cat, thanks for the apology.
"The situations of women locked up for suffering still births and miscarriages however is anything but hypothectical"
I didn't say it was - I said it was extreme and I will repeat - I do not think that miscarriage and still birth should be considered as murder. I can understand why it is investigated in situations where there was an intention to cause harm and in the cases that were linked to in the early pages of this discussion I believe it was because the baby was past the age of viability.
"Secondly, abortion is not rocket science. It means the termination of a pregnancy. It means putting an end to the growth of the embyro o foetus and not allowing it the chance to be born and have an autonomous existence. It is something that I think most women are capable of understanding without extra lessons provided."
Based on some of the posts on abortion debate threads I am actually not so sure. Many people refer to 'bundles of cells' or 'blobs' when the foetus is long past that stage of development. I think some people would not feel as comfortable with their decision to abort if they were looking at a scan of a 12 or 15 weeks old foetus - it doesn't just look like a 'bunch of cells' then! How can they be making an informed decision if they are not aware of that and if they are not comfortable with knowing that then maybe they should be reconsidering. Even some pro-choicers have a cut off point where they feel uncomfortable with the idea of abortion.
My 'murder in self defence' analogy was not to try to convince you of equality of life - we obviously disagree on that one. It was to try to explain how someone who is prochoice can accept/understand abortions in the situation where the mother's life is in danger. Many of us would accept murder in the case of self defence but that doesn't mean that we condone murder in any situation. Nor does it mean that because we accept murder in the case of self defence that we HAVE to/SHOULD accept murder for any reason.
"Because if you believe that life begins at conception and so are against terminating the evolution of any life, you can't accept this because in a typical IVF many eggs are fertilised and not all are implanted into the womb. "
I'm not sure how that proves that IVF is impossible. I think it just raises a similar ethical dilemma about the destruction of the fertilised embryos.
chandellina -
"i think women are ill-served by an automatic assumption that they must have thought through their decision and knows it's right."
I agree. I don't think we can assume anything. In fact, I think it is unethical to allow a woman to go ahead with the procedure without knowing if she has made an informed decision. People who are fully informed may argue that it is patronising etc but I can think of several situation where I am asked lots of questions that are irrelevant to me but that are relevant to others and they need to be asked to catch the people it may apply to - even if there are only a few.