When do you believe life begins?

[Zanblade]

Theres been quite a lot of debate on this question especially in religion. When does life truly begin has been influencing quite a lot of trial cases as some Christians would find abortion as murder as they believe life is born around the process of fertilisation. And some of them will use the bible as an argument against abortion. For example, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mothers womb."

Well I want to know what you think, when does life begin?

[Hellequin]

Note/edit: When I finished writing this, I realized that it's quite controversial, but it's how I feel. I'll be happy to converse more if anyone's interested.

I think that, since egg and sperm cells are living organisms (or suborganisms, if you'd like), and that there's never a point that the body of a developing fetus is nonliving, it's pretty easy to say that "a life" begins when an egg is fertilized, since it's got very different genetic material from its parent organism. However, the legal definition of a human life is used to determine a lot of things (and who gets to have rights), and as such I think it should be different than a strictly scientific definition.

Life can't possibly be so inherently valuable that its end should be cataclysmic--lives end constantly, in so many ways. I end the lives of the aphids stunting the growth of my mint, nobody feels like that is an injustice to do. I end the lives of each plant and animal I eat. A carrot dies, a tilapia dies, I remain and carry on. Sure, there's militant vegans that say eating meat is morally wrong and anyone who eats meat is evil, but I honestly don't care about them and I'm not going to get into that here. The point is, life always comes to its ends, though parts of it continue on in new forms.

So although a new form of life is indeed created at fertilization, that doesn't mean it's necessarily valuable enough to support. Sometimes the body rejects an embryo or a fetus, sometimes the little thing dies of its own accord because it can't function well enough. I personally believe that in some cases, keeping babies alive can be more cruel than ending their lives quickly. It's like with other animals, some young just aren't needed to survive. In extreme hardship, sometimes the weak young will be culled by the caretakers in order to give the remaining young more of limited resources. This helps ensure that at least one or some will survive to maturity, rather than all dying because of extreme rationing of limited resources. I think that if we're fine with killing other animals, with killing adults, under the appropriate circumstances, then we should be fine with killing off proto-humans and  occasionally even infants (under appropriate circumstances). Life may "begin", in a sense, at fertilization, but ending life is necessary and even kind sometimes.