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I will quote Christopher Hitchens on the issue: if it isn't human, what is it? And if it isn't alive, what is it?

Easily answered.

Of course it is biologically human. Of course it is alive. Of course it is a human life.

Those are scientific questions with obvious answers.

The question is not whether the fetus is a human life, it is whether it is (or should be) a legal person with the rights of other persons.

This is not a question that can be answered by science, as it is moral, ethical and legal in nature. In fact, it is at root a theological question.

It is entirely logical, though deadly wrong IMO, to believe a fetus prior to the moment of birth is not a person and has therefore no legal rights. Or, more accurately, choosing the moment of birth as the point where such rights are acquired is neither more nor less logical than any other random point. This creates logical problems for proponents of abortion, as we can see from the recent arguments that "post birth abortion" should also be allowed.

Each human life is a continuum from conception to death, whether that death occurs 3 months or 100 years after conception. There is and can be no point on that continuum where it becomes logical to say that life should acquire (or lose) the "rights" of a "person" under the law.

I quite agree. One can avoid the theological element by positing that there is no God (that's actually about the only way to avoid the theological element) but once one concedes the obvious fact that the fetus is a human being one cannot avoid the fundamental ethical question of who decides, live or die? Here the "choice" position appears to me to devolve into the nihilistic sinkhole that the strong decide for the weak. That is, in essence and stripped of its pretensions, the pro-choice position. The strong decide whether the weak live or die.

There we have reached ethical nullity, the position of grunting beasts. I think that we are something more, and for evidence I shall point out to the ethically challenged that those of us who believe and behave otherwise tend to have grunting beasts for supper. There is something to be said for the strong protecting the weak, most notably that it is in the interest of those who were weak, are now strong, and who will inevitably become weak once more. In short, all of us, and those who pretend otherwise are only pretending.