Loosening my pro choice stance.

[Aractus]

Until two nights ago i used to think the pro lifer movement was just another faction of religiously charged pseudo science like Young earth creationism.But after reading this essay in opposition to abortion on RW I'm uncertain if I could ever call myself "pro-choice" anymore. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Why_I...e_abortion

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"In the late 1960's the pro-choice movement made a deliberate, strategic decision to trivialize the abortion debate by dismissing all pro-life arguments as mere Catholic dogma. This made it easy to gloss over the inconvenient, undeniable scientific embryological fact that human life begins at conception in favor of specious arguments regarding church/state separation and accusation that religion "is being forced down our throats." Planned Parenthood today still insists that the question of when life begins is a religious one which varies from woman to woman, apparently mind-dependent rather than reality-dependent. They do draw the line at the old Mayan practice of throwing infants into volcanos, although I don't see why, under their theory, that wouldn't be a protected exercise of religion as well. I've seen more of a reliance on science - embryology, ultrasound - on the pro-life side than on the pro-choice side. In fact, the mainstream pro-choice organizations oppose showing women who are considering abortion ultrasound pictures of the child on the grounds that they are "confusing." It should be noted that the pro-choice side isn't opposed to raising religious arguments when it suits them. Planned Parenthood has hired clergy to promote abortion from a theological standpoint. The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice devotes its very existence to that endeavor. Ironically, even the atheistic Freedom from Religion Foundation employs a religious argument when it comes to abortion - it argues that the practice should be permitted because it isn't expressly forbidden by the Bible."

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For a long time now the American POVs on abortion have puzzled me. The fact that there are two extremes, and normal non-Americans like me get labelled as "pro choice" by the pro-lifers and "pro life" by the pro-choicers. It's really bizarre.

The question of when life begins that you cited above is totally correct - it begins at conception. Or rather a new independent life-form begins then. And it is human, even as a zygote. But it has unusual properties. For the first 2 weeks it can actually split and develop as twins or triplets or more independent life forms, thus creating multiple humans. Furthermore conception itself doesn't take place at the instant the sperm enters the egg, it takes place some 12 or so hours later when the sperm's DNA fuses with the eggs to produce the new unique life form.

At 21 weeks the foetus is developed enough to have a realistic chance to survive past birth if placed in an incubator.

As others have pointed out where the line gets drawn is rather arbitrary. If the foetus has Anencephaly for example, then abortion should be considered as option up until birth itself - and not only should it be considered, but it's the preferred way to manage a pregnancy with the condition. But that's not necessarily going to be the case in all pregnancies - for example imagine you have twins, one is healthy and the other is a brain-dead foetus that has Anencephaly. Well you can't very well go and perform an abortion on just the one affected foetus, therefore you might need to carry it to full term in that situation.

Medical necessities aside, abortion should be an option - but it certainly shouldn't be a recommended option for women.

Now I haven't seen the stats in a while, but the vast majority of abortions occur in the first trimester (before the 13th week of pregnancy), and it is medically the safest option for the mother for an abortion (which should be quite intuitive). In my opinion abortions for medical necessities should continue to be an option for the duration of the pregnancy, but the cutt-off for aborting a healthy foetus from a healthy mother should be around the 18 week mark.

Let's think of another scenario - the mother is diagnosed with cancer and needs to begin chemotherapy immediately to have a chance of living longer than 12 months. She can't have chemotherapy while pregnant, so she and her partner would have to make a decision about whether they want to abort the healthy foetus to begin treatment. In this scenario the foetus could be older than 22 weeks and this would prove a real ethical dilemma to anyone involved in making the decision, but it's still a decision that needs to be made. It shouldn't be prohibited though, and the family shouldn't be judged for choosing to save the life of the mother at the expense of a healthy baby.