Dear RObert,

The law in America varies according to each state. I'm not sure
what the father's rights are in this country. I do know that
there are firm personal opinions about abortion, and as time goes
on, the legal, ethical, and medical complexities have not
abated.

New medical technology is making it possible to
keep fetuses alive even earlier in the course of pregnancy, while
at the same time making it even safer for a woman to have an
abortion ever later in pregnancy - raising such difficult
questions, for example, as what to do with an aborted fetus that
turns out to be viable but probably defective.

In a study of people who actively campaign for or against the
right of abortion, studies have found sharp differences between
the social characteristics of "pro-life" and "pro-choice" people.
The pro-life activists generally had less education and income
than the pro-choice activists, but were more likely to be
married and to have more children.

Pro-life people believed that traditional gender roles reflect
deep natural differences between men and women and that
parenthood is a natural function rather than a social choice.

The pro-choice group believed that gender roles are more
flexible, were more permissive in their attitudes toward
sexuality, and felt that choice over abortion was a basic
freedom that was important for the quality of their lives.

Not surprisingly, opinion polls show public confusion
on the issue of abortion.

The greater majority of the population supports abortion in
cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's health. But
support for a mother's right to abortion on demand fluctuates
between just over and just under half of the population.

In any case abortion must be viewed in the context of
social changes in our society's pre-marital, marital, and
family life - particularly the climate of sexual permissiveness
and the sense of individualism that leads people to make decisions
primarily in terms of their personal desires rather than
traditional norms.

This issue will continue to perplex us for some time to come.
I certainly don't have the answers.

This is the nub of the ethical problem, from a site linked to be RObert,

<An article on Ethics Alarms brings up thought-provoking points:“A seven-week fetus is not treated as a human life if a mother chooses to have an abortion, and a doctor performs it. This must mean, in any sane, fair and ethical system, that it is not a human life. If it is not a life if a doctor aborts it, it isn’t a life if a boyfriend tricks the mother into aborting it. How can it be? The fetus hasn’t changed, and the conduct hasn’t changed.”

Welden has obviously committed a crime and it cannot be justified. However, the question is, why are we addressing this abortion with different definitions of fetus status and personhood than the ones we use normally?

Ethics Alarms draws an interesting comparison of this case to slavery: “An owner could kill a slave, and it wasn’t murder, just as a potential mother can abort the future baby she is carrying, for it is her body, just as it is his plantation — and she’s not committing murder either. If someone else killed the slave, well, that was a crime, but a property crime—after all, black slaves then, like the unborn now, just weren’t considered human beings.”>

onthebeach

abortion is not about ethics for the feminist. They know only of demanding rights with no responsibilites. Any ethics worth their salt tells you that you don't butcher a child for convenience sake even if its in the feminist mantra that a woman can do what they like with their body.

So Runner, the alternative to what you call, butchering a child, is to insist that another UNWANTED, UNLOVED, UNCARED FOR child is born, totally against the will of the parent/s.

Dont you think we already have enough of these?

Besides, this thread is not about abortion, it's about whether or not abortion can be classed as murder, something I for one think is not.

rehctub, from what I see the really odd bit is that abortion isn't classified as murder but the same action done without the woman's consent can be classified as murder. I accept the argument that an early stage fetus is not viable a human being. Potential to become one but not there yet.

On that basis I think a woman's control over her own body is the issue as there is no other life involved. If there is a credible case for thinking that an early stage fetus is a human being in a meaningful sense then it's not just an issue of the womans body but another life and the case for supporting abortion in all but the most extreme cases collapses.

The USA has capital punishment for some crimes but generally only the most extreme pre-mediated acts. As far as I know they don't knowingly execute innocents for potential hardship they may cause to someone else in the future. They don't execute people for being emotionally related to some crime. They don't execute someone because someone else may commit a crime if they don't.

R0bert

@Suze
You said that men who don't want to become fathers should abstain from sex at 9:28 on Thursday.

Secondly, I don't expect women to blindly trust men to take the pill. Men shouldn't be expected to have complete faith in women either.