A living embryo should not be aborted

1. If the embryo is living and human, then it should not be aborted.

2. The embryo, upon conception, is living and human.

3. Therefore, the embryo should not be aborted.

1. This statement is obvious because all living human beings deserve certain inalienable rights - including the right to life.

2. This statement is demonstrated in several different ways. The first is that a growing thing is obviously living. Even those who claim that an embryo is 'just a clump of cells' must admit that the embryo is living, because reproducing cells are, in fact, living.

The embryo is human because moments after fertilization it already has a sex (pertaining to X and Y chromosomes), and it cannot have a human sex without first being human. Its genetic material is very clearly human. Furthermore, it would be difficult to maintain that the conjoining of two humans would create offspring that is a species other than human. If it is not a human, what species is it?

After all, the fruit is always present in the seed. After one week, the embryo has recognizable limbs, and after three weeks, a detectable heartbeat, and after six, it has brainwaves. Yet 48 percent of all abortions in the United States occur after the ninth week. Someone must inform me of what it means to be human and during which week in development one turns the switch on to become human.

Is it consciousness? Hardly, unless you become less human when you sleep. Is it intelligence level? No, because the mentally challenged possess a right to life as any of us do. Abortion is not an economics issue. It is irrelevant to ask how likely an aborted fetus would be to commit crimes upon his maturation.

Might the fetus be more likely to grow up to commit crimes? Maybe, but pre-crime flies in the face of innocent until proven guilty. How isn't it shooting first and asking questions later?

Although important, it is irrelevant (when discussing life or death) to wonder how well the mother would be able to raise the baby once it was born. It is tragic to know that the fetus may grow up in a broken and degenerate home, but that does not mean that we kill him or her to put him or her out of a possible future life of misery.

It is irrelevant to speculate how much the state would have to spend on welfare because of the future newborn. Economically desirable effects are absolutely irrelevant if they came at the cost of a human life, lest the objector believes that one can put a price tag on a human life.

This is not a women's rights issue. The argument that fetuses can be aborted because abortion is a woman's reproductive right begs the question: Is it only a reproductive right if the fetus is not a living human, which is implied in the conclusion "the fetus can be aborted?" For abortion to be a reproductive right, the fetus cannot be living or human, lest the woman believes that a woman's right to her body trumps someone else's right to life.

Obviously women have reproductive rights; however, if the fetus is living and human, then he is no longer an appendage of the woman--he or she is a distinct human being, deserving of all human rights, even though physically he is still connected to the woman.

Must the woman continue the pregnancy even in cases of rape? An avoidable evil (abortion) is never justified, even in response to the gravest of all evils.

Of course our hearts must break over these cases, but the fetus did not commit this crime, and if the fetus is living and human, then her murder compounds the injustice of the rape. A persuasive fact: the demand for newborn adoption greatly exceeds the supply.

With whom is the burden of proof? The fetus, just like the rest of us, is innocent until proven guilty. It seems obvious that if there is any doubt as to a fetus' personhood, then we should err on the side of caution. The only relevant question that needs to be answered on this issue is this: is the fetus living and human?

All other questions are background noise.