Celivia, I liked the first of that two part post but disagree with much of the second.

I've proposed previously that that there should be a cut off point during a pregnancy before which the nominated father is given the chance to opt in or out. The mother then gets to decide based on that and her own desires and circumstances if she will proceed with the preganancy or not. That decision must rest with the mother because the father cannot carry the fetus to term.

The arguments you put forward seem (from my POV) quite similar to some of those put forward by the Anti-choice mob, just applied to men rather than women. As I understand it the choice to abort or not is generally about more than just the period of the pregnancy. It's about the parents ability to cope with the ongoing responsibilities of a child resulting from the pregancy.

Would you ban woman who thought they could not afford the upkeep of a child from having an abortion?

R0bert

Celivia, it seems you have all the rights and men have all the responsibility in your feminist world. If it's a womens singular right to abort or not, then by extension it ought to be the mans right to support or not. After all it's her body, just as it is his wallet. Don't ask men to protect women from her own decision. It's her body, have her do something responsible to mitigate any opportunity for an unwanted pregnancy or have her keep her legs closed. Take full responsibility of your "rights" is all I ask. Don't make men pay for your "right" to decide to carry to term, and don't make men responsible for your "right" to have an abortion. It's simple enough. Leave men out of it.

Good thief “I see the foetus as a dependent individual.”

It is dependent, it is not individual until the moment of birth. Its dependency negates all presumptions to “individuality”.

Hence the difference in legal treatment between a new born who can be cared for by anyone, even in the event of the mothers death in childbirth and the “preborn”

Re “On the contrary, people who are dependent deserve special care, not lethal neglect.”

The difference, any number of different folk can offer care to separate individuals who are incapable of looking after themselves.
An embryo does not have the same options.
Its existence is exclusively dependent upon the pregnant woman within whose uterus it is developing.
That unique woman has a priority right to decide how her uterus will be used and if that means terminating the pregnancy, then so, sadly, be it.
Better she is free to decide, against the wishes of the religious, than she is forced to accept the dogma of a minority faith (which she might not even believe in).

Goodthief, to have a thing called objective morality, you need
an objective arbiter and we have no evidence that one exists.

You may well claim "God", but in human history we have had
thousands of gods, hundreds of holy books etc, but no evidence
that a single one of them is the real one. What we do have is
evidence that people mostly believe what they were taught as
kids. Had you grown up in say Iraq or India, would Allah or
the Indian Gods be your god? Statistics say most likely.
So much of religion is really about geography.

When it comes to discussing things, I'm sure that if you looked
through the internet newsgroups, there would even be those
discussing every aspect of headaches!

Morality clearly has biological and cultural influences.
If you think about things to do with sex for instance, many
cultures certainly did not have the hang ups about it, as the
Christian Church does. Those missionaries were pretty shocked,
when they arrived on the Pacific Islands. I'm told that the
Intuit used to offer their wives to visitors. etc etc.

Your subjective opinions were formed by both genetic and
cultural influences, experiences etc. Of course you will
discuss them. In my experience, one single argument very
seldom changes anyones mind. I've spoken to JWs who eventually
gave up family and friends and left the sect. According to them,
it was a mountain of little arguments that eventually grew to
the point where one day, the crunch came.

So I never expect anyone to change their mind overnight, based
on one thing. I see OLO more as a way of exchanging information,
making points, but people are then free to think about them.
I've certainly changed my mind on some issues, over time.

So what is right is not that obvious, thats why we debate about
it.

There is no conundrum. A human being is formed as soon as the egg and the sperm come together and an embryo is created.

As an earlier poster said, let's value human life for what it is - amazing and a huge opportunity.

Imagine the amazing people we might have on this earth today if it weren't for them being aborted! I fear for the day when we become so obsessed with killing any human life for any reason that there is hardly anyone left.

Indeed, if we need to see an example of how abortion ruins societies, look at northern India (part Bihar and the Hindi belt states), where women are literally stolen by men to become wives for them because there are so few girls around. Shame pro-choicers, shame!

"Imagine the amazing people we might have on this earth today if it weren't for them being aborted! I fear for the day when we become so obsessed with killing any human life for any reason that there is hardly anyone left."

That's nothing compared to the vastly greater number of even more amazing people who might have been if only the otherwise wasted gametes had only combined. Then there are the gazillions of amazing people who might have been if only for the careless stubbing of toes. Why is that these poor potential more amazing people count for so little compared to the fused not as amazing people?

Even Rodney Rude is well aware of the enormous wastage of potentially amazing people that results from being careless with one's gametes. Yet for the prolifers it is as if the haploid part of the human life cycle does not exist.