Petty Junior Satanic Feminist, what you have provided us with is a value of human life that is relative to scientific progress.

By claiming that until a child is able to be kept alive independantly of its mother that it be considered a parasite able to be abortion, you are stating that abortions should be able to occur up until a baby is about 13 weeks old, because babies born prematurely at that time have been kept alive by the wonders of modern technology in nations such as France. In Australia, it is generally accepted that 22/23 weeks is the time of viability, though this is behind the times.

The true problem with the idea that because there is dependancy, there is a right to choose, is that if applied "rationally", then we should allow infanticide. Seeing, however, as the state claims a right to take away a child, and seeing that the state could provide medical care to a child of 12 to 13 weeks of age or more, then it is not officially a dependant child, because it can survive if not within the womb. In the third world, where medical technology is poorer, and the state less assertive in its duty of care to children, infanticide would be morally permissable in your eyes.

This is the inherant contradiction in our laws regarding the unborn. To punch a woman in the gut causing a miscarriage would render you charged with murder. For that woman to pop a pill or go to a surgeon for an abortion, she is exercising a legitimate choice. Here, a value is placed upon human life that is relative, relative to the mother's feelings towards it.

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In Australia it is not actually based, as you say, on the dependancy of the child, but rather on any possible negative affects it has against the mother. This exact definition varies from state to state. There are some discrepencies, such as Western Australia allowing for social and family reasons, and the ACT not recognising it as illegal in any circumstance. Queensland's McGuire ruling in 1986 stated forcefully that that the state "should rightly use its authority to see that abortion on whim or caprice does not insidiously filter into our society. There is no legal justification for abortion on demand" and that abortions laws are "a humane doctrine for humanitarian purposes, but it cannot be made the excuse for every inconvenient conception."

From this, one would derive the idea that there is an inherant worth to an unborn child, however that it acknowledges that due to the facts of pregnancy and circumstance, woman can be endangered by pregnancies, and in these circumstances choice should be offered. Western Australia offers a very lax interpretation of this idea, and the ACT gives the unborn a value when acted upon by another, unless that be a doctor under permission of the bearer. The ACT's position has no sound ethical basis, due to its inability to prescribe one uniform value to life. Western Australia, and, in practice, most of the states, could be accused of not upholding the value of life due to permissive attitudes to abortion on whim.

I would be interested to see the breakdown of abortion rates by state to see whether they are uniform across Australia, or whether the individual laws, practices and demographics of each state or territory influence the abortion rates. Only then could we have a proper analysis of the situation. Only South Australia has proper recording of abortion information.

This article tends to belittle the "little" Mary's out there and seems to be trying to trivialise the issue of abortion.
It's one thing to say that it's Mary's choice to have an abortion but it's another thing to say it's her problem.
If all you do is offer Mary information and no help beyond that then the abortion statistic is sure to rise. I doubt even the hard-line pro-choicers really want a rising abortion rate.

So, Yabby, what if the grandmother murderer (let’s call him Mr X) gets caught and he comes before you, the judge, in his court case where he is found guilty. Would you say to him, “Mr X you are going to jail. Please note however that you are going to jail not because murdering your grandmother was wrong. Rather, you are going to jail because it is reasonable for me and other people to be scared that you might kill us.”

In reply Mr X says, “But you have nothing to fear from me as I am now wealthy and I won’t need to kill anyone else.”

Judge: “But other people may follow your example.”

Mr X: “So I am to be sent to jail for 20 years even though I have done nothing wrong and I’m not a threat to the community. Some justice!

“You say law must be based on reason rather than morality: it may have been perfectly reasonable for the southern states of America to retain slavery – so do you believe slavery should have been retained?”

GP, you forget of course that the bible was used my many to in fact justify slavery. So much for help from so called divine revelation :)

You forget that if society deems something to be morally wrong, based on reason, its perhaps even more wrong then if somebody claims to be in touch with the almighty. Going to jail is not just
about somebody not doing it again by the way, its exclusion from society for crimes committed. So your Mr x would go to jail for the same reasons as they do now.

We are free to reason about morality and to draw our line in the sand where we think it should be. Look at the age of consent as an example.

In fact, if you really want to understand ethics and morality, studying primatology is rather interesting. Many species don't kill those of their own tribe. Selfish animals, who don't share food, are excluded etc. Frans de Waals "Good Natured" and "Chimpanzee Politics" make for interesting reading and the realisation that morality and ethics are grounded in biology, particularly in social
species.

But Yabby you didn’t answer my question! If a rational case for slavery is made, as could have been done by southerners in the US, should we accept slavery as being moral - at least for them then?

I have no problem with the idea that rationality and morality go together by the way. I don't think they need to be in conflict.

The problem for you it seems is that you are just manufacturing the notion of morality. I take it that you do not believe there are any objective moral values? If ‘morality’ just evolved over time then there is no such thing as morality at all, in the sense it is normally understood, but just behaviour that we choose to call right or wrong.

Since the notions of right and wrong are just made up then anything, given the right circumstances could be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. (As with slavery above.) The really wise person in your world would be the ethical egoist who encourages others to be moral – so that society is safe and ordered for his benefit - but all the time he secretly does whatever is best for his own interests. And why shouldn’t he? – after all there are no moral ansolutes so he is not doing anything wrong by this behaviour and he gets to live the most comfortable life. Of course, if everyone wakes up to what is going on and becomes ethical egoists then it really gets messy.