Did you see the article about babies photographed in the womb from 12 weeks?

[lisalisa]

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is a cow with a face and beating heart and fully functioning organs and probably more sentient than a 6wk old foetus any less deserving of rights? And yet we do condone meat-eating. Functioning hearts and faces don't guarantee you rights I'm afraid.

Florenceuk, Sarah Hrdy's work seems to major on primates rather than human studies, and yes the clear majority of people do attribute higher value to human life than that of other species.

I've seen the references, but still can't find anything supporting a mother's right to kill her newborn baby. In the examples given, there were explanations of why it happens, but nothing to suggest that it was not still "illegal".

"Similarly, murder is generally taboo in most societies because the alternative (everyone having armed guards) is pretty costly and inefficient." Err, would have to beg to differ. Murder is taboo because human lives are seen to have value, and should not be terminated by force on another individual's whim. The cost of armed guards does not come into it, but presumably societies which condoned murder would be in danger of dying out.

Well, it's true that if too many murders take place then a society can't survive - in fact a good sign that a society is running out of resources is generally when it starts resorting to cannibalism (because they're short of protein). However at various times, we do condone killing other groups of people eg in times of war, for sacrifice. And we also make decisions about eg when to turn off the respirator. What we don't do is allow everyone to kill whoever they like indiscriminately.

Anyway, I do recommend Hrdy's book which covers both humans and other primates (LM, you do realise we are primates!). For example, she states that women are unique among primates that, like us, produce only one baby at a time, in that they actually kill their own babies. "When women cause someone else's death (through sins of omission as well as commission), that person is most likely to be her own newborn baby...Infanticide is hardly unique to humans, and it is widely documented among primates, both human and nonhuman. But in other primates [which produce only one baby], the killer is almost always an unrelated individual, never the mother." p. 179

"Almost all infanticide in traditional societies occurs right after birth, and is conceptually identical to late-stage abortion. Neonaticide is favoured over abortion becuase infanticide is safer for the mother. The situation is reversed for societies with Western medicine. Abortion - especially in the early stages of pregnancy - is safer for the mother than giving birth is." p 470

And this statistic from Papua New Guinea - for the Eipo, infanticide accounted for 430 out of a thousand infant deaths. However the death rate of the survivours - 50 per thousand - was far lower than in other developing nations. And this was a maternal decision, not forced on the mother by males in the society, as the anecdote about a mother who intended to leave her 3rd child (a girl) to die but decided to keep her (p. 455).

The point at which we decide a child has a right to life is arbitrary - conception, 24wks or birth or even later. Conception has no more necessary moral validity than birth. It is up to society to decide where that point is, and that will depend on lots of different factors, including, perhaps, the success of modern medicine in giving premature babies a good chance of a happy life, but also the costs associated with childbirth itself.

Finally, my point re eating cows is that we do decide that cows have less right to life than humans - but there's no obvious moral reason for that. We make these distinctions between species, but we also make them between different groups of humans. For some groups (humans and animals), we put a lower value of life. Unpleasant but true.

Donnie, maybe we'll disagree but please do feel free to explain how anyone (including those who believe in a woman's right to abortion) can be anything but 'pro life?'

A human baby is completely different from that of an animal. To compare the two is absolutely ludicrous!

I do not think that in this day and age we will see an return to the backstreet abortionists. Today it is more acceptable for single mums and teenage mums than it was in the 50's and 60's. All that would happen if the abortion limit was lowered, is that we would see more babies put up for adoption. Giving more childless couples the joy of having a child of their own. Whereas now there is a 2/3 year waiting list to adopt a baby as there simply aren't any babies left to adopt, they are all being aborted.

And IMO there are many, many more women being pressurised into having an abortion than there are into having the baby. That simply doesn't happen any more. A teenage girl can get an abortion without her parents knowing. It is that simple. And yet these are the very women who grow up bitterly regretting that decision and the lack of support whilst they went through with it. I'll bet that the women who keep their babies are a damn sight happier than those who have abortions and spend a lifetime trying to get over it, forever grieving for that baby they have lost. There is support for mums who have had miscarriages, but what support is there for women who have had abortions?

And for those who condemn the pro-lifers, it is the pro-lifers such as Life who pick up the pieces, who provide counselling for women who have had abortions.

Yes women should have rights, but very often the pro-choicers are just as guilty of neglecting these individual women in order to assert that right. I am very sure that a woman does not have an abortion lightly, but we are so concerned about making it as easy as possible, that we forget to ask them how they feel, what they want, as illustrated recently by the teenager whose teacher helped her to have an abortion, only for the teenager to change her mind when it was too late. How will she feel now? Who will counsel her - I'll tell you who, the pro-lifers that's who. The charities funded by them who do their best to console women in that situation. The women the pro-choicers label as success stories because they've made their choice and had their abortion thank you very much, another statistic to tell the government, to persuade society that abortion is needed and wanted.

I am pro-life but I would never cast my judgement on anyone. I personally think there should be a campaign for more effective counselling before and after an abortion. A woman should be asked again and again if this is what she wants. And if the pro-choicers find this patronising, then so what? Better to naff off 5 women and save one from a lifetime of regret than please 5 women and leave one in pieces.

