Should abortion be illegal?

tango said:

That unless is the start of the slippery slope, which is part of the problem.

I think only the most hardcore opponents of abortion would demand that a woman continue a pregnancy even when medical advice says that it will kill her. In a situation like that you'd really struggle to justify telling her she has to have the baby.

A good friend of mine had an abortion under circumstances much like that. She was about 7 months pregnant and learned that the baby was badly malformed, had a near-zero chance of surviving more than a few days after birth and was unlikely to even make it that long because continuing the pregnancy would put the mother's life in serious danger. She and her husband desperately wanted that baby but concluded that the only sensible option was to abort it. It's easy to regard abortion as a black and white issue if you haven't been through something like that. (Thankfully my friends now have two healthy children - that issue was a one-off)

The problem comes when trying to determine at what point "harm to the mother" or "harm to the baby" becomes an acceptable reason to terminate a pregnancy. In a case where the mother's life is literally on the line if she continues the pregnancy it's pretty straightforward. But what about where mental health is concerned? Who makes the call whether a mother will be harmed? If abortion were outlawed entirely my friend would have had the choice between gambling with her life or going to an illegal backstreet abortion clinic. But as soon as you allow abortion to protect the mother from harm you open the doors to a pregnant woman finding a sympathetic doctor who is willing to state that having a baby would be detrimental to her mental health and you're right back to where we are now.

Other complications exist in cases like rape. I think you'd have to be pretty unsympathetic to a rape victim to tell her that she wasn't allowed to abort the child, that she had to carry it to term and give it up for adoption if she didn't want to keep it. But if you allow a rape victim to terminate her pregnancy you just create a perverse incentive for women to claim they were raped as a means to qualify for an abortion.

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MoreCoffee said:

I've been asking that for a while, thanks for asking too. If a law makes it illegal then what happens to those who break the law and if it is murder what ought to happen to them, both the doctor and the mother whenever the mother procures the abortion willingly and freely herself. It's one thing to say "it ought to be illegal" and "it is murder" and it is an altogether different thing to say "what penalty should be applied for breaking the law, if it is murder to break it?"

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tango said:

Yes there are, but now you're telling a rape victim that not only did she suffer the assault but she also has to deal with a pregnancy and all that is involved, for the sake of the child of the man who raped her.

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tango said:

The thing is it's very easy to say things like this from a position of never having to go through it yourself.

Just like my friend who aborted the baby she so desperately wanted because the option was that if she survived to actually give birth the chances were the baby would survive a few days at most. It's easy to say that abortion is murder with no ifs and no buts but if you really want to go there you have to call my friend a baby killer. She desperately wanted that baby and was heartbroken to have to terminate it. But her option was to literally risk her own life. She didn't want an abortion, and as soon as her doctor said it was safe she and her husband were trying for another baby (they now have two healthy children).

Likewise it's easy to sit and lay down your demands to a rape victim when you don't have to go through them all. What happens if there are complications? What level of medical intervention would you expect her to tolerate to maintain her unwanted pregnancy, and who would you expect to pay for that medical intervention? What if she decided not to accept treatment that might prove necessary to carry the child to term?

I can't help thinking that in many ways unless we are willing to come alongside a woman seeking an abortion and stay with her through the process we would prefer her to take, providing practical and financial support as required, and maybe even adopting the baby ourselves, insisting that she doesn't have an abortion because we say it's wrong rings very hollow. Of course it takes a lot more of ourselves to offer whatever practical and financial help is needed, rather than taking a stance that comes across as little more than "God, I thank you I am not like this person here".

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