Originally Posted by
Spectral
Requiring specific external conditions is not the same as lacking homoestasis. If it was, we wouldn't consider anything to be "alive". Making the same cell over and over is growth. If it wasn't, bacteria wouldn't be considered alive. Adaptation surely does occur, as embryos respond to their environment quite effectively. If they didn't, we wouldn't be able to do any research with embryos at all.
I think you're shooting for semantics that aren't necessary to support your central point. I'm about as pro-choice as anyone I know, but it's got nothing to do with whether an embryo's alive. Life doesn't convey personhood rights, and there's just nothing at all about an embryo that suggests it's a person. It's definitely alive, but there's lots of things (almost all of them, actually) that are alive that we have no problem with killing.