This is an often repeated, incorrect statement by the pro-abortion crowd. It's not in line with medical science nor morality.

I'd ask you: under what criteria does a "clump of cells" become alive - a "real" person, as you say?

- Upon birth? Then how is assault leading to the death of a (wanted) child counted as murder? What is it about birth that makes the child human? Exposure to air? Magic human juice in the vaginal canal? So a child is not human 30 seconds before birth, but 30 seconds later magically becomes human?

- When he/she exhibits brain waves (still in the womb by the way)? By that logic, you'd be forced to agree (if your position was at all to be logically consistent) that someone who is brain dead is not human and therefore no longer has rights.

- If he/she is wanted by the mother? Then the mother has the right to confer humanity to the child or not - basically the mother is God. One day she may love the child and the next, strip the child of her humanity when she finds out it's a girl (or some other arbitrary unwanted characteristic like hair color or disability).

The fact is, denying the fetus humanity (again, which has no medical or moral basis) clears the way, so to speak, morally and emotionally for people to do what they already wanted to do, regardless of the violation of the dignity of another human. Furthermore, it is a gross overstatement to say that the position that people shouldn't kill other people, even if the cost is following a pregnancy to birth, is "causing purposeful suffering". That position doesn't cause pregnancy, nor does it cause whatever suffering would be experienced by the pregnant woman - the woman's actions (sex) were actually the proximate cause the vast majority of the time (all but less than 1% of abortion cases are non-SA related, per Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank).