When is a life not a life? When it has been viciously cut short by a surgeon of death with a vacuum cleaner.

Even though I respect a woman’s right to choose, I do believe the limit should be less than 24 weeks. I agree that there are circumstances in which abortion should be permissive, however, no one could disagree that an abortion is one of the most unnatural gruesome things that can happen to a woman and should only be used as a last resort. The doctor actually has to suck the fetus out and search through to make sure all the body parts have been extracted and that there are no tiny arms or legs left inside.

There are so many people who would love to adopt.

I am a Catholic follower who believes strongly in natural law. I believe life starts as sperm and sperm should never be wasted into a tissue. Contraception is the real evil here. Some people say contraception can cut the amount of abortions. This is rubbish, it only leads to more promiscuity between children and destroys our moral fibre. Sex should only be performed my man and wife for the express purpose of producing a child. Anything else is against God’s wishes.

Joe,

You can be commended for the exactityde of your opening statement. Yet let me assure you that abortion is not only “one of the most unnatural gruesome things that can happen to a woman”. More importantly, it’s also a horrible termination of another human life. It should NEVER be condoned in a civilised society, no matter the excuse.

Of course they are right. The science shows that at 23 weeks an unborn baby has developed senses including the capacity to feel pain, so a compelling reason would be necessary to justify terminating this life.

Adults having unprotected consensual sex and then deciding they don’t want to deal with the consequences is inadequate justification for legalised murder.

Why would anyone need longer than 13 weeks to have an abortion anyway?

I am totally against abortion unless there are exceptional circumstances - i.e. where the mother’s life is in danger. There’s no other reason that could justify killing an unborn child. Should the pregnancy be an inconvenience, then there are plenty of couples struggling to conceive who would love to adopt. I believe that if you have conceived a baby, then the minimum requirement would be to carry that baby to term and then have him or her adopted.
Some people are of the opinion that an abortion should be granted due to the psychological effects of having a baby, or simply giving birth on the mother - let us not forget that dealing with an abortion could be equally if not more traumatic, and haunt the mother for the rest of her life.

Science should be allowed to define the point when a foetus is independently viable, not political expediency and definately not religion which has nothing useful to say about anything. If the available information is that, given current technology, a foetus is viable earlier tha 24 weeks, the point at which a mother can seek an abortion for other than strictly medical reasons should be lowered accordingly.

The whole age at which the child could survive argument is pointless anyway. As technology and health care improves, the number of weeks a fetus can survive at outside the womb will keep decreasing.

Let us look at the real issue here - science versus religion. Hopefully commonsense and science will prevail in the end.

I personally believe that in the future all fetus will be grown outside the womb, from conception to ‘birth’ in special cocoons. The parents will be able to genetically modify their offspring to make them as healthy and intelligent as possible, with no inherited diseases. We will be able to dispel ‘God’ as a myth once and for all, by becoming God’s ourselves and speeding up our evolution exponentially.

Lauren B - What research are you basing your ‘Most women that abort have to do so because the father won’t stick around’ theory on?

My guess is that this is what happened to you? Choosing a suitable life partner is a skill that, unfortunately, it seems most young women these days are not blessed with. The blame cannot lie with just one person. It takes two to make a baby.

In response to Lauren B’s comment; what use has that feminist ideology talk got to do with anything. Abortion can be just as hard on the father. If you ever study pregnancy or such related topics you soon realise how the males role in it all is highly neglected. Many men feel that they would like to be involved more but it’s not always that easy.

Anyway, reiterating the point that previous people have mentioned - religion should have no influence in the decision. If people wish to have faith in something then that’s their decision but it should not influence the lives of couples trying to deal with a very difficult situation. If the government had better plans to deal with the whole situation the psychological trauma suffered post-abortion might be decreased. Shortening the time in which to terminate a pregnancy will only add more stress to the situation.

And yes, medical technology is improving the survival rates of young babies but there is never any mention of the impairments and disabilities some of these babies suffer, nor the numbers of babies that don’t survive at 24 weeks.

Yes abortion is unnatural but then most of medicine is unnatural, it is all changing the course of nature and changing evolution etc. One cannot judge the choice of individual couples unless they have intimate knowledge of the couples beliefs, morals, upbringing and situation.

