Everyone seems to default to the legal definition based on a finite point of time. Treat the process of becoming a human being as a "process." It doesn't happen at any particular point of time.

Yes, it does seem like a process as opposed to a finite point. We like to simplify concepts to the lowest denominator - a specific point of time, a specific event, etc. That does not seem to apply here. And this process may be slighly different for various fetuses, perhaps even dependent on outside conditions. The point being is that simply because science cannot define something with exactness at this point of human development is not a reason to default to a supernatural explanation. Otherwise, we haven't progressed far beyond the Ancient Greeks (in some things, I think, we even devolved...).

Actually there is a relatively simple answer to this. According to doctors, life ends when specific brain waves cease. This is generally considered a legal definition of death. The same kind brain waves, as I was told by a neonatologist, commence at about 23-24 weeks. (I do not recall the details of the type of brain waves.) A fetus with those brain waves has a chance to survive outside of the womb. Before those brain waves appear, survival is not possible. Is that perhaps the beginning of a human life? Certainly the functioning brain is what makes us human.

As far as I know, the Old Testament is still part of the Bible and it is filled with little genocides and murderous sprees by God's chosen and eventually, God tops all the little murderers by killing everyone except for Noah. Nice work of Love! But wait - there's more. Now we get to the New Testament - full of love..., or is it? What happens to all those souls that are guilty of nothing more than not accepting the mandatory direction given from above? Tell me, would a loving parent torture and kill his children because they reject his love and teachings? All I can say is, God, save me from this kind of love.
You raise an interesting point of morality - that an atheist supposedly escapes responsibility by rationalizing whatever he wants. I would make a counter argument that a religious person, in doing good, is not really being moral. He is not being immoral, just not actively moral. Morality, by definition, is making a choice between good and bad. If one does good, but he does it because it is his only option, then there's no choice; therefore, it is not an actively moral action. When a person in jail does proper things according to the instructions of the warden, those are not moral actions. Likewise, when a religious person does good things because to do otherwise will be punished by eternity in hell, that is no different than following the instructions of a warden.

That's funny, because it's a criminal act to cause the death of an unborn baby.

What you're saying is, Mother A and Mother B both conceive on the same day.

Mother A gives birth at 39 weeks to a baby, goes out, and her baby is killed by a drunk driver on the way home from the hospital. That drunk driver is charged with murder.

Mother B is on her way to the hospital to give birth at the same time Mother A is driving home from the hospital. The drunk driver's friend, seeing the accident his other drunk buddy just got into, turns to look, and smashes into Mother B's car, killing her unborn baby in the process.

You're saying the first drunk driver should be charged with homicide, but the second drunk driver should not?

Do you realize how absurd that is?

You're trolling because you're trying to change the subject to talk about a topic upon which we have NO means to scientifically verify. It will go nowhere.

The exact moment? A human being begins when it draws its first breath outside the mother's body. A potential is not the same as an actual.

To what extreme would you carry this backward causation? Should a child be able to sue its parents for endowing it with inferior DNA, making it fail, say, a Mensa test? Nature is a crap shoot. We are all here by hundreds of stages of natural selection through hundreds of thousands of years.

Miscarriages are nature's way of eliminating the unfit. In our bodies, and even still in the womb, worn-out or inadequate cells constantly self-destruct and are replaced by new ones, reabsorbed and recycled, until the template wears out in old age. Should government have the power to rule over every cell in our bodies and hold us responsible for any damage we might cause through what we eat, do or omit doing? How do the minions of government know what the rules should be? Why should they be given power over everyone else? Is every citizen, or inhabitant, to be considered the government's property to do with as it deems fit? What kind of world would that be?

To repeat, a human being begins with its first breath. A human being owns itself. The selfish gene of the parents has a vested interest in seeing a child created and raised to successful adulthood capable of reproduction. Hence most parents do care about their offspring. The aged, infirm and demented, who were once robust and vital individuals, but now need care to make their end-of-life tolerable, have to depend on the grateful charity of family or hired help paid from savings. "Honor thy father and mother" was a pragmatic instruction to inculcate the notion of caring for them so you will be cared for when it's your turn to become dependent. It's payback for the years of care parents put into raising their children. Otherwise just set them out on the mountainside to fend for themselves, that the Spartans practiced.

As Ayn Rand said, "Life begins at birth."

Government concerns all of society, and most especially the quality and perpetuation of society. I think the moral issues are of utmost importance to both society and its government.

I have two nephews (by adoption) whose mother was a drug addict all during both pregnancies. These two boys were taken on initially as foster children by my sister-in-law and her husband who have been unable to have children of their own. The boys both are on ADHD medication (my sister-in-law is a professional RN) as a result of their mother's actions. While I am not advocating prison for these mothers, I can tell you from first-hand experience that doing drugs while pregnant can have profound and life-altering effects on the children - like my two nephews. They have serious trouble concentrating, emotional stability akin to a child 4-5 years younger, and a serious lack of self-discipline - again akin to a much younger child.

