What is abortion?
This would depend on the perspective of the person giving the opinion.
If you are pro-abortion then abortion is a decision made by a woman about controlling her body.
If you are pro-life then every comment made by pro-abortion advocates are beyond stupid, they are immoral.
Just to be up front, I am pro-life and therefore this opinion will follow this direction.
I am pro-life for exactly the same reason that women are pro-abortion, it is their body and we should be able to expect them to control their own bodies to avoid this problem. The fact of the matter is that a woman does not get pregnant by magic, there are specific biological causes that are known and have been known for a long time. Yet the claim by women is that they can get pregnant without controlling the cause.
From a scientific perspective, having unprotected intercourse causes pregnancy and women want us to believe that this is beyond their control. That is the basic problem with being pro-abortion, relieving women of any personal responsibility for their own actions. If you know that hitting your thumb with a hammer will hurt, then the doctor will tell you not to do that - DUH!!
Before going any further, someone is going to bring up all of the various situations that require exception and those must be given consideration and exception but those are few. There is no doubt that the health of the mother is critical and that decision should be left up to the mother alone. Rape and incest are criminal situations and no one should be expected to bear the burden of this. However, "I forgot" or "it slipped" or "can you get pregnant the first time" are not valid.
If we accept the reason that a woman wants to control her own body then we must also accept the fact that the need for the abortion was the result of a failure on the part of the woman to 'control her own body'. Kind of a circular argument. Women need to have access to abortion because they are unable to control their own bodies and must deal with the resulting pregnancy to rectify the problem they created with the lack of control. Here is a simple fact: every decision has consequences, wisdom is the ability to understand those consequences before engaging in the decision. Conclusion: If women actually have the ability to control their own body then there would be no need for abortion
Based on the above, the purpose of abortion is simple: rectify the consequences of a poor decision coupled with bad planning. There is no other reason. If a woman wants a child, getting pregnant is the easy part once the decision has been made.
The real issue is why abortion is bad, not good. Abortion has always been the foundation of the lifestyle for 'women of the night', those with loose moral character. For these women, eliminating the consequences was less expensive than the alternative, although for most of history it has been illegal in the United States due mainly to the Christian basis of the legal systems. This changed with Roe versus Wade, a Supreme Court decision which was primarily about the right to privacy for women that sought to get an abortion.
As indicated, in most states, abortion was on of those issues that were not discussed in polite company so the issue was more a matter of privacy for the woman regarding her health issues (of which pregnancy was one). In most states, abortion was limited by the states and, most important, the Supreme Court determined that the state had an interest in an unborn child. That interest was two fold: first, the health of the mother, and, second, protecting the unborn child, recognizing that as the pregnancy progressed there was a greater likelihood of a viable birth. The Supreme Court originally established the third trimester as the time frame for the state to have the greatest interest in the decision, in other words, by this point, the state may stop the abortion process.
In another case, 19 years later, the Supreme Court removed the third trimester limitation and instead replaced it with a test of fetal viability (which meant the fetus could survive outside of the womb without or without aid). We have now reached the point where a fetus can be murdered during the delivery. I wonder how we sunk this far without cause?
The point to be made here is similar to the original comments. Let's assume that a woman makes the decision, through drunken misgivings, to engage in unprotected sexual intercourse. This moment of intercourse starts a clock where there will be one of two outcomes. The first, and probably the most desirable, is that the sperm do not encounter an egg and die before conception can occur, let's all breathe a sigh of relief and go out and get a drink to celebrate. Oh, wait, here we go again.
The second outcome is that the intercourse resulted in conception. For those unfamiliar with the concept, conception is that moment in time where "two become one". Conception is the result of the sperm penetrating and fertilizing the egg. This is the real magic, at the moment of conception the half strand of DNA from the sperm combine with the half strand of DNA of the egg to form a new complete strand of DNA. Most people fail to grasp the significance of what has just happened. That new strand of DNA is unique, absolutely one of a kind, no other on Earth to match it, without equal. How is this possible that two people with no intention of creating wonder have stumbled on the greatest trick in the ability of mankind?
DNA is this complex set of instructions for the building of the human body. A DNA chain is made up of 220 million base pairs which would imply that about half of those base pairs come from the sperm and the other half come from the egg. Now consider, every physical characteristic of the human body is etched in those 220 million base pairs from the sex of the fetus to the color of the eyes and the hair. But it is so much more than that, will this fetus result in a mind equal to Albert Einstein or Steven Hawking or Marie Curie, will this fetus result in the perfect swimmers body or a runner without equal or a gymnast without parallel? Will this fetus be tall with broad shoulders or slim and graceful, will the fetus be short and delicate or pudgy?
At this moment in time, research is attempting to identify the impact of all those base pairs but it has not happened yet so, for thousands of years it has been a waiting game for the moment of birth. Of course, with technology comes the ability to see the hidden and there is the ability to see the sex of the fetus and if there are physical deformities.
But, back to the magic of the moment of conception - the result of this unfortunate social interaction is a fetus, a fetus that is unlike any human from before or the future. The magic of the DNA selection process is a fetus that has a set of characteristics that are unique when compared to everyone else in the world. This simple fact is one of the reasons that the casual act of sexual intercourse should not be taken lightly, there are consequences to every decision and one of those could be the next Bach or Shakespeare or da Vinci. It is like the throw of the dice, you never know the results until the dice stop moving.
As indicated earlier, the moment of conception starts a clock and, if uninterrupted, will result in a baby in about 9 months. The best part is that biology has shown us that there are stages in the development of the fetus so they can predict the level of growth day by day, week by week, month by month, this is not a random or uncontrolled process.
So, from the perspective of a the fetus, if you cannot control your bodily urges and end up pregnant, do you have the right to destroy the next human treasure? While there are ways to terminate a pregnancy using a 'morning after pill', the part that everyone forgets is that the die has been cast, the mold has been made, the image been formed and now all that needs to happen is the filling in the details, the DNA exists at the moment of conception.
So often the discussion of pro-abortion advocates is the right of the state to control when an abortion is permitted, is it 20 weeks, 20 days 20 minutes? The point of the previous discussion is very simple, it does not matter, it is the murder of a new life after the moment of conception.
It appears that this is where the line is drawn, women want the right to control their own bodies and then they want the right to commit murder when they are unable to control their own bodies. This is the ultimate liberal approach - the complete and utter dismissal of personal responsibility.
Lastly, I recognize that this position is a matter of personal preference but every time I think about a woman murdering a pre-birth child I am reminded of how precious life is. It is heart wrenching to wander through the cancer ward of any major hospital and see the desperation these patients show knowing that they have only a small chance to survive their illness. Ask any one of them if they would prefer to be reborn without cancer and your only consideration is that you don't want personal responsibility for your mistakes.