Thing is, the assertion that life begins with conception is not a belief, but a scientific fact.

Dale, that's simply a matter of opinion, albeit strongly-held opinion.

I like the logic behind Barnett's argument. If you believe all human life is sacred, it's rock-solid. If you also believe in the death penalty, or that it's okay to torture an innocent man to death by mistake if it stops 50 real terrorists, then all bets are off. Since I don't know how Barnett feels about those things, I'll just admire what he DID say.

Daniel, is it a matter of opinion that we can trace your origins back to the moment when your mother's egg and father's sperm joined and the fertilized egg started dividing? That's how all us humans started, my friend.

why is the moment of fertilization the start of "life" and not the formation of the egg or sperm before they meet? Or the moment that the umbilical cord is cut? There are valid arguments that "life" begins at any of these stages.

We start our lives as a single cell.

What happens just before we are a single cell? A sperm and an egg join. So, no, a new human life does not begin with a sperm or an egg. For that to be, then you exist not only in the vast amounts of sperm in the male, which is discarded and produced constantly, and, at the same time, in the female within each of her eggs. Aside from not logically being so, the sperm and the egg only have half the DNA that we need. In other words, the DNA inside a single sperm or a single egg are not paired, whereas, in the newly formed single celled human, they are paired. Come on, let's be serious here.

My belief is based upon science, not someone's theory and it is basic biology for crying out loud!

Yes, it is basic biology, just as Dale says and explains. Daniel, you have clearly never been pregnant. I can (well, did) drop any number of eggs, and unfertilized, they had no effect on my system. The zygote and implantation had one hell of an effect on my system. In vitro fertilization, as for example here
ought to speak you in this matter, somehow. How does that work, if the union of the egg and sperm have not begun life?

Am I a thread killer on this subject?

If so, is that a reflection on me or a reflection on those that refuse to confront me or, after confrontation, do not respond?

Dale, it's a reflection on my busy schedule! :)

I think life begins when the umbilical cord is cut - the moment of the baby's independence. Before that the child cannot live on his/her own, and therefore has no free will.

Daniel, do you have any idea how long it takes after the umbilical cord is cut for a baby to be independent? That child can not live on his own in any real way. To me it takes a real act of imagination to believe that a child is any less alive, kicking about in the womb, than after, when breathing air. You "life point" is arbitrary. My granddaughter who was born six weeks early would be alive while my other granddaughter who stayed in the womb till term was not alive at the same point of gestation. I think you make a pro-choice leap of faith, here.