Yeah...  I heard the world 'pure' describe virgins growing up.  Of course that implies that people who have sex are not 'pure' or dirty.  Funny how our religous culture works

I think that a fertilized egg is a person but I think that personhood carries different levels of value. A brain dead person is still a person but that doesn’t mean you need to keep them around.

            So in your example I would save the 3 year old because the child will suffer considerably more than the zygotes, not because the 3 year old is a person and the zygotes are not.

            And just because you save the child that doesn’t mean that the zygotes now have no value. If you had a choice between saving your wife or your mother in law from a fire you would save your wife. That doesn’t mean it would be ok to set your mother in law on fire.  

This issue is absolutely stupid. As a whole. Anyone who says that abortion is wrong has either not weighed in the factors, or has not weighed the factors in properly. Anyone who has made up their mind on EITHER SIDE is commiting so many rational errors that it boggles my mind that insanely rational people would lean on any side.

In the case of death for the mother, one life for the other is not a good trade off. The reason for this is that we KNOW what the mother is like. We do not know if the infant (yes, I call fetus' infants because they are incapable of taking care of themselves) is going to be an ass hole or not.

And I don't know about you guys, but I'm really fucking tired of ass holes.

But this is besides the point.

Abortion can be the right thing to do and it can also be the wrong thing to do, it all depends on circumstance and situation...

Can the mother take care of the baby? If so, abortion is the wrong thing to do.

Does the mother not want to take care of the baby? If not, abortion is the wrong thing to do as there are alternatives, such as adoption.

Will the mother die? If so, abortion is an option up to the mother. If she thinks sacrificing her life for anothers is the right thing to do, then fine. One should never be forced to give up their own life for another.

Was the mother raped? If so, abortion is an option up to the mother for the same reasons listed above.

Should it always be a choice? NO. Nobody thinks this, and if they do then they are an idiot. Should it be a choice for those who will suffer from it? YES. IT SHOULD.

Todangst, DG was correct in saying that there is no such thing as Pro-Abortion. If anyone actually thinks that abortion should be a choice left to mothers who don't want to take care of the child then they should be shot simply for being morally exempt. This is not the case though as there are, and always will be, exceptions to the rule. People who are pro-choice realize this and, generally, don't think it is OK for a well-to-do-mother who will have no problem raising a child to abort one.

The morning after pill and IUD act in the same 'time-frame' and I do sort of have qualms about both because of that. I'm with Tod in saying there's no upholdable line between a person (baby) and a person (foetal) and the practise of abortion at any point in gestation is detestable. It's a really really grey area when we get to those two things (MA and IUD) though because it drags in all sorts of irreconcilable aspects of the parent's human condition. But then I'm a theist so my opinion here doesn't matter much.

BTW I am impressed with the thoughtfulness of the opinions expressed here already.

Well, I have recently had my IQ tested at the "Very superior" level, so you are wrong - I clearly am not an idiot and I think if a woman doesn't want a baby and doesn't want to spend 9 months carrying one, let her have an abortion. I don't see it as a moral issue at all - any more than I'd see killing millions of bacteria by taking an antibiotic as a moral issue. I have no problem with a woman getting dozens of abortions for any reason whatsoever.

Sorry to butt in again, I think Maragon's position is really important to understand. But I also think that women taking the responsibility for this much of the human condition alone is what's really wrong with abortion. This view from the perspective of the woman's outcome fails to connect birth with sex, and by failing to connect birth with sex, it fails doubly to connect sex with realtionships, and in turn triply fails to connect the relationship with the emotional needs of the parents. The fact is that babies start at least as far back as that in the system. The emotional needs of BOTH parents that leads to relationships and consequently sex then baby is all one system of the human condition.  When you isolate those things out of the system the woman takes on an incredible weight of responsibility, like Maragon. But this responsibility boils down in the offing, to all humans, not to her. When we debate abortion I feel we deal post rationally with an already failing system of ethical economies ensuring ourselves no resolution, the real issue is in the burden of responsibility for moral outcomes that lies on everyones shoulders in the arena of emotional support for each other on every scale. In short babies come from sex, and sex is an emotional support system of human relationships well steeped in troubles of it's own.

Some people here are using the word baby and child while saying the "clump of cells" phrase is a fallacy of composition. Pardon me for thinking those people are contradicting themselves while simultaneously criticizing the wording of an argument rather than the gist of it.

