You asked about destroying "life", not the life of a fetus.
This seems highly disingenuous in the context of a discussion about abortion. It's also irrelevant, because if you have yet to show that it is always wrong to destroy a fetus, you necessarily have not yet shown that it is always wrong to destroy life.
I should add that should I agree that it is always wrong to destroy a particular life or a particular sort of life, it does not necessarily follow that I agree that it is always wrong to destroy life, unless you can show that this moral mandate is consequent of a quality universally present in all life.
But at any rate, no a fetus can't talk, obviously. But whatever the life of a fetus may entail, it's still a human life and we as civilized individuals should work to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Being unable to talk, walk, blink, etc. should not invalidate that right, either.
I agree that the life of a fetus is a human life. I don't agree that you've shown that it is always wrong to end human lives.
The inability to talk, walk, blink, think, etc. doesn't affect any duties we have with respect to preserving the life of a fetus--it merely invalidates the equivalences you're trying to draw between the life of a fetus and the life of a person.
I do agree that we should work to protect those who cannot protect themselves, whenever possible and morally permissible. I do not believe that this imperative is even close to sufficient justification to violate a human person's autonomy over her own body.
Fetuses are not known for legislating or enforcing prohibitions against abortion, so the conflict at question is between a person who wishes to exercise ownership over her body and other adult persons who would claim an easement on it. Trespass against the only property we can truly claim as our own is made no less noxious or more permissible by asserting that it is done on behalf of a fetus.
Because she is responsible for creating a human life whose only means of survival and growth is her uterus. Had it not been for the actions of the mother and father, she would be obligated to do absolutely nothing.
Babies don't try and spite the mother by growing in her uterus instead of in the sink or something. That's where babies go.
The fact that a creation of human life may be a result of a woman's voluntary actions does not in itself entail that she has an obligation to refrain from destroying it. The act of lighting a fire does not obligate me to let it burn, nor does the act of planting a seed obligate me to let it take root.
In assigning her the responsibility for the creation of a human life, you cede to her the choice of how to address the consequences of that act, for there can be no responsibility without freedom of choice. If she is to be responsible for the creation of life, she must be permitted the opportunity to be responsible for its destruction.
To do otherwise is to fetishize and aggrandize the biological operation of a uterus to the point of eclipsing any other value or importance its owner might have as a human person.
To do otherwise is to reduce a substantial portion of human sexuality to its procreative function.
To do otherwise is to validate every paranoia motivating lysistratan proscription and to unequivocally recommend its most absolute application.
To do otherwise is to take an act which at its best has a rare power to celebrate and strengthen mutual ties of affection and emotional commitment and pervert it into an implicit contract revoking a woman's rights to her person in favor of a property claim made on her flesh--a contract, which were it made explicit would be peremptorily annulled by any court not completely deranged by "the old Christian virtues gone mad" as an unconscionable and illegal form of slavery; bonding twisted into bondage.
To do otherwise is to claim that a woman must purchase permission to have intercourse by mortgaging her body to a communal prerogative of eminent domain.
To do otherwise is to make it impossible for two adults to keep their sex life private from their government and their peers.
I offer in all sincerity that in such a moral paradigm it would be irresponsible not to require both partners to possess a government license to commit intercourse, if not a separate registration for each act of coitus.
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And that's the best case scenario. All of the above presumes an ideal and magickal world in which abortion prohibition can cleanly and neatly end all abortions while avoiding as many negative consequences as possible.
In the real world, abortion prohibition won't end abortions.
In the real world, abortion prohibition will increase the number of illegal abortions and attempts at self-abortion. Abortions that frequently have consequences ranging from rendering women incapable of bearing future children to some of the most terrifying and painful deaths humans can experience.
In the real world, abortion prohibition will increase the number of pregnant suicides and the number of babies suffocated by their mothers.
In the real world, abortion prohibition will increase the number of abandoned children and the number of children consigned to a shamefully inadequate and traumatic foster care system that is already burdened far past its capacity.
In the real world, abortion prohibition will create the most unwanted children in the communities which are the poorest and the least capable of supporting them.
I consider this transactional approach to sex and procreation one of the most harmful evils to ever stalk the world. As a philosophic ideal it's morally repugnant; as reality it's a nearly unrivaled horror of misery, indignity, and pain.
