I would say it starts somewhere in the middle. It seems pretty obvious to me that we don't have a human life as soon as a sperm cell touches an egg cell - that's just a bunch of cells, nothing like a human life. But we also definitely *do* have a human life before birth, because after 8 months and 3 weeks that baby is almost certainly developed enough to be called a human. Therefore it has to be somewhere in the middle where it stops becoming "just cells" and starts becoming "human life".
I would say life begins at the moment the child could potentially survive outside the womb if it was prematurely born (which is 21 weeks, unbelievable as it seems). If we're going to draw a line anywhere that seems to me like the logical place to draw it.
That certainly isn't a perfect system for deciding when life starts though. That's because as medicine improves babies might be able to be born earlier and earlier, therefore changing the time that life starts. But philosophical questions like "when does life start?" shouldn't depend on the progress of technology, should it? It sounds ridiculous to say that the life of someone born 50 years ago started later than the life of someone born today.
When do you consider life to begin?
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I would say it starts somewhere in the middle. It seems pretty obvious to me that we don't have a human life as soon as a sperm cell touches an egg cell - that's just a bunch of cells, nothing like a human life. But we also definitely *do* have a human life before birth, because after 8 months and 3 weeks that baby is almost certainly developed enough to be called a human. Therefore it has to be somewhere in the middle where it stops becoming "just cells" and starts becoming "human life".
I would say life begins at the moment the child could potentially survive outside the womb if it was prematurely born (which is 21 weeks, unbelievable as it seems). If we're going to draw a line anywhere that seems to me like the logical place to draw it.
That certainly isn't a perfect system for deciding when life starts though. That's because as medicine improves babies might be able to be born earlier and earlier, therefore changing the time that life starts. But philosophical questions like "when does life start?" shouldn't depend on the progress of technology, should it? It sounds ridiculous to say that the life of someone born 50 years ago started later than the life of someone born today.
However, that's the best answer I've got :P