This author can have his own views on the subject of abortion and IVF, and is welcome to not choose either of these medical procedures for himself......oh wait a minute, he appears to be male isn't he?

So, maybe he can have a say on matters that affect his own babies, or his relatives babies (if his female relatives allow it), but exactly where does he get off lecturing other women on what they can and can't do with their own bodies?

He should remember that 'natural' abortions occur all the time (miscarriages), so maybe he should take this murderous matter up with his God?

Mind your own business and deal with the fact that abortion and IVF will now always remain safe, legal and available in Australia.

Susieonline thinks the author is not entitled to speak out against abortion because he is a man. Well I thought that just over half of the victims of abortion are male, and if left alone will eventually become men. I am a man and was once a foetus. If my mother had chosen to have a "safe and legal" abortion, I would not be here arguing with you. I would not have had the opportunity to live out my life with all that that involves. My own daughter would never have been born. That is why men have the right to speak out against abortion.
If you think the fact that its legal makes it right, then you have a pretty warped sense of right and wrong.
Having the right to decide what you do with your own body is all good and well, until that right involves killing other people.

Denny, before you judge perhaps do a little bit of research into Trisomy 18. Most of the babies with this condition don't survive until birth. Those that are born alive are unlikely to survive infancy. You might be strong enough to carry a baby with this condition... Oh wait.

Oh dear, the religious trying to use semantics again to push emotional buttons, nothing changes.

Fact is that a foetus is not a person, at 12 weeks it does not have a functioning human brain. You will have to wait until around week 23 until you can claim that.

Darwin was right, in every species, far more will be created than can ever survive. There are simply not the resources for all of them on our finite planet. If people only had children they wanted and loved, there would be far less suffering and misery in this world. If my mother would have had a headache rather then create me, I would not know about it, so it would not matter.

In nature, offspring need parents who are willing and able to provide the resources to raise them. No wonder there is so much misery and suffering, if you try to force people to do this against their will. Only a mother can judge what is right for her, not a heap of busybodies with theological beliefs which they cannot prove.

yabby says that without abortion more people will be born than can possibly be supported on this planet. That might be true in a state of nature, but is hardly the case today. Australians do not have enough children to even replace their numbers, let alone overpopulate the country. We have contraception that prevents unwanted pregnancies. These arguments may have made sense in China 30 years ago, but not in Australia today.
As far as the foetus not being a person is concerned, that is just semantics. The foetus has more to lose than anyone, having its entire life ahead of it. My life is already at least half lived. As long as it is not killed ( or spontaneously aborted) it's brain will develop and it will become a fully functioning human.
The author may be motivated by religious beliefs, but that in no way makes him wrong about the value of human life, even in its earliest days. I certainly don't believe in any gods, but believe it is wrong to kill the unborn. I also think its wrong to kill the newly born and those half way through their lives.

Rhys, the population issue is a global one, not an Australian one. Even if every Australian died tomorrow, it would take the rest of the world only around 4 months to replace the lot of us, by its growing population.

Foetuses already die naturally in the womb every day, in huge numbers. Life is full of risks for all, that is reality. You are trying to give rights which we give to people, to human organisms which by any definition are not yet people, just like an acorn is not yet an oak tree.

Now it is possible that last month, you and your partner could have created another cute baby, but likely you did not. Did you deny life to another cute Rhys? Was it wrong if you did not?

I prefer to focus on happy, healthy and wanted children, with parents willing to raise them. I do not see how it is right morally to insist on creating more poverty, sadness and misery. Each to their own I guess. This really is a decision for women to make, contraception does not always work and abortion in the first trimester as we have it, is a reasonable compromise IMO.