First let’s not confuse what is legal and what is moral.

I’ve heard this one before concerning blood was that you also Helen?

How about this analogy on the same principle.

Two women and a baby are stuck on a desert island with no hope of rescue for several months. The mother with the baby is dry while it just happens that the other is still lactating. There are no suitable local foods for the baby on the island. The lactating mother hates breast feeding and decided that since given the above analogy she doesn’t have to do anything, she won’t feed the baby and it dies.
What would say to that woman Helen?

It is a sticky situation concerning where to draw the line with positive rights, if I walk by a drowning child but because no laws says I have to help , what sort of moral person am I? What one person thinks is reasonable another can think not.

BTW I have to confess that I’m an ethical relativist I don’t think either side is absolutely ‘right’ but that’s another story.

To my mind, abortion is not a 'rights' issue. It is an issue of power and individual autonomy.

The reasons offered for or against appear as self serving rationalisations. They are all irrelevant and tend to distract the central matter of importance.

Its all about power. If you have the physical power to advance your own self interest ahead of someone else who does not have enough power to resist you, then you prevail. The idea of the state or the morally sanctimonious intervening in behalf of the weak, is mere rationalisation for doing that which they purportedly detest, namely the forceful coercion of another. If they believe, as they claim, to be defending the rights of the weak (unborn) and against the coercive power of the parent, then who will protect the weak (parent) from the coercive imposition of the state?

The state has no place interfering in what people do with their own bodies... abortions, suicide, embibing un-healthy substances, etc.

Then again, getting the state to give up its dependence on control is a bit like getting a heroin addict to give up the land of nod.

trade215, have you ever considered that maybe there might be just a little more at stake here than just the temporary and partial loss of control of the woman's body? There is a child's life at stake here.

As for the right to control one's body argument, that is too easily defeated. We all have a right to control our bodies yes, but the right to control one's body is a CONDITIONAL, not an unconditional right. It is conditional upon one not using their body in a way that violates someone else's rights.

For example, I have a right to control my body, but that doesn't mean I have a right to sneak into your house in the middle of the night and cut your throat. I still have an OBLIGATION not to take your life, and parents still have an OBLIGATION not to kill their children.

As the child in the womb is not a tresspasser and has effectively been forced into the womb of it's mother without giving any consent, then it simply has a right to be there, as it NEEDS to be there in order to survive.

The abortion issue is really about obligation and the principle not to endanger. If you endanger somebody's life you have a moral obligation to ensure that life survives.

Wow.

It seems to me that there are a whole group of people here who refuse to understand subtle argument. Ignore the fact that there is a man who plays the violin... any analogy brakes down eventually. It is about the duty not to kill vs the responsibility to keep alive.

The point is simple: sometimes contraception fails. A fetus is the result. A woman has a right to choose not to let it continue to grow so she has it removed. This is not the same as slitting a person's throat. It is saying "I am unwilling or unable to keep this fetus alive". Now - we could make the law that says if you don't use contraception then you can't have an abortion, but if you do, and it fails then you can. Oh - and Timkins. Go straight back to biology class. Sperm doesn't build up until there's eventually enough to make a baby. You only need one go.

Perhaps one day we will get the technology to have the fetus removed and placed in the body of Tony Abbott et al. then this will no longer be an issue and all the nice caring pro-lifers out there can be pregnant instead. Until then, there is only one issue. My uterus is none of your business. Do what you like with your own, and leave me to choose what does and does not stay in mine.

Amanda

Your case of "its my uterus and I'll do what I want with it" is rather purile.

You are enjoying a life in which you have inherited safeguards for and respect of your person. Right throughout it there are social interactions where your life is protected and enhanced. Of course there are diminutions, ranging from a nasty word from someone, through to final death, arising from the state of the physical, natural world as well as the actions of commission and omission of people who have no care of others in their pursuits, legal or otherwise.

Your freedom has been earned by social developments for millenia that enhance life. And usually earned through the blood of activists being shed by the powerful who sought to keep control of their world.

The argument that it is my uterus and I'll do what I want is the adoption of a power play. It involves disposal of another to stay in control of my life. I would think that the recent tsunami would have laid to rest such arrogance of our "controlling" western culture.

Life is so precious, in all of its potentiality and ever present vulnerability. In truth, none of us should inhibit it or diminish it, especially for our personal convenience.

Amanda,
I see very little that is “subtle” about abortion. http://www.mttu.com/abort-pics/

Abortion is a health problem, but the longer people try and obscure this health problem by leaving out relevant persons such as fathers, and replace them instead with violinists, then the less likely the health issues will ever be solved.

Bring on the “debate” regards abortion, but that debate can be based on well researched facts and information, and not violinists.