Please. Just don't do drugs. The long-term consequences on others - especially children - are avoidable and tragic.

How does the DNA of one cell equates to a "human being," except for a potential to bacome one? The blood cell, or a bone cell, or a finger nail cell has the same DNA.

Your GPS analogy is not quite applicable, since my point is that the definition of a human being (or the "start" of one) does not have to be a finite entity. Why are you summarily ruling out a possibility of a process that involves some time. The legal definitions always look for finite points, but that does not apply to many other fields.
As to your point of "trolling," funny that you say that to a person rationalizing the basic concepts of life on a website dedicated to rationalizing the basic concepts of life. Perhaps you would have liked to discuss religion with Ayn Rand, or would you call her a "troll"?

Sometimes there is no satisfactory answer to a dilemma based on our limited knowledge. When does a human-to-be obtain individual rights? When does the woman's individual rights lose precedent? Perhaps there will come a time when we can determine when the embryo, fetus has consciousness and we will define that is the transition point or perhaps there will be some other rational determination but for the time being, it is not unreasonable to me that the time be set arbitrarily as it is done in many states. I, personally, don't see any reason for society to want babies that even the mother doesn't but I also realize that that is not "moral" principle for a basis of law. I am mostly tired of the debate, think there more relevant issues for governance that need to be focused on and are being avoided by blathering about social issues, abortion, gay marriage, legalization of drugs, inequity, hate crime, gun laws and anything else to deflect from hard choices on the real issues that government needs to address.

I'll answer you as soon as you answer me. Because the answer to your first question is plain as day. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

GPS with only 2 satellites can be done on the same theory. There's infinite points you can be where those two spheres intersect, but 99.9999% of those points are invalid, they're either in mid-air, outer space, or underground. If you're on the ground, and you know you're on the ground, there's only two points on the earth you can be. If you're not in Zimbabwe, then you're probably at the intersection of Johnson St and Center Blvd.

In the same way, scientists have exhausted all other options for when a human being becomes a human being. There is no mysterious point it becomes a human being left to choose from, besides conception. Check that, birth is the other option, but that has long been thrown out as an invalid option, given that if you walk up to a 9 month pregnant woman and stab her in the stomach, murdering her baby, you WILL be put in prison for murder (and rightfully so).

And your second question is you, once again, simply trolling and trying to change the subject, wholly irrelevant to the question at hand.

If you put aside the concept of supernatural, e.g., a "soul" added externally by God, there is nothing in a fertilized egg that could be seen as a human being until it develops to some degree. There is potential, to be sure, but not a cognitive, sensing live organism that is in any way different from an ameba.

So, which part of the egg and the sperm, combined, defines the "human being" and where exactly is the "soul" located?

I totally agree. The problem is that other people will not share either of our opinions so in a democratic republic we try for a compromise. I hope others can understand that I find abortions of any kind abhorrent since I believe that life begins at conception. That should place me firmly on one side of the discussion.

I find the reason for my stand on two grounds, the first religious and the second philosophical. I won't go into the religious reasons except to say that my faith call all life precious and that should be enough, but there is much more.

On the philosophical grounds for life at conception, some may find the analogy strained, but it works for me. In all the documents that proclaimed, described, built and installed the birth of our nation the founding fathers all agreed that the most important right a citizen could have was their right to live their life. It is evaluated in freedom of speech, from the tyranny of taxation, life stolen and life enslaved, but most importantly it was the promise of a life free for unexpected death Thomas Jefferson wrote of so eloquently in the decoration of independence.

I believe as I think he did that no person has the right to kill another person as a matter of convenience. That this may include the mother herself goes without question. If she may have that right (a notion I most strongly question) there may come a day when she may be found to have a "right" to terminate the child AFTER birth, a post partum abortion.

If that ever comes to be we will need to apologize to Hitler. AND I have a list of people who need aborted........

Great points Robbie.

Well, I was not using the word "fetus" in a dehumanizing way, but as a factual description.
As to losing humanity with age - that's already being done in Britain and coming to America soon. Try getting an organ transplant or any major operation there (or soon here).

Dude, I don't HAVE to turn to the supernatural to explain it. It's VERY VERY simple to answer the question. Scientists knew it within less than a decade after the asinine Roe v Wade ruling. As technology advanced, they realized that there is no moment, other than conception, that can be used as a defining moment for when an unborn "fetus" is a human being.

I've never said atheism in itself is murderous. I simply said the truth, that it has no moral basis beyond what "I say", or what "you say", or "I believe", etc...