is it always wrong to take a life?"
Stephan,
No ! In many cases it's fully justified. Just don't let lefties be the judge of it. They'd rather that millions of unwanted babies starve to death so as to prove the point that every life is sacred. What religion do they belong to where they consider every life sacred but do nothing when lives are suffering a slow agonising death. Because life is sacred we can't put those mongrels who cause so much suffering, away for good.
I'd rather abort a foetus than knowingly bring a baby into an existence of suffering.
This may well be infanticide but what do we call children's suffering because of some leftie idealists ? Extreme hypocrisy ?

I doubt anyone is happy with the current unacceptable rate of abortion in this country, whether they are pro-choice or not.

We should certainly strive for far more effective sex education and contraception availability in high schools.
I'm sure the author of this article will be happy with this.

Failing this, then I think we should allow sex between men and women only when conception is desired, and only at the optimal time of fertility for each couple.
No sex at other times should be allowed.

If after all these measures, we still see abortions happening, then we should imprison all pregnant women until they give birth...

Anti-abortionists (I refuse to refer to them as “Pro-lifers” since they are overwhelmingly pro death penalty and war, and all while bagging moral relativism - ironically) are quite happy to talk about slippery-slopes when it comes to allowing abortion, but then totally ignore the slippery-slope of the state dictating to pregnant women what they must and must not do with their own bodies.

If we strip women of the rights to abortions, then how do we prevent the unsafe, backyard-job abortions and how do we police the ban?

Dictatorship much?

It doesn’t matter how morally right or wrong abortions are, the cost of not allowing them is far worse - even if we forget about over-population and rising crime rates due to the millions of unwanted children.

As for after-birth euthanizing, that’s a hairy topic and, in most cases, would probably at least be kinder than the DNR’s put on children born with chromosomal conditions, that are incompatible with life, from selfish parents that valued the state of their heavenly credit rating more than the comfort of their own child.

By the way, Stephan, none of the definitions of “civilisation”, that I can find, say anything about them being above nature (that is purely an invention of your own making used to bolster your rigid and narrow worldview), civilisation is the social process whereby societies achieve an advanced stage of development and organization - nothing more.

Perhaps you'd prefer we became uncivilized like the Abrhamic God who - without asking how we felt about it - thrust us into a celestial dictatorship in which we are expected to accept the horrifically immoral notion of the sacrifice of another in order to cleanse us of our wrong-doings, despite the fact that any one of us would have been obliged to stop it had we been around at the time?

>>The mere fact you need to ask this, Tony, would be sufficient to appall the vast majority of people, since we are discussing not just any life, but NEWBORN CHILDREN.<<

What? Everybody else here is discussing UNBORN humans. Except me when I'm discussing Vulcans. You appear to have an amazing talent for missing the point of the argument, Stephan.

Cheers,

Tony

The irony is that commentary about that article is that some commentators are saying by conflating infanticide and abortion, it provides some ammunition to an argument against abortion.

And, in an editorial well worth reading, the editor says

"The novel contribution of this paper is not an argument in favour of infanticide – the paper repeats the arguments made famous by Tooley and Singer – but rather their application in consideration of maternal and family interests."

Read That Editorial here -

http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2012/02/28/liberals-are-disgusting-in-defence-of-the-publication-of-after-birth-abortion/

The irrational discourse around this is pitiful.

"a zygote is as fully human and deserving of basic rights as an adult"

What about when an oocyte fertilized ex vivo? There are millions of zygotes cryopreserved for IVF treatments. If you believe that these millions and millions of zygotes all deserve to live, should they all be implanted and allowed to develop? What if they have genetic mutations and are 99% likely to fail, possibly killing the mother? According to you these are millions of babies that will one day die unless we implant them all.

Do you know that a single one of you skin cells has the potential to generate a zygote, which then can develop into a human? Should your individual cells all have basic human rights?

I can give you plenty of examples where your 'black and white' view fails to live up your stated moral standards.