Hi JP
Yes, I do think there is a stage in a pregnancy at which abortion is wrong except in rare cases, and as I admitted before I don’t think there is a hard-and-fast rule about what that point should be. A viable fetus should not be terminated unless continuing the pregnancy risks serious harm to the mother, or there is evidence that the fetus itself is damaged to the point of facing a brief and miserable existence.

Would you apply the precautionary principle to the two examples I gave earlier – the brain-dead person on life support or the baby born with no brain?

JP,

There are serious problems with the moment of conception position. It is hard to see zygotes as uniquely valuable. Reproduction is a very error prone process, and the vast majority of zygotes never end up as a live baby. Most zygotes and embryos are lost before the woman is even aware of them.

"Most of us have 46 chromosomes. Most of our embryos do not. Embryos end up with an abnormal number of chromosomes because the egg has abnormal chromosomes, or the sperm has abnormal chromosomes or during the first cell division after fertilization, the chromosomes are inappropriately separated."

https://www.coastalfertilityspecialists.com/resources/blog/why-do-chromosomally-normal-embryos-not-implant-in/

Even after pregnancy is confirmed, 10-15% of pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Nor is there a one-to-one correspondence between surviving zygotes and babies. Embryos can split to form identical twins or triplets. Two separate embryos derived from different egg and sperm cells can come into contact in the womb and cooperate to form a single individual instead of fraternal twins. Different cell lines are descended from the different embryos. Search "human chimera".

I agree with Rhian on this, as would most people. You have to distinguish a human person, who has sentience and a self like us, from human tissue. That is there is little outrage about contraceptives like IUDs that prevent implantation or first trimester abortions, but third trimester abortions are uncontroversially illegal, except in the most extreme circumstances.

(cont'd)

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You also need to consider how keeping abortion illegal works in practice, as in various Latin American countries. What actually happens is that your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer develops a sideline in abortion pills, and the police are just as effective at stopping this as you might suspect. In a small minority of cases, you can get the same complications as with a natural miscarriage, and there is no way for the police to tell the difference. Women have been jailed for years, their families broken up and any existing children deprived of a mother, all because they had a miscarriage.

Women in early pregnancy are denied treatment for cancer, sometimes condemning them to death, because the radiation or chemotherapy will kill the embryo or fetus.

Even if there is an exception for the life of the mother, doctors and nurses are reluctant to help if there are serious complications of pregnancy. They don't want to be second-guessed (and maybe sent to prison themselves) by some religious zealot in the government.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pregnant-el-salvador-woman-denied-life-saving-abortion/

A similar case in Ireland:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/woman-died-ireland-abortion-ban-warning-americans-roe-v-wade-rcna35431

You failed to take contraceptives or require the use of a condom.
- That's Strike 1, but you might be forgiven for that as unexpected circumstances sometimes occur.

You failed to take a 'morning after pill' which are readily available after your unprotected sex, that's Strike 2.
- Either you want to have a baby with the person you just slept with of your don't. Make a decision.

Women get their periods every month.
So if they don't get their period within the month there's good reason to suspect they might be pregnant.
You missed your period and you know you missed it. Strike 3.

At this point, you've had plenty of opportunity already to decide 'Your body, Your choice'.

You had the opportunity to take contraceptives, ensure the bloke you rooted wore a condom, take a morning after pill after the night in question and then missed your period.
- It's not like contraceptives, condoms, pregnancy tests and 'morning after pills' aren't available to anyone who needs them,
- They are.

If you were half-assed about taking contraceptives, lazy or chucking them down the sink to entrap your man then that's no-one else's fault except your own.

I say you get 3 months to book in a termination, then it's GAME OVER.
No termination after 3 months, serious penalties if you try to get one, as well as serious penalties and fines for the abortion provider.

Also a bloke shouldn't be expected to support you until 3mths have passed and you're officially committed.
And a bloke should be entitled to a declaration that the child is his before he invests himself in taking care of you.
If they support you during a pregnancy and then after birth find out the child's not theirs, the mother can be sued for misleading him.

One problem I see is that kids under 21 whose parents earn to much aren't entitled to income support.
That needs to change to ensure younger people can get what they need and take responsibility for themselves.

Rhian – you are unwilling to name a stage of pregnancy when you regard abortion as being wrong. That is not very helpful because at some point decisions have to be made. If abortion after a certain date is wrong, because it is the killing of a person (your terminology), then surely it is important for you to be more specific, otherwise you seem to be saying that it is okay for persons to be killed.

Just to briefly restate my point about abortion and viability: babies in the womb - their natural environment – are generally viable, just like we, in our natural environment, are generally viable. In all instances where there is a medical issue, we should endeavour to save both the mother and the child. If in doing so the child’s life is lost, then that is not an abortion in the moral sense as there was no intent to end the child’s life.

If the child in the womb has a terminal condition there is no advantage gained by deliberately ending their life prematurely. Even if the child lives only minutes or hours after birth, or is even still born, the parents can still spend some precious time with their child free from any ill-feelings from having acted to bring about a premature end to their life. There are also numbers of cases where there was a misdiagnosis and the child’s condition has not been anywhere near as bad as thought. Some parents only find this out after they have ended the child’s life.

Yes, I think the precautionary principle should apply in virtually all instances. Specifically though, in the instance you cite of a “brain-dead person on life support”: if a person is completely non-responsive for some time and their heart and breathing are only being maintained mechanically, then no, there is no need to continue the life support. Regarding baby’s with anencephaly, I would repeat my comments of the previous paragraph.

I’m not saying this is easy but it must also be recognised that abortion can be devastating for women.

Divergence – yes, I understand that, for various reasons, many new human lives that are conceived do not continue to birth. But there is a lapse in moral logic to go from noting the fact that a certain number of lives are naturally lost during pregnancy to saying that therefore we can deliberately intervene to end as many other such young lives as we like.

It is also a fact that many born human beings die from cancer, heart attacks, malaria, tuberculosis, etc (in fact 100% of born human beings die – eventually) but that reality is no justification for saying that we therefore can kill them if we want to.

Yes, it is true some new lives develop as a result of unusual or abnormal processes, but why does that mean that it is thereby okay to kill babies in the womb? It does not logically follow.
Yes, not many people object to IUDs due to the fact that they can cause early abortions, but , (1), probably many people don’t realise that that is so, and, (2), even if they do realise that and are still happy to use them, are you saying that we should make moral judgements based on majority opinion?

You say that “third trimester abortions are uncontroversially illegal, except in the most extreme circumstances”. It is certainly not the case that third trimester abortions are illegal in Queensland where I live and I think that is so in most other States in Australia. In Queensland it only requires two doctors to agree, for any reason, for an abortion to be provided up to birth.

Lastly, presumably you missed this sentence in one of my earlier posts: “I am not so much wanting to criminalise abortion as make people think about what we are doing to our own offspring and to voluntarily cease killing them”.