Hey man, have you been peekin' in my windows or something?  [:D]

Happyblaster, you bring up some interesting points...

"Your talking to a guy who knows from experience what stage 3 metastasis is all about. None of my tumors had their own heartbeat or measurable brain wave activity."

No those tumors didn't, but the pork chops on your plate did.  The animals which your hygene products were tested on did also.  And the cow that made your shoes...  Having a pulse and brain waves does not equate to humanity.  

You left out the human DNA.  But then, including it would ruin your argument.

Point taken, but when we start comparing "humanity" to livestock, we are stepping onto a slippery and dangerous slope. What about late term/partial birth? I'm not claiming to have the answer, in fact I'm not entirely sure where I fall on the whole issue, but the debate is too fascinating to ignore. What say you to 3rd trimester?

Happy, I'd agree that the above reasons are not valid reasons to have an abortion.  But there are many, many other serious reasons that women have them, and should have the right to have them.  Therefore, you can not make abortion COMPLETELY ILLEGAL, or the serious complications and other medical/violent crime reasons for having an abortion are not protected.  Like I mentioned earlier, my sister had a life saving abortion from a pregnancy that resulted from a gang rape.  She had every right in the world to terminate the pregnancy that would have certainly killed her had she carried the baby for more than 3 months time.

I don't see where you draw that conclusion.  I believe his "single organism" reference was merely an illustration that we [i]must[/i] interact with each other.  Identities and individual rights are modified by that interaction.  Just look at history.  Again, I don't see the logical extention.  The pruner, in the case of voluntary abortion, is the carrier of the embryo.  In the case of forced abortion in China, it's the State.  In the case of war, it is again the State.  Do you see voluntary abortion as a eugenics program?  I see it as an abnormally high prenatal death rate.  It's not quite that random, but close.  Heinlein's point was, I believe, that without birth control [i]and[/i] abortion the physical pressure of high populations will lead to famine and/or war.  And I think he had a point.  What would the population of the U.S. and China be today without birth control and abortion, and could we support it?  Something to think about.  Oh, certainly.  I abhor the idea of abortion as a primary birth control method, and I know for a fact that it is used widely as such.  But I understand that the practice has occurred as far back as ancient Greece (from a previous thread on this very subject, thank you ErictheHun) and I realize that it isn't going to stop because someone makes it illegal.  Too many people believe it to be a "right".

Hey MGNiko

Life saving?
Sure. If you can only save one, you save the strongest or the one with the best chance of making it. That is common sense. It also is very rare.

Rape victims? I don't understand why that makes a difference. The baby didn't commit the crime and does not deserve the death penalty. As far as sin, I think that a baby of rape has no more, and no less, than the regular burden of original sin we all have, and does not deserve death for it.

As an aside, in the old days in law a rape victim was called a "Prosecutrix" and that avoided a lot of baggage. Then in the 60s and 70s we had to start calling them rape victims, and now survivors (it's a bad thing, sure, but survivors?)
Sometimes the old ways were really the best ways.

"You left out the human DNA. But then, including it would ruin your argument."

What does DNA have to do with humanity?  DNA is nothing more than a big molecule.  It's not magic, it simply an instruction manual.  Apes share over 99% of our DNA yet we kill them for science.  A skin cell has all the DNA needed to make a human.  In fact when a single skin cell is placed in the proper medium it will begin to aggressively multiply and grow more skin.  

Until relatively recently it was thought that mature cells were not able to grow into a whole organism.  We now know this to be untrue.  A single cell can be grown into an complete organism with a little manipulation.  You guessed it, I'm talking about cloning...  

It's pretty scary where science has brought us.  Every day you send millions of cells down the shower drain, each one capable of producing a human life.  Every day eggs are fertilized in petri dishes and inserted into women.  With only a little more work one could do the same with a skin cell.  Suddenly those cells falling off your body and that fertilized egg aren't so different.  Every day millions of women pass embryos with their menstrual cycle without ever knowing.  

I'm not sure where I stand on this issue either, but I am sure that I shouldn't unilaterally make decisions for people.  As men we have the freedom to walk away from an unwanted pregnancy, I don't think it fair to take that ability away from women.  I don't necassarily think that either person walking away is right in most cases, but I don't think that it's my decision to make.  I am against third trimester abortions.  By that time a child can survive outside of the mother without support, the embryo has clearly become a child.  

You might want to rephrase that to "wouldn't you agree?"
When you say "think" you are asking quite a lot from someone who has labeled the beauty of the creation of human life, of a human child, of a helpless, defenseless, innocent baby, as parasitic.

[url=www.townhall.com/columnists/Armstrongwilliams/aw20020212.shtml]It's a life, stupid[/url]

[url=www.townhall.com/columnists/maggiegallagher/mg20020212.shtml]The right to choose life[/url]

Sure, it may be, but it happened in my family and a law that makes abortion Illegal would have in effect killed my sister.  She had pre-existing medical problems and had known for a while that she could never have kids.  It wasn't her fault she was raped.  
The simple fact is people are always going to disagree on this subject.  Some have more of a personal stake in the debate than others.  That doesn't mean you resort to name calling and being a prick, (not talking about YOU, just people in general [:)]
Debate is good, personal attacks on members is bad.

No one in either political party, and no Church I have ever heard of, has ever supported any law that would make abortion to save the life of the mother illegal.