The more and more I sit down and try to get my grips around how the "Pro-Life" movment as a whole can seen so inhumane i have come to the inevitable conclusion that these two groups see "life" in completly different terms. Ocne you realize this it's much easier to see where they are comming from and how to argue with them.
Human = DNA + biological activity ( heart beat, brain waves, and/or growth ). This is the standard that seems to be the base of the "Pro-Life" movement.
vs.
Humanity = The condition or quality of being human. This is a more wholistic approach that does not attempt to echew science or reason with idology either at the beginning or end of Human development.
The "Pro-Life" standard leads to inevitable restrictions and absurd conclusions. It leads to control of women through pregnancy, it leads delaying death for hundreds of thousands of elderly and infirm who no longer posses any form of humanity left. Just because we can keep humans alive seemingly indefinatly does not mean that it is ethical to do so. If it became possible to keep a severd finger alive with technology, should we? If we could keep your brain in a jar in a coma, should we? According to the "Pro-Lifers" these items would be manditory and ethical dispite the wasteful nature of them. THIS THINKING FORCES THEM TO CLING TO HUMAN LIFE WHILE ABANDONING HUMANITY.
Using humanity as your guide gives you a much more scientifically grounded view of life and morality. Is a first term fetus alive, of course, does it's humanity outweight the humanity of the mother, no. Should we keep the non-communicative elderly alive well past any reasonable hope of recovery, including doing all surgery possible to keep them alive? Never as it's wasteful and unethical to let them die a slow non-communicative death while occuping valuable tax dollars and hospital space.
This mindset is often attacked as "Playing God", but that is illogical. Since it's only through technology and medicine that we are now able to keep them alive, how it discontinuing advanced medical treatment in any way "Playing God".
It's really been an eye opening experience once you readjust your thinking to see how the other half thinks. You can't argue with them until you get them to see what the base argument is all about... what should we be protecting as a society? Humans or Humanity?