Interestingly enough, this is one of the few topics that I’ve found I have a hard time reconciling with my beliefs. It seems simple, in that it’s essentially the mother’s right over her body vs. the right to life of the unborn child and, thus, whichever right has greater precedence wins out. I’d also add that I put the right to life above all other rights, but that’s exactly what makes it hazy.
How do you define when the child is alive? If you go to one extreme, where life is defined at conception, then you’re forcing a strict belief on everyone, which is wrong. OTOH, if you go to the other extreme, up until the moment right before the child is actually born, then I think a majority of people see that as wrong. How do you draw any sort of meaningful line between the two. Do you go by first heartbeat, or first brain wave, or when the child is viable outside the womb? Do you go by a relatively arbitrary date?
Also, as someone mentioned upthread, you have the problem of “back alley abortions.” Just because it’s illegal, doesn’t mean that won’t happen, but now when they do, the lives and health of the women will be in greater danger and, thus, potentially cause harm to other people, particularly their children. Banning abortion and assuming these procedures won’t happen is, in my view, not going to be a whole lot different from banning drugs and just seeing all the crime and danger that has risen as a result of the drug war.
Moreso, I’m also left wondering exactly how it compares to regular murder. In general, there are family and friends that are bereft in a those situations and there’s measurable damage, not only to the person who was murdered, but to all those left behind. In the case of abortion, if you don’t believe it’s alive yet, the child isn’t losing anything and the mother is inflicting whatever loss she’d take on herself (the matter of the father and stuff is a bit more complicated). If you do believe the child is alive, while it’s not legally defined as alive, then the only real difference is that the child is losing something, but again, the only people who can really do anything about it are the family.
Also, while I’m at it, I think any sorts of “exceptions” are inherently dumb and contradictory. If you believe a child is alive and shouldn’t be aborted under normal circumstances, why is that child’s life worth any less because it was the result of a rape or incest or may have a birth defect? Should what you believe is a living child pay for the rape it’s father commited? Why is the life of a child with a birth defect worth less than one without one? If you are going to value life enough to want to ban abortions, I don’t see how these sorts of exceptions make any sense.
Anyway, what am I left with? I think I’d like to see a lot more discussion about where a meaningful line could/should be drawn, and less about “you kill babies” or “you hate women”, because that doesn’t save lives or protect rights, it just galvanizes the opposition. I think somewhere a line can be drawn where the majority of people can feel okay with from a legal perspective, but since I’m not a biologist or a politician, I won’t even try to hazard a guess at where it ought to be.
And all of that is said from someone who, in fact, believes that abortion is always immoral, even in the earliest term, but realizing that any legal definition that would include that doesn’t make sense, nor does legislating morality. Instead, like with drugs, like with casual sex, like with so many other things that so many people consider immoral, I think it makes more sense to legalize it, appropriately educate people on the issue, and make it safer for those who are going to do it anyway, and let the people figure out for themselves how they’ll handle the moral repercussions of their decisions and those around them.