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Frist of all, Thank you for your willingness to be open minded.
However, I do not accept your axiom 1 to be completely true.
For example, your part "A" of your axiom #1. While life "could" be thought to begin at contraception, I don't look at "just contraception" to dictate life. I look at viable life. For instance a fertilized egg doesn't necessarily implant itself correctly and you can have a miscarriage or a situation where the fertilized egg implants into the actual tube and must be medically removed. Miscarriages happen, so if life began does that mean the woman's body caused murder?
For your part "B" of axiom #1 I also disagree. I look at the woman (and frankly men as well) to have 100% control over their own body. If they choose to end their own life, that is up to them and I fully support their own (maybe misguided IMO) decision to do so. I do not believe in the war on drugs either. I think the age of adulthood should be ONE age for everything and not just a few things, like 18 to enter into a contract, 21 to drink, etc. It should be one age. So in rough terms, I do not consider a woman having control over her body murder.
So with those two things in disagreement, I simply cannot follow or agree to your logic. And do not get me wrong, you can be 100% against abortion and I don't really care. What you choose to do with your own body is your choice IMO. Where I have issues is when you tell others what to do or force laws for them to follow what you agree with.
Hope that helps.
I copied this to endorse it, but also to expand upon it. (Jumping in before I got to the end of the thread, so may be repeating others.) I, too, disagree with Axiom 1, and so did the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. The decision was based upon practical medical-legal considerations at the time, but also based upon, literally, centuries of the conception of "life". The key issue was, and remains in my view, "viability".
The legal/moral conception for most of recorded history was that an embryo/fetus was not a "living thing" until it could survive outside of the woman's body - i.e., at birth. Caesarean births were possible, but were generally fatal to the mother (and usually only performed if the mother was dying, or had died, in childbirth). The ability to survive the procedure is a relatively modern development. Roe was based upon the understanding of fetal development based upon medical realities of the time (1973). Of course, medicine has moved on, but the general realities it is based upon (trimesters) have not realistically changed significantly. Fetal viability is still the medical, and legal, hallmark, in my view, and is really at 24-25 weeks of gestation. Before that, the fetus has not developed far enough to survive. Medical science has pushed it back, but there are still limits.
There is a problem, I think, both legally and morally, with the framework proposed, and "fetal heartbeat" bills and the like. It comes in two forms:
First, is that we're not really talking about a separate "being". An embryo is a potential life, but is not, realistically, a separate entity from the mother. Someday, maybe soon, science will get there, but we're not there yet. Until we do, I am not an advocate for creating artificial distinctions that have no real-world meaning.
Second, though, is the issue of limits. "Conception" is generally considered (medically) when the fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. Unless that happens, the zygote will never be viable. Unless viability is the standard, there is no meaningful distinction between life and potential life. Why stop at the heartbeat? (Or, for that matter, why start there?) Is every fertilized egg a "human being", despite the fact that the vast majority don't survive? Why stop there? Aren't all eggs and sperm "potential human beings"? Do they require protection as well? From a moral standpoint, in my view, that goes too far.
Roe was intended to be a balanced approach to a thorny moral issue. Frankly, the framework it created is still viable in today's moral universe. It is for these reasons I reject axiom 1.