Human zygote.
Human Person?
(Any room for democratic debate?)
What Neil Gorsuch Won't Say About Abortion
Excerpt: Ronald Reagan used to say that you wouldn’t abandon a group of miners who might or might not be trapped in a collapsed mine. You’d go ahead and attempt a rescue, just in case there happened to be human beings down there. Similarly, Reagan said you should protect the unborn, in case it turns out that a fetus—or even an embryo of just a few cells—is a human being after all. (Usually, in controversies like this, it’s science versus religion. In the case of abortion, science keeps nudging the dial to bring conception and the possibility of viable birth closer together, which helps what we might call the Reagan fallacy.) But Reagan still had it wrong. We’re never going to have a sudden, mentally clarifying realization, as you might have a sudden factual revelation. We can only say that somewhere between being a few cells visible only through a microscope and being a complete, crying, pooping, laughing, smiling baby, a new human being is created. The process of human reproduction creates far more embryos than babies. The vast majority of them fail, for a variety of natural reasons, often at such an early stage that the woman involved may never be aware that a life has come and gone. According to the Republican Party, however, each of these microscopic embryos—those that are aborted by nature as well as those that are aborted by human intervention—has the same rights as a fully developed human being, a position whose full implications are never taken seriously and would be farcical if they were. The great strength of the right-to-life movement is its seeming moral clarity. Human life is human life, and it starts when two entities—egg and sperm—become one. Period. Sorry, but it’s more complicated than that. The robe of humanity descends gradually. You never get to draw a line. There are many situations where the difference between right and wrong is a spectrum and not a single point, and many situations where context makes all the difference. If you’re interested in reducing the number of embryos destroyed in this country, your best bet is to support Planned Parenthood."
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