One would think that any meaningful definition of baby or child would make reference to personhood. Personhood, in turn, implies sensorial and intellectual capacities that make it an individual. Those capacities, in turn, imply that there are brain cells and/or neuronal cells so configured as to make the entity conscious. An embryo or early-stage fetus is not an entity with brain cells and neuronal cells so configured as to make it consciousn. Consequently, it does not possess personhood. Consequently, it's not a baby or child by any definition of the word that makes reference to personhood. If your personal definition of baby or child makes reference to personhood, you're contradicting yourself by calling an embryo or early-stage fetus a baby or child. I have no complaint of people saying an embryo or early-stage fetus is a potential baby or potential child, or that a later-stage fetus is an actual baby or actual child, but the embryo or early-stage fetus most definitely is not an actual baby or actual child. By calling such an entity a "baby" or "child" you are implying actuality when there is no actuality to which you can speak.

If your personal definition of baby or child doesn't make reference to personhood, I'd love to hear it. I would also love to know how you are objectively distinguishing between the embryo or early-stage fetus being a baby or child while a benign vaginal tumor is not. Undoubtedly, you might try to make recourse by referring to the intentionality of the procreation event but that brings up the problem where the offspring of rape victims are no longer called babies or children. That's not an insignificant problem. You might try avoiding this problem by saying it's only the intentionality of the male, but we all know that males generally don't intentionally impregnate women, not to mention the chauvenism of such a position. I would also like to know how you are distinguishing the embryo or fetus from the mother and thus making it a distinct entity rather than being a part of the mother while not also simultaneously making benign vaginal tumors babies or children. Furthermore, I would also like for you to explicitly state whether situations of misplanted fertilized eggs are cases where the mother is an involuntary baby killer or involuntary child killer. I'll be looking forward to your definition and your answer.

As for the phrase "clump of cells," I do not particularly like the wording of the phrase itself but I can find no way to disagree with the gist of the argument that lies behind those words. Earlier the phrase was called a fallacy of composition. In actuality, it's not a fallacy of composition, just bad writing. If you look at how the phrase is used and the idea it was intended to convey, you'll find that the person was letting those ready-made phrases (that Orwell warned against) pour out onto their writing while they intended to say (something similar to) that it's an entity that doesn't possess personhood because it's configuration does not give rise to the emergent property of consciousness and consequently there's no reason to consider the entity a moral concern anymore than (say) a rock or benign vaginal tumor.

In the vast majority of intentional abortions, what was removed were things without personhood. To remove that nonconscious nonperson entity from a woman's private region is truly no different from removing that nonconscious nonperson clump of cells that comprise the foreskin of a male baby's penis. The only difference between them, of course, is that the male baby is a conscious person who's strapped down and proceeds to scream as someone rips its foreskin off. When was the last time you heard someone put forward an argument along the lines of: foreskin is made of cells; cells are life; I'm pro-life; therefore, I'm pro-foreskin? No! We don't see any large political debate on that issue, it's skirted to the side. People are less concerned about whether it's morally objectionable to chop off children's body parts and more concerned about whether the embryo will reach the stage where they can chop off it's body parts. So far as I'm concerned with other peoples' business, I support the right to choose whether to abort the embryo or fetus provided it's not a conscious entity at the time the operation's performed. Whether it arose from rape or consentual sex is irrelevant because personhood entails rights but nonpersonhood entails nothing. A woman who wants or needs to abort a nonconscious nonperson entity from her body is the only person involved, the thing inside her is not a person. It therefore follows that she is the only person we should have a moral concern for.

This raises the issue of whether it's better for the woman to have an abortion or to follow through with the birthing of a child and giving it up for adoption. It's my opinion that the woman would be better off emotionally by having an abortion than by giving birth to the child and giving it up for adoption. If the nonconscious being is aborted, never did it feel pain and never was it aware of its existence anymore than the dandruff washed off your scalp. The mother won't feel too bad for having aborted it. I think the majority of her pain will be the sorrow she feels when she has those rosy imaginings of what life would've been like if she allowed it to become her child. If she thinks realistically she probably won't feel that bad about missing that path in life though—she just managed to avoid working for another person for eighteen or more years, changing diapers for what seems like forever, and various other things like driving the kid to school during the winter and jeopardizing her own life because the child gave the bus driver the finger. It's the rosy imaginings that hurt her, not necessarily the events or actualities. On the other hand, what if she births the child and gives it up for adoption? The initial separation of a person and nonperson can certainly suck, as in the case of abortion, but the initial separation of a person and another person looking back at her can be much more emotionally disturbing. Do you think she'll ever forget that horrible moment? And again, one must factor in the imaginings of the woman. Just think of handing your child over to someone and then thinking to yourself, years on end, whether the child may have fallen down that someone's stairs and broke it's bones, might be beaten by the foster parents or the kids in the neighborhood where the foster parents live, might be relocated from one home to another and scarcely knowing just who their parents are, and so on. Those thoughts aren't of the "boo hoo, it could've been so great" variety that inevitably arise in the abortion scenario, those are absolute conscience killers. I would also like to restate Maragon's statement that noticably pregnant women "could be ridiculed, ostracised, miss job opportunities or lose work." Let's also not forget that if the female is a teenager, her highschool education may have been extended an extra year, thus lowering the amount of money she would've otherwise made throughout her life. Then, add to this whole scene of woe the feelings of those children put up for adoption who actually do experience the pains I mentioned. As Magilum pointed out, some of the children put up for adoption can be "transformed into monsters who will only continue the cycle of social destruction."

