"So, in other words, she's arguing for the right for a pregnant woman to be absolved of any moral responsibility for the life she's carrying in her womb?"

So, M, you're suggesting that a woman who happens to have a ball of cells growing inside her should be condemned, or, more appropriately, society should insist she feels unbelievably shit, to the end of her days, for wanting to and having it removed?

Would you say the same for the heavy smoker who develops a cancerous tumour in their throat or lungs, say? Because surely the logic is the same - neither
did absolutely everything they could do avoid finding themselves with an unwanted ball of cells inside them. No?

As for your argument about life termination, I find that preposterous in the extreme. At what point is that balls of cells life? It could not exist outside of the womb until a given point, so how can you possibly describe it as independent life, with its own rights separate to that of the woman carrying it?

As for keeping it taboo - oh please. The recent outcry about the advertising of post-conception advisory services has only served to show that the arguments put forward by the pro-life lobby don't mind abortion in certain circumstances, but they don't want women, especially young women, to discuss the issue freely, or for society to have the issue out in the open, lest we all turn into disgusting little harpies. What nonsense.

I'm really perplexed as to why I'm being bunched in with the "pro-life lobby" when I explicitly said that I support the right to abortion?

This issue isn't as polarised as some people wish to portray it. Perhaps it would be convenient if there were only two possible stances, but in reality there's a multitude. My main objection is to radicals on *either* side who seem, as Laurie as done, to suggest that it's preposterous to hold anything other than the extreme, polarised view they happen to subscribe to.

To clarify my stance: I'm not attacking the legal right to terminate a foetus. I'm attacking the argument that women who choose to do this should be given carte blanche to feel as guilt-free as they wish, and to do it as frequently as they see fit. I personally think that's sending the wrong message to young women, and will only increase the abortion rate (which everyone should agree is a bad thing, given - as many have pointed out above - that it's a painful procedure for the woman).

My other objection would be this phrase "ball of cells". Let's be accurate: a 20-week old foetus with a heart, lungs, brain, nervous system and clearly formed limbs and digits is in no way a "ball of cells". Cavalorn's equivocation to a tattoo is utterly beyond belief. These foeti are very close to be complete human beings, and people such as myself who feel sorry for them should absolutely not be vilified for our empathy.

PS Laurie: you're correct about my reason for finding your pic distasteful. I simply don't see that abortion is something to smile about - under any circumstances.

So are you!

Abortion is the killing of a developing child. No one has the right to do what they like to their body. You have to wear a seat belt, you cannot take non prescribed drugs, nor euthenase yourelf so why should a women be allowed to kill a developing child?

Thank you for this article. I have had 1 child and several abortions. I am completely happy that I made the correct decision each time. I would like to point out however that abortion is not always painful, and those who believe that those balls of cells are life are not only doing a grave disservice to people having abortions but also to the many women who have had miscarriages during the same trimesters.

I don't think 'tragedy' is a helpful way to describe abortion. Most women reach their decision to have an abortion after many many days and often weeks of soul searching. Even the need to see '2 doctors' can aid the process of making that decision so that every woman can be sure that she is making the right decision for herself and her own circumstances. Perhaps 'regrettable' is a word that could applied to becoming pregnant in the first place but any woman undergoing abortion, whether it is once or twice or more times, should never be made to feel ashamed or guilty.

Why do these debates always become so black/white, pro-/anti?

I would agree that two doctors' signatures for a very early-stage abortion could be more upsetting than the procedure itself, but eve-of-third-tremester abortion seems like something that in no way should be entered into lightly - a bit of counselling would be a good thing.

So, cannot different conditions apply for different stages of pregnancy?

Scientifically and medically an abortion is a very different thing at 10 weeks and at 24 weeks - so why not legally too?

To say abortion is an emotive issue is like calling the Titanic a boating accident.
As I understand it, before we get into time limts, it should always be a womans right to choose. Hopefully the father is involved, but it is unrealistic to expect this nowadays. And no man can carry a foetus to term, therefore our job is one of support, if wanted.
Dear Des Demona, every human being has an opinion, thats what makes us human.
No "Bleating" about rights, just a statement of fact. Why do you insist that one half of humanity has no right to play any part in reproduction, other than that which you dictate? Surely this would be as awful as mysogyny?

Thank you for this article. We need to remind people that among us are many millions of women, young and old, who have had 1, 2, 3, or more abortions, and who are loving, caring mothers, friends, and citizens. There are more than you imagine! That 90-year-old good Catholic woman probably used birth control, or tried to abort, after her 4th or 5th child. Those who truly hate abortions could work to assure that birth control is 100% effective, 100% safe, 100% free, and 100% easily available.

In an ideal world, abortions would not happen, and we make sense of it from there.

