Deborah – children are of course our future – I guess our present has some bearing on this too. Our present will shape that future for our children to inherit.

Do you wish you children to inherit –
1 A world where they are free to exercise sovereignty of choice in matter which materially effect their personal destiny (be those choices good or bad) ?
2 A world where they are driven by edicts and commands and forced, possibly against their will, to obey the dictates of an authoritarian state ?

If you answer 1 - you, like me are pro-choice.
If you answer 2 - please explain why you would wish to condemn your children to a status little better than slavery?

BigAl30 – I would guess you have never had to face the dilemma of making a serious choice – certainly not about abortion – if you had you might realise life is more than a nursery rhyme or poem.

Maybe you could tell us all what special insight you possess which gives you “authority” to make and impose critical choices on people you do not know?

Don't be silly, of course I've had to make serious choices, but I couldn't look at myself in the mirror if I had a hand in killing an innocent human being to suit my economic or social circumstances.

You talk about "edicts". Your side of the argument is the one riding roughshod over "Rights" the rights of the child. Playing God by deciding that the tiny human life is to be cruelly killed.

I don't know how people who have a hand in approving an abortion, and the doctors and nurses using the instruments of death [after taking the Hippocratic Oath] can sleep at night.

They probably sleep very well knowing that they are enabling women to make safe, legal, informed decisions about their bodies without risking gaol, serious injury or death.

BigAl30
No one is asking you to have a hand in anything –

The pro choice perspective defends your right not to have a hand in anything, without interference or demands from anyone else.

It also supports the sovereign right of women to exercise their right, without interference from you, particularly when we are talking about a process which intimately involves her body and her body alone.

You cannot separate any right which you would attribute to the embryo / fetus from the rights of the pregnant woman - since the embryo / fetus is inseparable from its nutrient and oxygen supply and life support.

That you don’t know something merely illustrates your ignorance – maybe if you researched and found out you would understand more and accept that people do things all the time which you might well disagree with – and you have no right to interfere with them either.


Amanda – yes I think you are right

I agree with Bill Muehlenberg.
The bond between a mother and child does start long before the child is born. This child is not a stranger in the sense mentioned by Thompson in her article but carries the imprint of both the mother and the father.

Don't call me ignorant. The fetus is a new human life, programmed to grow into an adult human if not attacked by abortionists, or subject to some accidental mishap. It's not a tumour, and should not be treated like one.

If it is OK to kill such a new life, because of its dependence on its mother for nourishment and oxygen, it's no wonder that some people are now saying it's OK to kill new-born infants up to 3 months. It's time we had that Inquiry.