Women should have the liberty of choosing the path they think will produce less emotional scarring, but they also own their own bodies. This was part of the reason why I asked for a definition of baby or child that distinguishes the embryo or fetus from the mother. If the embryo or fetus is considered part of the mother, rather than something distinct that is inside the mother, then denying her the choice of abortion could only be sustained by the tyranny of denying her right to own her own body. The criterion of personhood provides an excellent reason to think they are distinct entities, as they are distinct consciouses, but before there is a consciousness in the fetus how do you separate it as a distinct entity from the mother? I have crafted an argument that uses self-ownership to establish the woman's right to have an abortion when the fetus has not attained consciousness and I would appreciate feedback on it:

(1) People own their bodies and everything within them that is without consciousness
(2) Embryos and fetuses without consciousness grow within the bodies of people
(3) Therefore, people own the embryos and fetuses without consciousness within their bodies (modus ponens, 1-2)
(4) People may destroy what they own that is without consciousness
(5) Therefore, people may destroy the embryos and fetuses without consciousness within their bodies (modus ponens, 3-4)

Thus far, I have not yet addressed the issue of whether abortion should be allowed or not after the fetus has attained a rudimentary consciousness though. This is when a rudimentary personhood exists and the issue becomes more complex. I'm truly not comfortable speaking on this portion of the issue. I'll simply say that I intuitively feel that it's wrong to have an abortion at this stage, but my intuition could be completely wrong. I need more time to contemplate on this issue. Thankfully, however, attempts to have an abortion during this grey area is almost vanishingly small percentage-wise. I can't recall the exact percentage but somewhere around 99.5% of all attempts to have a legal abortion occur during the period where there isn't even a rudimentary consciousness, meaning that the vast majority of abortions that do occur present no moral dilemma as far as I can tell.

Of course, that almost vanishingly small amount of possibly morally objectionable abortions should be reduced even farther—along with all other abortions. I think that making abortion illegal is a nonsolution. If you make abortion illegal then the result will consist of black market abortions where sanitation standards aren't nearly as high thus increasing maternal deaths, women desperately trying to do the procedure themselves with objects like clothes hangers and dying in the process along with fetus or child, or actual children being born in back alleys and being tossed in dumpsters where they slowly starve to death while their screams reverberate through the metal canisters they were placed in. Those issues will not magically disappear—regardless of the uplifting but delusional reassurances given by conversative Christians—and consequently abortion illegality present a larger moral dilemma than legality because the ending of life occurs to conscious persons instead, who are capable of being harmed and self-interests denied. As such, I support legality and think the solution is to reduce the amount of unintended pregnancies, of which there are many possible ways to address the problem.

First, medicaid coverage of contraceptives would, according to the Guttmacher Institute, prevent ~500,000 unwanted pregnancies and ~200,000 abortions every year. By preventing that many pregnancies, we not only reduce the amount of conscious-fetus abortions that occur but federal and state governments could also save perhaps billions of dollars by reducing the amount of funding needed to provide pre-natal and post-natal pregnancy care for medicaid recipients. This has a fairly high upfront cost but it would ultimately reduce the budget and the misery.

Second, I think the debate between safe-sex and no-sex education is completely ridiculous because both approaches could be combined into a single approach. The current debate over the issue is baffling—an analogous situation would be firefighters at the scene of a forest fire doing less than they could because they're consuming their time by arguing amongst themselves about whether to fight fire with fire or water when both tactics could be combined. They should, in essence, be taught that they should control themselves but they should have a plan B if they find themselves overpowered by their hormones. This is akin to telling someone that if they absolutely must punch something to vent their frustration, better a wall than a partner. And...

