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Comment by benjohnson | Hacker News Reader

From what I've seen, people with a pro-choice viewpoint generally acknowledge that life biologically begins at conception.

The split in viewpoints, as I understand it, is that early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development.

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FWIW, from any of these debates I've read on reddit at least, I've encountered almost no pro-choice people who believe life begins at conception. The party line seems to be that it is a zygote until birth - well, of course they'd never state it in such clear terms as that, instead you get any variety of mental gymnastics to avoid the question, but one thing they are absolutely certain about is, it is not a life.

"Life" vs "(viable) human life". Not the same thing.

A 26 week old fetus is viable, but you can still abort it.

I think most people would say that "viable only with massive medical intervention" is not what they mean by "viable" in this context.

There are plenty of full term babies that need "massive medical intervention". Are they viable?

They are not, and using the exact same logic advocated by the the pro-choice camp, there should be no moral issues with not providing the necessary medical support for the baby to survive. Taken at their word, if it is not self-sufficient, it is not a life.

I'm more than willing to admit that if the baby is removed from the womb too early, it will not survive, so in that sense it is "not viable". What bothers me is most (if not all, in my experience) pro-choice advocates refuse to even acknowledge the fact that non-intervention will result in a human being successfully born in the vast majority of scenarios. To me it is intellectually dishonest.

Interesting. Most of the people I hear supporting abortion won't acknowledge that it's a life that's being ended. Whether they don't know or just won't admit it varies by person.

  early life isn't significant enough to protect at that stage of development

The usual condition as I understand it is that it must be a "viable human life" to merit protection. All sorts of things can go wrong, such as miscarriage, so it's not a viable human life until it's born.

Those egg and sperm cells are quite alive before they meet.

However neither carries a full copy of a person's DNA. They're only "alive" in that they're biological.

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