My views on abortion

I would agree that at some point, adoption becomes the preferred option over abortion, but again, I don't think it's a panacea option, and I would have a hard time making adoption the only legal recourse to an unwanted pregnancy at a certain stage. I would definitely want either the doctor, nurse, clergy, friends, social workers, etc to advise adoption as an option, but I still think the choice comes down to the mother, ultimately.

At the risk of opening another can of worms, which is one reason I thought this warranted a separate reply, how about taking in to consideration Earth's population.Right now, we have a few billion people on the planet, and it grows very quickly. While I would never encourage abortion, it would seem that eliminating another mouth to feed if it's unwanted and hasn't passed the "human rights threshold" isn't necessarily an inherently bad thing.

And it could be said that it is his and her child that suffer the consequencies for her actions, could it not? The parents at least placed their own burden on their heads. At some point they have to buck up and take responsibility for their actions, whereas the child had no say in it whatsoever, yet gets to pay for his/her parents mistake. Do you have any children? Then don't get pregnant if you don't want to be pregnant. There's the shining moment of choice. By this rationale then even after the baby is born a woman should have more rights than a man on this account? She has more entitlements due to her sex? Now that you mention sugeries, there is something that points out the speciousness of the current argument. If we are dealing with choice over one's own body, why is it that some surgeries are prohibited but you could get an abortion more easily than certain medications?Isn't there something fundamentally awry here?

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

A severely mentally retarded person still exhibits higher brain function. They're still self-aware. Higher brain function != an IQ over 60. Even a severely handicapped person who will never have more mental capacity than a toddler has higher brain functions.The only individuals who would be counted as "dead" would be people who are brain-dead. Vegetables.

I assure you, I really wanted to know your answer. I'm not arguing for or against abortion, I just think this is a good "arbitrary" place to pick. One that can actually be turned into law. I was wondering about your thoughts on the matter. I intended no scare tactic.So, what's your thoughts?Would you be opposed to such a point, if made law?
If, as you say, no one asks for an abortion after the point I've described anyway... then I assume you have no problem with it?I'm just trying to clarify your position, as far as I can tell, you're only talking about early in a pregnancy. For such an area, I completely agree with you (and so does my arbitrary point of "Life"). But, if a law is ever going to be put in place (many good things can come from such a law, such as abortions available to any women who requests one, regardless of the doctor's personal view), I think it would be incredibly irresponsible to say it's always the women's choice, no matter what, until the baby is actually born. That's just obscene.For a law to be put in place, a point must be defined. Do you have a better choice for "a point"?

Obviously not if one can be absolved and the other not. I thought your post was very thoughtful, which makes me wonder why other people couldn't answer it so honestly and thoughtfully.Yes, you are right to say that there is an inherent nature where some things aren't equal due to biological differences that are no fault of anyone. It's nobody's fault if one has a vagina and another has a penis. It's merely incidental. There are some things men can do that women can't, and some things women can do that men can't.My question was if it is right to decide things, based on those unintended biological differences, in order to trump the other.A man can't help that he can't biologically carry a child just as a woman can't help that she's forced to biologically carry a child. Regardless, it obviously takes a male and a female to reproduce. Shouldn't a man have some say?Also, I wanted to know if you believe there should be any restrictions on abortions?

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

Then we agree, as I would not want this the only option. It's a tough debate and there seem to be no right answers, only slightly better answers. And that, of course, varies from person to person.I think everyone would agree that in a perfect world, everyone gets pregnant at the exact moment they want to and never get pregnant when they don't want to. But we don't live in a perfect world. So we just have to deal with reality, which can be a cruel thing sometimes.Thanks for your reply.

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

I agree. I was more just testing the waters with RAZD's defintion of Life. I've never heard of such a specific defintion being used in the abortion debate before and wanted to see how it fared. I'm more concerned if there is any rational, factual reason to not consider this defintion of Life as a valid "point of no return."Which means.. I'm basically useless if we're trying to convince such subjective-lovers into an objectively based reasoning system

True, the trend that has yet to slow down, as far as we know from the earliest censuses until now, is that the human population has made a steady increase. Extrapolating we can assume that the earth can no longer sustain such a projected population in the future. Famine, pestilence, war, etc would be the only ways to then stop it from causing total extinction.But if we were to go this route in the interests of the planet, wouldn't it be more justifiable to gather up all the murderers and rapists of the world and execute them rather than targeting innocents?I'm just saying that the argument could be made.And of course all of you should know that I in no way advocate deadbeat dad's, I was just playing the role of devil's advocate.

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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson

I would argue that even with that definition of "Life" or perhaps a better term being "Human Rights Threshold," we still can't make it a black and white, before this point is ok, after this point is never ok. There still has to be health issues for the mother and the baby considered, not to mention extenuating circumstances that may come up rarely, but can't be ignored.{ABE} I like that definition, BTW, but I don't think we can use it as an inflexible line past which abortions are never allowed.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

I've never had a kid, nor do I know much at all about pregnancy. "2nd trimester" is anywhere in about the 4-6 month mark, right?Thanks, I was kinda wondering about where that is.Most places won't terminate a pregnancy after, what? Like the 3 or 4 month mark?To me, this only adds more confidence that this definition of Life is probably a pretty decent idea, and likely even feasible.

We'll have to agree to differ then - I think potential is a very big deal.I've been thinking about the cloning question some more.The skin cell is equivalent to a sperm - it has no capacity to develop into an embryo until fused with an egg cell. So it doesn't deserve the same status as an embryo, but the same as that of a sperm.If an embryo were to be generated this way, then once generated, it would have the same status as one conceived naturally.Does a sperm have enough 'potential' that we should be concerned about it? That's an interesting question - there may be some people who say yes (I'm not one of them).Edited by Peepul, : No reason given.

But this gets back to, are fetuses, before some arbitrary line in the sand, people who can be innocents? I don't want to go down the road of involuntary population control a la China, or even worse. It may become inevitable if the population doesn't go down naturally, or war, famine, etc may make our choices for us, but again, I'm not for the involunatry population controls as yet, I'm just saying, removing a potential person from the resource users isn't necessarily bad.

I mentioned that in my reply. A case can be made that if the risk to the mother of having the abortion is equivalent to delivery, that would be the point. One day before a delivery due date would be covered by that. Again that "point" of equal risk is always going to be a gray area so I don't think you can write law around it. It would have to be something that is decided by a woman and her doctor.

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If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. --Thomas Jefferson

I completely agree, I didn't intend it to be taken as an absolute black and white system.I would only propose it as a line for where the woman can terminate the pregnancy without having to disclose her reasoning for anyone else to judge. And doctors cannot refuse such a request before this line.Extenuating circumstances and such after this line do exist, and this definition isn't meant to alter how they are dealt with. I belive they are dealt with by trying to gather as much information about the situation as possible? And then making the best decision possible for both mother and unborn baby? I don't know much about such things...