The Being that matters the most to the abortion question is human Being.

This question has always seemed to me the reddest of herrings. Some behaviors simply create a coarseness that a peaceful and prosperous society need not tolerate. We have laws against animal cruelty, but not because animals "have rights." We have laws against urinating in the subway, but not because platforms "have rights." Abortion may or may not be one of those behaviors. It makes no difference at all whether the aborted thing is a human. The issue is whether we want to be part of a society that values what a fertilized egg may become highly enough to protect it at some stage of its becoming a member of that society.

The law against homicide - as distinct from the law against abortion - may raise questions of whether a human being has been killed. But even then, the issue is not whether the victim is a human being by some test other than whether we want to live in a place where killing that kind of thing is acceptable. The question is not whether the thing is human by philosophical measure, but whether society is made better or worse by a rule against killing it. Thus, we may determine that killing a viable fetus is murder, that aborting an embryo is not murder, and that aborting a fetus at some point pre-viability is a crime sui generis.