Over the course of a human life, a person passes through many stages of biological development. We know it is natural for a person to move from being a helpless infant, to a stumbling toddler, to a wiry teen, and so on. Many changes occur in size, appearance, hormones, and otherwise. But throughout these stages, we recognize that it is the same human being.
And barring accident, or disease, or violence, we know for certain that a human being in one early stage will eventually progress to the next. For example, the infant will eventually become a toddler, and the toddler will eventually become a teen.
Consequently, it is inconsistent of us to imagine that a fetus (our unborn offspring) is not a human being, simply because it happens to be at an early stage of development within the womb of its mother. Whether it has four cells or four thousand, nevertheless it is progressing forward in this "march of life". And barring accident, or disease, or violence, we know for certain that it is going to continue in that progression.
And so it would also be inconsistent of us to deny that fetus the most basic of human rights - life. We endeavor to provide all the members of our race with protection from those that seek to harm them unjustly. At the point of conception, the fetus has begun its journey in the process of life, and so it is deserving of whatever reasonable protection can be afforded it. And it most certainly does not deserve to be killed, simply because it is inconvenient to the parents, or because educators and legislators are uncertain about what role it might fill in society.
This argument, of course, does not require us to give basic human rights to sperm or to eggs. We recognize that sperm and eggs are needed for conception. Nevertheless, we cannot know with certainty that any individual sperm or any individual egg is going to become part of this new life, as the "for certain" process of development does not begin until sperm meets egg in fertilization.
As an aside, we should also note that this line of reasoning wounds another popular pro-choice argument. For the mantra is that a woman has a right to an abortion because a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body. However, every living woman has herself gone through all the stages of being a fetus, as part of the process of life. And so we must recognize that, although a pregnant woman and her fetus may share many things - such as some nutrients and tissue - there are nevertheless still two lives being lived out.
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