Lauren B - you´re clearly a wrong. your comments are sexist and offensive to me as a single father, who do you think you are. you´re clearly not a nice person to be with, judging by your comments and the fact that you´re partner did´nt want to stick about after knocking you up

When i was a young man i made a huge mistake,a mistake called Sally.She was the newgirl at school.Sally was definetly not the cream of the crop.We never spoke but i could tell by the way she flirted with the bus driver she was sexually active.I avoided all contact with her,it was easy as she was 2 years older then me and you could always hear or see her coming.One day she approached me on the bus.All i wanted to do was to get rid of her,it followed me off the bus and the next thing i know this heavy set and very forcfull girl had wrestled me to the ground in the park near my house!!i screamed for help!!
I couldnt handle the embarrasement of shame so i started abusing myself in more ways then one.My mother sensed the changed in my behaviour,it was only when SALLY turned up to my door on a rainy saturaday morning that she undurstood why.Sally was pregnant,my mother was sick!!My mother agreed to pay for the abortion,even though we couldnt afford it!
Then,, Sally was gone.Know one new what had happened to her and my unborn child.I finished school and moved as fare away as i could,away from Sally away from the shame. Then one day when i was home for the summer i saw Sally and my baby girl Cloe outside the oddbins in the town next to mine.Sally was as horrible as i remembered and i couldnt even bare to speak or look at the little one,she reminded me too much of her mother!!If only there was rights for a man in these situations.Common sense should take presedents as much as law.What sort of a future does my Cloe have with or without my help!!I beleieve we should have new laws that allow victims the choice to say yes or no.How many Waineter style single mothers do we need to see befor we address this situation.Living on the dull and pumping out unwanted children seems to be the crase which more and more hopeless and nieve young women are taking to avoid a prosperous job or lifestyle.The goverment are giving charactors like Sally an easy way out!!and there using helpless young boys and users to quinch there thirst for social welfare!!

Lauren B
I have some sympathy with your position if what you are saying is that the reason women have late abortions is because their previously supportive partner has absconded. That being the case it would still be better if the state would support the mother through thre pregnancy and the later consequences if it got that far.
I am pro-choice, I think that a woman should have the say over what happens to her own body (in preference to the foetus’) for as long as is rationally acceptable. I believe we can establish a medical/scientific point where that acceptable time limit is.

this Tony Williams character could not be talking more rubbish. Never have I had the misfortune to encounter such a narrow minded individual. It´s all about choice and freedom

The anti-abortionists have been completely dishonest in this whole debate. There is not a scrap of evidence suggesting that medical advances have improved the chances of a baby born before 24 weeks surviving. In fact, the facts show that they have the same chances as they did 20 years ago.

The point is, the antis will not stop at 20 weeks. They want an end to ALL abortion and the reason they often focus on late-term abortions is because they KNOW it’s an emotive issue. It forces the debate to focus on the extremly low number of late-term abortions. (Over 90% of abortions as far as I know take place before 12 weeks).

The lower the better.

In my experience an abortion can leave a lasting emotional scar on the mothers life. It may seem the convenient alternative but many live to regret. Far better to have the child and allow adoption. Yes-even in a rape situation.

Once life has been conceived in my view it is precious and no one except God has the right to take away. I hate to think what negative impact our multiple
abortions are having on our society. We are a country that has lost its values and lost its direction.

Try and tell a teenager, that they have to put their lives on hold for nine months, for a child they hated since the moment they were conceived.
Should a woman have to put her life on hold for almost a year, to carry a child they do not want with the vain hope that they might be able to patch up their life after the child is delivered? Would you force your own child to? Or you wife?

There are times when being pregnant and having a child is an upmost inconvenience. Why should a woman have to stop a job or education? Whilst men can just skip on with their lives.

A herion addict should not be allowed to abort a child that once born, will also be an addict and have to go through a detox? Seems so humane doesn’t it? Sometimes it may be more human to have an abortion then to have a child.

AND
Speaking of adoption, do you know how difficult it is to adopt, my parents wanted to after I was born, my best friend was adopted out of Malasyia seventeen years ago, because even then adoption was hard.

I am shocked by some of these comments, a lot of them a extremely sexist.
A man and HIS WIFE?
Because I am a proud owner of a vagina I should belong to a male because of my sex?
I am a sixteen year old girl, and what a shocker, I am also on the Contraceptive Pill, and have been since i was TWELVE. Due to the fact that when I suffer from extreme Premenstal Stress, I am a time bomb, and I will explode, does that make me evil in the eyes of God, because I did not want to have to have mood swings that took me from an agressive manic, to a misrable wreak, and did not want to have to feel like my uterus were about to fall out of my ass.

