Nonsense - 'right to life' is religious rubbish with no basis in fact.

The "right to choose" is liberal nonsense with no basis in morality.

Morality is subjective, and should never be used alone as a form of argument.

This country asserts that the right to life is a fundamental human right. I didn't have to refer to religion once in my argument.
Anyone who wants to argue that no such right exists should probably explain very carefully why they shouldn't then be killed. Why shouldn't they be got rid of just as a convenience in the same way the unborn currently are? The only justification anyone really has for a distinction is that the person making the distinction isn't an unborn child.

I haven't directly appealed to morality either, although strictly speaking, any argument should appeal to morality, or in the philosophical sense, ethics, because the only reason to have a law against anything is if that thing is wrong, and "wrong" is a moral or ethical judgement.

Agree totally, abortion is murder

This is an issue on which people are never going to agree. That is why the choice needs to be left to the individuals involved.

We have laws for issues where people don't agree. If nobody wanted to do something, there would be no need to have a law against it. To choose to give people a choice is to choose to permit it. Some people think they should be able to kill other people to get their way and we legislate against that, and to allow abortion because some people think it is alright when it is in fact wrong is moral cowardice.

In what other context does one person have the "right to choose" to destroy another human being?
Abortion is outrageous murder.
If the UK had saved the 7 million lives destroyed, the population would not now be top heavy by about 7 million and the problems over care of the elderly and pensions etc. would not be acute.
When abortion was legalized in 1967, the public was told that it would be applied to medical emergencies (David Steel!) but what has happened - millions of murders for reasons of convenience.

Abortion cannot be justified as a matter of free choice, because the subject of the abortion does not have any choice in the matter. Abortion is the ultimate selfish act of an adult on her utterly dependent offspring.

Whether someone agrees, disagrees or thinks it's a private matter is irrelevant. The murder of unborn babies is wrong.

Abortion should not be legalised, its down to the individual to choose, should a 12 year girl who has been raped, be forced to have the child ? and ruin their lives. There is a clear distinction that is the moment the bundle of cells becomes conscious. By the same logic masturbating should be ilegalised because you are murdering the potential of life in the sperm, thus contraception should also be ilegalised. A bundle of cells no bigger than a pee, is not a human life, and is as much of a human as an egg, or sperm. Over-population and quality of life are also dominant in the argument for. If a child is born into poverty, or with no limbs, is it not kinder to stop the development of the bundle of cells. As for arguments referring to this then resulting in myself being morally allowed to be murdered if a bundle of cells can , is a redundant idea. I am fully able to survive with no help from developmental carrier i.e a mum. I am conscious, I give to society as a real human being not a pee sized bundle of cells, i have formed relationships, and am a being which feels emotion and can think.

The distinction between egg and sperm and fertilised cell is genetic, significant and identifiable. The fact that you do not know that the unborn are conscious does not render them unconscious. Unborn children are seen to react to their environment, and to clearly recoil from foreign objects in their environment (in particular, those introduced by doctors), but can still be aborted under current law.
The ability to survive alone cannot be a measure of the right to life. We are technically capable of supporting a fertilised egg to birth without the need for implanting in a mother, so a mother is not specifically necessary. If, on the other hand, you require the ability to survive without any assistance from other people, then few, if any of us are entitled to life, because we do rely on other people all the time.
You also can't argue that if a child would be born into poverty or deformity they should be killed for their own sake, unless you intend to apply that argument consistently. Either you get permission, which the unborn can't give, or you go around bumping off poor and disabled people left right and centre because that is your standard of life not being worth living.
It is not your place or mine to assert that someone else's life isn't worth living, and indeed our society regards as insane and in need of treatment anyone who attempts to end their own life because they don't feel it worth living.
No argument for killing the unborn should be based an assumptions about their feelings or desires, because you don't know what they are and would object vociferously if you were treated in the same way.
As for "I have formed relationships, and am a being which feels emotion and can think", you need to define these more precisely before you can prove that the unborn don't, and given that the unborn recoil from instruments being used to abort them, they seem to me to be distressed, and you certainly can't prove that they aren't.

