I am not a doctor.

I am not a psychologist.

Therefore I am asking a relevant qualified person is the following possible?

Cant we have the best of both worlds? Give parents the choice to abort and if they decide to, cant we save the embrio/child etc and grow it either artificially or naturally with a carrier until conception? We must have the technology.

Perhaps we are killing a future Nobel prize winner or the person who finds a cure AIDS, and i am sure many adoptive parents would jump at the chance to 'sponsor' a baby.

This would assist prospective adoptive parents, mean the parents have the right to terminate or 'handover', yet most importantly, the child has the right to live.

I have been involved with abortions with family members and unless alleviating circumstances, either way you look you are deciding that for your own reasons you want to take out what is inside of you, and you are not prepared to carry through a child you do not wish to have.

The miracle of life is not just about the baby, the world works in mysterious ways, if something has been created by accident, many people (including myself) feel it was meant to happen.

I was an accident, I was not convenient for my parents, they were not in a loving relationship and my mother would of aborted me if she was able to.

Ask her now if everything in life happens for a reason, ask her now if she wished she had her wishes granted. That is life, it has its many roads, but i would not be here if that decision was made.

Everyone is special, so i thank the circumstances in 1980 that enabled me to make a contribution to life, and to have one.

Just dont throw people away. if you want to abort, it should be us as a society that does not let that baby down, and provides it with its right, once concieved, to grow and live. Science can give us that chance and this debate can therefore be solved.

Realist,
you spoke about embryo not being conceived yet. "Conception" is Scientifically defined as a sperm cell fertilising a human egg. So an embro <is> conceived.
That is why condoms and things like that are called contraceptive- because they work against(contra) conception (ception). Which is also why using a condom is not sexual union but simultaneous masturbation.

I am always amazed that it is the secular humanists and atheists who try to bring religion into the debate on abortion.

From a strictly materialistic/scientific point of view, the fertilized egg is a distinct human life. Any talk of 'personhood' or when it becomes a 'human being' is metaphysical.

All such metaphysical requirements must be seen as simply subjective opinion, especially coming from atheists. As such, there can be no way to judge between the the different opinions, even amongst the pro-abortion crowd.

Whilst Amanda has appeared to be balanced, she misses this important point and the simple scientific fact that it MUST be a human life after conception. There is no need for human interpretation.

As with any right to life issues, there is only 1 issue that realy needs addressing. Do we value all human life equally or do we discriminate against a powerless minority.

I think what you're saying has *some* merit, Realist, but you are not living up to your name in other ways.

It certainly solves the problem of forcing women to carry a foetus they don't want, however doesn't really solve the problem of having to raise children no-one wants (if you're talking about 0 abortion). Some would be wanted, for adoption etc, but there would be a lot of left-overs.
It would be good for the (hypothetical because in reality I don't think it would happen) fathers who didn't wish the pregnancy to be terminated and wished to raise the child as a single father.

Although, I do feel the same way about the serendipity angle in a sense - I have often thought that as much as I am against having children for myself, should my tubal ligation fail I would feel that against those odds I should really keep the baby.
Conversely - isn't it fate either way? Like, whether it's in the negative or the positive, what ever happens was (self evidently) meant to be?

As much as those products of conception *could* be the next Einstein, they *could* be the next Hitler too... works both ways.

There is now evidence that brain activity begins in the foetus from as early as 4 weeks, and of course the foetus is deemed a human foetus (and not some other type of growth), and that is why that human foetus is removed.

However any discussion on whether or not the foetus is human, basically overlooks the fact that the abortion is like a form of contraception that is being carried out.

Statistics on abortion in Australia are often difficult to find, but there is evidence that the rate of abortion is much higher in Australia than in other countries such as Germany. This could very well mean that less contraception (or inadequate contraception) is being used in Australia, and the taxpayer is subsidising much abortion (through Medicare), instead of contraception.

There would also be questions regards many of the abortions that are being carried out. In most states the mother has to be in serious danger (either mentally or physically) before the abortion can be legally carried out by a doctor. This means that the mother would have to be assessed to determine if she is in serious danger, and that assessment would have to be undertaken by trained and qualified persons. This would basically mean a doctor or a psychiatrist. Few other people would have the qualification for such an assessment.

However there are abortion clinics that advertise, and state that they do not need a referral from a doctor, which means that they themselves must be carrying out the assessment. Such an assessment would take hours or days, and therefore, it is highly improbable that proper assessments are being carried out by abortion clinics, and therefore, it is likely that they are operating illegally.

The taxpayer is now subsidising an illegal activity.

Of course the persons who have always gained from this to date, have been the owners of abortion clinics. They have gained monetarily, no matter what has happened.

"The taxpayer is now subsidising an illegal activity."

I didn't think you had noticed Timkins
Yes we have been doing that for a few years now. We are spending taxpayers money propping up George Bush's illegal war in Iraq which has brought about mass killings of innocent human beings that rival the tally of Saddam Hussein. Just imagine the drop in abortions that would occur if that sort of money(Billions of dollars)was expended in Health and Education.
Just how genuine is your concern for the preservation of human life.
I vaguely recall that when parliamentary discussions were taking place to establish a womans right to have a termination, one parliamentary wit suggested that in the oppositions case Abortion should be made retrospective....There is a lot of merit in that proposal.........