What you miss is the importance of population reduction. Without abortion, too may children are born into poverty, starvation and crime, which ends their lives prematurely. Die as a zygote or as a 14 year old? You miss the point that some women really don't want a child for reasons of their own and the pregnancy is accidental or through rape. When all the unwanted and abandoned children have been adopted, then your argument will have more value. Besides, I have never met a woman who uses abortion as birth control. If you have ever had an abortion, you would know the havoc this plays with your body and the grief that follows from the sudden hormonal change.

I like to keep it simple when it comes to abortion. If you're against it, then don't have one. I know several women who made that difficult choice, and they turned out to live productive lives. Your fourth point is kind of scary.

I am in agreement with all of your positions and, at heart, am (1) pro-life. So I do not think that it is right to allow abortion, from a (2) moral/ethical perspective. I also think that it is difficult to draw a line in time to mark the point (3) at which a zygote becomes a human being, and am concerned that as medicine advances we will have to face a (4) dilemma about ectogenesis and abortion. However, after a lot of research and dialog I have accepted it, despite my objections, for the following reasons.

a. Research has shown, time and again, that when abortion is outlawed, almost as many abortions get performed, but by untrained people, leading to permanent injuries the death to the mothers. Outlawing it does not stop it from occurring and offers very little to curb it.

b. There are already many unwanted children who often end up populating prisons and causing havoc for society. Of course this argument is a gross generalization and quite cold-hearted, but it is an additional minor factor.

c. Consider the argument: "If you had to make a choice between saving one child or 100 embryos, which would you do?" Yes, it's a fabricated situation and is marginally valid. but it does emphasize that there is indeed a difference between the life of a born and an unborn child.

Given the above arguments, and the factor that there is a core difference of opinion between pro-life and pro-choice advocates, I choose to err on the side of freedom - that I live in the United States where we are only to impose our beliefs on others when it does not compromise their rights.

I've read your four points. If all of the anti-abortion people, instead of protesting, got together and provided viable alternatives to abortion, such as paying for baby stuff and health care, or counseling, or open adoption, or public education to welcome these babies rather than shaming the mother, your points might become moot. Or not.

I would like to address your second point. Banning abortion, and therefore restricting the rights of women to autonomy over their body, will NOT force anyone to advance other women’s rights or family issues. I would argue that if people want to eliminate abortion, that best way to do that is to address the social issues that often lead to abortion - like poverty, lack of access to birth control, and the challenges of providing health care and other basic needs. But people are not “forced to” address those issues to prevent abortion any more than they would be “forced” to address them by banning abortion.
if society actually addressed those issues, abortion could be significantly reduced, and we should make every effort as society to do that. But making abortion illegal doesn’t solve anything - it simply makes it illegal and dangerous to access.

I think there is a lot crammed into your 4 points. You talk about things being "meant", however I would argue that there is no "being" or "force" driving things, so nothing is "meant", it just happens. While the concept of having 100% successful birth control is ideal, it doesn't really pertain to where we are now, so doesn't really negate the need for abortion. I also have the sense that you are ignoring some of the reasons women want abortions. Specifically things like rape, not wanting their children to grow up with another family, feeling that the life/death cycle itself is something bad that they don't want to foist upon another person,and a desire not to contribute to over population.

1. Yes, we should continue developing better and better contraception. This does not mean that we should not use the solution of abortion in the meantime as it is currently the best method we have for eliminating unwanted pregnancies. We cannot make policy based off of speculated medical technology only the technology we currently face. Yes, aborting an unwanted fetus isn't fun, but neither is carrying to term an unwanted fetus.

2. You act as though there is not research and good research going into pre-natal care and how to eliminate birth defects. You also act as though people view abortion as the only way for low SES women to move up in the world, it certainly is not. It is a procedure that would help any woman to not have the major disruption in their life that an undesired child would cause. In no way do people advocating for the woman's right to have an abortion say it would end women's poverty, and that we should not be helping them in other ways.

3. So? You cannot remember your time in the womb. If a fetus is aborted before it is born it is as if it was never conceived at all. There is no difference. Aside, you better be against Plan B then to be philosophically consistent.

4. See my first point. We cannot make policy based off of speculated future technology. To force women into conditions that they do not want or chose on the off chance that humans will eventually develop technology to allow for ectogenesis is wrong. It goes against your desire to help women that you stated in point 2.

All together you appear to have the same arguments as many religious folks. You completely ignore women's rights in favor of the rights of a fetus. You prioritize the safety and wellbeing of a lump of cells that is completely dependent on its host, over the host itself.

