The mother "is" also. Assertion is not proof. The problem with the abortion debate is that all sides want to assert rather than prove their positions.

The mother is a human. Her womb belongs to her. If she cannot control her own body, she is reduced to the level of a farm animal impregnated for the sole purpose of insuring profit for the rancher. What manner of ego run amok does it take to demand control of woman's reproduction?

There is nothing 'potential' about it. It is, and there are no permutations of what 'is' is. And, yes, the protections should be the same.

It's actually very simple (as the article points out).

The thing being aborted: what species is it? Human or other? It's not a frog or a giraffe. It's human. Is it alive or dead? Alive. So, it is a live human being. Pretty simple.

This is spelled out in more detail in the article.

I think all would agree that a zygote is a living thing. But is it a human being? Or is it a potential human being? If it is the latter, should it be accorded that same legal protection as a fully formed independent adult?

I understand what you're saying, and you are right that if that is their argument, it is still invalid regarding abortion since killing the human is "interaction".

However, the idea that rights only *exist* in a social context makes right contingent on social context (and therefore subjective), no matter how you slice it. It would be more appropriate to say that the right to property would be primarily irrelevant (and potentially not discovered) apart from a social context, but that does not mean that it did not exist. I, alone, am *right* to live my life, to own my property, and to do as I see fit -- whether I ever encounter another person or not.

This is the problem which many Objectivists make in interpreting reality through their epistemology. We may come to discover certain things in reality (like rights) through experience (interaction with others), etc... but that experience in no way determines the nature of the reality being discovered.

He wasn't saying individual rights come from society, he was saying they only apply in a social context. Meaning if no humans can interact with you, individual rights don't exist. You can't have a right to property if you're the only human on an island. I'm not arguing how you applied this in your article, I'm just saying your wording may be off or possibly your understanding. Rights are a concept no matter how you look at them, a concept to determine how humans should interact. Without humans interacting you could at the very least say that whether rights exist or not, they don't matter.

Again this doesn't apply to your argument, because if a human kills another human that still counts as an interaction. How does that sound?

"Live and let live" ... you mean like "live and let the unborn baby live too"? Cool.

Although I suspect that you really mean "live and let me (or someone else) kill the unborn baby" -- which sort of evades the issue... and changes the subject. Did you read the post??

Ugh. The pictures heading the article are horrific. But then, the procedures used to produce them are horrific, especially when used to abort late term fetuses. A life is a life. A=A. To say otherwise is to reduce humankind to the level of chemistry and protoplasm. To kill a convicted murderer with legal sanction is not the same. Such a one forfeited life when they committed murder. To kill an unborn who has done no wrong except exist is murder.