The thing with using the word arbitrary is that it isn’t a great concept to use akin to an on off switch. There are a lot of things that can’t be simplified down to arbitrary/not arbitrary. Sometimes it’s better to use a level of arbitrariness. For instance starting adulthood at the age of 18 is arbitrary. It’s a made up number. It could just as easily be 18 years 2 months. Some people hit a certain maturity level around that age, some before, some after. Calling someone an adult at high school graduation is less arbitrary. Everyone is a different age when they graduate, but they have all completed (essentially) the same maturing process. I think you can say the same thing about human development in the womb.
Everyone experiences the exact same thing at the exact same time when it comes to fertilization. Because it is literally the beginning point of the formation of a new, unique, and distinct human being (with the only real exception being identical twins which essentially get that moment a second time). Everything after that depends on the individual and is highly variable. Then there is birth. We are all born. Some through c-section and some through the birth canal. Some of us are born at 8 months gestation, some 9, and some at other times, but the day and time we were born is something we can all know. Both of those points in time are LESS arbitrary than any other point. Does that mean we can’t write laws based on arbitrary points during development. Of course not. We do it all the time. But we aren’t talking about laws much right now. We’re having the philosophical discussion. If you accept the premise of everything I just wrote (I don’t know if you do and I’m sure you will point out where you don’t if that’s the case), then I feel like there has to be some willful ignorance involved if you were to continue to say the point of fertilization is just as arbitrary as any other point.
You are disregarding basic biological and evolutionary science by not drawing a distinction between a separate sperm and egg and a sperm that has fertilized an egg. Do you not believe in biology? Do you not believe in evolution?
This question came up in another thread. Here is what I wrote on the topic. Short answer - philosohpically I’m against it when it means discarding fertilized embryos. Legally, it is clearly different than abortion, so I don’t see a reason to combine the two.
Ok. So it was simply a scare tactic. There is no law proposal by any republican elected official in existence that would ban anything commonly referred to a birth control. But a left wing advocacy group “claims” that a law that doesn’t mention birth control at all and is not designed to ban birth control is actually a secret way to ban birth control in order to scare people about what republicans are actually trying to do (restrict abortion). Telling the truth isn’t enough to get people to vote against republicans. You actually have to lie and embellish in order to hammer it home. Got it.
Also, and the ACLU knows this because they are literally all lawyers, any attempt to use that law to stop someone from using birth control would get laughed out of court, 1. because it isn’t even remotely designed to do that and 2. the SCOTUS has literally said people have the right to contraception and the draft opinion by Alito in the Dobbs case does not even remotely attempt to limit that right at all. Abortion has been a contentious issue that both sides have disagreed on the moment that SCOTUS in 1973 decided to create a constitutional right to it. The fight has never waned. The SCOTUS created right to take birth control, whether or not it is was properly legally and constitutionally grounded, on the other hand, is not something anyone on the pro-life side has ever been willing to attack as far back as I can remember. If you pretend that it is, you’re flat out lying.