If your parents had been using an effective form of contraception during the period before you were conceived, your life would have almost certainly not come into being. It would have almost certainly stopped the egg and the sperm that created you from coming together. Effective contraception would have extinguished the potential for you, a sentient being, from being born. An abortion at an early stage of pregnancy would have had the same effect.

So the point is that both contraception and abortion involve the wilful prevention of sentient beings from coming into existence. Whether this is achieved prior to, or soon after (say, for the sake of argument, up to 20 weeks) conception is irrelevant, as no conscious being exists at either stage. And as we’ve already established, the foetus is valuable because of its potential to become a human. It has no physical value in and of itself. i.e. when a baby is miscarried, it is the loss of potential conscious life that is mourned, not the loss of a mass of cells (unless you have a religious belief that places a kind if “spiritual” value on the foetus).

The only difference you seem to draw is that each individual usage of contraception possibly prevents the life, where as an abortion probably prevents a life (the foetus might have been miss-carried etc). However, if you consistently use contraception then you probably stop several lives from coming into existence. So really, for all intents and purposes contraception and abortion are ethical equivalents.

what i’m saying is at conception, that is where the development begins as the sperm has fertalised the egg, in which case if left unaborted will grow into a full human being, whereas contraception prevents conception in the first place and a sperm or egg is incapable of growing into a human being independently

Why?

“the current abortion laws are the ones that are based on a ‘religious’ viewpoint rather than nature”

Why?

“your whole argument is a philosophical position rather than a scientific point”

All I need is a scientific determination of when the mass of cells becomes a sentient/conscious being, then I have a rational philosophical argument that is backed up by up by science. So here’s some science to get the ball rolling.

“The pictures showed foetuses of 12 weeks’ gestation, bouncing and kicking in the womb, before the mother is usually aware of such movement. At 16 weeks, they can be seen sucking thumbs and yawning, and at 18 weeks opening their eyes.”

“John Watts, Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics at University College Hospital in London, said. “It is clear that a vast amount of activity is happening mainly in the last three months of pregnancy. We will never know at what point foetal consciousness and awareness start. But the link between cortex and the rest of the body doesn’t come into play until 23 to 24 weeks, when the first connections are created.” ”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article658385.ece

(see Muriel Newman’s recent column on “Junk Science” at http://www.nzcpr.com for the definition of religion i’m referring to)

When it’s your body you can do what the hell you like with it. Yes you can even have a vasectomy, which in all probability will prevent a life from entering this world. Yes a foetus is different from a potential foetus, but it’s an argument of semantics really. The real issue is the preventing the potential of a sentient being from coming into the world, and both vasectomies and abortions (and any form of birth control for that matter) achieve this end. Up to a certain point in development, a foetus is no-more a sentient being than a carrot. The difference between them is clearly potential. So the prevention of the prevention of the potential is the ethical issue (it’s determining the point where the mass of cells becomes a sentient being that is the tricky part). So, logically you are either for all forms of potential prevention (abortion and methods of birth-control) or you are against them.

Where it gets tricky is when different belief systems clash. i.e, if you believe that a foetus has a “soul”, and you believe that it is immoral to extinguish a “soul” then I can understand your opposition to abortion. However, if you don’t believe in the existence of a soul then I can’t see that there’s a rational reason to be against other people using abortion.

Ultimately however we live in a secular state, which means that you can’t force anyone to do anything because of your religious beliefs. This is a good thing in my opinion.

reposted from Investigate’s letters to the editors page:

Good to see the old abortion debate being inflamed once again. Personally I don’t see the problem. If you are against abortion don’t abort. If you are for it go ahead. If there is an anti-abortion chromosome the antis will win out in the end. As for the foetus, surely its soul will go to heaven …if there is a God, that is. If there’s not then what it doesn’t know won’t hurt it. Simple really! Interesting too that the pro-abortion group aren’t pro-abortion for every pregnant woman – that is, they don’t want a blanket ruling, but merely the right to choose – whereas the anti-abortionists want absolutely no-one to abort.

Julian Matthews
Waiheke Island

Your analysis doesn’t go far enough. You have adequately covered the rights of both the pro and anti abortionists, but have overlooked the third party: the foetus.

Does a baby have rights? I would argue quite obviously that it does. It is as human as you or I. The new in-utero soundscans clearly illustrate that it is merely a smaller version of ourselves, complete with habits like playing and sucking its thumb. To ignore the rights of the baby, by assuring that somehow the mother has more rights “because it’s her body”, is no different to turning a blind eye to child abuse or child murder because “a man’s house is his castle”.

Ultimately you have to decide on what basis someone has human rights, you can’t just draw an unscientific arbitrary line in the land for the sake of convenience and say blandly, “anything younger than this is not human”. Says who?

If a baby has rights the moment it is born, why does it have no rights before that? On what grounds?

If it is wrong to kill a six week old baby because it is unwanted or unloved by its mother, why is it not wrong to kill a 20 week old baby in utero?

If it is wrong to kill a one year old simply because the family find the child a financial burden, why is it right to kill a baby in utero on the same grounds?

All the arguments used by the pro-abortion lobby that women should have a right to choose because of the impact of a pregnancy, can equally be used to justify child homicide up to the age of 18 years.

The bottom line is that there must be some measuring stick upon which we apply human rights, and the only logical one is the presence of human life.

The abortion debate is not actually about either a woman’s “right to choose” (which assumes she has such a right), nor about an abortion group’s right to oppose. It is actually about whether the foetus has rights, and on what grounds those rights can be denied.

Clearly, a foetus can’t speak for itself. Nor can a one year old. Clearly, a foetus is totally dependent on its mother for food. So is a one year old.

The truth is, a mother takes on the responsibility of motherhood from the moment of conception, not from the moment of birth. She has a “choice” about whether or not she had unprotected sex, or whether she had sex fullstop. We all know that pregnancy can result from sex. That’s our choice, we don’t – or shouldn’t – have the choice to kill for the sake of inconvenience.

And from a Libertarian perspective, it is actually more rational to support the anti-abortion lobby, because they are standing up for the non-initiation of force against a weaker party – the baby.

Ian Wishart

Yes….we don’t want that freedom and individual rights rubbish and for Women to control their own bodies! Its against God etc…

meh, who wants to waste $10 every year to renew their membership anyway, the only thing that matters is who you give your party vote to. until Rodney pulls another Steve Forbes and changes his position on abortion of course i don’t want to be representative of that kind of party

Such as what? He did DWTS and a few swims etc…he lost weight,got healthy and has a new spring in his step …whats wrong with that? It will stand him in good stead come election time.He has been pushing a taxpayers bill of rights and rates caps…what else do you want right now?

Neither does Rodney, judging by the balderdash he’s now talking about and engaging in.

“Stan I like the tenor of your above press releases. Unfortunately you do not do ACT or yourself any favours with your obscenities. ACT

ACT has had my party vote since the first election it contested – however if you are representative of the people at the heart of the party I would have to give my future support serious consideration. Generally people who cannot get their point accross without having to resort to obscenities have little credibility.”

Just to make it VERY clear to pdm and any others, Stan is not a member of the ACT Party and in no way represents the people “at the heart” of the organisation.

With you perhaps they don’t PDM, but should I give a fuck???

Generally people who cannot get their point accross without having to resort to obscenities have little credibility.

That’d include DPF if his thread on ;’Helen texting Mallard’ is anything to go by.

However I agree with his sentiment…. why the press is reporting Helen’s texts is beyond me.