In my blog on http://christianrr.blogspot.com I posted the following article

When are human beings protected under the Right of Human Dignity?
When do they have a right to live?

Those are important questions that face everyone of us as soon as we come to the question of embryonic stem cell research. In yesterdays program Albert Mohler and his guest Prof. Robert George pointed out that they see the human being fully protect worthy from conception until death.

I disagree with Dr. Mohler and Prof. George on the beginning on the worthiness of protection. And to point out why I will turn out to the end when a human being is considered especially worthy of protect: Death.
The whole western world considers a person to be dead as soon as all brain activity cedes. With the death of the brain, the human mind is (from a secular point) irreversibly destroyed. Apart from this point there is no consciousness, no feelings anymore, no thought. The individual has ended his or her existence [in this world if you are religious]. One thing about this death is that while the mind is dead, the body needn't necessarily be.
Did you ever wonder how it is possible to use the organs of a dead person?
Actually dead organs couldn't be used to transplant. The still living body of the brain-dead person is kept alive by artificial respiration and heart stimulation until the needed organs could be extracted. Just when the live maintaining machines that were needed for this procedure are switched off the body will die as well.
This example shows something: The right of human dignity and the right to life are dependent on the unity of the human being. The human being itself is made up from the unity of human mind and body. The human body itself has no special dignity once the mind ceased to exist. Otherwise the apparent use as a mean by harvesting the bodies organs to an end would debase its dignity.

Returning to the human embryo we can ascertain beyond doubt that it is a human body in it's earliest stages. Like Albert Mohlers guest pointed out: The is no serious scientific discussion about that. But as I pointed before: The body itself doesn't have dignity, even if alive. Dignity and the Right to Life is granted to the human being, which itself is defined by it's unity of mind and body.
If I look from that standpoint to the embryo in its earliest stages I simply stand to say it has not a single braincell. It is therefor most certainly and most positively brain-dead. The embryo is therefor in no ethical way different from the still living body from the person who was just found brain-dead.

Dr. Mohler, a question at this point, do you want to take your atheist listeners for fools by claiming that the full unity of the human being in the embryo could be argued from any other than a religious standpoint? You necessarily need this obscure concept of some ominous soul to argue a difference between the living body of a brain-dead person and an embryo.
If you argue that the soul leaves the body with the death of the brain and enters it upon conception, there is a theological argument to make that there is a difference between the still living body and the embryo.
On the other hand: What verse actually describes when the soul enters and leaves the human body?

Another secular difference between the embryo and the "undead" body is that the embryo still has full potency for life while the only potency the "undead" body has is for death. But there is one important necessity for an embryo to grow into a human being: That gets implanted in a womb. It is medically impossible at the moment and will stay medically impossible for a very long time for a human embryo to grow into a human being in any other place than the womb of a woman. Outside the womb the embryo has the potency of growing into specialized clumps of cells, but never into a human being.
The act in which the mother allows an embryo to nest in her womb starts the growing of an embryo into a human being. That is also the point from which on the mother gives the right chemical environment and nutrition to the embryo to fully grow into a human being. In other words the point from which on the embryo is really given life from its mum. The implantation is the moment when a promise between the mother and the embryo takes place in which she in or without awareness of the act ensures the embryo to it grow into a human being.
At this point the pregnancy starts and any interference with that would be an abortion. With the developing mind there are rights of the embryo and fetus to be protected. I will tackle that in a later article.