Who doesn't think that they are alive?

This is the second generation of this strawman that I have seen on Facebook.  I used to think that everyone knew that it was a strawman, until I started seeing friends repeat it and someone posted it in one of the threads that I was commenting on.  OK, first watch this Sesame Street video to learn what is alive.  

Does that Paramecium on the left, breath and eat and grow? [1]  Certainly it does.  Does that 24 to 26 week old fetus on the right, breath and eat and grow? [2]  Certainly she does. (Human embryos and fetuses generally default to the female gender) So who is saying that a growing fetus with sleep cycles and a 40-90% chance of surviving outside of the womb [3] is not "life"?  The answer is no one.  Also, 88% of abortions happen in the first twelve weeks.  Only 1.5% of abortions are performed on fetuses over 20 weeks. [4] Most people who get abortions do not wish to terminate fetuses over 20 weeks.  Let's try this next one.

The picture is of a one hour old single cell embryo. [5] Now let's try the Sesame Street test.  Does she breath and eat and grow? Certainly she does.  Who dares to challenge the wisdom of the muppets? The answer is no one.  

At an hour old, this single cell has an up hill battle.  About 19.6 out of every 1000 women annually will have an abortion.  This means that 22% of pregnancies will end in abortion [4], but this embryo only has about a 30-70% of even implanting in the uterus to transition from conception to pregnancy. [6]  Even if she implants, she may not implant in the uterus.  Ectopic pregnancies occur at 19.3 out of every 1000 pregnancies or about 2% of pregnancies. [7] Once implanted correctly, she still has about a 31% chance of miscarrying. [8] Things get a little more dicey when you considered that one out of eight embryos form twins, but only one out of 80 twins make it to birth. [9] All of this adds up to the embryo having as great as a 70% chance of not surviving to birth [8].

Tubal Pregnancy

I type all of that to point out that when a embryo dies or miscarries, those terms mean that it was considered life to begin with.  The question is not whether she is life, but whether she is a person.  The irony here is that the first meme equates pond scum with a fetus.

Correction 12/5/2012: This post originally said that 19.6% of 1000 pregnancies end in abortion.  This was an error on my part.  It should have said 1000 women.  The abortion rate is about 11 times the ectopic pregnancy rate.  I apologize for the error.