Whatever “right to life” entails or means, it must be absolute if it is a right. E.g., if you have a right to practice any religion (peacefully) that you want, then there is absolutely no circumstances where the nation in which you live can stop you from practicing your religion (peacefully) — Bob Ross

That little parenthetical withdrawal made me smile. You rights are ABSOLUTE, except for...

their Telos dictates that they will develop rational capacities — Bob Ross

Would you say that ‘DNA’ could replace “Telos” in this sentence?

Rights are not found in the world. They are given, by us.

If @Bob Ross would have the argument framed in terms of rights, then we can evaluate it is terms of rights. The rights of Mrs Smith outweigh the rights of a mere cyst. If it seems that they do not, then the way rights have been allocated is in error.

Talk of telos marks the theistic underpinnings of certain ethical views. Saying babies should be born with two arms marks ableism, failing to acknowledge the variety of human life. Presumably a person with one arm is to be pitied, but their impurity must debar them form the Temple. Talk of "should" marks the move from how things are to how you want them to be, or to how you think your invisible friend want them to be.

When your moral theory arrives at an immoral position, then your moral theory is wrong. Giving a zygote standing over Mrs Smith is immoral, and hence so is any moral theory that reaches that conclusion. Your moral theory reaches that conclusion. Hence it is wrong. — Banno

:100:

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" --Edgar Allan Poe

@RogueAI

When your moral theory arrives at an immoral position, then your moral theory is wrong. Giving a zygote standing over Mrs Smith is immoral, and hence so is any moral theory that reaches that conclusion. Your moral theory reaches that conclusion. Hence it is wrong.

You are begging the question: whether or not my theory arrives at an “immoral position” is exactly the essence of the abortion debate, which you are supposed to be engaging with me on.

By positing that any moral theory which arrives an immoral position is wrong, you are not wrong (in that claim); but the problem is that you must provide an alternative moral theory in order to demonstrate that an immoral position actually was reached (unless you want to appeal to moral intuitions).

I haven't denied that zygotes have rights, but instead have maintained neutrality on that odd issue. My position is that whatever rights the zygot might have are far outweighed by those of Mrs Smith.

That is exactly the issue: you aren’t engaging with any of the ethical considerations of this dilemma. You are just keeping it vague and appealing to a moral intuition that you have (at best) that we should allow women to violate a zygote’s rights.

That little parenthetical withdrawal made me smile. You rights are ABSOLUTE, except for...

:smile: We can split hairs on what exactly the right to practice religion entails, but my point is that if it is a right than whatever it entails is absolute—surely you can agree with that?!? Otherwise, we are talking about privileges...I think we can find common ground here.

Rights are not found in the world. They are given, by us.

They are given by us to best uphold the respect we deserve; and, in this sense, are innate. If there were no societies, one would still have basic human rights.

The rights of Mrs Smith outweigh the rights of a mere cyst.

This is internally incoherent; for a right is absolute, and saying someone has the right to X but only by a degree such that someone else’s right to X can trump it is to say, in a convoluted fashion, at best, that the former only has a privilege to X. If they have a right to X, then that cannot be taken away even for someone else’ right to X.

E.g., if I have a right not to be murdered, then I cannot rightfully be murdered even if someone else could be saved from being murdered, who also has a right not to be, by sacrificing me. To say I have a degree of a right to not be murdered, is to really say I have a privilege to not be murdered (in some scenarios).

I think that evolution and biology are the groundings for Teleology: I don't think that there needs to be an agent that designed it for there to be design.

I think that evolution and biology are the groundings for Teleology: I don't think that there needs to be an agent that designed it for there to be design. — Bob Ross

Or for there to be a soul. Aristotle believed a fetus in early gestation has the soul of a vegetable, then of an animal, and only later became "animated" with a human soul by "ensoulment". For him, ensoulment occurred 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days after conception for female.

Then what is there to argue? Pro-lifers ascribe moral worth to zygotes and pro-choicers don't. There is no objective fact-of-the-matter that determines one group to be correct and the other incorrect.

We are arguing whether it is right or wrong to kill a human being at this stage in his life. It’s an important question.

But not wrong (and stupid) to judge the moral worth of an organism based on the physical characteristics that determine its species?

I don’t understand where this is going. Do you mean something like believing black cats to bring misfortune?

False dichotomy.

True, I meant they deserve to live or do not deserve to live. So which is it?

