1. Illegal except to save the mother's life or in the case of rape.
2. Legal under all circumstances except when the foetus is viable outside the mother's womb.
In case 2, if a woman wants an abortion at seven++ months, you induce or do a C section and have the state care for the baby...adoption...etc.
If case 1, it then follows that there would be no death penalty and no waging war. That is, option 1 is only acceptable if there is a blanket social commitment to the "sanctity of life."
I personally favor #2 not because it's philosophically pristine, but because it is better than all other alternatives.
Case #2 would include sex-selection-based abortions by definition. To change that situation you do not change the legality of the abortion, but cultural views about the status of men/women. If parents are mad keen on having gender-balanced families, well, that's that.
Joanna
----- Original Message ----- On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/philosophical/future.shtml
>
Yeah, standard pro-life arguments I get. Love 'em or hate 'em, they have an indisputable moral consistency. It's arbitrary distinctions like Chapman's that escape me.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk