Wow, we should all really admire your humanity in making that difficult and painful admission.

Come on, IIuLTiMaFoRSaNII. Why the snark and the irony? You can be a good conversation partner (ready to have an "intellectual" and "nuanced discussion about emotional complexities". Why not stay that way?

Since I am the same kind of person, I'll take you up on your offer. Let the discussion begin! :-)

the arguments of pro-abortion activists make no sense.

What arguments are you talking about? Some do, and some don't. Overgeneralizing doesn't really make you sound convincing.

A fetus is "biologically dependent" on his or her mother and therefore has no right to continue living?

Yes. What is the contradiction? A lung is also "biologically dependent" on its host to continue existing, yet we don't have to say a lung is a human being.

The exact same argument could be made for an infant--indeed, it is in many ways easier to care for a fetus than for an infant, who requires care and feeding from external sources to survive.

Indeed, and this argument has been made, in many cultures that accept infantice as a natural thing (Ancient Greece, for instance, or the indigenous cultures of the Amazon basin on which I happen to be a specialist). Why should that be in itself a problem?

A nine week old fetus has arms, legs, finger, toes, a nervous system, and a heartbeat. He or she is a human being with a right to life.

And a nine-week old fetus doesn't; so you'd argue that it (or would you stick to he or she?) is not a human being and has no right to life? Is it a question of number of weeks?

So, you ask about "personhood". It's a pity that you use emotionally laden negative terms ('legalistic sophistry', 'shameful history' etc.) that sound more like the activist that you say you are not. I'll first of all suggest that we avoid that.

Now, I will also not go into the historical detail, since we all know that 'personhood' has been defined indeed in many wrong ways and has been used to do many wrong things in history. I will not dispute that, so there is no need to go into it.

I will rather turn to the question of what 'personhood' is to you. When is someone a person -- scientifically, legally, morally, religiously (each of these may be different in principle)?

Here is a short summary of my own personal take on it (so not that of pro-choice activists, which I'm not either; everybody has a right to his or her own opinions, and I speak only for myself).

A human being, like every living creature, is a process (a history, a story, a tale) that begins with gametes (haploid sex cells, ovum and sperm) and ends with death. In our world, human beings have legal rights and are entitled to legal protection, which means that we have to define legally what a human being is. We cannot include the whole process (history) that a human being is in the definition, since this would imply ascribing legal rights to gametes which would create tremendously complicated problems; so we have to nuance the definition in a common-sensical way (one that would exclude at least gametes). So a point has to be found in the life history of a human being at which the beginning of his/her legal existence is marked. This point is in principle arbitrary, since there are no absolute arguments for prefering one point more than other (say, the moment of conception, the moment at which the heart starts beating, the moment at which genital organs are formed, the moment at which the whole body is formed, the moment of birth, the moment at which the baby begins to crawl, the moment at which the baby begins to toddle, the moment at which the baby begins to speak...), so it's basically a question of cultural preferences.

A parallel situation: people are assumed to come of age at 18 (or 21). There is no absolute reason to prefer these ages -- maybe 16 would be better, maybe 25, etc. -- but some decision must be made, since babies cannot be given full citizen rights (e.g. the right to vote) for which they still haven't developed the necessary skills. So the actual age (16, 18, 21, 25) is a compromise, not by itself sacred in any way, and changeable should there be any practical reason for doing it.

That's basically my position. What is yours?

is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. I don't know if he is the wave of the future or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if he were.

Malusinka, what you point out are indeed technicalities. They are indeed problems, but they are solvable, and people who want to give rights to f(o)etuses won't be stumped by them, they'll just find some solution.

But who doesn't, dterrydraw? :-)

Considering the strange way sex is handled in American (and most of Western) society, it is not surprising that people would have insecurities about whatever they think now embodies sex appeal. After all, what is there in life without sex appeal, in a post-but-not-quite-prudish society like contemporary America?

I don't blame advertisers as much as I blame the need to feel pleasant to others without actually asking these others (who differ from person to person) what really is pleasant or not. To the point of going ahead with risky operations that really won't change anybody's life.