Right to Life?

I recently had a conversation with someone over social media about a very divided topic; abortion. I was trying to understand something I had heard recently and during the course of this conversation, I learned some interesting things and these things I think lead down a scary path so I wanted to share.

I asked how anyone who believes, trusts, and uses sciences can support abortion. Science has given criteria to determine if something is living or inanimate. Humans, and human cells, are both considered living by these standards. The minute the sperm and egg combine, a zygote is formed. At no time in this process does either the sperm, the egg, or the forming zygote cease to be living. This zygote has a different set of genes than either parent. This qualifies it as a separate being from the mother. While the mother is the host and allows the zygote/embryo/fetus to grow and survive, the zygote/embryo/fetus is a living entity separate from the mother.

This is how I believe and how I understand what I have learned. In this conversation, the other person was trying to explain their beliefs. First, they claimed that the zygote/embryo couldn't be considered living as it has no brain wave activity/neural activity. However, this isn't a classification for something to be considered living. They then tried to determine when a zygote/embryo should be considered living by determining when a human is considered dead. This approach doesn't make much sense to me. Cells are living. When they combine, they don't die. They don't not live for any amount of time.

While I appreciated someone taking the time and sharing the research they had found, I didn't agree. Mostly because they were changing definitions to meet the criteria they were studying. Researching to find things that they subjectively determined.

The part of the conversation that frightened me the most was when they shared how some scientists are trying to determine what they call a "right to life." When should something be "living" or "alive enough" to have the right to remain so. Why this is so scary is because now this living, unborn fetus somehow doesn't have the "right to life" so then its ok for us to kill it. As this was explained to me in our conversation, I was shocked. The first thing that came into my head was "Isn't this exactly what started the U.S. and German eugenics programs? Isn't this why there was slavery? Isn't thinking like this what lead to so many other horrible things in history?"

If you don't know, eugenics is "the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics" (Google dictionary).  This was practiced during times of slavery to try and create stronger, healthier slaves. Generally done in awful ways such as forced rape of slaves. At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. and Germany worked on a different eugenics program. This program was forced sterilization of persons who were considered mentally slow or of lower intelligence. It was all in the name of doing what was best for society; increasing intelligence, removing those who would be considered a burden, etc.

Abortion is turning into this same thing. Iceland and Denmark are having record low incidences of children with Down syndrome being born because their healthcare systems require doctors to offer genetic testing that can identify genetic irregularities. The majority of mothers-to-be receive this testing and then almost all of these women are aborting the fetuses determined to have issues. All of this is covered by their healthcare. And all in the name of removing some "undue burden" on the mother. (I have heard the "undue burden" debate in other conversations about abortion meaning the state or government doesn't have the power to take away a woman's right to an abortion given the undue burdens of emotional, fiscal, physical and other stresses pregnancy and subsequent birth place on a woman.)

I just don't understand how one group of people can arbitrarily decide when someone else has the "right to life".