We are arguing whether it is right or wrong to kill a human being at this stage in his life. It’s an important question. — NOS4A2

You're not making any sense. You claim that moral worth (and rights) are not properties of objects but "a status we afford or ascribe to them" but then suggest that whether or not it is wrong to kill a human is independent of whether or not we afford or ascribe moral worth (and rights) to them.

Do "so-and-so has a right to live" and "it is wrong to kill so-and-so" mean different things to you?

I don’t understand where this is going. Do you mean something like believing black cats to bring misfortune? — NOS4A2

Both humans and flies are living organisms. You seem to be claiming that it is wrong to kill (innocent) humans but not wrong to kill (innocent) flies. You are judging the morality of killing a living organism based on its physical characteristics (specifically in this case the physical characteristics that determine its species).

So why is it wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some humans (e.g. babies) but not others (e.g. zygotes) based on their physical characteristics but not wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some living organisms (e.g. humans) but not others (e.g. flies) based on their physical characteristics?

True, I meant they deserve to live or do not deserve to live. So which is it? — NOS4A2

Zygotes don't deserve anything, and so neither deserve to live nor deserve to die.

For purposes of a conversation about when a woman can terminate her own pregnancy, most of us, for some ambiguous reason, agree, that the moment of birth demonstrates a sufficiently formed thing we can justifiably call a human being. Maybe it actually starts sometime before birth, or maybe even a few months after birth, but despite those possibilities, most of us stipulate that the moment of birth is at least the moment a new human being can clearly be individuated and identified as such.

For some other ambiguous reason, we all also agree that all human beings share a similar (maybe not identical) right to life, that human life is valued and to be granted as a right to all who have such life. Murder is wrong, because human life is of value, etc.

All sides of the conversation basically agree with these above statements. We all know we won't go killing any babies once they are born without owning up to killing a baby person, and we all would admit killing baby persons is a big no-no because such things are human beings with the right to life.

But when we now ask of ourselves, "can we abort the human fetus sometime after pregnancy but before birth?" intractable disagreement erupts, confusion runs rampant, and logic plays second-fiddle to emotion and posturing.

Can we abort the human fetus sometime after pregnancy but before birth? It depends on two things: whether all humans deserve the same right to life (are there some humans who can justifiably be killed?); and it depends on whether a newly conceived zygote is a human being, or such a zygote is not a person until much later.

The easier question is: is a newly conceived zygote a human being? Or when does a human life come to exist as a human life? (It's an impossible metaphysical pickle, but a straight forward question.)

It occurs to me, if no one ever wanted to abort a fetus, why would anyone question what we were when we were two-days conceived? We would simply see our two-day-old stage of being whatever we are. This is the basic biology of it. All life works that way. Procreation of a species starts at the moment of conception, and ends with two adults having sex, to start it all over again, and again... these are what each human being most fully is. We are living, changing beings now, in the most basic sense, just as we were living, changing beings the day of our conception. All just different stages and functionings along the same simple way of life.

If someone asked me, "What is the oldest moment when anything about you, anything at all relating to just you, first came to be? When did anything about you make it's first appearance?" I would not answer when I was born. I would have to point to when my unique DNA started doing it's human DNA thing. Just like each one of us. We did not exist, and then we existed, and the oldest piece of what is happening in me right now that I can physically prove and demonstrate in the world today, is connected to the information contained in the DNA present at my conception.

Any moment to claim a new human being first comes to be after conception (such as birth) is arbitrary, unless you want to pick the moment of self-consciousness or some higher function (in which case you are way after birth). Science has to go on the demonstrable and testable - which is, for a human body, the moment of conception. Conception is one demonstrable limitation in the life cycle of a human being - it is the limitation I call, it's starting point. I see no better moment or time period during which a new human being first comes to be.

So maybe the only reason to do the mental acrobatics needed to define the moment a new person comes-to-be as happening sometime after the moment of conception, is to see if we can more easily justify abortion?

If a human being comes to be sometime after conception and before birth, then during the time the zygote is a not a human, we can abort it with as much or little consideration as removing an unwanted mole or kidney. We don't have to address the harder, moral question surrounding when can we kill human beings anyway.

But let's assume that two-day-old human zygotes are little baby people. What demands that the woman refrain from booting the new house guest from the premises? Seems to me nothing does, but a convention regarding the value of human beings. Because we can easily use reason to say "Adult women are more valuable than unformed zygote humans, and as human zygotes only exist within the pregnant woman's body, she should get to decide what to do about the zygote.

This argument is both ridiculous (as it undermines the function of any moral law) and impossible to refute (as no one agrees on an objective morality beyond the vague, ambiguous, "killing people is bad").

