i was just going to state that my body certainly is my vehicle, my vessel & my temple, no one else having any right to authority over it. ... this still stands, but i have to add, that i felt slightly dismayed by the aggressive note in the post. i could have done without it.

No one knows my life enough to make such a critical decision for my life. I would never claim to know enough about anyone else's life to make such a critical decision for that person and expect others to mind their own business when it comes to my life. I already have 2 special needs kids who need me for the rest of their lives and who is going to take care of them when I can no longer care for them? People need to mind their own business, regardless of whether life begins at birth or conception.

I wholeheartedly disagree. Decisions about pregnancy should be made between the woman, her conscience and the doctor. End of story everyone else shut the f** up

My personal belief is I'm pro-life but believe it is not my place to impose that belief on others, that it is a women's right to choose!

I am anti-abortion and fully against the death penalty. However, I am pro-choice as far as abortion is concerned because I feel it is not my place to dictate to a woman what she can and can't do with HER body, regardless of whether I approve or not. I will also add that I do not judge others on whether they have had an abortion as I believe that anyone can find themselves in a situation that requires solutions I have been fortunate enough to never need to consider.
Where I am anti-abortion is in so far as believing that people should be taking more responsibility for their actions and not putting themselves in situations where the abortion is little more than birth control. I appreciate that this does not apply to a great number of people and I am not trying to tar them but I live in a society where it is free on the NHS to have an abortion, paid for by taxpayers where other forms of birth control are also provided, free of charge, that is far less costly both in terms of finances and manpower to the NHS.

too many people, not pro choice, pro abortion

I will always defend the right of any human to be in control of their own body even over the if it is at the cost of the life an unborn child. As humans our biological imperative is to protect the young something that is hard to overcome but, the fact is that humans are more than biology; we have minds shape by life's experience and logic until that part of us comes to be are we really human?

I do not use the phrase "pro-choice." I say that I am pro-abortion. Many are shocked by that at first. I'm also pro cancer treatment and appendix surgery. That indicates that I am supportive of any medical procedure which helps improve the lives of people, if they require that procedure. Nowhere in the constitution, and not even in the buybull, is a fetus given the status of a born human being. Of course it is biologically human, but cannot be seen as the same thing. Imagine that I am holding a baby. In my other hand, I am holding a test tube containing a fetus or zygote. I'm going to drop them and you have to save one. If you are in your right mind, you will choose the baby. Women, like most other creatures abort regularly, both naturally and induced. I'll always remember the sign a young woman was carrying at a march. It said, "My mom had an illegal abortion. I miss my mom, not the fetus."

There is a great secular/atheist/humanist debate with Matt Dilihunty on Youtube on this topic titled:

'Abortion Debate at Texas Freethought Convention, Matt Dillahunty vs. Kristine Kruszelnicki'.

Very comprehensive and a well done civil conversation perfomed in a fair and balanced debate format. I find myself agreeing mostly with Matt on this.

I've been personally pro-life since realizing shortly after the birth of my daughter,I could have prevented her existence when her mom asked if we should keep the baby or have an abortion.That's a power I personally don't want. However,I realize there are many valid medical,financial,and other reasons that women should have the abortion option available.

I support a woman's right to choose within the first 20 weeks or for necessary medical concerns. Economically, it's the morally right thing to do for everyone(Freakonomics example of crime reduction, and more).
Education in the U.S. is a clusterfuck. In France, sex ed is called, the art of love making. In the U.S., we tear up broken hearts and discuss abstinence-only which is antithetical to our biology (those of us who aren't asexual).
For me, abortion would be too heartbreaking a decision to ever have to make personally. I imagine that is a sociobiological response most humans have which is why there is a debate of abortion in the first place.

We won't need abortions once birth control is perfected. In the meantime it's pretty effective.

I am definitly for a woman's right to choose. Christians will fight for a woman to carry to term, when the child is born they do not want to spend one penny to keep the child alive.

Horrible when it comes to being part of a non secular country where people judge them other based on race , religion and principles

I identify as secular pro-life, based on science and human rights. The foetus is a separate and distinct human being, from the get-go, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child specifically states in its preamble that the articles therein apply before and after birth. Similarly, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Protocol II, Article 6, Clause 4, specifically calls on signatory member states to desist from executing pregnant women and mothers of young children.

I do accept that there are times when abortion can be the lesser of two necessary evils eg rape, incest, threat to life of the mother and fatal foetal abnormality, but being a necessary evil should be kept to a necessary minimum.

On an intellectual level, I find the notion that it is okay to kill a human at one day before an arbitrary point in time, but not one day after that, to be galloping nonsense.

And finally, on the issue of the foetus' compromised humanity by dint of being dependent on another, I would point out that the whole of human history has been littered with episodes of violence explained away by denying the humanity of others. In Rwanda, the Hutus called the Tutsis 'cockroaches', in Pol Pot's Cambodia, those to be exterminated were 'deportees,' and in Nazi Germany as we all know, those to be terminated were 'untermensch.'

As somebody who believes there's almost certainly nothing after this life, I think it only reasonable that people without religious faith should strive to maximise life wherever we find it.

It will be a life when it is in the womb, we have to be greatful, we weren't aborted; I don't want to see abortion become illegal, as back street abortion are more likely to happen, and that could put the mother at risk, and if you automatically put them in jail, you might cause problems there, if abortion were illegal, and women did back street abortions.
It might be far fetched but people do desperate things when needed.

There's actually an atheist abortion debate with Matt Dillahunty and Kristine Kruszelnicki addressing this from a strictly non-religious perspective. You can check it out below if interested.

An embryo is alive (in accordance with biology's perimeters of life); it is unlike all other cells in the female body and arguing that it is merely a detachable coagulation of cells is scientifically wrong.