04-15-2016, 04:50 PM
(04-15-2016, 04:39 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: This is not based on an opinion: once the egg is fertilized, it is growing and developing, and therefore no longer just a glob of cells that is dead matter.
Living things can't just grow from nothing because that's not how life works and that's not how living matter works.
That is not the opinion to which he is referring. The opinion, the philosophical conundrum, that exists within the abortion argument is not whether the embryo is living, but whether it can be considered a separate individual if there is no feasible way for it to be separated from its host, the mother, and survive even with medical intervention. It's the same philosophical question you posed in the OP, really. The differences being, one, conjoined twins have individual identities and are treated as individuals by the government whereas an unborn child has no name, SSN, nothing. And two, the possibility of a conjoined twin surviving something like you describe is there, it is much more feasible to occur than a first or second trimester embryo.