So can a woman abort her tiny one-celled human being?

So my approach is, the intellectually honest position is to admit you first existed at the moment you were conceived in your mother's woman, as all humans beings trace their presence back to this moment and nothing before then. And then admit we adults all have a choice when it comes to morality - do we want a universal morality or not? If we don't, we can let people decide for themselves which human zygotes get to go on living (squatters that they are), and which do not. If we do want to say "All humans have an equal right to life" then we have to say "I will not kill human zygotes." (We can deal with exceptions to the rules later, as when the life of the mother and zygote compete with each other, or other reasons.)

And my approach to this is, there is no morality without an objective morality. If we live in a world where each of us gets to decide whether to kill this or that person, we may as well say we live in a world where there are no rules. People are idiots, including you and me. Maybe we shouldn't value ourselves at all, in which case abortion makes total sense. But if we, for some ambiguous reason, want to say human beings are wonderful flowers on the face of this universe, highly valued and not to be killed, then we are stuck with the beauty of two-day-old baby Ziggy too.

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" --Edgar Allan Poe

Yes, folks focus (overly focus, in my opinion) on the life vs death of the fetus when addressing the topic of abortion, whereas the crux of the issue lies elsewhere, namely whose autonomy should supercede the other's.

Yeah, I don't buy that (sorry Aristotle).

Yeah, I don't buy that (sorry Aristotle). — Bob Ross

Though your objection to abortion is based in Aristotelianism?

Technically, neo-aristotelian. The part I was discussing was Aristotelian in nature; but you pointed out some other point that Aristotle made, assuming you are right, about souls. I am not sure he actually believed that, and don't want to re-comb through all his literature to find out.

Any moment to claim a new human being first comes to be after conception (such as birth) is arbitrary, unless you want to pick the moment of self-consciousness or some higher function (in which case you are way after birth). Science has to go on the demonstrable and testable - which is, for a human body, the moment of conception. Conception is one demonstrable limitation in the life cycle of a human being - it is the limitation I call, it's starting point. I see no better moment or time period during which a new human being first comes to be. — Fire Ologist

Two zygotes can fuse into one, creating a chimera. One zygote can split into two, creating twins. The origin and persistence of a personal identity doesn't work in the neat and tidy way that you might want it to.

We can deal with exceptions to the rules later, as when the life of the mother and zygote compete with each other, or other reasons. — Fire Ologist

We are dealing with exceptions. If continued pregnancy will kill the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy will paralyse the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy is not what the mother wants then abortion is acceptable.

As soon as you accept that the zygote's right to live is not absolute – that sometimes abortion is acceptable – the claim "abortion is unacceptable because the zygote has a right to live" is accepted to be a non sequitur. There is always an explicit "unless there are good reasons to abort".

We just disagree on what constitutes good reasons. You might agree that if the mother is at risk of death or paralysis then the reasons to abort are good, but not agree that if the mother doesn't want to continue the pregnancy then the reason to abort is also good.

I appreciate your elaboration on your thoughts, and I cannot possibly dissect all of it in one response; so I will address some key points that you may find worth digesting.

1. Persons are not, traditionally, identical to human beings. You used them interchangeably throughout the conversation, and most people are going to deny that rights are grounded in the organism—they usually believe it is grounded in personhood. The question becomes: “(1) when does a human being become a person, and (2) what is personhood?”. Conventionally (right now), personhood is mindhood: it is to be a person. The more I think about it, the more I want to use ‘personhood’ in the pre-modern sense: to have a nature that sets own out as developing into having a mind with a proper, rational will.

2. For those who are pro-choice, if I were to iron man there position, they have no problem with providing the asymmetry between infanticide and abortion: the latter is the killing of a person, the former (in all permissible cases) is not. The reason I think you, specifically, think this is a problem, is because you are equivocating ‘human beingness’ with ‘personhoodness’.

3. When life begins, does nothing to comment on when a life has rights. You are right that, scientifically, it is uncontroversially true that your life began with conception; but this doesn’t directly address if you have any rights upon beginning to exist. You need some further argument for that.

4. “killing people is bad”, as you put it, is not really a good representation of pro-life positions (if we iron man it): a pro-life person (usually) thinks that human beings acquire their rights immediately upon beginning to live and the ends do not justify the means, so it is straightforwardly immoral to abort.

5. Whether or not “we want” a “universal morality” is irrelevant to ethics: either you really should or should not do such-and-such, or there isn’t.