Third, that combined approach should be expanded upon so it conveys a more comprehensive understanding of not only how an unintended pregnancy could doom their dreams but also show them the effects of unintended pregnancies on the environment, thus using the new green-generation's desires as a leverage. How many students are taught about the amount of deforestation that occurs due to unintended pregnancies, or the amount of extinctions or devastations that result from that deforestation, and so on? The current institution seems to insist that they focus only on themselves rather than teaching students that the moral problems are less local, more global, in nature. Perhaps the medicaid savings could be used toward this goal.

I think it is an interesting thing to point out that, while many of the atheists here are more than willing to say that they detest abortion and they find it "morally wrong," they are not willing to have the government claim that pre-born humans have rights, protected by the government like every other human.

 I wonder why that is?  Is there something to be said about the moral relativism of atheism?  I never believed it myself, because I get all of my ethics from philosophy rather than from any religious text--but I doubt everyone has put as much thought into ethics as I have (although certainly some have). 

Thoughts? 

(Note: personally I think that it should be determined like almost every law should--locally.  People should be able to govern themselves, and vote within their local community as to what is and isn't moral.  Therefore a local community absolutely has the right, and in my opinon they should, to regulate abortion.  Self governance is a right of all people.

On a more personal note, I would vote to abolish abortion except in cases of rape or when two doctors consented that the birth was a danger to the mother.  If she was raped, then she should not have to suffer a pregnancy by someone elses forced actions (the baby itself is violating her right to her body, taken from her against her will), and if she is in danger of harm... well I don't think I need to justify that one.)

Okies, Eloise, my bad. I believe you and retract the inaccurate parts of my comments.

Recreational sex can be innocent in the same sense that other risky activities--driving a car, skydiving, getting drunk--can be. If you're referring to the relative unreliability of most birth control as the 'consequences,' then I'll concede that one. We can only hope for better methods soon, and there is always sterilization.

I have no problem with abortion.

I think a womans rights over what happens in he r own body trump the "right" of feotus.

We assign rights based on the manifestation of certain special properties. Any object that displays these special properties is afforded these special rights. The properties in question are conciousness, self awareness, ability to feel pain. It is these manifest properties that we seek to protect with assigning rights. Not this is nothing to do with being a human. If any animal displayed these properties to a human level then they too shoudl be afforded special protection by law.

Science tells us the feotuses simply do not have these properties. Thus they do not have the special protection of special "human" rights. They should thus be treated in a similar way to other objects with similar levels of these properties.

Now sure they have the POTENTIAL to manifets the special properties in question but so does every strand of DNA in your body under the right conditions. If we allow potentiality to come into it then every time a fertile couple have protoected sex and and don't concieve then it should be classes as murder. In fact masturbation is equivelant to the holocaust if we allow the potential to come into it.

So a woman manifests these special properties and so has full rights including her right to what happens in her own body and life.

A foetus does not have these properties.

The womans rights wins.

The man has no rights in this because it is not his body that would effectivly be enslaved for nine months if forced to carry full term. Unfortuantly men to have an obligation to look after the child if it is carried full term. Is this fair? Well probably not but this bit of unfairness is better than letting fathers off the hook so it has to stay really.

If everyone were totally homosexual we wouldn't have this problem in the first place. It's not as though we need anymore humans inhabiting the Earth. In the case of everyone being totally homosexual the only children born would be the ones that were really wanted.

To be serious, however, haven't abortions been performed by humans for an incredibly long time? I realize that that's not a good reason in and of itself to continue on the practise in the modern times, but it factors into my understanding of the importance of the option to women.

At what point in time does someone consider an abortion an abortion? My sister, with her husband, did not want babies and did not want to use certain birth control for personal reasons. My sister employed a series of other contraceptive methods in order to reduce the chance of her getting pregnant, but eventually a method broke down and she feared she may be pregnant. She used the morning after pill in order to ensure that she didn't continue being pregnant if she was. This seemed very reasonable to me. After all, I don't believe that anyone should ever dictate to another person what they can and cannot do to their bodies and between each other, even if a bundle of cells could mature to birth. That being said, my sister is now 3 days from her due date of a pregnancy she and her husband planned.

