Abortion

Quite right. So until you can prove the existence of this "soul" thing we'll keep right on erring on the side of caution and letting women have free choice over their bodies.

If you're not assigning the mind to the brain, you're assigning it to a supernatural element - we usually call that hypothetical supernatural entity "soul". There is no competing naturalistic explaination.Trouble is the naturalistic explaination has a wealth of empirical evidence on it's side; while the supernatural one has pure speculation and a big pile of philosophical problems on the other.You're acting like in the absence of absolute proof both explainations are equal. This is not so. In every single case where a phenomena has been explained it has been explained by a naturalistic phenomena. Not once in the history of the world has a supernatural explanation triumphed. Not only that but the naturalistic side actually has evidence for it; while the supernaturalistic side has none. No. It's been born; it's no longer placing a physical burden on the mother. Abortion is about the mother; not the fetus.

Science does "know" where mind comes from - it's from the brain. What Science doesn't know is how mind comes from brain - if, indeed, that be a meaningful distinction. You're argument relies on the mind being a seperate and independent entity from the physical development of the body; the only candidate for that is a supernatural soul. There's no Scientism in my statement at all. We do have a lot of empirical evidence for mind being a product of brain; Chiroptera details some in his post. We know activity in the brain both reflects and affects mental states; we can watch emotional responses in the brain, pin down areas related to memory, speech and vision, we can see how damage to the brain impaires mental process and the inbibing of drugs produces emotional and mental states and artefacts. These things are well established. Dualism, meanwhile, has never come up with decent answers to philosophical questions posed 350 years ago let alone the ones posed by modern science.If you're referring to my later statement. Please, give me a single counter-example. Well slap me with a kipper and call me Sally.

So your objection is: people are using abortion to help maintain the lifestyle they want? To which, I reply duh - that's the point!Maintaining freedom of choice about anything (not just a woman choosing what happens to her body) is all about letting people make the choices they want so they can have the lifestyle they want. It assumes that, in most cases, the person best able to decide the best course of action for them is themselves.I don't see anything faintly disturbing about the fact people are exercising their right to choose in order to get the lifestyle they want. There's nothing childish about that; it's stepping up to the plate and making the decision.