Pro-Life or Not So Much?

Are those who claim the right to protect the life of embryonic humans, people who are aptly named pro-lifers, really struggling to preserve life? Or are they just preserving their egoistic ideologies?

Given the choice between saving an embryo and saving a mother I do not see how a pro-lifer can value an embryo on the same scale as the mother. How can you attribute the same qualities, the same rights, the same privileges to the embryo as to the mother?

Consider this; a mother, a wife. She has been born for forty years and on the Earth she walked for forty years. Now look at her history, but do not start from her childhood. Do not look at when she was just a ball of cells but look at her now, an adult human being. This person has a life. She eats, she loves, she smiles and cries, she can talk and dance. She has friends and maybe family. She is living. Her memories live in the minds of those who met her, her 'soul' lives on in the lives of the people around her. Yet, look at her now when she was just a ball of cell. What defined her then as what she is now? Was she then what she is now?

Now consider that embryo deleted from existence. There is no mother any more. No memories linger in the minds of people that never had the chance to get to know this person. Yet, they do not know this. For they had never the chance to meet her in the first place, and thus never had the chance to integrate her in their lives. She will never be missed, always forgotten. An embryo which is not born is not a human which is to die.

Pro-lifers tell me that the embryo has potential to become human. That if given enough time, it will grow to become this mother. I tell them that that is true. I also tell them, that the embryo WILL become a mother, but right now it is not. Consider the embryo discarded. Would you rather discard an embryo or discard the mother which brought forth this same embryo?

What if, after the discard of the first embryo, the mother decided to bare another embryo inside her? Would this embryo grow up to be a human being much or the same as the human being that was discarded before it? And if so, wouldn't this mean that by not discarding the first embryo you are denying life for the second embryo?

Do not put forward arguments of probability when that same probability contradicts your assertions. How are you so certain that that embryo which you so valiantly defend is more important than those countless other possible embryos that you have so foolishly forgotten?

DNA does not make us human. Humanity makes us human. Life moulds us into a shape filled with character and memories. An embryo has none of these. When given the chance to kill an embryo for the benefit of the mother, would you choose to kill an embryo without a written future, or kill a mother with a written past?