Go home, look at your wife, your daughter, neice, mother, and tell them that you would happily have them carry a child of a their rapist, tell them that you would rather them put their life on hold, because you believe that they would be murdering something.

Obviously a woman is too stupid, or hysterical, or irresponsible to decide her own fate. Obviously she cannot be trusted to make a sensible or moral decision. Obviously she thinks nothing more of her body and her furture and her offsping other than of its potential (in)convenience.

Really?

I would not say that many women at all suppose abortion to be any small thing. I also propose that a woman will do her utmost to make a decision and carry it through either way as soon as is physically possible.

Therefore, let’s eradicate from this discussion the following:

- religious argument (individual choice)
- time limit argument (individual circumstance that is, on the whole, avoided where possible anyway)
- adoption discussion (if you know people who want to adopt, there are already far more than enough children available)
- When does life begin? (science can give answers but ethical debate can only partially be aided by science - it’s usually the “ick” factor that drives it which, again, brings us back to personal circumstance)

So what does that leave us with?

Not a great deal. It leaves us with the need for an open mind. It leaves us knowing that whether pro-life, or pro-choice the only was to bring peace (as with everything) is to understand each other.

I personally, admit that there have been many times in my life where I thought I’ve understood something, but it wasn’t until I was in that situation myself that I really had any clue at all. So what can anyone do, except try to take off their blinkers before fighting for the greater good?

As a society we have demorcratically enshrined in law the freedom of choice which is applied to both religion and abortion.
The option to follow a faith or choose an abortion is a conscientious decision made by an individual.
I accept that people have the right to express their faith and the opinions it forms; but I struggle to understand the rationale of people of a religious faith which leads them to try and impose the tennants of their faith on an individual; and I am unaware of any faith whose followers are advocated the right to sit in judgement on issues of conscience.

Easy! Life starts at conception, it always did it always will. Scientists are liars, just like politicians.

Why don’t the so called scientists listen to what Einstein said, i.e. “God doesn’t pay dice with the Universe.” It stands then the everything living is meant to be.
Why don’t scientists and politicians listen to what Einstein said? They don’t care about truth that’s why! Well there is some hope for them, if they find another planet to live on, the scientists and politians can build a rocket and go and live there, they can leave us alone, with what is true life and not their lies about what life is. Good riddance to them!

and just to belabor the Einstein point he wrote this in a letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind in 1954
“The word God is for me nothing more than the product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless childish”

It does not take a genius to realise the embryo the fetus are all the early stages of development, just as a new born baby is not yet an adult, a fetus is not yet a teenager. Yet life from conception has to be deemed valid otherwise when is the baby suddenly alive? Is it alive at midnight of the 24th week? By that all babys born before that alive are technically dead. Is it alive when its heart starts to beat? As soon as those tiny cells fuse and create a completely unique set of DNA, that is when life begins!

Steve Bowen quoting Einstein
“The word God is for me nothing more than the product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless childish” an interesting quotation from a man who regards honour as childish.

Freud said something similar, most probably coked out of his brains at the time.

Scientists or not, they are but men and prey to illusion, after all look at that lunatic Newton who spent most of his life trying to make gold out of lead.

It’s all about money. Perhaps a Professor Winston’s remarks might suffice, that scientists suffer from “tunnel vision.”

V O Sullivan - You can’t claim science is the bigger cause of death and human suffering just because it was responsible for the H-Bomb! Think of how many wars were started BECAUSE of religion in the first place! Also I think science has balanced out Nagasaki and Hiroshima many times over with its treatments and cures.

But this argument isn’t about religion vs science. It’s about abortion. Yes, abortion is the snuffing out of a life, but it is sometimes a necessary evil. Just as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were.

An embryo does not have an “undeniable right to life”, If it did we wouldn’t be having the debate. The law as it stands denies such a right up to 24 weeks. The facts are that foetal development is a gradual spectrum of complexity which at some point leads to a concious self aware human being. When that foetus reaches that point is debatable and only reconcilable through the science. As a society we have to decide a point at which stage of development the foetus’s rights outway the mother’s, and I suppose, what adverse consequences to the mother are serious enough to warrant termination at a particular time. We are all prone to the “ick” factor and some of us to delusions of the divine but neither of these are rational ways to answer these complex questions.