*The days of the holy zygote are well beyond us" flies in the face of reason*

Nonsense. An acorn is not an oak tree, an egg is not a chicken,
a sheet of steel is not a motor vehicle. A person has a human brain,
if that stops, its a corpse.

*if a chemical abortion had been used on you when you were a zygote, you simply would not be here now! Whoof! No little Yabby!*

Denny, if my mom had had a headache, or if my mom delayed sex for a
minute by stopping for a cup of coffee or whatever, more then likely
a different little one of a billion sperms would have won the race
and I would not be here either. Fact is I would never have known
about it, so it frankly would not matter. In nature there is hardly
a limit as to the amount of potential offspring that can be created.
Reality prevails, we flush trillions of sperms and eggs down our toilets daily and don't give it another thought.

That is the reality of nature, I am not so foolhardly as to ignore
it.

You might well wear your heart on your sleeve, but a little bit more
reason would not be such a bad thing.

Exactly what is an ‘unborn child’? It seems a contradiction in terms to me. Either you are a child or you are not a child so why the distinction? What is wrong with the perfectly good word foetus? Why can’t you believe that life begins at conception and still call it a foetus? Or is it that ‘unborn child’ is more emotionally manipulative? If you need to resort to emotional manipulation is it because you do not have a reasonable argument?

If it is so obviously killing then why is there not obvious proof that the foetus is a human being? It can’t be that hard for those who are absolutely certain that abortion is murder to provide us with an absolutely certain definition of human being since murder is the killing of a human being. Why don’t they help the rest of us out with an exact definition? It would help solve lots of other problems as well.

A recent letter in the SMH said that decriminalising abortion would simply mean that it would be regulated as a medical procedure instead of as a crime.

I am not sure how that would work, because what sanctions are available if a medical procedure is improperly used?

I don't like abortion, particularly late term abortion where the fetus is nearing or even at a point of viability. So how do you regulate a medical procedure where a doctor aborts a fetus that is capable of breathing on its own? The story of the Northern Territory breathing fetus that was left to basically 'die' (what is the term for life becoming extinct when something is not considered to be alive?),whilst lying in a surgical tray, from exposure and dehydration comes to mind. (What was the difference between that fetus and the 7 year old left to starve to death by her parents in NSW recently?)

So I am serious with this question, when does regulation of a medical procedure transform into a criminal act? Some might say never, but others would point to serious cases of medical abuse carried out in the name of being a medical procedure.

When we have medical technology, and the willingness to use it, to try to save the life of a severely premature baby in one room of a hospital, whilst in a clinic in the same hospital medical technology is being used to 'terminate' a fetus that may be more advanced than a premature baby I really have to ask what has happened to our society.

And I recognise that trying to enforce the law won't work either.

Is there any way we can 'pregnancy proof' women so that they only get pregnant by choice? I guess not, because even then they can change their minds.

There's another aspect of this case about these unfortunate young people from Cairns that hasn't received much attention, but which I think is quite critical to the wider debate. Apparently the cops discovered the packaging etc of the abortifacient drug while they were searching the couple's premises looking for other drugs - which weren't found, so some eager beaver cop has decided to go after this young woman because they at least had something with which to charge her, as police do.

This seems to me to encapsulate the entire stupidity of the law as it currently stand with respect to medical and indeed surgical abortions in Queensland. While abortion remains technically illegal, women and medical professionals who terminate pregnancies, and anybody who assists such procedures, are potentially subject to opportunistic persecution by the State - as in the case of this unfortunate couple.

The law needs to be changed such that any ambiguities that may be exploited by those agencies, organisations and individuals who are inimical to a woman's right to choose to have a medical or surgical abortion if she needs one, are removed.

Until that happens, those who wish to control women's choices will continue to victimise those women who decide they need to terminate foetuses that they don't want in their bodies.

Phanto – surely it is not that hard to grasp: an unborn child is a child that has not yet been born, i.e. the child is still in the womb. Where is the contradiction in terms there?

Using the term “unborn child” is not to try and be emotionally manipulative – that is the term, along with just “child” (used in relation to an unborn child) that is used in the Qld Criminal Code, such as here:
S 313 Killing an unborn child
(2) Any person who unlawfully assaults a female pregnant with a child and destroys the life of, or does grievous bodily harm to, or transmits a serious disease to, the child before its birth, commits a crime.

Moreover “foetus” is just Latin for a young human being before birth, after the organs have started to develop – why is that a better word to use than “unborn chid”?

Quote:
Until that happens, those who wish to control women's choices will continue to victimise those women who decide they need to terminate foetuses that they don't want in their bodies.
Unquote

That sort of argument makes my skin crawl, as, except for cases of aggravated sexual assault or other illegal acts, women have the choice as to whether they wish to take part in the activity that leads to the "foetuses that they don't want in their bodies" without using contraception, even if they have to use more than one method.

If they don't want to have foetuses "that they don't want in their bodies", then use contraception. And before you jump down my broadband cable, reach thru my screen and strangle me, I am simply restating exactly the same argument used by those who argue that men should be responsible for paying child support for the children that they sire: The old 'if they didn't want to pay child support then they should have kept it in their pants' cannard.

Of course men should be responsible for paying child support, or they should have 'kept it in their pants', so why let women off the hook? If they didn't want unwanted foetuses then they should have not had sex without contraception. What is good for one must be good for the other?

Or do you want to give women a 'get out of motherhood card' that you don't want to give to men regarding fatherhood?