Abortion

I am most delighted to see that you have not abandoned this debate, lighth0use3, and I am happy to accept your apology. Now, let me start by noting that you speak as if there is some kind of underlying meaning and purpose to everything that happens. You say for instance: "Everything happens for a reason, and those millions of other sperms and eggs were never meant to be born, ever." In the next paragraph you go on to say: "woman who have abortions, go against nature. They refuse to accept what is meant to be." This, to me, betrays a fundamental inconsistency in your argument. It cannot be the case, as you claimed before, that your objection to abortion is based simply on the grounds that you are preventing the existence an entity that will never have the chance to experience the life that you and I experience. If it were, then you would have no choice but to care as well about all the eggs and sperm that are wasted all the time. You would have to be against all forms of contraception for instance, for if, for example, a man wears a condom and thereby prevents his sperm from reaching the egg, the effect is still exactly the same as if the egg had been fertilised and subsequently aborted. A human being that could have come into existence, hasn't. But yet you care about the one situation but not the other. Indeed, you display a complete disregard for the egg and the sperm in that situation, saying that they can be unborn for all you care. So this isn't about allowing everyone who could be born, to be born, at all. And if it weren't already clear where you're really coming from, you somewhat give the game away with your mention of religion in your final paragraph. The hidden subtext that I interpret to be behind your arguments, and your bold assertions, is that you hold the classical Christian belief that all life is created by God, and that we human beings have no right to interfere with God's plan - in this case by destroying the 'life' that he has created. If I have guessed correctly, then you need to show that God exists and that abortion is against his law. I for one do not deny that as far as I'm aware, no religion encourages abortion, but I don't particularly care what religions say because I am not religious. But even if God does exist, I don't accept your claim that by aborting a fetus, we are going against nature and thereby committing a wrongful act. Human beings go against nature all the time in all kinds of different ways - the computers by which we are currently communicating are most certainly not natural for instance; neither is the Internet. Vaccinations, and indeed medical science in general is most certainly 'against nature' - nature, in these situations is just to let people get sick and die! So with that argument out of the way, all you have left is the claim that fetuses are human beings and that killing human beings is wrong. Now I of course agree with you that killing human beings is wrong, and I also agree with you in the narrow sense when you imply that we should not care about human beings, so the only issue here is whether or not a fetus is a human being. Let me say now that I do not accept your definition that a fetus is an unborn human baby, and I am not sure where that definition comes from. A fetus is certainly unborn, and will develop into a human baby if left alone, but why should we call it human? Indeed, a better definition comes from the medical part of the online free dictionary, which defines a fetus as the 'developing young in the uterus' [1], which seems to me to far more sensible. I would also point out, as a minor point, that according to that definition (and your own), an embryo only becomes a fetus at around 8 weeks since conception, so by your own definition, you have no grounds on which to object to abortion within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. More substantially however, I further justify my claim that a fetus sufficiently early in the pregnancy cannot be considered a human being because the fetus itself, up until a given time, is not capable of surviving outside its mother's womb. Generally speaking, most fetuses cannot survive at less than 24 weeks, hence why in the UK abortion is only legal up to the 24'th week of pregnancy.[2] That said, in some extreme cases, medical science has been known to keep fetuses as young as 21 weeks alive, but this is certainly not the norm and it safe to say that those taken outside the womb at 20 weeks or less will perish. And just to put that into perspective, 93% of all abortions carried out in the UK in 2009 were done before the 13th week anyway. [2] My fundamental point therefore is that fetus of this age, which is biologically incapable of surviving outside its mother's body surely cannot be considered to be an independent human entity, separate from its mother. Indeed, I argue that until that point, the fetus is simply a part of the mother's body that is in the process of developing into a human entity, but that until that point, she, and she alone, has the right to decide what happens to it - in just the same way that you and I and anyone else have the right to decide what happens to our own bodies. I hold that it is a fundamental human right that every woman should be allowed to determine when she does or does not become a parent and that no-one should have a child forced on them against their will - and I therefore hold your answer to my question about rape to be particularly tragic. Those women who are raped and who nevertheless choose to have the child have every right to do so, but it is a twisted view of morality indeed that says that those women who do not wish to bear their rapist's child should be forced to do so. For these reasons therefore, I continue to hold that it is the right of any woman who wishes to have an abortion sufficiently early in her pregnancy, to have one. [1] = http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com... [2] = http://www.nhs.uk...