Valuing life does not require saving all life. What's important is happy, healthy, useful life. The idea of a "right" to life is academic. We live in a world so severely overpopulated that we are significantly diminishing the prospects for our posterity's civilzation. What does a "right" to life mean when I am more a burden than a blessing to the world, and harm not only contemporary but future people as well?
It is significant to note that the spontaneous abortion rate is believed to be over 50% -- most conceptions do not survive even to the point where the mother is aware of pregnancy. The miscarriage rate is about 10%. Whatever the philosophical considerations of death before birth, it is very, very common. Sure, abortion is murder, but do the unborn care why they die? Usually, it seems, it is because they are too unhealthy to live. We may be squeamish about this, but it is how the world works.
re. point #3: by that argument, contraception and abortion are equally objectionable. Do we value life so much that we want 50 billion of us? does more = better?

I am pro-choice. What occurs within a woman's body should be between her and her doctor.

Re point 2, you have written the following:

"To accept abortion as a go-to solution for women usually discriminated in the workplace is to choose not to address the challenges women face in the workplace when they are pregnant. Abortion seems to be a solution that discourages the pursuit of real solutions for women finding themselves in these difficult situations. Abortion freezes progress in other important areas of social justice and science."

While I agree that greater scientific research and policy reform are necessary to better protect pregnant and non-pregnant women in the workplace, I nonetheless say that you are putting the cart before the horse. You are arguing that the existence of abortion as an option is somehow undercutting research into the development of other options. I sincerely doubt it. Please present the evidence that scientific research and/or policy development aren't happening because there aren't enough unwanted babies being born because too many of them are still being aborted. I am quite sure that there's already an overabundance of unwanted babies and disadvantaged pregnant mothers in this country. The research wouldn't happen significantly faster if we got more, but there would be disproportionately more suffering of both women and children. That is a lousy trade-off. No, if you want fewer abortions, then put the horse where it belongs - promote the investment in scientific research and policy reform that would make bearing children into the world less risky for impoverished women.

Re point 3, you twice use the word "contraception" where you mean "conception." This is confusing to your readers to say the least.

You have written: "The farthest identifiable point in my existence, is at the moment of contraception where most my physical traits identifying me as human today were created. Contraception is sort of my biological birth whereas delivery is my physical birth."

In both cases, the word "conception" is the only word that fits.

I note that you haven't discussed pregnancies that occur as a result of rape or incest. If you are going to start to define human life as beginning at conception as you do above, then it would become impossible to make allowances for abortion in the cases of rape or incest because that, too, would have to qualify murder. After all, if fetuses are future people with rights, then it isn't their fault how they were conceived. But forcing a woman to bring a fetus thus conceived to term is extremely cruel.

Personally, I think I shouldn't have anything to say about what women do with their own body. As for human life, I consider sentience as the only proof of humanity, and that only develops after birth, so abortion is a non-issue to me.

Though I can agree with almost all you have said every argument is trumped by one unescapable fact. The planet is now straining to accommodate 7 billion top predators at the expense of nearly every other life form. Our prisons are filled with unwanted children who raised themselves and found "family" in street gangs, orphanages, foster homes, reluctant relatives and other non-nurturing situations. As far as I'm concerned any woman who has the slightest hesitation about having a child should be allowed a publicly funded abortion on demand literally up to the time of birth. The environmental, social and economic costs of forcing reluctant women to go to full term are enormous. As someone who has and never will spawned a child I am sick of paying the costs and receiving as my compensation a diminished planet and society that lives in fear of the anti-social acts perpetrated by alienated offenders.

The idea that anyone is "meant to" become anything is magical thinking. There is no such thing as destiny.

I can't get past your using "contraception" when you obviously mean "conception"...

I think this is good but missing things. A fetus gestated outside of a female body, eliminates the pre-delivery bonding that mothers feel toward their babies. Every child, deserves two loving parents. As we know, this doesn't always happen. I would like to see babies only born to committed partners. Partners should be committed to raising their children in a loving home. I don't believe that Zygotes are human. They are potential humans. Fetuses however are human beings. It should never be the right of uninterested parties to determine if an abortion is done. Each partnered human should have that choice, with the emphasis on preventing late term abortion. Women, should ultimately have control of their bodies and partners should be given adequate birth control of their choice to space their children in a manner that works for them.

I'm pro-choice. A woman has the right to control her body. If that means ending a life inside her body, then that's within her rights. When science has a solution where that life can be safely removed from her body and allowed to develop naturally outside of her womb, I will support the right to life.

You make some valid points. However at present there is less risk to a woman's life to have an abortion than there is to carry to term. So, i think it is up to each woman individually as to whether or not she should take on the rick of carrying to term or not. Even if the risk is small, the risk to the woman's life is still there and should not be forced on anyone.

