[user104658]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

Are you comparing medical knowledge, the kind of things you have to have years of training and education to practice, is the same as recognising social inequality? Really? I've had plenty of operations and medical procedures but it doesn't make me knowledgeable about the ins and outs of those procedures.

When have I ever said that my opinions on racial inequality as as valid as someone who has suffered it? You're just trying to stuff words down my throat now.

At the end of the day, my point is simple, my definition of a fetus being truly alive is 30+ weeks, when fetuses can survive as consistently as full term babies, then I'll change my mind but we're not at that point yet.

I didn't say that the opinion of a woman who has been pregnant is more valid than that of a doctor or a biologist... But you're not either of those? You're a male layperson, your opinion is less valid than that of someone who has experienced a pregnancy, whose opinion is not medical or scientific.

... But to be fair, I doubt you'll find a biologist who would attempt to argue that a fetus of ANY gestation is not alive. I've literally never heard the claim that life that isn't self sustaining "isn't life" in any form, and you don't have to be a biologist for that one, basic high school biology will do, or even reading a dictionary.

Life

the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.

A fetus is a distinct cellular entity that consumes in order to grow and is in a state of continuous cell division. That's literally the only qualification for "being alive". It's made up entirely of human DNA, thus it is human life.

Again, that doesn't mean it is "a meaningful person" in the philosophical sense and that's the part that's open to debate and interpretation. That a fetus is a form of life is simple biological fact.