As much as I wish I could agree with you, I just can't. Human and human being are exactly the same thing. I think that's an ideology you have come up with yourself to justify your position on abortion. Which is fine. I've made up my own ideology about the nature of heaven and hell, too. It makes sense to me. But it probably isn't true.

In my anatomy scan a few weeks ago I saw my baby's head, arms and legs (including all the bones therein), eyes, nose and ears, bladder, kidneys, spine (each single verterbra), brain, corpus colosum, medulla, feet and hands, fingers, and all four chambers of her heart, beating away like a little champion. The ultrasonographer saw a lot more than I did, but she is supposed to.

Babies do breathe, as well. They don't breathe air - once they're born their respiratory system shuts down what they were doing in utero and switch over to actual `taking a breath' breathing. I only know this because the obstetrician explained to me that because of a medical condition I have, once born my baby might need help to make the switch.

Which brings me to my next point. You state that foetuses need intervention to survive if they are born early. This is true. Babies need intervention to survive once they are born - at full term. A baby without intervention is going to be a dead baby pretty quickly. They can't survive on their own. So your logic fails on that point, too.

Breathing air does not make us human. Our DNA, our development, our brain function and our physical appearance make us human. To suggest that we are not valid or viable until we have taken a breath is, I'm afraid, very naive and ignorant.

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We've got rules and maps and guns in our backs, but we still can't just behave ourselves. Even if to save our own lives, we are a brutal kind. The Shins