If you answer “yes”, all these other elements are basically irrelevant.

If “no”, why are you defining “birth” as the signifier of human rights?

Does this mean a viable, conscious 9-month baby can be aborted simply because it hasn’t been “born” yet?
Why “birth”? Why not “teething”? Why not “puberty”?

If you answer “yes” to aborting a viable, conscious 9-month baby, why can’t viable, conscious babies that *have* been born be killed too?

Excellent summary!
One point on (d): I’m not sure I’d mark ‘consciousness’ as the point, even if we could somehow determine it. Once fertilization occurs, we have that unique human being. Beyond that point, no one really knows at what point ‘value’ should be assigned to that human life. Various criteria could be employed (and I suppose that would be at least a step in the right direction over where we are now), but it would just be arbitrary… and one group could argue against another’s criteria.

One way I’ve heard this presented, is with the building demolition analogy. If you were about to push the plunger to bring a building down, and asked your crew if anyone was still in the building… and they reported that they didn’t really know… would you just push it? In other words, unless we could somehow be certain of the state of the unborn, we’re better to err on the safe side (and preserve life).

Also, a common argument I’ve heard against your last couple of points about women having plenty of reproductive choice is concerning rape, etc. While contributing to a super small percentage of abortions, and being a terribly painful situation, granted, killing an innocent human doesn’t seem to be the proper solution. It does solve a couple of problems (the woman having to carry the baby and the impact that will have), but is quite a horrendous trade-off. One good way to defend against this argument is to replace the fetus with a toddler (‘trot out the toddler’ tactic). So, let’s pretend that when a woman is raped, sometimes she ends up with a 2-yr-old that she must care for for 9 months (we’ll have to pretend she couldn’t adopt him/her out or get someone else to provide care). Would we then say that she would have the right to kill the toddler? Nearly everyone would consider that absurd. Once again, it shows the key issue is that for people trying to be ‘pro-choice’, they have to consider the unborn to be of zero value and not another human being.

My two cents.
The unborn are (a) alive
(b) human (they’re not spiders or fish)
(c) genetically distinct from the woman (which is why her immune system attacks it)
(d) at *some point* (nobody can say precisely when) they become conscious (this happens *before* they are viable).

As for the “self-sustaining” definition? This is also a semantic, pedantic tactic.
*All* living creatures feed off other living things in one way or another.
There are no “independant” living creatures.
They all suck life out of other lives.

Human moral codes in all cultures have placed serious restrictions on the circumstances under which another human can be killed.
This is not taken lightly by any culture (The feminist perspective I find offensively flippant and superficial).
.
Generally the human killed must be a serious danger to others in some way (invading armies, violent criminals), or have committed an offence so grevious that their existence can no longer be tolerated.
Only pregnancies that threaten the life of the woman could in any way be perceived as “dangerous”.

Do we really want to emulate the few cultures where infanticide is acceptable? Even those cultures are now modernising and reforming.

With so many aware of human rights abuses in the past, it seems odd that one group of historically oppressed people are now demanding the “right” to commit their own abuse against a powerless “other”.

Women have plenty of reproductive “choice”.
There are numerous choices they can make before and/or after becoming pregnant.
Abortion shouldn’t be one of those options.

As for conversion from US to metric, 3.78 L = 1 US gallon…the conversion after that isn’t too difficult . So if a vehicle that gets 4.6 L/100 km, this would be 1.2 gallons /100 km, or about 1.2 gallons per 60 miles, which would calculate to about 50 mpg.

I ran into that problem part way through the process, and this is what Callcentric support said:
“Hello,
With other customers, they have provided a statement that “Google Checkout” provides when you purchase a number and the address is usually listed at the bottom.
If you can provide this document, or any other email from Google Checkout or Gizmo5 that displays your address, we will accept it.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know so we may proceed. We are sorry if this is an inconvenience to you. Thank you.”

I was able to submit a screen-shot of my Gizmo5 account page, which had the phone numbers which are mine. Then I submitted one of my recent statements where I added some minutes to my account. They accepted that. Af first, I figured I needed the statement where I purchased the phone number where both would be on the same ‘receipt’, which I’m not sure if I could have found.

Hope that helps! -Steve