A Message To the “Pro-life” Movement: Keep Your Faith Off My Lawn

[tanthrix]

Each year the so-called “pro-life” movement further encroaches on what I believe should be an irrefutable right to all women: the right to have an abortion. It's either an egregious attempt to inject faith-based ideology into law which has no place in any nation that takes the separation of church and state seriously, or it’s an exercise in poor

Comments

[nomadraven]

I ramble

[tanthrix]

The conclusion I came to is that newborns aren't people either, and if it's ok to abort fetuses, it's ok to kill newborns.
You've hit the nail on the head: there really is no well defined point in time at which an infant will transition into consciousness. Ultimately though I don't think that it is a major problem. We simply need to pick a semi-arbitrary cut off point that makes as much sense as possible. In my opinion, that point should be the time at which, even in the best circumstances, a fetus cannot survive birth without medical intervention. It's not as fool proof as I would like for the reasons you stated, but it will do nicely as the right to have an abortion is not nearly as important as the length of time you can have it for

[natowelch]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_development#Fetal_period... )

[half]

I tend to be pretty happy with drawing the line at the ability to suffer. That would put the abortion line right around the end of the first trimester, as the nervous system begins to operate.

Eh, but what about the fully grown pregnant woman's ability to suffer? Making her go through pregnancy and childbirth will cause her to suffer more than the fetus will.

Pro-lifers don't get to use ugly partial-birth abortion photos anymore, which are rare and extreme cases anyhow.

They'd still use the pictures they already have, and claim they are from first-trimester abortions. Oh wait, they already do that.

Women need to be able to have abortions after the first trimester. Sometimes it is discovered that the fetus has a birth defect that will be fatal shortly after they are born. Sometimes the woman doesn't know she's pregnant until that point. Sometimes she is unable to get an abortion until that point. And regardless of the reason, it's her body. So... it's her choice.

[natowelch]

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/04/consolidated_na.html

Really, really good nature of Morality post.