I cant pretend to know the circumstances of every woman requiring an abortion but I could assertain that the decision is never taken lightly with the exception of a tiny minority. Obviously the tiny minority who do take the decision lightly should not have children anyway and ironically abortion is then the right decision.

Pro lifers may claim those children should be adopted or fostered. This is a commodification of children and is not motivated by the wish for the best welfare of the child.Foster children are often condemed to a life of crisis. Abortion too is often incredibly traumatic for both child and mother. The common problem of child abuse should be addressed long before abortion should be reviewed.

Many superstitious cults claim abortion is against the teachings of their gods. They should not impose their values on the rest of society. The vast majority of preganacies terminate naturally. If a supernatural being made the rules of the universe existed then is obvious abortion is more moral than old age.

Witch hunting doctors who perform abortion is nothing more than reactionary and smacks of Nazi Germany of the late 1930's.

Previously I wrote
"Abortion too is often incredibly traumatic for both child and mother"

What I meant to say was

"Adoption too is often incredibly traumatic for both child and mother."

West wrote:

"Abortion too is often incredibly traumatic for both child and mother"

What I meant to say was

"Adoption too is often incredibly traumatic for both child and mother."

That is so true, at least the foetus has a chance to recover from adoption......

Numbat “You are the one condoning the killing of innocent babies just as the real fascist did during the time of Hitler”

No –

I am condoning nothing, I am saying – people are free to choose how their bodies will be used. That means Free of my condonement or criticism.

The Fascists are Tankard Reiss who would, like Hitler, demand to make the decision for other people, rather than respect them to make their own decision.

Oh and Hitler enacted laws which made abortion a criminal offense and upped the penalty, eventually to a death sentence for Aryan Women who dared disobey, sounds like those "fascists" were pretty seriously “Anti-abortion” to me.

When you know other people enough to know more about their circumstances, capabilities, capacities, desires, expectation and plans, then you will be in a position to make “abortion” / “no abortion” decisions for them.
Until that time, every anti-abortionist should just butt out and find their own real reason for being, instead of trying to micro-manage the affairs of complete strangers.

Hamlet, I think you’ve nailed the fundamental moral question when you propose that “Either the unborn have value, or they don't.”

The difficulty arises when you ask more specifically whether that value is that of a human person whose rights should be regarded as equal to those of any other person such as the woman who is carrying that pregnancy. To me it seems self evident that a freshly fertilized zygote has nothing like that status, but that a foetus in the moments just before birth is getting pretty damned close.

The problem is, at what point does that fully human value kick in? There is no black and white answer to this: the process of development from a single cell to a fully formed human is a gradual one. Some moral theologians argue that a zygote has this “personhood’ status from conception, citing genetic uniqueness as the decisive criterion. This makes no sense to me, as an identical twin is no less a human than a person whose genetic code is unique. Others propose some kind of “ensoulment” event at an arbitrarily chosen point in the pregnancy. It seems you choose “viability” as your criterion, although, as you say, this is becoming quite bendy with the development of medical technology. The most widely accepted critical point in our culture seems to be birth. In some other cultures, especially those with traditionally high rates of neonatal mortality, babies aren’t named, and ascribed personhood, until some weeks or months after birth.

Pro lifers often blur the distinction between a potential human and an actual one, often appending “unborn” (as in unborn baby, unborn child) to do so. The fact that an embryo or foetus is a potential child does not give it an actual child’s status. I am a potential corpse: I’d get pretty annoyed if people started treating me now according to my potential, rather than actual, status.

In short I’d say yes, a zygote, embryo or foetus does have value – but as a fully fledged human being, a person, no.

Snout

the matter of life was also blurred by a NSW Court of Criminal Appeal decision in R v David John IBY [2005] NSWCCA 178, handed down in May 2005, in which the Court of Criminal Appeal confirmed a District Court Judge's opinion that a baby is born alive if:

“[51] … a newborn baby is born alive or lives when it is fully extruded from its mother and is living by virtue of the functioning of its own organs with or without medical stimulus or assistance.
[52] The Court further finds that a newborn is living by virtue of the functioning of its own organs when it breathes with or without assistance or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscle whether or not the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta is attached and regardless of whether such function has been achieved by medical assistance or stimulus.”

the higher court continued

13 His Honour’s finding on the facts, set out above, was that there was both heartbeat and respiration, albeit that the respiration was assisted. On his Honour’s legal analysis, either of these matters would lead to the conclusion that the baby was born alive.

unquote

Consequently, it can be considered, at least under law in NSW, that any foetus that has a heartbeat, breathes or has brain activity outside the mother's body is alive, and therefore the death of that foetus through medical intervention must be considered as unlawful killing, at the least. Therefore the infamous Darwin baby that cried for 45 minutes after being 'aborted', is really a murder victim who could have been saved.