I have many thoughts on this.

1. The fetus is a parasite until it can survive on its own outside the body.
2. Those that can't take care of themselves should be protected.
3. It's just a cluster of cells, no sense of being.
4. How do we know there's no sense of being?
5. When can the fetus feel pain?
6. Abortions should not be used as birth control.
7. Why can't abortions be used as birth control?
8. Woman's body, woman's choice.
9. The father should have a say too.

Ultimately, I am pro choice, but it's a conflicted stance. I base my decisions on science alone, but there's so much we don't know about the human body. To answer the question, no a fetus isn't special. It's biology.

I love to flip the tables on this topic. Is an embryo any more sacred than a woman's life? Because when abortion is illegal that is exactly what is being communicated.

What an interesting observation. I can’t speak from an intellectual point of view with this. I don’t believe I could abort a child in uterine because it is a living being who has the right to live. However I would not push this on others. This is central to my beliefs. I recognize the biology and the understanding of divinity in the biology. I suppose it is complicated.

We're clearly not opposed to killing our own species. We kill criminals. We kill people we perceive as enemies. We choke up a bit when confronted with the idea of killing innocents. And we have a natural predisposition for protecting children. But we have no leg to stand on if we claim we are unwilling to kill. The point is, we are happy to kill if we feel it is justified. So any so-called sacredness is out.

The question becomes "Is it justifiable?" Whether killing a microscopic blob of cells or killing a 250 lb. blob of cells, it's still killing. The bottom line is that 'deciding when to kill' is a decision adults have to make sometimes, no matter how uncomfortable it might make us. We murder the food we eat. We murder our own kind when we feel they are not fit to live among us. We murder those who are trying to murder us. And a growing contingent of us feel that murder of the unformed is justified in the preservation of the formed... that we should be willing to suffer that discomfort in the service of granting half our species the right to body sovereignty.

It is Nature's way that not all potential life is granted a full lifetime. As responsible adults we must stop passing the buck to gods or selective-sacredness, and shoulder our unpleasant duties. We should never approach them frivolously, but when two values we respect are mutually exclusive, we must try to make responsible choices, rather than pretend we can remain innocent bystanders.

Like there is no God, there is no objective right and wrong. There is only whatever you personally hold to be of value. I don't like killing innocent, potential humans. I like even less assuming that I have some God-given (if not God, then from whom?) right to force a woman to manage her body in some way that suits me. NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES.

None of us can authentically claim to be "right". We can only claim to have preferences that we are willing to stand by, and I stand by a woman's right to choose.

A human embryo is not sacred since nothing is "sacred", but unique and special it most certainly is, if only in potential.. Though Pro-Choice must be upheld, I do feel society is too quick to dispose of the unwanted.

It is very special. Especially when stir fried & served with a nice bordeaux.

I think it's special in as much as an acorn is, because of it's potential, which is kind of cool. Some seeds have to be burnt to reproduce of course

What about IVF or IVG? In the not-too-distant future, all human embryos may be conceived in a lab, and a sperm donor won't even be required, as stem cells can be used to manufacture sperm-like cells. A significant number of blastocysts may result from a single egg harvest, which may then be frozen indefinitely. These samples may be genetically screened for diseases and deficiencies, as well as analyzed for gender and other physical attributes, and perhaps even temperament or personality. The designer child is not that far away, and the unwanted blastocysts, sacred or not, will be discarded and destroyed by the millions.
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I’d say a human embryo is both special and sacred.

Matias, this is very similar to the (very interesting) question you put out the other day on the reconciliation of religion and science. As I said then, many scientists compartmentalize their faith and practical knowledge, as humans are incongruous in thought, deed and emotion on a daily basis. The professor in this case tries to merge the two and finds himself in a logical cul-de-sac. I get what he is saying as conception is an amazing thing. It’s an incredible mathematical chance that you are you, and one spermatozoa among millions penetrated one egg, when human ovulation is a tricky thing. On the other hand it’s such a common occurrence that there are seven billion of us! Human conception is at once as mundane as shitting and as incredible as the Big Bang. In the grander scheme of the world and in a biological sense, a human embryo is not a sacred thing - it is a product of reproduction and is no higher or lower in order in the natural world than a germinating acorn or a mouse embryo. However socially the family unit, fertility and conception have taken on a meaning beyond genetics. Anthropologically insemination and pregnancy can bond kinsmenship and identity of the clan, unite or divide clans, form the basis of social cohesion and peace, claims to territory or war. Pregnancy is imbued with ritual and birth is a right of passage. That is why women’s fertility is controlled by men to this day. That is why to some people believe it is sacred - thousands of years of programming. It’s the key to survival of your group and your genes. It is logical that most of society think an embryo is sacred, and that murder is evil. It’s all tied to primeval survival. Truth be told that both conception and murder are mundane daily occurrences.

