Alan B,

<<LISTEN, MORONS, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO KILL SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T HAVE A BEATING HEART TO STILL!>>

Using an ad hominem logical fallacy, 'listen morons', denigrates your reasoning ability. It's fallacious reasoning.

When does the heart-beat of a foetus begin?

In Qld, it is now legal to abort a baby in the womb at 22 weeks. Is the heart beating at that stage? If so, is abortion killing a baby?

I think being mother's day this Sunday we should all thank our mums for not taking our lives.

I note the deep anger of Alan B's comment and his description of people who stand outside abortion clinics as religious nut cases.Due to family obligations I have never been able to participate in the "Mother and baby" rescues attempted by these people but there is nothing crazy, aggressive or hard about them.They are often older citizens and driven by compassion to trying to save women from the trauma of abortion.
There needs to be Law Reform to remove from the statute books legislation that allows the legal execution of a member of the human family who has committed no crime against anyone.There have been children born out of incest, rape or domestic violence who have gone on to lead productive worthwhile lives. In such awful cases the child has committed no crime so why do we allow them to be killed? Any civilisation that removes the protection of the child in the womb will inevitably wither and die because it has allowed corruption to grow at the very heart of its existence. I hope both child and mother will be protected with no criminal proceedings against any woman but charges against those who carry out this barbaric procedure.

Thank you Graham.

Life begins at Conception. Personhood begins with Life.

All the genetic information for growth and development is available from Conception.

The only legitimate grounds for an abortion, is to save the physical life of the mother, if she is in imminent danger.

If it is expected that the child would have health problems, it should be allowed to be born and given the necessary palliative care and support - with parental support.

Rape or Incest is not sufficient grounds to kill the child. The abused woman should be supported.

If a woman is having mental health issues because of a pregnancy, she should be supported as would a non-pregnant woman. Abortion does not solve mental health issues - it can compound them.

Adoption with support and palliative care of those in need are underused.

Well sorry to tell you assorted religious nutters who oppose abortion it really is none of your business.
If the religious Ayatollahs want to impose their opinion on us stand for Parliament get a majority & do it
But otherwise mind your own bloody business if your silly enough to break the law you deserve what you get

The question regarding the morality or otherwise of abortion is extremely complex, so complex that I hesitate to get into it. Indeed, many books can be written about it and years of contemplation are necessary to grasp it.

In comparison, the question whether or not a killing took place is a simple one, it is binary, cold, clinical, medical. On its own, however, it says little about morality.

We, well most of us, intuitively sense that killing is wrong. But WHY is it wrong? Stepping in a bit deeper we can answer that killing another is doing unto them something which we would have hated being done unto ourselves - counter to Hillel's Golden Rule (and Jesus' rephrasing of it). Taking this one step further, ANY selfish act is wrong/sinful - not because the act itself is necessarily bad but because it increases our selfishness, thus takes us further away from God.

Thus clearly, aborting for selfish reasons is wrong.

Yet if we are able to separate the selfish motive (which is always bad, even if we receive everyone's approval and medals for what we do) from the act itself, then the full complexity of the question is exposed.

I will not dare to present all my raw thoughts in this matter here and now, just two points for today:

1) Whether killing took place is not a useful question - in order to use Hillel's Golden Rule, better ask whether or not anyone was harmed!

2) Even when a human body is killed, it is only the body which is killed: the in-dweller within that body can never be killed.

"The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed."
[Bhagavad-Gita 2:20]

"Weapons cannot shred the soul, nor can fire burn it. Water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it."
[Bhagavad-Gita 2:23]