When the state steps in and makes abortion illegal the rate hardly changes, just the number of illegal backyard butcher jobs many result in the death of the mother, due to unrestrained bleeds. Bleeds that in a proper medical setting are controlled.

For laws to work they need to be enforceable!

As I see courts (appointed/unelected officials) are there to enforce law. Not to overturn constitutional amendments or create new laws? What's next on the hit list, the fifth amendment? Thank god we live in Australia where this control freak insanity is still to raise its ugly head!
Alan B.

Killing a human life includes the stilling of a heartbeat! No heartbeat no human life! Euthanasia, on the other hand, requires just that!

A wart or a cancer tumour are cells that also rapidly divide, but like the fetus have no heartbeat! So no human life is extinguished by an early term abortion any more than the surgical removal of a cancer.

Moreover, when an unwanted child comes into this world where a single parent is forced in depressed economic circumstances to raise that child, that child's life may be hell on earth of deprivation, neglect and abuse! And often forces the cancelation for life of a budding worthwhile and prosperous career for the mother? As studies or training is put on permanent hold! And a lose, lose all round!

And where this is the case in far too many cases, an early term abortion would be far kinder, more humane for both the mother, her career prospects and the unwanted and abused child!

If the Fathers/sperm donors could be forced to carry that child for nine months internally, and medically possible, then be saddled with the care, control and responsibility for that child right through to adulthood!? And give up forever on a potential prosperous career as the first result!? We wouldn't be having this conversation!
Alan B.

Dream on, Dan!
Alan B.

"If you are going to use the word defenceless child then defenceless teenager or adult or grandparent would do just as well."

I'm pretty sure it's also illegal to kill a defenceless teenage or adult or grandparent.

Proceed accordingly.

Binoy

Roe v Wade is just a cluster of words, and you are just a cluster of cells.

You're lucky people aren't tearing you apart limb from limb and calling it a "right".

You are dependent on others, you inconvenience other, you are "pro-choice" - and claim that they have a right to deny your humanity and kill you, right?

Not even the feminists believe their own constant double-talk.

Dear JP

Do you consider abortion acceptable at an earlier stage of development than a fetus - as a fertilised egg, blastocyst or embryo? Or do you share the Roman Catholic view that contraception is immoral, because it prevents the creation of a human life?

In my experience, most people who support women’s right to abortion do not think it’s ok to kill a child (there may be a few exceptions such as utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer), but they do not accept that a fertilised egg, blastocyst, embryo or early stage fetus is a human person with all the rights that entails. Dictionaries are not much help in this discussion because they can describe the stages of physical development but not the journey to personhood.