Thought experiment:

You are visiting a fertility clinic. A fire breaks out on one of the theatres, and is rushing towards the oxygen tanks. When it reaches them, the entire place goes.

You are in a corridor. On one side is a cooler containing 50 frozen embryos, immersed in liquid nitrogen and ready for transport. On the other is a baby, screaming in terror. You have only got time to rescue one, and if you hesitate, everyone dies.

Who do you choose?

Get your bible out of our vagina and shove it up your ass!

People who claim to be scientists are supposed to view things with a sense of reason. These religious scientists make a mockery of their own profession and they make me sick.
We live on a space ship with finite resources. We have stretched those resources to the point of endangering future generations of humans and killed off thousands of species of non-human species. That is immoral. Trying to moralize our extreme, exponential population growth is the height of hypocrisy and arrogance (and extreme fear).
No, nothing about any part of any human is special and tying mumbo jumbo words onto our existence changes nothing.

If the joining of a sperm and egg is somehow a sign of a spiritual reality or a sacrament of sorts (however he's defining that), I have to wonder whether he believes the same for chickens and pigs, whose embryonic development is so similar to that of humans, and if not why not. He seems to have no basis for his claim except that he believes in the supernatural. That seems to be justification enough for him, but I need reasons backed by science or strong logic (not theology or metaphysics). I've never heard a sufficient argument to support such spiritual-reality assertions.

Nothing is sacred.

Abortion rules

There is a biblical way of having an abortion. A method that is not only approved by God, it was invented by him. He describes it himself in the book of Numbers (5:11-31). It's all part of God's wondrous Law of Jealousies. God's magical abortion procedure. A priest, some bitter water, and a wife that you think might have been unfaithful. Priceless. So if God has his own abortion procedure, abortion can't be wrong, right?

I am told 20% of pregnancies end in miss-carriage. If everything is "part of god's plan" then god must be the universes greatest abortionist! (I know, I'm taking something, but god know what, out of "context"!)

Then according to Dr. John Wyatt: Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics, a human embryo is inherently scared due to an innate bond with the Almighty Creator of Time, Space, and Dimension. We are the children of God which makes each and every one of us a special little flower, divine in origin and inherently beautiful.

That's so sweet but I see a problem with that thinking.

His hypothesis hinges entirely on the unprovable existence of an invisible magical being who lives in the sky. So if the Almighty Creator of Time, Space, and Dimension weren't real then Dr. John Wyatt's assertion of the human embryo as sacred is a steaming load that he just made up based on his faith.

But I'll go one better.

Not only are humans not the scared creation of an omnipotent superbeing but there's currently about 8 billion of us covering the planet. Eight billion of ANYTHING is a plague. If there were 8 billion rabbits, or 8 billion koala bears, or 8 billion ring-tailed lemurs, there'd be government programs paying people to kill them in vast numbers.

Dr. John Wyatt: Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics is just another Xian nutjob with an education.

In my opinion, it is something special but nothing is scared.
Theist jump through a lot of hoops to justify their beliefs.

No life is sacred. It simply exists or is.

Professor Wyatt is thinking that we are our bodies, and that is getting him in trouble, off on an irrational course IMO. No human body or any organism is worth much because bodies are manufactured at more than a sufficient rate. Sure, embryos are sacred, but everything is sacred. Human bodies belong to the natural world and are subject to nature’s laws. Every acorn does not become an oak tree—there’s not enough room.

IMO Conscious Awareness desires a river of organisms with which to interact, but the fate of a single organism is of little concern—organisms are temporary by design. They are also nothing but robots, finely made but unaware and without free will, a sense of beauty, or love.

Embryos are under the total control of the manufacturer until such time as conscious awareness takes possession of the product. After that she has no say.

The collision arises first with the assumption that a collection of cells is more than that. This would need to be demonstrated. Until that demonstration we should treat it as it is.
I think if you have to introduce a supernatural explanation to your argument you have already lost on a rational level. Is an collection of cells sacred? No. Or you would have to concede that a sperm cell can also be sacred and somehow nobody (that I'm aware of) seems to want to make this argument.
Is an embryo special? Yes, everything is special, so no, nothing is special. What does special even mean?
The moral status of an embryo depends on your morality. For me, moral consideration starts with consciousness. How you want to define that is another rabbit hole you might want to go down, but there is a point where an embryo is definitely not conscious and a point where it is definitely conscious. Somewhere in between is good enough for me, for now.

Is the human embryo sacred or something special ?

NO

Not in my opinion, but in the opinion of many others yes.