Mike,
I've never been altogether comfortable with the strict division between abiogenesis and evolution. It's perfectly reasonable to say that the evolution of all species from the first life forms is a different subject than the emergence of the first life forms themselves. However, I think that Darwin's theory illuminates the similarities between both subjects.
The origin of a contemporary species, according to Darwin, is a process of evolution from an ancestor species. There is no magic threshold that a species crosses where it assumes its species-hood, and it can be difficult to distinguish between subspecies and species. How, then, can we separate a species from the ancestor species, or from the very process by which the new species evolved? The answer is that we can't. The core of Darwinism is that such distinctions are useful but arbitrary, vestiges of the essentialism that Darwin's theory put to rest.
The same goes for the distinction between life and non-life. If we're looking for the magic point where life 'happened,' we're not likely to find it. Even in modern forms there is a Twilight Zone between life and non-life, inhabited by such things as viruses and prions. These forms aren't considered living organisms, though they share some of the biochemical machinery of true life forms. I'm not an expert on proto-biology by any means. There are plausible scenarios for the emergence of life as we know it, but the field is by definition highly speculative.
Speculation using verifiable, testable mechanisms is more responsible than speculation using supernatural fantasies. Yes, I have a thing for Methodological Naturalism, because it's the bullshit filter that has worked. Without MN we have literally no basis for limiting the field of possible mechanisms down to ones that are relevant. If I seem dogmatic in declaring that you can't do science without using MN, just look at the track record of MN in advancing our understanding of natural phenomena. If the puzzle of abiogenesis is to be solved, it will be solved using MN.
regards,
Esteban "Amino Acid Casualty" Hambre