@HumanPersonJr,
- Just thought you might appreciate to know that commenting with a quote from a preacher is a "response in kind" to the quote from Ayn Rand.
- The question of morality is a religious one. Ayn Rand's view of abortion as a human moral right is the result of her religious understanding.
- I guess you could say I am one of DavidC99's pals, but I definitely used to agree with you that the way to wage war with the "Proggie/Libs" was through superior argumentation. However, I had to come to the conclusion that morality is defined outside of my own intellect, feelings, and ultimately authority. For morality to be objective, it must be defined "outside of myself." Personally, I cannot think of an objective morality apart from God.
- So, "making this about God" is a must for me. Because He is the one who gives human rights.
- An example (maybe too far removed for this topic) would be how the U.S. motto is "In God We Trust." Why would they put God on there? Not to make a religious statement, but instead to clearly demonstrate that government is not the ultimate authority.

...Anyway, I thought the preacher did a good job of explaining how we as a culture could come to a conclusion that abortion could actually be considered "moral," even while acknowledging that the "fetus" is an actual "life."

"In a world without God, and without submission to his will, the will—the “want”—of a mother has become the will of a god. I say it carefully and calmly and sadly: Our modern, secular, God-dethroning culture has endowed the will (the “want”) of a mother not just with sovereignty over her child, but with something vastly greater. We have endowed her will with the right and the power to create human personhood. When God is no longer the Creator of human personhood, endowing it with dignity and rights in his own image, we must take that role for him, and we have vested it in the will of the mother. She creates personhood. ...

In other words, in our laws we have now made room for some killing to be justified not on the basis of the rights or crimes of the one killed, but decisively on the basis of the will, the desire, of a stronger person. The decisive criterion of personhood and non-personhood, what is right and wrong, what is legal and what is illegal, is the will of the strong. Might makes right. Might makes personhood. Might makes legal. This is the ultimate statement of anarchy. It is the essence of the original insurrection against God, and against objective truth and right and beauty.

No culture can survive this kind of anarchical thinking indefinitely. Part of the remedy is to spread the truth: Might does not make right. Desire does not define duty. Wanting does not create worth. All of us know intuitively that if someone desires our destruction, that desire does not justify our murder."

- Piper, J. (2009). Sermons from John Piper (2000-2009). Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God.