Troll a sincere prolifer.

[Ramo]

So the sperm swallows the ovum?
Mighty hard my friend, look at the comparative sizes!
Anyhow, just go back to the previous description of fertilisation, where the sperm and egg fuse to form a zygote. Both the sperm and the egg cease to be.
This is different from the nutrients provided to an unborn child, in that the child consumes the nutrients.

Cease to be? Could you define that? I don't know what that means, exactly. Sounds like an another irrelevent semantics argument to me...

No. The study that I cited examines the reactions of an unborn child to outside stimuli. If the child recoils, we can expect that they feel pain to some extent.

Why? I've recoiled from unusal sensations, excluding pain.

Besides, one of the functions of the brain is to regulate pain impulses. Without these higher brain functions, the unborn child may feel more pain then we would.

You'd need to establish that this fetus feels pain in the first place.

It's the same reaction an infant will have to pain.

Let me get this straight. Because an infant has certain very general responses to certain specific stimuli, any similar general responses by an 8-week old fetus is caused by these specific stimuli? I see a small break in your logic...

Well, then 8 weeks seems to be a credible standard.

Why? 8 weeks is a pretty crappy standard as far as brain development goes.

What does this have to do with protecting an unborn child? If I say yes, or no, it will not matter to the overall position. If we should protect animals, then we should also protect unborn children.

I'm not saying that we should protect animals, I'm asking you why we shouldn't protect animals. It matters for the argument I'm making.

Yes it is relevant to my definition of personhood.
I've said that before.

But you haven't explained why it's part of your definition of personhood.

The capacity to increase in complexity seems a good way to define growth and development, in that mental growth is also an increase in complexity.

1. Once again, you haven't explained why the capacity to "increase in complexity" is relevent to the definition of personhood.
2. You haven't answered my question. What, exactly, is "complexity"?

A quality harboured within the substance of the entity. DNA bears the intrinsic capacity of a human being to grow and develop.

What's the "substance of the entity?" More phrases that don't mean anything... A human, born or unborn, won't grow without food.

It includes everyone we consider to be persons, unlike other standards of personhood, sentience, etc.

1. It's not what "we" consider to be persons, it's what you consider to be persons.
2. So you're saying that you've created a definition of personhood specifically designed to fit your idea of who should be persons? Circular reasoning, anyone?

As for Alzheimer's patients, which I expected, BTW, they still retain some of their memories.

But they lose a lot of them. Hence they decrease in mental complexity, so they're not persons according to your criteria...

So why seperate the unborn child from all other humans?

What are you trying to say here? Since what you just wrote doesn't seem to have any relation to what you quoted.

I would define a "being" to be something with sentience (doesn't have to be human). And since I think legal personhood should be tied to sentience, a "being" is equivalent to a person.