[Jack]

I think the point that a lot of you are missing is that you can say "oh abortion is murder because of such and such reasons" however what is the alternative? Are you advocating that we make abortion illegal except in cases where the mother's life is in danger? Because if so you must consider that a hell of a lot of people do not see it that way and if, somehow, abortion became illegal many people would resort to back-alley dangerous procedures instead of carrying a baby through to birth.

Similarly, from the small amount of this thread I've read ( I admit I've not read it all), you all seem to be putting forward that abortion is murder because an embryo has the potential to become a fully formed human being. However why should we place a potential human's rights before an actual, non-abstract human? The potentiality arguement also falls down when you consider that contraception prevents a potential life from forming, if abortion is murder then condoms most certainly are too. With that view even abstinence would be moraly suspect as you're preventing a potential human being being born each month by not frantically trying to concieve, you become as morally abhorent as the person who walks past a drowning child without trying to help.

Also, I'm not quite sure how you could justify a male having a say in a woman having an abortion. Of course, it sounds perfectly fine and dandy in theory but how would it work in practice? Who's view would take precedence? Similarly why should a man be able to effectively use a woman as nothing more than a 9 month incubator against her wishes? Maybe if someone could present a logical explanation of how it would actually work without room for abuse by males (which happened before women were allowed to control abortion so I assume it would happen again) then I would be more friendly to the idea. The only logical solution is, instead, to allow the man to fiscally abort the child from his life if he does not wish to have it and the women does, if it the man who wants to keep the child: Then tough. Adopt a kid, there are plenty in the adoption system as it is.

Similarly placing a kid into adoption isn't so nice and peachy as a lot of you make it out to be. The cost of giving birth alone can be rather high and the stress it places on a womans body is not something to just be ignored. While of course there are harmful side effects to abortion (guilt etc etc) those are the risks people take when having one, if they are having one then it is obvious that the serious consequences of having the baby outweigh the serious consequences of aborting it otherwise they would not be doing it. There are also a lot of kids who are not adopted from that system.

Also, can people stop referring to it as "murder" because according to the definition of murder it's not.