Annachie wrote:Biochem, you completely ignore the group that says abortion is wrong but it is the womans choice, not yours or mine.
The issue that many people overlook regarding abortion is what happens to the baby?
The mother seeks abortion because she does not want said baby. It may be due to lifestyle, finances (babies are expensive!) or culture (get rid of the baby before the mother's parent realize their daughter hasn't been a good girl and take drastic action to punish her in order to restore the so-called Family Honor).
So, we need to look at the why of abortion. What are the reasons behind a mother not wanting a child? What circumstances does she live in? Would a pregnancy out of wedlock result in her having her throat slit?
(By the way, that last one is unfortunately known to happen, families from highly religious countries follow the creeds of Family Honor and do things that are seen as regaining honor by their own culture, but as barbaric by many others. In several cultures, becoming pregnant without being married is grounds to be forced to commit suicide by being locked into a room with a knife. The girl either starves to death or uses the knife to end her own life. Either way, the family claims that the girl was depressed and commited suicide.)
So, a wider support base will be needed, including safe houses for teenage mothers whose family are out to kill them due to cultural issues.
As for those who don't think that they can afford to raise a baby, you need somewhere for the baby to go. Adoption would be a good move, but you need to check to see if the adopting family are going to be a good family. Childrens homes are an obvious choice, but unless they are run by incredibly skilled people, they tend to slide somewhat towards "Lord of the Flies"-type structure with the children literally fighting to be top dog so that they can order the others around.
Plus, as Rotherham proved, childrens homes can easily become places for pedophiles to find their next victims.
Even after all that has been sorted, what about things like Ectopic Pregnancies where the child is growing inside the Fallopian Tube? Although extremely rare, such things are quite lethal since the Fallopian Tube does not expand the way the womb does and will therefore break, causing the mother to die of serious internal trauma. The only way to avoid losing both mother and child in cases like that is to abort the child.
Abortion is a very complex issue. Simple statements like "Woman's Right" or "Abortion Is Murder" do not reflect even a small portion of the complexities that help to create the entire situation.
Of course, cultural considerations in multicultural societies really don't help matters, especially since many of the smaller cultures absolutely detest any culture other than their own.
I swear that some of them can be as bad as Internet Activists...
Edit - And then there are the fringe groups...