Concerning your first criticism:
I concede that the statement I made to the effect that birth and conception are the two most obvious points for the beginning of life was biased. These have just always seemed to me the most obvious, but I recognize that there are many other potential points. Having conceded that, I posit that the exact point for the beginning of life is irrelevant.That's a dumb POV.
Drawing the line at either conception or birth is really problematic. For one thing, you're saying that either we need to choose one extreme end or the other because for some reason, there's absolutely no way to meet in the middle. That's completely ridiculous. I think you'll find that an enormous amount of people fall somewhere in the middle; I know that I do. There are plenty of other reasonable places to draw the line, and if you aren't acknowledging any of them, you just aren't looking.
For example:
Almost half of all implanted embryos do not make it to six weeks. Given that, it seems fairly reasonable to make a six-week cut-off, because it's lost so much of the time, anyway. Viability. While viability is changing, there's no reason the law can't change with it. Trimester. Have you seen a fetus in its first trimester? Because I have. It's tiny, and there's not much there. So, yeah. That point of yours is stupid.
Irrelevant because it cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. The closest we could get is a verdict by consensus, and this is not a reliable indicator of what the actual truth of the matter is. There are many varying viewpoints, each with it's own degree of apparent legitimacy, and none of them can be conclusively proven. Should we then act irreversibly, aborting fetuses and by so doing perpetrating a deed which might be murder and which is indisputably the preemption of a human life? Committing such an act, on the basis of little to no concrete information is the height of irresponsibility. If ever there was a case in which the risks were too great to justify the benefits, this is it.
Concerning your second criticism:
Whether or not a fetus is alive has not been, and possibly cannot be determined. Therefore it may be either alive or not alive. Reasonable caution would indicate that we should assume it is alive in order to avoid unintentional mass infanticide. Because of this, and also because I personally believe that a fetus is alive (and because the argument would be otherwise pointless), it will for the sake of the following argument be assumed that the fetus is indeed alive.Also, your other point is stupid. Yes, women can choose (usually) (in the Western world) to not have sex. That isn't the point. Even if they choose to, that doesn't mean that they suddenly cease to have rights over their bodies. During an unwanted pregnancy, there's mutual fist-swingage. The fetus is harming the mother's body, too. There is no other situation in which one person is forced to give up their health and livelihood for another person, because pregnancy is a unique situation. That doesn't mean that you can just wag your finger and say, "You shouldn't have had sex." Why? Because one action does not remove your right to decide what can happen to your body unless you are sentenced to execution. It's irrelevant.
It should be noted that Anonshadow's observation that pregnancy is unique, and the concession that there is at least on exception to the generalization that "...[a single] action does not remove [one's] right to decide what can happen to [one's] body...", are entirely accurate. Lamentably, no other statement in that paragraph enjoys such a distinction.
During pregnancy, a woman does not lose all rights over her body, but they are severely curtailed by the existence of the fetus. The fetus has rights as well, and is far and away the more innocent of the two parties whose rights are in conflict during pregnancy. In this case, the fetus's right to life supersedes any right the mother may have to be unencumbered by pregnancy.
In pregnancy there is emphatically not "mutual fist swingage" in this situation. Except in cases of rape, the fetus is present in the mother's womb because of an entirely voluntary act committed in the full knowledge that sex results in pregnancy (indeed, that reproduction is the primary purpose of sex.) So the fetus's fist swingage consists of being inside the mother's body as a direct result of the mother's own actions. In abortion, the mother's fist swingage consists of termination of the fetus. No, the fist swingage is not mutual at all, and moreover it is all caused by the mother and father of the fetus, not the fetus itself.
Additionally, there are in fact certain actions which repeal certain rights. One example is murder, which repeals one's right to freedom from imprisonment, and even one's right to life. Another example is enlisting in the military, which suboordinates one's wellbeing to the wellbeing of the country as a whole, and removes much of one's right to self-determination, at least for a period of time.
Also, there are necessary consequences to actions: when one touches a hot stove, one will get burned, and when one has sex, one may become pregnant. This is simple cause and effect.
There has thus far been much discussion of rights, but there also exists something called responsibilty. A doctor may be licensed to operate and practice, but with that right comes a responsibility towards his/her patient. One may have the right to drive, but that right is accompanied by a responsibility towards the other drivers, to drive lawfully and responsibly. Yes, one has the right to have sex whenever one wishes, within certain limits of decency, but one also has the responsibility of taking care of the resulting child (or at least of not murdering it). To argue that the act of having sex is irrelevant to whether or not one will become pregnant (thus forfeiting some prerogatives to the rights of the fetus) is akin to arguing that inhalation is irrelevant to the presence of oxygen in the blood.
P.S. Although it hardly needs to be said, a woman is not "forced" to give up her health during pregnancy any more than a person on vacation is forced to ski very fast down a steep snow-covered slope and run into a tree and die, or a person who chooses to eat a spicy dinner is forced to experience heartburn and flatulence afterwards. These are all voluntary choices, each of which has its own set of consequences. Abortion is an attempt to avoid natural consequences through desperate and immoral methods.