Abortion is MURDER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"If there is no clear dividing line, then no change occurs" - now there's a loose bit of reasoning!

"If there is no clear dividing line, then no change occurs" - now there's a loose bit of reasoning!

"If there is no clear dividing line, then no change occurs" - now there's a loose bit of reasoning!

"If there is no clear dividing line, then no change occurs" - now there's a loose bit of reasoning!

A fertilised egg is a human life and should not be destroyed under any circumstances, this is the same as killing a person. If it is a question of choice then it should be the unborn child who decides!!!

A fertilised egg is an unborn potential human life. At the moment of conception it is a bunch of very undifferentiated cells that has not even developed a nervous system.

The eggs we eat are unborn animals, we absolutely do not need to consume them to live, yet they are killed by the billions every year. Clearly killing unborn life for our own convenience is not an issue for most humans, why are human babies different? What choice do they get?

We have reached the entirely sensible balance between disposing of a collection of cells that will commit a mother to caring for it for 9 months, without which it would die and killing a unborn child with a developed nervous system.

It's why there is a limit in this country on how late a pregnancy can be terminated. A limit that is examined and voted on by parliament.

"The unborn are human. At the moment of conception they become, by any reasonable definition, human." - Some would argue there. That is why abortion laws include a time limit.

Consider that the majority of fertilised eggs from even healthy couples fail to implant. Consider that of those that do implant many fail to survive long enough for the mother, in the absence of one of those test kits, to detect the pregnancy.

Abortion is a balance of rights. You are arguing using extremes by invoking the idea of the zygote, blastocyst, feotus, as a child. Let's consider some others.

What of the mother with a critical illness, say cancer? Should she delay chemotherapy? If she dies the child dies. What of that 9 year old who was raped and carried twins? Her chances of survival were low, yet the Catholic church excommunicated the doctors who saved her.

What of the millions of children in the world who are born, but die before the age of 5 because of starvation, war, poor sanitation?

Abortion has become a subject of too emotional lobbying. It is a complex situation which is why our legal system has had to work to balance the arguments each way. Crying "abortion is always murder" and "it becomes a baby on day 1" just looks ridiculous, especially the bit about it becoming a baby on day one. The people who argue such have shown that they are blind to the suffering they would cause for their ideal.

For that reason I give this idea 1, meaning "strong reject".

Regarding the last comment from RichardJC.
Why should a mother who is critically ill be more concerned about preserving her own life than the life of her unborn child? and for the 9 year old who got pregnant from being raped, maybe there was a reasons for this, is an abortion any less dangerous on the human body than a cisarian section? and could she not give the children up for adoption if she was not able to look after them? What the real problem here is selfish people thinking they know what is best.

@pphillips - we do have to ask about the various situations, which I believe over time parliament and the courts have done

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If the critically ill mother dies before the child can be born then the child dies anyway. That sounds so obvious it shouldn't need thinking about, but comments here say "an unborn child should not be aborted in _any_ circumstances". A more edge case is consideration of the future of the child should the mother die soon after birth. Some mothers have delayed treatment. Outcomes have been varied. It is up to the mother to decide with the advice of the doctors based on the specific situation. It is not possible to make a blanket ban as it seems those with an idealogical hatred of abortion would want. For what it's worth, life saving procedures such as de-fibrillation and emergency drugs would prioritise the mother. There can be no other way because dead mother means very soon dead baby.

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Would you make the 9 year old go through that? I don't know how early in the process the pregnancy was detected, reported and aborted. This "idea" is based on the premise that it should not matter - but killing off a small bunch of cells sounds so much kinder than forcing a 9 year old through pregnancy, through C-section, through either keeping or being forced to give up the children.

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"Selfish people thinking they know what is best". Please expand. I can guess what you allude to and don't like it, but don't want to be caught out by wrong guessing.

To Richard JC.
What I was referring to was human intervention in ending human life.

