Oddly enough, religious arguments convince me the least. If there is God and a soul, heaven and all that - it doesn't even matter does it?

Even more oddly, we consider a heartbeating body without brain activity to be "dead" and allow that person's proxy to end any artificial life support, knowing that the body will expire.

I wonder why measurable in vitro brain activity isn't the red-line deliniation where an embryonic clump of dividing cells actually displays signs of probable life.

But more importantly is the fact that in death we admit that the physical body is simply a vessel for consciousness/interactive life/soul. Does destroying the vessel destroy the soul? No one believes that, and in that immutable truth may lie the reason the Christian bible does not contain a single reference to life beginning at conception nor deeming human intervention in terminating an in vitro embryo as an act of murder as determined by the Fifth Commandment.

My Roman Catholic orthodoxy taught me that souls are infinite and that the death of the body is not the death of the soul. If that is one's belief, then how does that square with abortion being the cessation of "life" when the body itself is not physically connected to the eternal soul?