If we thought of a fetus as a baby....Re: abortion

[Dennis Perrin]

> If one _really_ thought of a fetus as a baby, though, one would
> logically have to consider aborting a fetus to be the same as killing
> a baby and argue that abortion should be criminalized and that
> abortion providers and women who have abortions are murderers who
> ought to be tried and sentenced to prisons.

Well, it is killing a developing human, which, without an abortion, would
become (minus complications of course) a human baby. The heart starts
beating before 12 weeks, which the standard cut-off for legal termination,
and the limbs are formed as well.

I'm against criminalizing abortion simply because it won't work. You can't
(or shouldn't) force women to carry a pregnancy to term against their will.
Sex education, contraception, adoption -- these are the methods that will
reduce (and apparently have reduced) abortion rates.

But this notion, coming mostly from the men, I notice, that abortion is this
ho-hum procedure (like having a hangnail removed)is seriously misguided.
Most of the women I know who've had one are emotionally conflicted about it,
and in certain cases there is extreme regret and guilt.

DP