we still need to find a human cause that could account for the development (a specifically human development) of the bodily organs needed for thinking.
So, what is this cause? The answer can only be that the zygote is itself that cause because it clearly has within itself what it needs to bring about this development. Certainly, it needs nutrients and oxygen from outside (as we all do) but it has within itself the capability to assimilate and use these things in the pursuit of its development. But, and here is the punch line, if the human cause of the development of the bodily organs is the zygote, then the zygote is already human; and, if it is already human, it already has a rational soul. Thus, we see how stripping away the ancient biology but applying the self-same metaphysical principles leads inevitably to the conclusion of immediate ensoulment.

Of course to follow this argument you'd have to follow the rest of Aquinas's arguments regarding souls and rational thought. But the important thing here is that Aquinas's gradual change was based off out-dated embryology, and so by using Aquinas's argument to support his own Schneiderman is contadicting science. The reason there is no consencus among scientists as to when life begins is because most scientists aren't following philosophical arguments correctly; they make the distinction between biological conception and "ensoulment" but when they argue when "ensoulment" occurs their reasoning is incorrect.

You offer a definition of human life as "sentience, consciousness, the ability to feel pain etc." But those are just properties that humans can express; that's not the biological definition of human life. Here's what I found on biological life:

(1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce

Biologically, there is no difference between human and animal life. Aquinas argues that the difference is the type of soul(i.e. intellectual soul for humans). And by using his argument for ensoulment, we know that it happens at conception.

The ethical questions you raise are important; should a zygote be removed from the womb and stored at a fertility clinic? I don't think so, but that's not the argument. I would hope that fertility clinics have proper measures to protect the embryos; considering they were kept frozen I have doubts as to whether a fire could even be started that would end up destroying them. But abortion isn't about an embryo accidentally being destroyed in a fire; it's about intentionally targeting the embryo/fetus/zygote(whatever stage of development it's in) and killing it.

lets stay on topic guys

@quitecontrary, you didn't answer the question about which one you'd save in either of the scenarios I presented.
And no, I don't think that any sort of adult permission should be required to acquire an abortion. Getting an abortion is a commitment, but not as much of a commitment as having a child. I see no benefit to forcing a teenager into either choice against her will.

@Vita it just doesn't make sense to me to perform an evil even if it is to save another person's life. Both of the situations you presented to me force me to choose between one life or another, and my whole point is that it shouldn't be a choice. I won't contradict myself by choosing either the woman or the baby, because I strongly believe that choice is up to God.

I don't think I can make this argument with an atheist because for them everything is powered by human actions and motivations, and something that cannot express itself therefore is of little consequence. I want to speak up for those who can't express themselves, and though it's hard to imagine a zygote or even a fetus wanting anything, it doesn't seem right to kill it on those grounds alone.