Personally I find abortion impossible to morally justify in virtually all cases - many arguements have been put forward and I don't need to reiterate them. However I think that the following compromise is one which both camps should agree on as step forward:

The overwhealming majority of abortions are inflicted on perfectly healthy mother and child. I'll be generous and say 95% of abortions fit in this category (if not more).

Further in 95% of cases the stated reason for the abortion is 'economical reasons'. This calculates as follows:-

100,000+ abortions a year X 95% on perfectly healthy mother and child X 95% for economic reasons = 90,250 abortions a year simply because people think they can't afford to support the child!

This is a gross injustice in one of the wealthiest nations this planet has ever seen. It is an impossibility that any parent in Australia can claim not to be able to adequately economically support a child when the government will always at minimum ensure that every Australian citizen is housed and fed. Not having a wealthy up-bringing is no excuse for murder. My childhood was far from wealthy but was brilliant all the same.

Surely the "pro-choice" camp can see the injustice here? The abortion rate is disgustingly high. I have come to accept that at least for the next generation or so many people will push the abortion line (there is just such a lack of education out there), but surely no-one can justify such a high number based on a total lie that people can't afford it.

"100,000+ abortions a year X 95% on perfectly healthy mother and child X 95% for economic reasons = 90,250 abortions a year simply because people think they can't afford to support the child!"

This is a good example of why you should be very wary of participation in surveys. To me, such reasoning seems oversimplified and faulty, much like the reasoning that suggests a woman having an abortion is a murderer. Again, I call on the prolifers to provide reasons why a cell or cells in the process of forming a human being should be regarded so differently from cells with the capacity to form a human being ( gametes or somatic cells). Clearing this hurdle would at least give the unwashed an insight as to how a lab technician destroying human embryos and Martin Bryant have so much in common.

Daniel “Personally I find abortion impossible to morally justify in virtually all cases “

It is not about your ability to “morally justify” anything.

If you cannot morally justify an abortion, don’t have one.

However, for all your moral anguish, it does not entitle you to deny someone else, likely female, the right to make up her own mind and to live with the moral consequences of the decision.

“Surely the "pro-choice" camp can see the injustice here?”

I would suggest the greater injustice would be if a pro-lifer get legislation on the statutes to decide a woman will not be allowed to get an abortion but does not carry any responsibility or duty for the outcomes of that decision.

Goodthief, an IUD works by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb. Therefore it works post conception.

Even very liberal thinking (on other issues) Daniel would therefore have trouble with an IUD.

Aqvarivs, yes, a man financially responsible for a child loses independence. But, a man can continue working throughout the nine months of pregnancy, throughout the early months of a baby's life without missing a beat. That is the difference. Paying for child care for a baby, taking in account that the mother may not have the choice to stay at home to look after her baby costs.

The fact that single mothers account overwhelmingly for those living in poverty speaks for itself. This cannot be brushed of with lazyness or everyone wanting plasma TV's.

Would fewer women choose abortion if low living standards wasn't an issue? Maybe so, but then, as some already do, women who choose to have their baby would be accused of being lazy spongers, living off suffering men and the state.

If she does go to work when the child is still a baby, so not to lose too much of her skills etc. and be independent, she's selfish and a 'bad mother'. If she waits until her child is of school age, no employer is really interested in her dated skills, and not really interested in fitting in with school times.

Terminations for purely financial reasons, are the saddest reason of all. That surely is purely about failed contraception. So, we're back to that. Contraception. And men play a huge very important part in this area too. By discussing, by asking, by making a joint decision on this. By talking about what would happen if contraception failed.

But, babies is often the last thing on men's minds. In beginning relationships, if a woman is not 'ready and willing' after the 3rd date, she's 'frigid', 'manipulative', 'a teaser' and worse. Ask any single woman who is dating. It is hard out there.

It's a strange fact of human nature that the only certain way to avoid the accusation that you are doing nothing to stop evil and injustice in the world is to do nothing to stop evil and injustice in the world. Particularly if you are pro-life.
If you dare state the truth that abortion is the deliberate killing of a small, developing human being in the womb and, on the basis of this simple and incontrovertible truth, state that it is a great moral evil, you will become the target of irrational abuse from people you have never met, yet who claim to know every thought which crosses your mind, how you spend all your time and money, and your views on war, capital punishment and poverty. You can't get more irrational than that, and it's hardly surprising such people use the same standards to judge the value of life in the womb.
If you go one further and state that those who deliberately kill recognisably human unborn babies with fingers, toes, eyes nose, mouth and beating heart are murderers, you will be contradicted, yet it is as literally true and self-evident as to state that those who sexually abuse small children are pedophiles.
Fester, you demand of pro-lifers that they justify their use of the term "murderer" in relation to newly-fertilized embryos. The simple answer is that, in my experience, they don't use that term because of its generally-accepted usage. It doesn't alter the fact that the deliberate destruction of embryonic human life is just as it says. But why do you divert the discussion from the article's topic of surgical abortion, as I have described it above? That is unquestionably murder. Is it too embarrassing for you to confront?

Celivia, when you say you can't understand why anti-abortionists say abortionists kill babies, and that they must just be pretending, I suggest you are the one who is pretending. That's like saying you can't understand why people who prey on young children are called pedophiles. Just being nice to them, are they?
Here's how Registered Nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer described a 6-month partial-birth abortion she witnessed, in testimony to a US Senate hearing on the subject:
Shafer testified that she saw the baby's beating heart on the ultrasound monitor. The 'doctor' pulled the baby into the birth canal with forceps, partially delivering his body while leaving the head inside.

“The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall …

"The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things.”

Shafer added that the abortionist pulled the baby out and threw him into a pan. She continued, “I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just ‘reflexes.’” Shafer, who is now pro-life, said two other partial birth abortion procedures she'd witnessed involved healthy women and healthy babies.
Now why would we pretend to believe that abortionists kill babies, Celivia?