Just food for thought for you too chow down on and digest.

You are begging the question: whether or not my theory arrives at an “immoral position” is exactly the essence of the abortion debate, which you are supposed to be engaging with me on. — Bob Ross

No, we've shown with examples that the life of a zygote pales in comparison to the life of a person. For example, if an orphanage and fertility clinic with x amount of zygotes (where x is whatever huge number you want) are on fire, you save the orphanage. In a trolley car situation, you run over x zygotes to save a child (again, where x is any huge number you want).

You're not making any sense. You claim that moral worth (and rights) are not properties of objects but "a status we afford or ascribe to them" but then suggest that whether or not it is wrong to kill a human is independent of whether or not we afford or ascribe moral worth (and rights) to them.

Do "so-and-so has a right to live" and "it is wrong to kill so-and-so" mean different things to you?

Yes, one is the reason to conclude the other. If you believe the first the other ought to follow. Does that make sense?

Both humans and flies are living organisms. You seem to be claiming that it is wrong to kill (innocent) humans but not wrong to kill (innocent) flies. You are judging the morality of killing a living organism based on its physical characteristics (specifically in this case the physical characteristics that determine its species).

So why is it wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some humans (e.g. babies) but not others (e.g. zygotes) based on their physical characteristics but not wrong to judge that it is wrong to kill some living organisms (e.g. humans) but not others (e.g. flies) based on their physical characteristics?

I don’t kill flies because of their physical characteristics but because of what they do. I kill other organisms because I need to eat them, not because they have hooves or fins. But this conversation is about killing members of your own species.

Zygotes don't deserve anything, and so neither deserve to live nor deserve to die.

Many parents would disagree with you. So what is your reasoning?

No, we've shown with examples that the life of a zygote pales in comparison to the life of a person. For example, if an orphanage and fertility clinic with x amount of zygotes (where x is whatever huge number you want) are on fire, you save the orphanage. In a trolley car situation, you run over x zygotes to save a child (again, where x is any huge number you want).

How about all of them? Then again there would be no orphanage, nor any human for that matter.

Technically, neo-aristotelian. The part I was discussing was Aristotelian in nature; but you pointed out some other point that Aristotle made, assuming you are right, about souls. I am not sure he actually believed that, and don't want to re-comb through all his literature to find out. — Bob Ross

So your view follows Neo-Aristoelianism in believing that abortion is wrong because it interrupts the natural potential of the fetus to become a virtuous, rational human being, which contravenes its telos and human flourishing.

I feel that it's wrong also, though I'm not anti-abortion. Are you anti-abortion or would you support making it legal up to, say, thirteen weeks (when over 90% are performed)?

Yes, one is the reason to conclude the other. If you believe the first the other ought to follow. Does that make sense? — NOS4A2

You have said that rights are not properties of objects; that all that can be said is that we either do or don't grant rights to something.

If whether or not it is wrong to kill something depends on whether or not it has a right to live, and if whether or not something has a right to live depends on whether or not we grant it the right to live, then whether or not it is wrong to kill something depends on whether or not we grant it the right to live.

So arguing over whether or not it is wrong to kill zygotes is arguing over whether or not we grant zygotes the right to live. You grant zygotes the right to live and I don't. So where do we go from there? By your own logic it is not the case that one of us is correct and the other incorrect.

I don’t kill flies because of their physical characteristics but because of what they do. I kill other organisms because I need to eat them, not because they have hooves or fins. But this conversation is about killing members of your own species. — NOS4A2

We're not talking about whether or not we do kill things; we're talking about whether or not it is wrong to kills things.

Why is it wrong to kill (innocent) humans but not wrong to kill (innocent) non-humans? They only differ in their physical characteristics, and according to you it is wrong to judge an organism based on its physical characteristics.

Many parents would disagree with you. So what is your reasoning? — NOS4A2

That single-celled organisms don't deserve anything, regardless of physical characteristics (e.g. genetics).

All you have offered is examples which presuppose your own ethical position without offering moral reasons for accepting your position. E.g.,:

I say "yellow is the best color".
You say "why is that?".
I say "because if you have to choose between yellow and any other color you are going with yellow".
You say "how does that answer the question?".

You are analogously begging the question: I want to know why you think we can morally evaluate the zygotes as not having basic human rights which would bar you from making the conclusions you keep making in your examples. All you keep doing is presupposing your own position in your examples, just like I could presuppose yellow is obviously the best color and my example is that I would pick yellow over any other color...that just presupposes my position that yellow is the best color, and that's why I would pick it. When you say "we would pour the zygotes on the burning building", you are literally presupposing what you are supposed to be proving: the zygotes don't have a right to life.

