[Angus]

Originally Posted by Grimnir

Abortion laws vary greatly throughout the world.
One extreme is places such as the Vatican where it is basically no no never never kind of laws
UK and US have the opposite extreme. Can basically terminate a baby for any reason and at any point.

My opinion is abortion should be legal if the baby has not developed yet and it is first few weeks or so.
Once baby has developed at a certain point then abortion should be illegal apart from under special circumstances.
Those special circumstances should be only health risk and complications.

If doctor thinks that mother's health is at risk then he should determine whether the baby will survive without the mother. If baby would die then the doctor should abort the baby to save the life of the mother.
If pregnancy is at the stage where the baby could survive outside the womb, doctor should advise the mother of this and she makes the decision.
Save the life of her baby or abort the baby to save her own life.
Each woman would choose differently under these circumstances.
Some women would terminate, some would save their baby.
Health risk to mother is the only exception in my opinion.
Anything to do with economic reasons or baby disability is murder and no different than killing baby after birth.

I agree that once a baby is viable after around 24 weeks, abortion should only be undertaken if there is severe health risk for the mother. Disabilities etc would usually have been picked up by scans and examinations earlier in the pregnancy so there is no excuse to wait till the later stages. As regards economic reasons, well in this country at any rate some stupid women see having babies as a career move since ensures they don't have to go out to work, and it can be quite lucrative for benefits, and those women who don't want children for career reasons are usually intelligent enough to take precautions. I doubt most women would abort a baby for economic reasons.

As I said earlier, abortion should never be cynically used as a means of birth control. There are plenty of preventative methods available so there is really no need to get pregnant if you don't want to. But what of rape victims, or victims of incest; what of women who are in abusive relationships; what of women who have alcohol, drug or mental health issues etc etc, there is really no hard and fast rule that covers ever eventuality. Any woman considering abortion should always be offered counselling, but they should ultimately be the ones who make the decision, within the parameters of the law.