If killing a person is murder, then there is no legal justification in carrying it out because one is a victim of a crime. Yet, in capital punishment cases, we go ahead and do so anyways.

There is also the religious assertion that in its present state, a zygote is a human being, yet, say, the biological matter that is removed from the body in a woman's period is not. I am not aware of an argument that does not hinge on the zygote being empowered by a magical soul.

Well, a zygote is a developing human being while a placenta is clearly not. You don't have to believe in a soul to think that all human beings -- regardless of their stage of development -- merit legal protection.

A pre-menopausal woman carries thousands of eggs. Are they all also not human beings? Does the average woman commit at least one murder a month? What about the nutrients that might be assembled into a human being?

Giving the 'undifferentiated mass of cells is clearly a human being' argument even a slight push very quickly devolves into absurdity.

They are not humans because they are not fertilized eggs. Unfertilized eggs are haploid, not diploid, meaning they are unpaired chromosomes (am ignoring X and Y). It also means they could not produce a living human... too many problems owing to the missing second chromosome in each pair. Is like having 25,000 gene deletions!

Some animals have a phenomenon called parthenogenesis which allows an unfertilized egg to develop into a living organism. This does not naturally happen in humans. (And I doubt it happens unnaturally.)

The biggest "murderer", using the definition of the religious people, is the "god" himself, as it is known that, biologically, many of the inseminated egg cells don't end up ever becoming babies, failing to attach to the uterus and getting ejected. Even many that attach don't survive long enough to develop, resulting in a natural "miscarriage" later. That's simply how the reproduction mechanisms work.

So why again should humans be punished when it happens all the time anyway "by design"?

> Well, a zygote is a developing human being while a placenta is clearly not.

In that case, pro-lifers should have no issues with a pregnant woman asking her doctor to remove her placenta - as long as they don't touch the zygote.

Wouldn't that equate to imprisoning someone but not providing them with food?

Or the equivalent of removing life support and having them die slowly and painfully, rather than simply administering an overdose of morphine. I do like that the issues blend at this point, though - removing the placenta is something I haven't considered. It would be legal because you can legally take someone off life support.

It seems to equate to imprisoning someone in the house of a very poor person who can only afford to feed themselves, and requiring that poor person to provide the prisoner with food, and then punishing the poor person when they refuse.

Do you prefer to force the mother to feed and host a parasitic child against her will? That's pretty uh...totalitarian.

Religion is the only place where you'll find people arguing that a zygote is a human, so I'll say it's impossible to make the argument without religion.

For a secular reference search "plead the belly".

That's a pretty bold claim that many disagree with.

Don't be shy: if it is so bold, why not explain why?

Feel free to present non-religious arguments that contradict the claim.

I'll bite.

Human life deserves protection. Human life starts at some point in time. Saying human life starts at birth (when the child leaves the womb), makes no sense. There is nothing unique about leaving the womb that infers humanity. There is nothing different between killing at newborn and killing a baby still in the womb who is past-due. Location doesn't infer something is a life or not.

So we need to find a better indication of when a human life begins. One could argue that if a child could live outside the womb, then it is a human life. Currently children commonly survive being born 26 weeks premature (3 months before being normally born). Again, killing a premature baby is no different than killing it in the womb. It's the same life.

Other believe that human life starts before that. Some believe that once the self-sustaining process of forming a baby starts (fertilization), then it's human life.

I'm not arguing for one or the other. However, I do understand why some people hold those beliefs.

The mother's life again gets zero consideration.

How about if we consider that she should not be forced to feed and carry a parasite against her will. It is risky, regularly including death and disfigurement. People love to talk about the right to life when they are referring to an innocent zygote but suddenly everything changes if the mother's rights are brought into it.