Do you see what I mean?

So your view follows Neo-Aristoelianism in believing that abortion is wrong because it interrupts the natural potential of the fetus to become a virtuous, rational human being, which contravenes its telos and human flourishing.

Sort of: not sure exactly what you are saying here. It is neo-aristotelian because I view personhood and rights as ground fundamentally in rational Telos—viz., in the Telos of a being such that they are marked out as supposed to be developing into a being with a rational will.

Yes, it also disrupts the human virtue that a being could have; but that’s not why. Killing a person in self-defense disrupts their ability to achieve human virtue…

I feel that it's wrong also, though I'm not anti-abortion.

Ethics doesn’t care what you feel: it cares about what moral reasons you have.

Are you anti-abortion or would you support making it legal up to, say, thirteen weeks (when over 90% are performed)?

No. Abortion is always immoral, unless you are including “abortions” in the sense of side effects, as opposed to means, of upholding the woman’s right to bodily autonomy and life (e.g., hysterectomy on a pregnant cancer patient).

~~

You are begging the question: whether or not my theory arrives at an “immoral position” is exactly the essence of the abortion debate, which you are supposed to be engaging with me on. — Bob Ross

Again. How are theories of morality to be judged unless on the basis of the actions they justify? Unless you are claiming that the only criteria for a good moral theory is internal consistency, then there must be moral truths against which we can compare theories. And one of those moral truths is that Mrs Smith should turn out to have greater value than a cysts.

Yes, folks focus (overly focus, in my opinion) on the life vs death of the fetus when addressing the topic of abortion, whereas the crux of the issue lies elsewhere, namely whose autonomy should supercede the other's. — LuckyR

This is similar to an argument made for supporting slavery in America. It's not about humanity, it's about whose autonomy ought to prevail. Bad precedent to set.

Two zygotes can fuse into one, creating a chimera. One zygote can split into two, creating twins. — Michael

True. But how do these possible turns of events detract from what I'm saying occurs at the moment of conception, a conception that occurs prior to any of these other moments anyway?

The mechanics of conception may be broad and are a moving process themselves, true. But the result is the object (or possibly objects in your case) we still have to call a new human zygote. I am saying a new human zygote is the best place to start defining a new human being. Are you saying you agree that a human being started being human at conception and that some of these human beings live for a short time becoming a "chimera" or twins (starting newer human beings in a different way than typical conception)?

The question of what is a human being and when does it come into being is only one question in this discussion, but it is a key question necessary to define what an abortion itself is (removal of a human fetus before birth). Is abortion the killing of a human being or not?

As soon as you accept that the zygote's right to live is not absolute – that sometimes abortion is acceptable – the claim "abortion is unacceptable because the zygote has a right to live" is accepted to be a non sequitur. There is always an explicit "unless there are good reasons to abort". — Michael

You've moved on to address when an abortion is acceptable. I'm just trying to say what an abortion is.

You talk about exceptions. I have to presume you mean exceptions to some rule. Presumably exceptions to a rule like: killing human beings, such as you and me and new born babies, is to be avoided. For example, a rule like: With exceptions in cases of the life and health of the mother, abortion is to be avoided, because abortion is the killing of human beings and killing human beings is to be avoided.

So if you want to have a conversation about exceptions, I have to assume you think that abortion involves the killing of a human being. Otherwise, if the zygote/fetus isn't a human being, killing it does not implicate this rule or its exceptions.

If continued pregnancy will kill the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy will paralyse the mother then abortion is acceptable. If continued pregnancy is not what the mother wants then abortion is acceptable. — Michael

How is that last one an exception? What is your rule, that, without the exception, it would otherwise be wrong for a mother to terminate her pregnancy because she didn't want to be pregnant and/or have a baby? What makes "pregnancy is not what the mother wants" an exception to what rule?

We just disagree on what constitutes good reasons. You might agree that if the mother is at risk of death or paralysis then the reasons to abort are good, but not agree that if the mother doesn't want to continue the pregnancy then the reason to abort is also good. — Michael

I really hadn't commented on my reasons why abortion might be acceptable or not. I never said I agreed that killing any human was a bad thing or not, nor whether killing is sometimes good and best. I merely said an abortion is the killing of a human being.

I agree abortion is acceptable at times. Do you agree abortion is killing a human being?