I think we have slightly different definitions of "human life" in this very grey area.

So what is "what's best"? What nature will have done perhaps? Yet we act to free ourselves from a lot of what nature would otherwise choose for us. We fight cancer and other illnesses. We prolong life and reduce pain.

The argument that if there is no dividing line no change occurs is simple to see. If you kill a grown human, then except in certain circumstances such as war, or that person actively looking to harm someone else, it is murder. If it isn't murder just after conception, then there must be an instant between that moment and adulthood when it became murder.

when I said

"The unborn are human. At the moment of conception they become, by any reasonable definition, human."

I was speaking with the experience of someone who has had the debate a thousand times with someone who thought they could say what made someone human, then discovered that by their definition, either the unborn were human or adult members of homo sapiens who are currently permitted to vote, drink, smoke and in many countries carry firearms are not. You can't use the ability to feel pain because children can be aborted under current law who clearly suffer, whereas to slip some hemlock into someones evening cup of cocoa first renders them incapable of feeling pain then kills them. You can't use consciousness because consciousness can never be proven not to be there, whilst many adults can be in states that might be described as uncouscious when you wouldn't want them killed.
I can't refute every possible definition for you here because there are a theoretically infinite number, but the basic trend is the same whatever you use.
To refer to the fact that many fertilised eggs fail to implant is irrelevant. I am saying that to choose to kill them is wrong, but if they die of their own accord, that is something we must accept. Everybody has to die sometime. What I don't like is the assertion that some people should be entitled to decide to shorten the lives of others purely for their own benefit.
The terms "zygote, blastocyst, feotus" are not precise in terms of the nature of the thing, and seem to me to be used largely to try to industrialise the whole thing so that people don't think of them as human beings, but a foetus is defined as "An unborn baby after the seventh week of gestation" which seems to me to hardly be a reasonable measure of what it actually is. Development occurs at a different rate in each case, the the seventh week cannot be said to be of any significance whatsoever.

In response to "What of the millions of children in the world who are born, but die before the age of 5 because of starvation, war, poor sanitation?" I would say that our resources are better spent helping these people rather than murdering them, and I would also say that it is not the place of any one person to decide that another person's life can't be worth living. What of the 100% of people who will die in the end anyway? one could just as well argue that if they're going to die we should get it out of the way before they use up the world's precious and limited resources.

The accusation that people who hold my position cause suffering is blatantly false. If a nine year old is raped and gets pregnant, I would not have the baby killed, but to accuse me of trying to cause her suffering is rather generous to the rapist.

There is an important distinction between what I asserted and what some people have been arguing. I said "deliberately to take action to terminate a life" should be illegal, and there is a distinction between giving a mother life saving treatment that may (or even is likely to) have the side effect of killing the child and deliberately aborting that child.

"but killing off a small bunch of cells sounds so much kinder than forcing a 9 year old through pregnancy, through C-section, through either keeping or being forced to give up the children."
A nine year old who has an abortion IS giving up her child. The child is being murdered, that is very much the point. There may be a difference in that the nine year old doesn't have to make the choice, but being forced into a particular course of action isn't any better, and is possibly far more traumatic. Regardless of arguments about whether abortion should be allowed, people who have abortions frequently suffer terribly as a result and find themselves in need of long term counselling. At first I decided not to mention that in this thread because they have no bearing on the point I was making, but if it's going to be used as an argument I'd best say it.

Finally, can any one of the people who have suggested that the position I espoused is ridiculous or anything of that nature actually explain the flaw in the argument? All anyone ever does is try to be fluffy and 'compromise' without any explanation of why the answer can't be the one I give. Just because people have views across a continuum, doesn't mean the truth isn't at one end. In fact, in law, in ethics and in philosophy, which are the only areas this relates to, the answer is most likely to be at one extreme or the other.

To ngreer,

Excellent comments. I too would be interested to see an explanation of the flaw in your argument. Is there an initiative to restore philosophy and ethics to our school curricula?

