[jammies]

At its core, abortion is about the definition of humanity; I don't think it is plausible to define a first-trimester fetus as "human" without the dualistic (and religious) assumption that it has a soul. I am not aware of anything definitive in the Bible that talks about when the soul binds to the body, and in antiquity many pagans believed that babies were soulless until their first birthday, which is just as plausible - if not more - as the idea that a blastocyst has a soul.

Even if you do not believe in souls, however, it is difficult to condone the practice of terminating viable fetuses, as the only difference between a viable fetus and a baby is location, and not anything morphological. Leaving theological questions aside, this leads us to a solution much as has been implemented in most Western societies - abortion available up to the last trimester, and thereafter only if the fetus is not viable or the mother's life is threatened if the baby is brought to term.

Anything else is difficult to argue except on the basis of religious belief - without the "soul" acting as a clear indicator of humanity, there are simply too many ways of defining "human" that can be proposed, some of them too broad in scope, and some too narrow. It is because these definitions are arguable that the decision must be left to the individual conscience, as you cannot *prove* a fetus is human any more than you can *prove* it is not.

This is why, despite assertions in this thread to the contrary, that it is the religious - and specifically the fundamentalists and the Catholics - who drive the anti-abortion movement. Only those who believe in the soul can definitively claim they know the "truth" about when a human is a human. From the perspective of the State, however, their "truth" should not hold any privileged position, and to give in to these views is to devolve back towards the harmonization of church and state as opposed to the separation thereof.