Hamlet,

Curse this two post rule! I realized what you were getting at about two nanoseconds after I pushed the “post comment” button.

Your question, “If women can opt out of the responsibility of parenthood, though abortion, or by giving a child away for adoption, then why not men?” is a valid one, and opens several cans of worms, including ones about male parental responsibility and choices, responsibility for contraception, paternity fraud, and child support. I don’t have a simple answer, except to observe that a ban on abortion will solve none of these dilemmas.

There are, I believe, many perfectly decent and sincere reasons to oppose abortion. This isn’t one of them.

Your description of an embryo or a foetus as a “parasite” echoes the use of similar terms (“tumour”, “space occupying lesion”) on other threads by posters who I gather have strongly anti abortion views. I have never heard these terms used to describe a pregnancy by pro-choice advocates, or by anyone in the medical or counseling professions.

Your point about men having little or no say in the outcome of a pregnancy despite the expectation they will shoulder the financial responsibilities is a fair one, although it's off the topic of Melinda’s article. She seems to me to be arguing that negligence and poor practice in the abortion field are being ignored for political reasons, and connects this in some way to an argument that pregnancy support services shouldn’t have to declare their ideological positions. The first part of this deserves some examination, although I don’t think Melinda is convincing in her article. The second is a non sequitur

TRTL: "IF?" the pro-choice advocates have made a mistake,I mean just how can they tell that this small human being that feels pain, moves,feeds, and lives on oxygen breathed by its mother is not alive and if these foetus' are alive without taking their first unaided breath. How do they apologise? They may shout "sorry" into a vast empty room - so to speak yet the dead infants will not hear this pathetic apology and moreover this late apology will be utterly bloody useless eh? Regards, numbat

Numbat,

You are assuming that a zygote, embryo, or early fetus has the same moral status as a baby or adult human. This actually only became the dominant Christian position in the 17th century. Before then Christian tradition generally held that abortion was wrong at any stage, but that the fetus did not definitely become fully human until some time in the second trimester. I think that the "moment of conception" doctrine has advantages for demographic competition, keeping women in their place, and securing a supply of cheap labour, but that it isn't what people really believe.

If we accepted the arguments of the animal rights people then we would have the same duty to save rabbits from foxes that we had to save Jews from Nazis. Similarly, only about 1 in 4 zygotes survives to the live baby stage, even if there is no interference. In your (stated) view then the greatest human health problems are not cancer or heart disease, but such things as failure to implant and the biological mechanisms that cause an abnormal embryo to be expelled. Why aren't you calling for medical research funds to be diverted to these areas? Even very conservative Christians have no problem with the idea of brain death. How is this possible if having a brain is irrelevant to having human status?

There is no one to one correspondence between surviving zygotes and people, because at any time up to day 12 after conception an embryo can split to form identical twins or triplets. Two embryos that would normally form fraternal twins, no more closely related than any brothers or sisters, can be squeezed together and cooperate to form a single individual (google "tetragametic chimera"). A case was recently discovered in England when DNA testing appeared to show that a 50 year old woman could not be the mother of her two sons. The embryos can even be of different sexes, and chimeras can be formed in the lab between species too different to hybridise. What happens to the soul in these cases?

Snout, actually parasite fits:

one definition - MSN Encarta: Definition:

1. organism living on another: a plant or animal that lives on or in another, usually larger, host organism in a way that harms or is of no advantage to the host


From Biology on-line: parasite

(Science: biology) An organism which obtains food and shelter from another organism (for example giardia).

From Yahoo: Biology An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.

All of which are pretty much in agreement, and provide a good definition of the foetus. Of course if the part of the definition 'different organism' is omitted in the human case, and it being argued that the foetus is part of the host rather than a different organism, then we would have to look at abortion as being no more than akin to breast reduction for cosmetic purposes.

So, abortion is really just a form of cosmetic surgery? Then it should be allowed right up to the very minute of delivery, when it ceases being a parasite.

Hamlet, I think you're trying to set up a straw man argument here. I doubt you sincerely believe that "parasite" or similar descriptors are appropriate to refer to an embryo or foetus. Nor do I. What is your point?

Snout, it is simple. Is the foetus a being, a parasite or an appendage?

In NSW there are laws that make it an offence to commit an act, such as in a car accident, or by criminal assault, that results in the death of a foetus, whether or not the mother is harmed, except in the course of a medical procedure.

Isn't this a rather dramatic double standard? Why should an action that results in the destruction of a foetus by a car crash on the way to an abortion clinic be an offense, when if the foetus arrives safely at the clinic it can simply be destroyed?

Either the unborn have value, or they don't.

Having said that, I agree that laws against abortion can be harmful. But I would have to say that no foetus that has the possibility of viability (and its getting early and earlier) should be aborted.