Brian,

This issue really isn't anywhere near as much of a conundrum as you think. It is one of those few issues in society that really is black or white.

Arguement A: If an unborn child is recognised as a human being, then by default abortion is clearly murder. Unless perhaps the life of that child is posing a serious and real threat to the life of his/her mother.

Arguement B: If an unborn child is not recognised as a human being, or is considered sub-human, or some kind of lesser-human, then perhaps abortion may not be considered as murder.

So the crux of the arguement is weather and when an unborn child is considered to be worthy of our current society's arbitrary measure of what constitutes a human being.

Remember in Hitler's Germany many were considered sub-human/lesser-human and it was considered scientific fact. I am sure the indiginous peoples of this country were not to happy with their 'sub-human' banner only lifted here in the late 60's.

Brian I put this to you. There are only 2 single things that all human beings share - and this is proven by scientific fact:-

1. Being genetically homo-sapien.
2. Being alive.

Have a think about that. Every single claim you can think of to de-humanise the unborn can be disproven by the fact that each and every supposed sub-human trait can be found in many fellow humans who have made it past the abortion gauntlet and are considered human.

I guarantee you that the above measure holds 100% of the time - try it.

I seems to me that the only thing that an unborn child has thats different from say a severly mentally disabled person or a person in a 9 month coma is that they just happen to be unlucky enough not be born yet and live in a society where abortion is as accessable as having a tooth pulled.

PS I am sure that half the people here were un-wanted at some point in their lifes.

As a developmental geneticist, I find the entire debate over reproductive technology (including abortion/contraception etc.) misguided. It is based on the mistaken idea that human life actually begins. It never does! Human eggs and sperm are not dead. They are living cells whose main difference from any others is that they have one copy of the genome rather than two. Human life is not a series of discrete events but rather a continuous chain of biological life alternating between a one-copy and two-copy genome state. (At some stage in its neural development, each two-genome-state human form becomes self-aware - i.e. an "individual"). Human life BEGAN about 3.5 billion years ago when the first living cell arose and each of us living today is only here because ALL of our millions of ancestors were survivors who reproduced - a fantastically unlikely event (so count yourself lucky)!

Is a soul created when two living cells with one genome copy each fuse to form a single living cell with two genome copies (not a remarkable event in biological terms)? Surely the debate on the value of human life should centre around consciousness and when human consciousness becomes sufficiently developed for self-awareness. Beating each other over the head about the rights or wrongs of "killing" a newly-formed two-genome-copy cell is ridiculous! (How many two-genome-copy cells in our bodies die naturally each day - millions?)

Maybe we're asking the wrong question here.

Instead of asking when life begins we could be asking how we can go about helping pro-lifers live with the fact that abortion is legal. Unless Tony Abbott somehow manages to swing a dictatorship sometime soon, abortion is going to stay legal.

I don't like the fact that Tony Abbott is the health minister, but I'm not going to get hysterical about it. I live with it.

Maybe we should be thinking of pro-lifers as trauma victims and work out ways to help them live with the reality of abortion.

Murder will always be murder just as stealing will always be stealing. Legalising something does not change the morality of it. The pro death campaign do not argue that abortion use to be murder because it was illegal. The authors arguement is summed up 'Debating the issue seems pointless.'

Many people hearts are so hardened that they will continue to defend the indefencible. The defender of life then becomes the villian. I dare say many of us would not even be allowed to have had an opinion if abortion was legal in our parents day.

This article is another pathetic attempt to hide the fact that we have legalised the murder of those who can't defend themselves. The same people then scream about sending Australian troops to war. Our morality is warped.

Michael in Adelaide,

I have an autistic cousin who is far from conscious nor self aware.

By your logic if someone where to murder him it would be acceptable?

Read my post above - every single de-humanising excuse anyone can think of can be disproven by the the genetics/alive measure.

Told you it works 100% of the time.

Next please.

Daniel06, dragging your cousin into this debate, although emotional, really has nothing to do with the fact that abortion is legal. Your cousin's autism would have been noticed when he was 2+ years old, and killing a 2 year old is murder or euthanasia.

Yes pro-choicers have to be vigilant to preserve the right for Australian women to be able to access safe medical abortions.

When single women have children they are condemning themselves and their child to years in substandard housing, living a demeaning hand to mouth subsistence on the paltry single parent pension and waiting in long queues to access health and dental services for themselves and their children. Make no mistake unremitting poverty triggers depression.