Sorry to revive this thread but I missed it! And it was all boys, wasn't it? So I wanted to waste some time and breath if that's ok...
Before I ramble I just want to say that if it was me in the situation, it wouldn't be an issue unless there was a serious medical problem for the foetus. But then I'm lucky enough to live in an extremely cushy country with a relatively stable life, with the freedom to use some of the best contraception invented without paying for it too. Despite this, I don't particularly think abortion is uniformly evil - at least, it's no more evil than a lot of other things we regularly take for granted.
A little anarchic here but the shock tactics comparing aborting to killing a child are less worrisome to me. I see it as very similar to killing and eating animals (infant or otherwise) for food or drug testing, even though we've evolved to deal with that comfortably biologically and socially. I appreciate that people who say things like this tend to be labelled as maniacs but a life is a life to me. So there's some precedent for this convenient ignoring of niceties for the good of the existing humans, which has ended up desensitising me to what is effectively ending a human life in the long term.
All the people posting that it should be performed 2-4 weeks after conception - most women won't know they're even pregnant at that stage! You can't even detect a pregnancy reliably with a home test kit until 3-4 weeks after the act in a lot of cases, and even then if it's a real accident most won't know to check until they've missed a period. And even then on hormonal contraception they won't be having actual periods to miss until they experience other symptoms. Textbooks may say that periods are every month but for a large percentage of women they are not like clockwork. The only people who would be having abortions at 2-4 weeks (which would likely be chemical processes rather than the harrowing sweep described on page one) would be people who were regularly using abortion instead of actual contraception - hideous behaviour. I think the compromise of setting it as the time where the foetus could be saved if born prematurely is more reasonable.
I think it's a nice image people have of all those unwanted children being born and sent to orphanages, but actually adopting unwanted children seems to be falling out of fashion rapidly. Controversial thing to say here (sorry) but I personally think that the current trend of expecting fertility aid and complex surgical interventions to enable couples who would normally be unable to reproduce to do so is one of the factors that will, if anything, lead to more of a decline in adoptions. Very few people seem to actually have "adopt an unwanted child" in their life plan. Of all the men commenting on anti-abortion; you may agree that you'd be happy to adopt but how many actually plan to try to do so, even if you can have your own children? It's a harsh process. It's certainly not in my ideal plan as a flawed, selfish human, though it would be my first choice if I ended up wanting children in future and found I couldn't have them naturally.
Finally on a slight tangent to address the "three's a crowd" comment, you'd be surprised how well large families can work. I certainly was when I first experienced them through friends (I only have one sibling myself; typical working class UK family configuration). The parents may not be able to lavish as much individual attention on each child daily but on the flip side, you have loads of siblings to socialise with as well, so you don't end up neglected. I think chaos turned out well anyway
I didn't actually vote in the poll as even after all these words I'm not wholly in one camp or another. I suppose I support choice, but in an ideal world it would be lovely if it didn't have to be an issue in the first place.
R