I am pro life in the sense that I think the life of a woman who has already been born shoudl be valued more than a prospective life, which may or may not be born alive.

As an example, one of my sister's first pregnancies produced a child with "water on the brain". My sister's religion (Mormon) forbade abortion. They knew the baby woudl likely be born dead and if it survibed birth it would not live past infancy. However, she carried ti to term at risk to her own life, because she believed abortion to be wrong. She lived, but the risk to her life was for nothign because the baby was born dead. My sister had insurance, so the costs of prenatal care were affordable to her, but for poor women who can't afford prenatal care, they woudl not know of a problem that the one above, and forcing the woman to risk her life to carry to term, risking the woman's life, for a child she doesn't want, which may nto even live, neglects the risk of life to the woman and her ability to choose whether or not to take on the risk to her own life.

I think we should work to keep abortions safe legal and as rare as possible, via good sex education and widely available birth control. I am not an advocate of abortions so much as i am an advocate for woman to be able to choose whether or not they wish to become mothers and take on the risks of carry to term.

What if i just don't feel any major difference between a fetus and someone who wasn't conceived because of a condom being used or that the sex that night didn't lead to impregnation. In both those scenarios imo someone who could have been born or come into this life ended up not joining us. There are lots of things that lead to life that would have joined us ending up not joining us. I don't really feel guilty about the 2nd scenario so i don't see why i would feel guilty about the first.

@Tyssina
What do you think about the so called morning after pill which women can take within 72 hours of unprotected sexual contact?
Surely if it were available free from family planning clinics then there would be less abortions? If the government subsidised proper contraception like the coil then it's a cheap reversible operation and doesn't poison the body with bovine hormones like the pill does.
There are some extremist Catholics who think that even a barrier method is wrong though !?
The cost of repealing Roe v Wade is far too high. Why don't Americans fund contraception options?

Wow!! There's a lot to unpack there and you have evidently thought long and hard about this and so I feel I should do the same and think about your points and get back to you.

My initial thoughts are - you keep using the word contraception when you mean conception
I'm sure this is down to auto correct but it's confusing so please edit for future readers.

Also, you mention neither capital punishment nor abortion after rape and incest, so where do you stand on this?

pro abortion, too many people

You can think whatever you please. NOTHING will ever make what any woman chooses to do with her own body, ANY of your business. If you don't believe in abortion, you should never be forced to have one. Beyond that, it doesn't matter what you think. If it's not YOUR body, it's not your life, it's not your decision, and it will never be your business. Ever.

Why do you arbitrarily place the beginning of life at conception? Why not before? Why do you devalue human eggs and sperm? Why do you not consider them (non-religiously) sacred? How can you call yourself pro-woman while holding such a low opinion of the quality of life of women? Why do you use inflamitory words like 'murder' (which is a legal term) in an attempt to poison the well?

You're scary.. My body, my choice. End of.

My take on your submission:

#1: A) Claiming (more then once when reading your replies) your assertions are "Pro-sceince" does not support your argument without references to specific scientific studies that support a detailed component of your claim

#1 B) Claiming that you are "Pro-Women" then rambling on without consideration for the health and rights of a woman makes me seriously question you honesty or understanding of this issue from the perspective of a woman.

  For example:  

A friend of mine told me about her good friend: a woman who was attacked and raped while walking home by a violent man. Because the young woman was a Catholic and a High School Senior, she did not have an abortion. She gave birth and raised (rapist father was usually in jail and wanted nothing to do with her or his boy) the hateful (the unwanted boy was filled with violent behaviour and filled with hate.) The boy horrified the mother as every time she saw the baby, then young boy . . . . he reminded her of her violent assault by the boys father. The boy (surprise surprise) (Nature AND Nurture) is now an unwanted violent young man who has already displayed violent outbursts to classmates and performed delinquent behaviour that has placed him in Juvenal hall. To quote my friend "From the day the mother was raped, her healthy life ended. She is a total wreck and now suffers severe emotional issues that have made her unemployable."

I could go on about the number of other health issues such as spontaneous abortions, or ectopic pregnancies that must be aborted or the mother dies, and other "Pro-science" points you ignorantly or purposefully omitted that contradict your stated "Pro-Woman" stance. By failing to take into consideration any of these or a long list of other women health issues but I think, (ok, I hope) you get the point.

#2 How do you define "Sacred" The dictionary definition of secured is: (religious rather than secular. (of writing or text) embodying the laws or doctrines of a religion) without religion?
and how in the world would this ". . probably foster better pre-natal care and research in preventing fetal abnormalities. . " f a c e p a l m. This entire section looks and smells like a copy and paste from a theistic argument for Pro-Life.

I find your #3 and #4 assertions equally lame. If you wish, I'll expound.