The 'counselling' offered by anti-abortion pressure groups is hardly likely to be objective, is it? And therefore isn't actually counselling. It's promoting their views. And feeding the notion that all women are destroyed by having abortions. Nonsense. Some people may bitterly regret having abortions and that is very sad. But other people are very relieved. We just don't hear about them. Nor do we hear about the people who had babies they didn't want; it isn't socially acceptable to regret becoming a mother. One reason women have late abortions is because they are obstructed by pro-life doctors or by the failure of the NHS to provide proper healthcare for women seeking abortion. In many parts of the country most abortions are provided by organsations that charge. The NHS can get away with it because these patients are in no position to protest, or shout about the lack of decent healthcare.
Adoption is not a simple alternative to abortion. It involves women having to endure an unwanted pregnancy, go through labour, and give up a real, living and breathing baby. Why should women be forced by social disapproval to continue with pregnancies they don't want?
And actually there aren't hordes of potential adoptive parents waiting for disabled babies with major health problems (the most usual reason for a late abortion).
Isn't there something distasteful, even exploitative, about the idea of putting pressure on women who have unwanted pregnancies to supply babies to order for childless couples? There was a great supply of unwanted babies in the 40s, 50s and 60s when having sex outside marriage carried huge social stima for women (not men, surprise, surprise) and unmarried women were often not allowed to access effective contraception. Women were punished for getting pregnant by having their babies taken from them; they weren't allowed to know if their babies were even still alive, much less whether they were happy.
Some adoptions were happy (my mother, for instance) but often it was the cause of great unhappiness for mothers and for their children (read the history of Barnardo's and the way children there were treated. Or the accounts of the child migrants forcibly sent to other parts of the Empire often to be horribly abused).
The history of adoption is not a happy one and I don't think it should be promoted as an effective alternative to abortion. Although of course in some instances adoption can be a good thing, it isn't an alternative.

Rhubarb, on what basis do you set yourself apart from a cow? Is it cognitive function? Attachment to your children? Because I would guess it is actually quite difficult to do so without also excluding some humans as well, unless we just impose a blanket distinction without any logic. I know we do consider ourselves different, and there is probably something important wired in our brain which does this, but it also has the rather nasty effect of causing us to discriminate against people that look different or act differently. Having been on the receiving end of this, I would guess it's quite an instinctive thing. However foetuses also fall into that not-quite-human, might-be-human category - explaining why, for example, filmmakers often model aliens with foetal-like features because instinctively we find this disturbing.

More reflections on this: I think it is important to distinguish between the fact that we bond with our children and that we can love and cherish children with disabilities, against the decision taken to abort, because our attachment to the foetus (as opposed to the baby) is necessarily more limited. I'm not denying we can be attached to our babies-to-be, but the parent-baby bond is something more complicated that is molded by time and hormones - that's demonstrated by the fact that human mothers can and have committed infanticide, and also, conversely, that we can adopt other people's children and love and cherish them.

I think it important that people who are asked if they want to terminate on the basis of potential disability be given full information on what this implies and how their child might still have a fulfilling life and how they can form just as strong and rewarding a relationship with that child - and I think the SN boards here give us an insight into that. But it's still a decision for the mother, not for someone who is not going to be involved in giving birth and bringing the (potential) child up. And I don't think calling the mother who aborts that foetus a murderer helps particularly.

"and that we can love and cherish children with disabilities," can I just object to this please. It's some weird idea that parents of normal children often hold- that somehow we are saints for loving our children. However weird and strange (ugly?) they may appear to some people outside the family - it is no harder to love a child with a disability than it is to love any "normal" child. Often its a lot easier. Parental love is tied up with protection, and children with diabilities need a lot more protection than most.

Sorry couldn't let that sentence go.

Sorry JimJams, I didn't mean to say you were a saint, I meant that it was normal to love a child with special needs - that people shouldn't expect that they won't have a loving relationship with a child with special needs, just as, for example, I also said somebody who adopted a child expected to form a loving relationship with them. Hey, I love and cherish my kid too! Sorry if this wasn't clear from my post.

The charity Life does offer very good counselling after abortion, I take it eddm that you haven't been for such counselling, that you are lucky enough not to have needed it? I know people who have taken counselling and the feedback has been very positive. The point I was trying to make it that pro-abortion groups don't make much notice of the woman once the abortion is done. More counselling is needed and if you think that pro-life groups will be biased, then rally for some more of the pro-life groups to offer it!
And I do have personal experience of adoption too, my 2 brothers were adopted, as well as my niece and nephew and 2 of my friends. Sure, there are people for whom it doesn't work, but in the majority of cases, it works very well. I wouldn't be without my family for the world, and as far as they are all concerned, we are all family no matter where our blood comes from. We've been brought up by the same parents and that's all that counts. These days though, adoption is hardly mentioned, it seems taboo almost! And ok, it's not good for the mother having to give her child up, but neither is it good for the mother who is undecided about abortion and yet gets one done anyway because of pressure. At least with adoption you get plenty of time to change your mind, and loads of counselling both before and afterwards.

And what makes me different from a cow? Well my dh would ask the same thing! But as I'm a Christian I would have to say the usual spiritual thing, i.e. a soul. But even if you are an atheist, you have to concede that we are in fact hugely different from our animal relations, just ask David Attenborough.

There was a follow up article in the Sunday Times this weekend which debated many of the issues discussed here, especially the legal allowable timing of abortions here