How about this?
What if a 34 year old woman was raped by her brother and was prevented from having an abortion... Then when the embryo has developed, the birth has taken place, it is deaf, dumb and blind, then four years pass by... Finally the woman acheives independence, but she is financially bankrupt and she can abort the child (Remember, it's only four, so it hasn't fully developed mentally or physically, PLUS it was incest AND rape)

Do you support the woman in her FREE CHOICE to abort?
REMEMBER her offspring is deaf, dumb and blind, so it cannot express its choice to live any more clearly than it could when it was in the womb.

If you support the woman, I don't know what's happened to you
If you don't support her, there's no difference in supporting any of the more "classical" forms of abortion.

Timkins I had those two exact thoughts, that we do in fact have capital punishment in Australia and that 'choice' is like the 'clean warfare/surgical strikes' to sanitize killing. It's easy not to think that you are taking another human life when you never see the result or use neutral terms.

Jose thank you for the analogy as it has made me think further, but don't expect a thinking response from Pro-choice they have left the thread and you would have been flamed anyway if the rabid ones has stayed around. Logical consistency, you won't find that from Pro-choice.

To be fair to both parties if we take away a mans say in the abortion we shouldn't make him pay child support, it is only fair that if neither party wants the child -especially like the case you have provided- and the birth allowed to continue, then the state should take up the care of the infant. Remember we will need extra people to make up for the 33% childless singles and the large elderly popluation so the state looking after the unwanted may be a boom industry.

I wouldn't change the laws until that was made clear.

Jose: you forget the obvious difference between a feotus and a 4 year old baby. Namely one is a feotus, and one is a baby.

Want me to go through it again?

I can't believe that there are still people who think that a feotus is a baby. It's a collection of cells, it's a piece of flesh, it's not life. This is medical fact - accept it.

By your logic sperm is life - which means I kill about 16 million babies a day. Sorry to be graphic, but seriously. It's frustrating to think how far you can be away from a real debate when people can't even get the most basic, obvious, scientific facts correct.

Hi Neo.
Back and ready...

I feel the main problem with your experiment is that you classify a existing human with physical defects as a non-person and equate this to an unborn foetus. I'm not able to make the same leap.

For me, once a human is born, they are a person, irrespective of their physical status. The law sees it this way. Some extreme situations require guardians to make decisions – but they are required to act in the best interests of the person and do not require consideration for others.

As for the foetus, the main arguments that I have (not the pro-choice lobby) is that I don't see the foetus as a human at all. My main reasons:

* It is dependent on the mother. That is, up to a certain point, it requires the mother for sustenance as it has no properly formed gastric system.
* It, up to a point, has no cognitive ability. Now before some cry ‘silent scream’, etc, I said up to a point. For much of the early stages, there is not a fully formed brain – so it cannot have cognitive ability.

Comparing a partially formed creature to a formed but damaged human is, in my mind, no comparison. I do see where you are coming from but would respectfully disagree.

This is the crux of the argument. Where do we draw the line? As with most things in life, areas of grey always divide a community and it will be a long road before we find common ground.

Neo, I respect your opinion and understand your reasoning – which I respect even more for your honesty. Nevertheless, I do not agree with your position and hope you will at least give me the same courtesy.

I agree that perhaps abortions are too numerous but it seems more important to try reducing their number through addressing causes rather than stopping treatment.

One point – ‘Choice’ doesn’t equate to abortion. It simply means the ability to choose between the two. Plenty had the choice and continued with the pregnancy.

For those of you that equate born children (ie: after birth) to foetuses... would you consider a (born) calf, lamb, chicken or fish to be a lessor life than that unborn 3-4 month old foetus? Do you have any qualms in killing that animal to ensure your survival or someone else's? Just want to hear your thoughts?

And if you (if you're a man) had intercourse with a woman using a condom, which broke during coitus. Would you punish the woman for enjoying her body like that (with you), by forcing her to go to term? Maybe she should have known better and had her fallopian tubes tied? Would that make things much better for you? Would you be able to live with yourself then?

spendocrat Go to any embryologist site and see, that to them the life of a unique human begins at conception and start dealing with the scientific facts.

Reason
It would interesting to get the actual legal context but I shouldn’t have to point out the morality and law can be two entirely different things.

Now let get our definitions right don’t use human, a feotus is human –homo sapien- what you are talking about is a human being where most definitions have that as a human with personhood.

So no if you are saying they aren’t human beings you are exactly right. But as my non-person argument goes we give formal ‘personhood rights to post-natals that don’t have functional personhood.

>It is dependent on the mother. ……….it requires the mother for sustenance as it has no properly formed gastric system.

All my eg’s of non-person post-natals are dependent on survival for sustenance by carers so no fundamental difference.

> It, up to a point, has no cognitive ability…………… so it cannot have cognitive ability.

Again the fact that these non-person post-natals don’t have functional cognitive ability is why they are non-persons, if we granted it on cognitive ability there are many other animals that should have rights which is the crutch of Singer’s argument.

There so no fundamental difference so while I respect your opinion and the way it has be delivered I see no substance to your 2 points. Pls expand and respond to my replies and my other points in my other posts.

Confused
Your first point is interesting as it address some of the points raised by Peter Singer in his animal right argument but due post restriction I’ll leave that to my next post window.

>And if you (if you're a man) had intercourse with a woman using a condom, which broke during coitus.

Simple as I said there are plenty of other ways to enjoy sex without risking pregnancy ie oral, anal, mutual-masturbation, dry humping etc. As a responsible Pro-life I wouldn’t have vaginal sex period!