Christ himself did not put his law higher than the state's... "render unto Caesar" remember?
as for when life begins... eggs and spermatozoa are both alive, there is never any point in the reproductive process when the offspring is not "alive"... including well before conception, and the billions of reproductive cells that die in the course of every conception...
So the question shouldn't be about when something becomes "alive" but when it can be considered a "person"
True but Christ also stated that in the end you will be judged by your creator. That include Caeser and all thoses that run the governments of this mortal world. When they create laws or use the power of the state to go against God's will they will suffer for doing so.
Now it is true that the Bible does not directly talk about abortion. It is also true that every cell of your body is alive yet we happyly kill off cells all the time.. see cancer treatments. But what can not be rejected is that the cells belonging to a unborn developing human "Fetus" have the ability to become a much larger independantly living organizism. The issue is and always has been when is that fetus like us humans.
Clearly it is human from the very begining, although under construction. If not aborted, either naturally or by outside forces namely the abortion we are discussing here, it will become a human with thoughts and feelings. The ability to think "brain waves" have been documented to occur well before birth. The ability to feel pain has been documented even earlier, see reaction of the fetus to outside object touching it or worse killing it.
At what point is a person a person? How many inches out of the womans body does it take before the person becomes a person? If you can abort a child and it not be murder how can you charge someone who by physically attacking the mother kills the unborn child with murder? Clearly the child has a viability point well before birthing and viability includes the ability to think and feel.
The truth is that the unborn child is indeed alive and at a certain point before birth has all the mental abilities and feelings that a new born child has. The arguement forwarded by pro-abortion(Choice) people is more based on a "right" of a woman to determine the fate of their unborn child, namely the right to kill the unborn child.
This arguement is based soully on the fact that the woman is carrying the child. It seems to totally disreguard the child that is being carried. So much so that every effort is made to de-humanize the child, making a point of never calling it a child and refuseing to admit that it has life, feelings, or thought. But clearly at some point it must possess these elements of what it means to be a human being.
I think it is totally fair to say at the point of viability the child possesses the characteristics that could define them as being human. At that point, as a human being, the child possess the same rights as the mother. If she wants nothing to do with the child past that point the mother should be required to birth the child and respect the child right to life.