It's a pretty big topic in Northern Ireland as it isn't legal here. Women face having to travel to England to get an abortion.
I don't agree with abortion on demand, but it should be available in rape & FFA cases.
Except of course in purely cold, hard, scientific terms it definitely is. There is literally no other logical point from which you can determine the beginning of life than conception - which is why it's called conception, of course.
What I find interesting is how those who choose to argue otherwise - who would normally consider themselves to be rational and non-religious - start adopting quasi-religious ideas about when life truly begins when it comes to this issue in order to justify their position.
No, I'm afraid I disagree. 'Human life' is a very nebulous concept when applied to a foetus. It isn't complicated because people don't think about it seriously, it's complicated because it's complicated.
And I haven't even gone down the 'what does human life have to do with the debate and why was it introduced in the first place?' line.
It's complicated because people dishonestly try to hide from the brutal truth of what is being done - namely the termination of human life. Once you remove that dishonesty and obfuscation from the equation and treat it as a brutal, purely utilitarian proposition about the value of one life in relation to others, many of its complications fall away.
And the reason we introduce human life into the debate is because a/ that's what's happening here and b/ the right to life or its obverse the right to take it are pretty fundamental ones when it comes to questions of law and ethics.
In which case a person in a vegetative state without any active brain pattern is also a 'human life' and turning off the life support system is the moral equivalent of murder.
See how easily it gets complicated? The human life angle and conception were introduced because of the Catholic church's opposition to abortion. It isn't in anyway disingenuous or dishonest to question the definition of human life and argue that because it is impossible to define it therefore has no bearing on the argument.
Much of that confusion you mention goes away if that is your perspective as well.