That's a good point and a tough call to make concerning a soul. The physical body aspect is cut and dry because you can detect the initial cells of the fetus with the use of decent ultra-sound equipment. The spirit aspect is also fairly easy to detect, especially when now the EEG and EKG show activity @ 40 days into the development.
You can also tell when the body no longer has a spirit when a qualified coroner or doctor legally pronounces them dead. A soul is fair more subjective.
I do know that life does not need a soul to exist, just a physical body and a spirit, which is what all of living nature has. If the evolutionary model is used, then there can't be any such thing as a soul because it's only real purpose is to carry the entity of the person into an after life realm. So under the evolutionary model, there is no such thing as a soul and no eternal after life. It's man's religion that comes in and invents those concepts. I don't observe evolution creating things without a purpose so if there's no afterlife, then no need for a soul.
Then why would evolution start the creative process of building a human from initial cells without intending to finish the task and make it a human? Evolution wouldn't, every ovum that starts out is intended by nature to become a human once fertilized. Not all make it due to varying dynamics of the enviorment,(actually I think Rei stated that it's only a small percentage of fertilized ovums ever make it through the guantlet of enviromental obstacles, I assume this is evolutions way of ensuring you get a quality product) but it just means that the pregnancy becomes a miscariage.
What I don't understand is when man intervenes in evolution and willfully terminates the pregnancy, why all of a sudden is it taboo to call what has just been killed, a human. Why the sugar coating by saying "Well, it needs to be born to be a human or it needs to show brain activity" when everyone knows what's being stitched together by evoultionary forces in the womb. If all it is, is matter and a life force, who cares if it's human? No biggie so why the discomfort in calling it a human.
Also, I said earlier that people like the term that we as a human race are showing our finest face of compassion by providing safe, accessable abortions to a desperate group of women. So then say it like it is,
Pro Abortion = Pro Compassion
Pro Life = Pro Oppression
Then let the best face of the human race shine forth and be Pro Abortion because the more abortions that can be performed, the more compassion is manifest to an all to often victimized sect of our civilization - women.
[This message has been edited by Lizard Breath, 11-12-2003]