What do you think about abortion?

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I am against abortion, because you can't prove whether the fetus is a person or not, and I don't think you should risk it.

Personally I'd rather not have any child of mine aborted, however I also don't feel I have the right to tell other people what they can do.

As such, I am firmly pro-choice.

I am pro choice but of course I hope people don't choose to do an abortion. Who am I to judge others. And there could be extenuating circumstances such as rape, income, etc.

I do not like abortion, and will never get one myself unless my life is at high risk. However, I'm pro-choice because I do not believe the government should dictate what women should and shouldn't do with their own bodies. More than that, I believe it to be unethical to ban abortion due to the societal impact of such an act.

Since I'm male and don't have to undergo the physiological and psychological changes that come with pregnancy, I decided long ago that I have no right to make judgments about the reproductive rights of women, however ghastly I may find the abortion procedure to be.

First, define person: What defines personhood is not universally agreed upon; that said, I see "person" as synomous with "sapient being" and I shall thus use this definition in this post.

As a matter of fact, you can prove sapience quite easily as can be seen in the following definition: A sapient being is a being that is capable of acting with rational judgement. To me, the language test is most rational and fair: Can the being use any complete language, signed, written, spoken or otherwise, at at least a conversant level of fluency? Also, have a look the famous Turing test.

Note that not all humans are sapient, this includes fetuses, humans in vegetative states and the profoundly mentally disabled. Likewise, there is absolutely no reason why non-human beings cannot be sapient. I see Alex the Parrot as semi-sapient while fetuses simply lack sapience: Alex could count and speak very simple English, thus partially passing the language test. A fetus, on the other hand, even leaving aside its ability to survive without its mother, could not do anything with the language nor the Turing tests if given the chance to learn them! And, if extraterrestrial peoples exist capable of space travel and rational judgement, I would not hesitate to call them people at all.

You may also find this paper of interest:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q= ... tbqrPRUv8A

I do my best not to, honestly

I am pretty sure that we have thoroughly staked out our positions in other threads. I'm a little reluctant to get on this merry-go-round again.

I disagree with is strongly but don't think that it should be illegal.
Thinking about is emotionally disturbing to me. You may not be killing a person but you have murdered the fetus.
You have taken away the chance to have a life. In some circumstances it can be quite selfish to have an abortion.

I'm militantly pro-choice and I think abortion should be available on demand. That said, I don't think abortion should be legal after 21 weeks unless the mother's life is at risk. The cut-off point is 24 weeks in my country, and I think that's too late.

I've taken the morning-after pill myself, so by some people's definition, I may already have murdered a 'baby'.

I think that the wrongness of killing something is directly proportional to how intelligent it is.

Fetuses are not as intelligent as a grown human. Therefore, killing a fetus is something like killing an ape, or a dolphin. It's not very nice, but it's not murder. And you are allowed to do it in self-defense, or if letting it live would severely inconvenience you.

Although I wouldn't have an abortion unless I needed it for my own health, and I would rather that pregnant women carry the baby and give birth then give it up for adoption if they don't want to raise a baby, I am pro choice. The reason I am pro choice is that the baby is in the mothers body. You have a right to decide who does and does not have access to your body, and there is no way to remove the baby from the mother without killing it, as we don't have the technology to keep a fetus alive and let it develop outside the womb.

Some people say that consenting to sex is consenting to pregnancy if it arises, but I disagree. You don't consent to an undesirable possible outcome every time you do anything. Because you consent to having your appendix out does not mean that you consent to a confused doctor doing a colostomy instead. Because you consent to ride in the car to the store does not mean you consent to being t-boned by an 18 wheeler. If either of those things were to happen, then you would do everything in your power to restore your body to the state it was in before. It's the same with sex. If you have sex and your intent is not to get pregnant, then you are under no obligation to carry the baby to term.

It's a simple matter of whose body is it? Yes, abortion is done upon a fetus, but is there any other way to get it out of the mother before it grows? No, there isn't. Because she doesn't want that in her body, she has the right to remove it.

Does that mean that it's okay to kill a person with a low I.Q.?

It's not "okay", but it's probably a little bit better than killing a person with a high IQ. If you had to choose which one to kill, you should choose the one with a low IQ.

But the difference between individual humans is trivial compared to the difference between humans and other animals, and the difference between humans and fetuses.

I am also dubious about whether or not IQ captures the kind of "intelligence" that I am talking about here. Perhaps a better word would be "consciousness".

I still find it amusing that there's no shortage of men offering their opinions on something that they'll never have to experience firsthand.

Just sayin'...

Not something I consider desirable but necessary in some cases.

ruveyn