I'd like to start by thanking Banquo for an excellent kick off.

Now, in general I agree with our venerable Senior member. A fetus should be given human rights from the moment of conception. I must therefore be explicit in saying that abortion is, I believe, a form of homicide, when you abort a fetus you are ending the life of a human being, no matter how imature. We should not think that simply because the fetus is largely or completely dependent on the mother for sustinence and survival it is any less an individual being. A newborn is only slightly less dependedent, and a child only somewhat less than a newborn. No one would consider that "baby" or "child" denote lesser being than adults, only less developed ones. It follows that the fetus is also a human being, the only reason this is not obvious is because it resides within the skin of another human being, even so it is not "inside" in the sense of being inside the mother any more than it is "inside" a blanket once it is born, it is still a seperate entity, not a mere cancer to be cut out.

If you accept the above premise then the question becomes "is homocide ever morally justifiable"? Clearly some people believe it is, they advocate execution, euthenasia and honour killings. However, I believe it is NOT, under any circumstances ever. This does not mean I would damn a man for killing another man to protect his daughter from rape, or one soldier for killing another in battle, but "forgivable" is not the same as "justifiable". One of the weaknesess in modern Liberal thought is that in the absense of a compassionate God to forgive your sins all thoughts and actions must be permissable if they are to be allowed - if you cannot be forgiven in teh aftermath you must be justified in the action itself. I believe this lack has warped the moral debate in the West, where once we forgave we now seek to excuse, and this shift is particularly damaging with relation to the issue of abortion because women are now required to feel "ok" about an abortion, that it was "the right thing" where once they could have been consoled with "you had no other choice". This goes a long way to explaining the rising number of abortions since it was first legalised in the West, about 50 odd years ago in most places, because if it is "ok" to adopt a child with sever brain damage maybe it can be ok to adopt a child you don't want, and therefore will not love.

It would not be "ok" to kill a newborn because of post-natal depression, it is not ok to abort a fetus because you don't want it, it should not be allowed in most circumstances. Having said this, it is a fact that some women will decide that they do not want to go through a pregnancy, even if the resulting child can be quickly found a loving home, and for the sole reason that they will seek an abortion regardless the procedure should be legal up to a certain date, if only to prevent an influx of butchered women to hospitals after illegal procedures. multiplication of misery and harm is not an acceptable side affect of a policy instituted for moralistic reasons. I dissagree with Banquo that 24 weeks is an acceptable cut off point. If we cannot bear to slaughter animals without stunning, we cannot hunt vermin for the suffering we might inflict we cannot kill a defenceless human being with a functioning nervous system. I therefore submit that the point at which the fetus exhibits basic brain activity is the civilised cut oof, and I further submit that a woman who has not taken the decision to abort after missing three menstruations has in effect already made the decision not to abort and should not be allowed to revisit that decision having made it once. As the situation stands there is far too much scope for sudden abortions motivated by volatile emotions, such as those in a break up, which have nothing to do with the child or the mother's long term feelings. In such cases there is potential for a woman to make a decision she will regret for the rest of her life which can never be undone.

Such decisions are made, and they have tragically predictable emotional consequences.

Forgive me, I have more to say.

I cases where the issue is medical the decision to abort or not should be made by the doctor, based on his estimation of the likely survival of child and mother. No parents, as in Lemur's case, should ever have that decision inflicted upon them. There should be specific legal protection for doctors in this situation.

In other situations the decision should primarily be the mother's, but she should not have sole rights in the case where sex was consensual. When two adults exgage in consentual sexual congress they do so in the full knowledge that their is a posibility of conception, if they did not realise this they would not be competent to give consent. this being so, both man and woman have already decided to chance the posibility of concieving, the woman should subsequently be allowed to make that decision again independantly because the fetus is not solely of her body, it is equal parts the flesh of the father and the mother, and the law should aknowledge this. All the current inequality between fathers and mothers is the result of the law's basic blindness to this simple fact, both man and woman are equally but uniquely necessary for the creation and nourishment of a child at all stages of its development. Reform should begin at conception. In the case of rape, where the woman was prevented from giving here consent this determination does not apply.

To sumarise, abortion for genuine medical reasons should be legal, otherwise selective abortion, subject to exhaustion of all other options, should be legal at a point no later than that at which the fetus can be considered to have rudimentary awareness. The legal recourse to selective abortion should be considered an act of charity to the woman in question, and this should not be inferred to confer a "right" to abort the unborn.