Here's a simple definition of life from dictionary.com:
the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.
Obviously, the child in the womb meets all of these conditions, quite literally from the moment of conception.
A dictionary definition isn't the final word on life, but it's not a bad start
What's interesting about the standard that you offered is that it's a really high bar. A nine-year old is not "fully formed in any respect." A 22-year old might be fully formed in some respects, but certainly not all.
A five year old in a coma would fail every single one of your tests.
But I think there's a deeper problem. I can prove to you that the child and the womb can think and feel, and I can do it with one word: Wait.
In other words, it's not that the being we are talking about is incapable of the things you care about like some sort of cocroach. It's just that they need more time to develop. Something they would have if we didn't kill them.
One example that I think illustrates this well is one that I just used in recently in a Medium comment thread. I apologize if it was this one and I'm repeating myself, but it applies here. Imagine a man is on trial fro raping a little girl. His defense is "your honor, I didn't rape her, I couldn't have raped her, because she's incapable of giving consent."
That seems to make the action worse, not better.
When someone is still developing and lacks capacities that they will attain later, you have extra responsibility to take care of them.
Of course with rape, like murder, you shouldn't be doing it to anyone.
I think one good way of looking at the question of killing is "did you rob it of a future?" When you smush a fly, the clear answer is yes. So you killed the fly in that instance, regardless of it can think or feel. Of course, I'm okay with the killing of flies. For me, the single biggest distingtion is human vs. non human. And the child in the womb is undeniable a unique human being.
This is a big deal not just on a moral level, but on a practical one as well. In order for society to function, we all need a baseline of respect for human life. We don't get to pick and choose what counts as life based on what is conventient to us. I can't just declare you to not be a "life" just like you can't do the same to me. We have to respect the life of every human being. And there is no doubt that the child in the womb is a human being at the earliest stage of development
The issue of early misscarriage that you raise is certainly interesting, although I don't think anyone truly nows how common (or uncommon) it is.
Obviously I don't spend much time mourning those cases, not because those lives don't matter, but because I don't know about them, Just like I'm guessing you don't spend much time in distress about the tens of millions of slaves accross the globe. It's not that you're cool with slavery, it's just that chances are, you didn't even know that there were tens of millions of slaves accross the globe. Even if you did, it's easy to ignore the plight of a nameless, faceless group. And to a large extent, that's what's happening here. It's easy to value human life when you can see the cute face of a baby. But the children in the womb and slaves around the world are real human beings, in most peoples' minds they are just nameless faceless abstractions.
I don't find the argument that "not all pregnancies are meant to continue" compelling. After all, all humans die. As you point out, "it's nature." So is murder okay? The logic of your position would seem to suggest that yes, murder is "natural" because murder is death, and death is natural. 100% of people that have been murdered would have died anyway. And I'm 100% sure of that statistic.
I'm definitely on board that a woman should be prepared to be pregnant. It's a real shame that we've set up society in such a way that people can coast through life for years on an adolescent autopilot. If I had to guess, I'd say this is a worse problem for men ("Peter Pan Syndrome"), but women certainly aren't immune.
But we need to make several points here:
1) Restricting abortion ecourages responsible behavior. We've already seen this. When Roe was overturned, instantly people started realizing they would need to behave differently
2) When it comes to marriage and/or children, sometimes the way to become responsible is to just take on responsibility. I've seen this happen. A girl I know had a child in high school. Before getting pregnant, you would have said she wasn't ready, but she took on responsibility and found she was up to the challenge
3) Raising a kid isn't the only option. It's worth remembering that while it's hard to find a permanent home for a child in the foster system or an orphanage, there are waiting lists to adopt infants. One of my wife's friends just adopted a child that would have been aborted.
I'm glad to see that you are questioning later term abortions, but I'm curious what your basis for doing so is. If you are completely on board with abortion at one stage but not another, what changed between the two. And how exactly did you know you crossed from totally acceptable to something morally ambiguous?
Why at a certain level should abortions only be performed for certain reasons? And at what stage exactly? Because that's kind of important.
Also, I'm not denying that difficult decisions exist. But usually when people face a choice where it's genuinely impossible to choose, they don't feel regret. How could they? The other choice wasn't any better. The memory might still be painful, but making the decision provides a lot of the relief from the agonizing over the decision and it actually brings you closer to peace. If the particular decision that you made is still nagging at you, that's a pretty good signal. Even if there are exceptions to this, the best course of action for someone burdened with guilt would be to get them to consider the possibility that they made a mistake.
