Long story short the place is extremely messed up, like fifty people are dead because he wasn't around to save his brother's life when he was twelve so his brother died and couldn't stop a runaway train or something. All this other stuff is way worse than when George was born and in the end happy ending he re-wishes he was born and things are normal.
That is very cute, but that is not how the real world works at all.
Every action we make depends on our current knowledge, leading to a chaotic effect that snowballs very rapidly. Had George not existed, there is no evidence his brother would ever have been in a life threatening situation. Without him, he would have been completely different and would have been to different places at different times with different people. Furthermore, small errors accumulating, it's very possible that there would not even have been a runaway train in that situation, but maybe some other runaway train a hundred miles from there.
Furthermore, one of the decisions people base on their knowledge is the decision to have a child or not. If a couple wants one child but the time isn't right, they can either keep them and have some difficulties, or abort, wait a few years, and then have a child in better conditions. In the end, they will have had one child. In your example, it is actually a very real possibility that had George not existed, his parents would have had another child later instead. He would merely be replaced.
Basically, you are oversimplifying a very complex system. You could think of it this way: humans naturally seek to fill voids that they see in their lives and surroundings. When a human is born, they fill some void. But if they are not, the void remains, and so does the incentive to fill it. If you want to have exactly two children and get an abortion, that doesn't mean you will only get one kid after all. You will either get two kids and an abortion, or two kids and no abortion. That might not always be the case, but it is clear that the long term impact of an abortion isn't necessarily less life. It is like a janitor pointing out that if they didn't exist, the building that they clean would be dirty as hell, without realizing that if they didn't exist, well, they would just have hired somebody else.
Your point that we have to decide when a fetus becomes a human is a good one. I believe that the line should be drawn at fertilization. When left to run their natural course sperm will stay sperm, ovum will stay ovum, but a zygote will develop into a baby.
Your argument is poorly thought out. When left to run their natural course sperm will stay sperm, ovum will stay ovum, but a frozen ovum and a frozen sperm under a heating lamp will develop into a baby. Or you could put sperm in a chamber, an ovum in another chamber, both chambers separated by a gate, and connect the gate to a clock. After exactly thirty seconds, the gate is opened and fertilization occurs. When left to run its natural course, without any interference, the system of the two chambers, sperm, ovum and clock will develop into a baby (might need an incubator too). Does that mean it's murder to take out the ovum and smash it under a rock?
I know it sounds like a ridiculous example, but it is not. The "natural course" of the apparatus I just described will produce a baby. It's not because a zygote is interleaved and seems like a single thing that it is a fundamentally different situation. The truth is that whatever potential a fertilized zygote may have, an apparatus that contains sperm, ovum and is programmed to cause fertilization must have the exact same potential. That's why potential is a very poor argument against abortion.
The right way to proceed is as follows: first, you need to determine what it is, exactly, that makes murder unacceptable. Second, you need to determine whether these properties apply to fetuses or not. But for now let's proceed the other way around: what properties does a thirty second old embryo have that are possibly of any value? Sentience? No. Intelligence? No. Human appearance? Certainly not. Do other human beings have an emotional attachment to it? No. Can it do anything for us? Nope. It can
become human, but clearly after thirty seconds it's not quite there yet. A thirty second old embryo has very, very little value. So it should be abortable.
Now, after seven or eight months, it's different. The fetus looks like a human. It has some limited sentience. It also took plenty of resources to develop. Surely it is worth something, and we could deem it unabortable.
The line is somewhere between the two. Where? We don't know and we probably can't know either. But what we
do know is that it's
after thirty seconds and
before birth. So what you can do is find the last moment when you are comfortable to assert that the fetus is
obviously worthless, and conservatively put the line there. That moment sure as hell isn't conception.
Also stop with the loaded terms. Abortion is not killing a child. Calling a fetus a child completely muddles the core issue, which is to determine when a fetus should be considered human in the first place.