Conception is when the human egg is fertilised makes an embyrio
(by definition is a start)which starts to multiply to make a human being. If it is not legal to kill (not even for the courts) another human then why is it legal to kill an albeit an unborn child ? How many embyrionic cells makes a human ? As there is no anatomical answer to the question, then there is no specific point (in the process from conception to birth) when the the term human being can be applied, the there is no point when once can kill the defenceless process in the making of man. Life begins at conception and whether one is religious or not the taking of life given by God should only be taken away by God.....or have we humans now become Godlike and we can decide better ?

Birth is not the start of a new human life-just a change of the baby's environment. A new life would naturally begin in the womb (usually in the womb's fallopian tube) when a single sperm cell from the father fertilises an egg (ovum) from the mother.

At fertilisation (conception), a new, unique, living human individual is present. He or she is not part of the mother any more than he or she is part of the father. At conception all the hereditary characteristics of the new human being are established, including colour of eyes, gender and build. Nothing more is needed to determine the development of the embryo. All the information about how the baby is to grow and develop is contained in the original single cell at conception. Nothing is added after conception except oxygen and nutrients (food and water), the same essentials that are needed to sustain human life after birth.

The developing baby is known as:

* a zygote at the single-cell stage
* an embryo till the end of the eighth week
* a foetus from nine weeks (when the child's body is essentially complete and recognisable as a miniature human baby) until birth.

Humanity is not acquired but is inherent in all members of the human race, including the unborn from the moment of conception.

The two types of abortion are:

* spontaneous - a natural miscarriage
* induced - the deliberate killing of an unborn child.

When most people talk about abortion, they mean induced abortion-the deliberate killing of an unborn child.

Induced abortion denies the most basic of human rights-the right to life-which is justly due to each member of the human family.

All human life is of equal value. The life of the child in the womb is neither more nor less important than that of the mother. There is therefore no moral objection to measures aimed solely at curing a life-threatening condition in an expectant mother, even if this leads to the child's death. In such circumstances (for example, ectopic pregnancy in the fallopian tube), treatment that is ethical does not involve deliberately killing the baby.

If an unborn baby is old enough to survive outside the womb, and if it is thought that there will be problems later in the pregnancy, the baby can be delivered early and steps should be taken to sustain the baby's life.

If there is disability, social problems or difficult circumstances surrounding the child's conception, the right response is one of compassion for the parents and the child. It can never be compassionate deliberately to take innocent human life.

The Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and became effective the year after. It applies to England, Wales and Scotland, but not Northern Ireland. During the 30 years after the implementation of the act, the total number of abortions performed annually rose by nearly 700% such that some five million induced abortions were performed in Britain. During the last 15 years of that period, the annual total of induced abortions exceeded 170,000. In 1998 it was over 187,000-more than 510 a day-which is 87% greater than the pro-abortionists' estimate of illegal induced abortions in the 1960s.
Reasons for abortion: Although more than 90% of induced abortions are certified as being done to safeguard the mother's physical or mental health, it is widely recognised that the majority of these abortions are actually performed in response to social rather than medical problems. Induced abortion in Britain is effectively practised on demand.

Abortion is murder, ask any embryologist.

We're overpopulated anyway. Any little bit helps.

Abortion is indeed murder! Many people are simply ill-informed about what actually happens during an abortion. In many cases the baby is literally being chased around inside of the womb by the Doctor. Why? Because the child is aware that something has entered its realm that should not be there. It is sickening! Many times, the baby's feet, arms, and legs are pulled off in an attempt to get the baby out. There are no pain killers given to the child either.

Rape as an excuse?

No way! Only 2% of ALL abortions performed are rape related.

Back street alley abortions causing deaths as an excuse?

Again, no way!

More women are dying with legal abortions than they did when going to a black market doctor because the abortion rate has risen to such astronomical levels. Fewer women actually died when abortion was illegal.

pro life FTW 5/5

I hope people come to see their barbaric comments for what they are.

Pro choice? choice is made at the stage of having sex. sort it out