I wouldn't have had a problem if the abortion (Because that really is what my sister did isn't it?) if she was indeed pregnant, took place a month or two after she became pregnant. Or am I to understand that there are different developmental stages a human life goes through before birth and that some of these disqualify the use of the term abortion? I don't see how a person or people can be obligated by a law to carry a human life to term if they really don't want to. My sister did not want a baby at the time. You could say she was irresponsible for not practising the use of certain other contraceptives, but that is quite irrelevant. If abortions are to be banned except in the case of extreme need, what would people be forced to do? How would my sister have carried on her life as she did? What sort of burden (emotion, financial) would have been put on her and her husband? She has expressed to me that if she became pregnant at a time inconvenient to her she would not carry through with the pregnancy. Would it be termed infanticide for a person to have an abortion where they are illegal? Would the person be put to trial and sentenced? I am simply beside myself with the implications banning abortion would have.

I believe it's important for those people who agree with a ban on abortion to realize that they are not usually performed whimsically and just because but by people usually in desperate circumstances. Unless society is wiling to pay for the pregnancy and ensure the health of the child and a home for it if it is unwanted when it is born, then I can only see a ban on abortions as a gross injustice in a society largely apathetic to the needs of others.

I don't personally support abortions in the typical sense (obviously, I hope), but to be opposed to them merely because it seems repugnant and immoral or because of some fanciful ideal that adoption is available and a viable option is extremely naive and frankly insulting to the women and couples who would be extremely hard put by a pregnancy they can't afford emotionally or financially, regardless of how she/they became pregnant. I fail to see the issue in another way and I refuse to give a centimetre of personal freedom up in order for society to exact some control over sex. I find it absolutely more repugnant to put a human life capable or producing another human life at the same level of the produced at the point of production. My sister, her happiness and welfare, and that of all women, come before my desire to protect and foster even the most infantile life. I would rather a woman be able to have a baby when she can and wants to than to be forced to carry to term a baby that would negatively impact upon her happiness and welfare.

[edited]

Took the words right out of my mouth. I've always said that abortion should not be used as a "get-out-of-baby-free card", but in certain circumstances (e.g. rape, incest, risk of mother's life, etc.) I wouldn't begrudge anyone for using it. I'm also big on personal freedoms, so even if abortion is not a choice I would make in a particular situation, I can't and would never want to force you to make the same decision.

    Science is the only way to fix this problem, the "on -off implant solution ?, Deluded and his, need work on this .....  We are science ..... abortion no more is  possible ..... and will be ? why not ? ??? 

Well, Eric Schwartz sang:
"It's just believers in the bible that would have abortion banned
Anti-choice agnostics, I could count 'em on one hand"

But while that may be true in relation, that's surely not meant to be taken literally. Because after all, atheism doesn't equate "scientific thinking" or "liberalism". So a teenage atheist girl can actually say something along "Awwww, me likin babbies, you no maek babbies ded!" Also, one can have other, non-religious arguments like "Abortion increases insensitivity towards the value of life" or "The fetus is innocent, even if it came into existence by rape" or "We are going extinct, we need every child" (after a global catastrophe, for example). So the answer is yes, there are atheists against abortions.

Why don't you plug the ethics of stem cell question in as a new thread? I'm sure it would have legs of its own. Stem cell research is fascinating from an ethical point of view. I wonder what all our folks might think?

I really have no problem at all with a "morning after" pill. Any tiny 'moral' twinge about flushing a few cells away cannot ethically be offset against even a modest likelihood of a child being raised in a dysfunctional or uncaring environment, IMHO.

As the development time-line proceeds, the minimum justification should grow.

I do not actually quite agree that "can survive on it's own" should be a significant factor.

I would emphasize an assessment focussed on the mental development, as far as it can be assessed.

This is always going to have a major subjective component - as with all moral issues, there are no absolutely objectively definable lines to avoid crossing. 

EDIT: The obsession about a 'soul' is the most common problem, which assumes we are discussing a fully 'ensouled' person from the moment of conception, which is why religion is so commonly involved in objections. But that attitude to human conception is the primary driver to objections, not the religious expression of it, although the religious doctrines typically reinforce it enormously.

Exactly it's the lesser of two evils.

But I could also support mandatory abortion as the lesser of two evils. If we ever have a rational social contract to eliminate all poverty, people would need to agree to limit there family size to get things like medical care, job training. If people did not live up to there obligations, there would need to be consequences.

Uh-oh, here we go.

 Have you seen this debate before?

Just a point, didn't the recent healthcare bill make it illegal to deny based on pre-existing conditions?  This took effect in September of this year.  If you have a private insurance plan, you can have your child added to it.