DavidJS: You’re right. Very sloppy on my part. I apologise.

Foyle, I imagine we could find a way of making the “self aware adult” less self aware before killing them. When sleeping, say. Leave a family behind? Then, kill single people. Lose a good worker, then kill the unemployed. Gruesome and perverse, I know, but that’s where you go if you decide to kill humans to save the planet.

I accept that some abortions are the result of hard thinking and hard circumstances, and that people on my side of the debate should show respect for women who do not terminate on a whim, but that doesn’t stop abortion from being a homicide.

West, Your “sovereignty over their own body” point is question-begging. If there's only one body, you're right. If there are two bodies, then you're not.

Your post contains a lot of very unsavoury food for thought and terrible irony for people like me, but it doesn’t mean abortion is not homicide. The Church has done wrong, but that's a whole separate topic. The moral issue pro-lifers speak of (whatever their political pedigree and ulterior motives) is simply “Thou shalt not murder”.

Even if your point about God is reasonable, that doesn’t get us off the moral hook. If and when we humans get our moral act together, we can take God on. Meanwhile, we should accept responsibility for our decisions and actions.

Jordan147, the whole AI dilemma, and how it affects this topic, is unfamiliar to me and so I have to think about it more before I can respond. But thank you for your post.

Pax,

Goodthief you are right and there are many bodies. A family tragedy evoked a woman in town to approach my family. She as a teenager had been gang raped to the point of mutilation and fell pregnant, she carried the unwanted child as abortion was both socially unacceptable and unaccessible. The child died in the womb and was still born. Needless to say her life was over , as was any other children , grandchildren, great grandchilren she may have had. The "Number" of bodies is not the point. The point is I am not her , you are not her and nobody has the right to Judge her if she was able to have an abortion or the medical staff who may have helped her.

I find pro-lifers shallow and callous. An example is the fine particles from a single petrol run motor vehicle will cause the termination of as many pregnacies as abortions in this country. I know a pro-lifer who drives a four wheel drive , she would be responsible for countless of resulting abortions from the pollution she creates.Multiply that by the electricity she consumes from coal burning , she sends her kids to school on the other side of town just to impress her neighbours. I dont see her so bothered by abortion that she is willing to change her life style.

Its more fulfilling for pro-lifers to vilify victims and live as a hypocrites. It is preposterous to claim pro-lifers are sincere in their care for life , clearly they are not. So lets get past this nonesense and cut to the real chase. Pro-lifers believe they should have authority to dictate to people on the basis of the madness of superstition. The link between the pro-life movement and the occult superstition of the bible is well established. This is a group of people who are morally panicked , who cannot manage life so turn to superstition , have hit bottom and feel the need to vilify the vulnerable in order to make themselves feel superior to others.

West, very well said.

Goodthief “I believe there are two people involved (the woman and the foetus)”

If you were to suggest two “people” are involved, I think you need to consider that, actually, three were involved, the father too.

Here we come to am important point. I do not believe the father has any right to make the final decision of to abort of not.

The fathers body is not “at risk” during the time of gestation. It is only the woman’s body which is “used” in that part of the reproduction cycle. Only she should be recognized as the authority of choice. Not the father, not the foetus and not those who claim to represent the foetus or who think they are exercising some moral imperative.

“My point is that this essence doesn’t simply arrive at birth. Naturally, I believe you were you from the moment of conception.”

I am not sure when I started, at conception or possibly before conception or at birth or maybe when I became conscious of who I am, around age two from memory. All I do know is I am a “work in process” which will (hopefully) continue after death.

Yes I do believe in God, I talk to him sometimes and seek his guidance (although he has never responds, in any physical sense and I dont expect him to).

I choose not to follow a religious creed but respect peoples right to choose their own. Only through exercising choices do we grow as individuals. Only by challenging authority do we prevent it from pretending to become "God" and the best way of challenging Authority is by consistently putting the individual at the top of the "social organisation chart" and not at the bottom of it.

Col explains the god perception finely but as an individualist rubs against the Christianist agenda. Covered by Col is when a person begins to be a person. Essentially physical feeling and self awareness and personality only exists in a mature formed brain. This is the reason abortion is regulated. To say we are a person upon conception is philosophically Buddhist, the being attracted to a copulating couple becomes a person. To say we are 'us' from the point of early cells do not draw distinction from our physical past. Col is actually suggesting we as persons are billions of years old. If we are 'us' at conception then we have been 'us people' since the atoms that we are made of formed. The dust in our homes, a lot of which is our dead skin is also then us people, we should then treat everything with a neurotic level of respect because to dust the top of a fridge is by the cell cluster is human argument , a form of abortion.

Col illustrates the Christian view nicely , that everything is fetishised , like a child who sees personality in a teddy bear.
The Pro-Life cult takes that a further step and as Christianists as their cousins the Islamists seek to punish those who do not submit to the authority of the fetishised world a god of their own invention. Women in dire straights are not the only people Pro-lifers persecute.

Col Rouge, That's a very fine post and I agree with a lot of it. I wonder if we have stumbled into agreement. You say, “I think you need to consider that, actually, three were involved, the father too”.

I am happy to recognise three: the mother, the foetus and the father. Three people. How their roles differ is another matter, all I’m looking for is a more inclusive approach to identifying people.

I am happy to agree also that a human being is a “work in progress”. In support of your view, modern research points to enormous development still occurring in a person’s 20s.

You say, “I am not sure when I started, at conception or possibly before conception or at birth or maybe when I became conscious of who I am, around age two from memory.”

I will need assistance in understanding how you might have begun before conception, unless it was in the “mind of God” sense that I have suggested. Anyhow, as you seem to think it possible that you started as early as conception, doesn’t it follow that we might all have begun that early? And, if that’s true, then all I’m saying is that that is a relevant consideration in any discussion about abortion. In other words, if a foetus might be the beginning of a person, then that beginning should be recognised.

Further, wouldn’t it be a good idea to protect one year olds who happen to be on the same timeline as you – not yet self-aware? (I must say your memory is far superior to mine.)

West, I am happy to converse with you when and if it appears that you are prepared to converse rather than abuse. As soon as your post appears like another tantrum, I’m afraid I don’t really read the whole thing.

Pax,