Ethics doesn’t care what you feel: it cares about what moral reasons you have. — Bob Ross

Feelings have a nasty habit of influencing our moral reasoning.

Abortion is always immoral… — Bob Ross

Neo-Aristoelianism doesn’t appear to take a firm position on the issue, not being based on moral universalism or divine command. It seems within the sphere of virtue ethics that arguments could be made for legal abortion supporting human flourishing better than making it illegal. It's not like there are no negative consequences of making abortion illegal.

By the way, what is the reasoning for placing high moral value on "rational will."

1. Persons are not, traditionally, identical to human beings. You used them interchangeably throughout the conversation, and most people are going to deny that rights are grounded in the organism—they usually believe it is grounded in personhood. The question becomes: “(1) when does a human being become a person, and (2) what is personhood?”. Conventionally (right now), personhood is mindhood: it is to be a person. The more I think about it, the more I want to use ‘personhood’ in the pre-modern sense: to have a nature that sets own out as developing into having a mind with a proper, rational will. — Bob Ross

I appreciate that. I am conflating distinguishable concepts of human being and personhood. But I am trying to treat this more plainly. I see the distinction between a human being and it's personhood as a distraction. I am focused on one key moment (or time frame) in the existence of the full human person - when did it first come to exist? Birth? conception? Age of reason? In the mind of God before all time? Never? When.

Further, this is a speculation about the nature of the human subject for sake of addressing the following already established, immovable objects: a newborn baby is a human being and it is one that has a right to life. We can ponder whether a this newborn has a mind, can experience, displays "personhood" etc., but it doesn't matter what we find - we already cannot kill a newborn baby. So the sole focus is, "is there a time before birth, possibly at conception or sometime after, when this newborn being that we now cannot kill and recognize as having rights, should still be treated as a person so as to cause us to protect its body from abortion?" If we stick to physical, demonstrable, observations to base our definitions and conclusions, the moment of conception seems plain. If we stray into the nature of mind, and personhood as if these are distinct from the body, then we will either show that even newborns are not persons, or I'd love to hear a good definition of a human being that clearly demonstrates that a newly conceived fetus is not simply the first moment any of us came to be.

2. For those who are pro-choice, if I were to iron man there position, they have no problem with providing the asymmetry between infanticide and abortion: the latter is the killing of a person, the former (in all permissible cases) is not. The reason I think you, specifically, think this is a problem, is because you are equivocating ‘human beingness’ with ‘personhoodness’. — Bob Ross

I think people are conflating two different issues as one. The moral vagaries surrounding killing persons, and the definition of persons. On the one hand, there is "what is a person/human being (the thing we protect after birth) and when does it begin?" Do we start being human beings the day we are born, which is the same day our right to life is recognized (depending on the state of course, but that's a third issue)? Or do we start being a human being sometime earlier than that or later than that? That is one issue. On the other hand there is the question of, "Because killing human beings or persons is wrong, when is abortion potentially wrong?" The answer may be always, or never, but it is a different issue.

3. When life begins, does nothing to comment on when a life has rights. You are right that, scientifically, it is uncontroversially true that your life began with conception; but this doesn’t directly address if you have any rights upon beginning to exist. You need some further argument for that. — Bob Ross

We are stipulating that all new born babies are human beings, with rights. If it is uncontested that a human life began at conception, and it is a human being such as a baby that has a right to life, I do not see any good arguments grounding a removal of those rights before the baby is born while retaining the fact that it is a human being. What happens in the womb that is so different from a new born that would allow this otherwise individual human life to be seen as not have the same rights as anyone? All the arguments I've seen contradict themselves.

4. “killing people is bad”, as you put it, is not really a good representation of pro-life positions (if we iron man it): a pro-life person (usually) thinks that human beings acquire their rights immediately upon beginning to live and the ends do not justify the means, so it is straightforwardly immoral to abort. — Bob Ross

I'm anti-private-right-of-abortion-without-exception. I'm not pro-life. This conversation has so many permutations. I think people like delving into the minutia before even admitting the common ground they share.

Newborn is a human being.
Killing human beings is to be avoided.
A newly conceived zygote is a prior stage in the life of the newborn.
So a newly conceived zygote is a human being, the killing of which should be avoided.

Avoided, but for any subsequent exceptions somebody might argue for.

How are theories of morality to be judged unless on the basis of the actions they justify?

Moral theories are not analyzed based off of moral intuitions: moral intuitions are analyzed in terms of moral theories. Moral theories are evaluated based off of how well they evaluate what is actually good qua (right and wrong) behavior.