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They key, in my experience, is to point out how quickly abortion slides into infanticide. Why? Because once you don't accept that individual human life should be protected regardless of it's capabilities, the right to life turns into a utilitiarian haggle over the greater good and which specific ability or trait holds the essence of personhood rather than than a God-given right that every living human being inherently has. Any arbitrary trait is as valid as any other (and the choice of traits is generally driven by some utilitarian goal) and the only non-arbitrary trait (non-animal consciousness) isn't clearly present in humans until they are about two years old, well after birth.

I respectfully disagree. I don't think that is the key. And I'd be pretty skeptical if you said you've "cured" any pro-choicers with that argument... and it's even less effective in terms of ESC research.

Do you really believe that all human life "should be protected regardless of it's [sic] capabilities"? Really? You know what Saddam is capable of. If his people give him the death penalty should we offer him asylum here in the US? Should Schwarzenegger have commuted Tookie Williams' sentence?

I know that's not what you meant by "capabilities" but assuming you're for the death penalty you're acknowledging that not all life has equal value... that not all life is worth protecting.

Or what if we find OBL but he's carrying a newborn everywhere he goes. If you attack, he promises to murder the little one. Do you charge in anyways? Most people here, I'd wager, would say absolutely. Sucks to be that baby... sucks to be the parent/sibling/third cousin twice removed of that baby... but that sacrifice would ultimately be worth the thousands of lives we'd potentially be saving by taking out the (insert your favorite expletive here).

The decision becomes even easier if he's carrying around a test-tube with a 4-5 day old blastocyst that's about this big.

Are we then caught in a "utilitarian haggle over the greater good"? Absolutely. Is it hard to digest? Yup. The realistic notion, though, that not all life is worth protecting at all costs is going to be present in the minds of those who approve of this type of research.

IMHO the key is to get people to re-evaluate the cost vs. the reward.

Imagine Grandma's dying. She's 105 and was starting to lose touch before the stroke last week. She's in a coma now and will be dead within 24 hours. The doctor approaches you with an unusual request. There's a new theoretical method for reattaching severed limbs that just appeared in all the medical journals. The doc wants to know if he can experiment on Grandma. He'll simply remove her arms and legs and then reattach them. He'll pump her full of gallons of morphine so pain will be no issue. With a lot of luck this could save... or at least significantly improve... many, many lives somewhere down the road. Somewhere... twenty years or more down the road... and maybe never.

Yeah, given the she's pretty much guaranteed to die on the table, but she's as close to dead as you can get. She can't think... she's not aware of her surroundings... and she won't feel any pain. Is scientific progress worth it?