Modern life, sorry, is to blame. Take the Virgin Mary?!?

It is amazing the amount of father lines that should not be followed at all.

I am a man and I have absolutely NO reproductive rights. What about my right to choose? It doesn't exist. As soon as a woman gets pregnatn the entire decision to become a parent, not just for her but for the man as well, is up to her. That is not fair. men need to be given an opt out plan too. Roe v. Wade clearly states that it is too much of an imposotion for the stat to decide whether or not an individual becomes a parent- only for women. As I write this there are upwards of 100,000 men in jail for not being able to pay child support. A financial burden that they are not allowed to negociate and is often times unreasonable.
Where was their right to choose when they needed it?

Fully agree with the general premise of the article if somewhat ill-presented. The 'removing an unwanted clutch of cells' in Laurie's comment is thoughtless and inaccurate of some abortions. Also, for information, so called 'addicts' (I presume Heroin and Crack) are routinely refused treatment of all kinds (not just treatment for their dependency) across the UK, though England is considerably better than elsewhere.

Des - Abortion is a feminist issue as long as there are patriarchal arguments being put forward like this:
"If a woman gets pregnant because she has willingly had sex, then she should live with the consequences. Now if she has been raped, abused, or her health is at risk of course she should have the option to have an abortion."
I do empathise with anti-choicers in that, if you consider life to start at conception, then abortion is killing a living organism. Deciding what life is, when it starts and at what point you can consider a bunch of cells to be a human is something nobody really knows and goes beyond gender issues.

But, when people are basing their stance on whether the mother is a whore or a martyr, then it's definitely feminist territory. Once you've said "ok, the pure of heart and vagina may kill their babies if they really want to", you can hardly pass yourself off as a champion of the unborn, and you're just left getting angry at harlots.

I think the reasoning here is overly facile. More distinctions need to be drawn than are. Firstly, you draw a false dichotomy: one could regard every abortion as a tragedy without requiring legal restrictions on abortion. By analogy, every instance in which one friend betrays another might be thought a tragedy, but few would demand that the law get involved in such matters. Secondly, one could regard every abortion as a tragedy even if one believes that every abortion is such that it produces the outcome that one ought to bring about in the relevant situation. By analogy, consider a case in which the only means by which one could save a billion people from horrific death would be to kill a small child: the killing of the child should be thought tragic, even if the enormous benefits involved are such that killing the child is what ought to be done.

Finally, there is a simple failure to engage with the ethical issues surroudning this issue. Traditionally, the abortion ethics debate focuses upon two issues: 1.) the moral status of the foetus; and 2.) the moral rights of a woman with respect to her own body. J.J. Thomson famously argued (and rightly, in my opinion) that the strenght of 2.) can support the permissibility of abortion even if 1.) is regarded as equivalent to that of an adult human being. But note that if 1.) is regarded as equivalent to that of an adult human being, then it seems sensible to say that abortion is a tragedy, since it seems sensible to suppose that the death of an adult person is almost always a tragedy. Thus, in order to support the view that abortion the view put forward here, you need to establish that the moral standing of the foetus is nill - equivalent to that of an appendix. But no such argument is provided in this article, and liberals are generally loathe to approach this issue, resting their stance with respect to the permissiblity of abortion on Thomson's reasoning.

I'm afraid the comparison with addicts is not really a good one. Plenty of doctors in the NHS refuse to treat addicts and many of those who do look sternly down their noses at their patients. There is also strong compulsion (if you consider the threat of withdrawal of treatment for an addict compulsion, I do) to follow whatever treatment modality is trendy at the present time. Addicts are all treated as if they are going to steal, lie and cheat. Sure, many of them do but the assumption of guilt is always there before an addict can prove they are innocent of such behaviour.

Interesting article but very light on solutions. What's the viable alternative to viewing "every abortion as a tragedy"? Are you suggesting that as a society we should treat going to the abortion clinic like popping in to the dentists? One the one hand you criticise the right-wing media for fearmongering in that vein; and yet on the other you seem to be very clearly leading us down that path...

"The legal status of abortion in Britain is so encrusted with misogynist moral debris" < Nope, people just don't like the thought of killing foetuses. That's all.

"Only women with unwanted pregnancies are obliged to justify their health-care decisions before receiving treatment."
I think we need to add that trans people also face this and that it's not coincidental that women controlling their reproductive capacity and people aligning their gender identities are both baulked at by the male-stream medical profession and forced to justify their "rights" in these areas.

The comments here have demonstrated so many of the ways in which men seek to invaldate and ignore women's views - even down to dismissing the writer on the basis of her picture and her education (as if being educated were a bad thing?).

"So, in other words, she's arguing for the right for a pregnant woman to be absolved of any moral responsibility for the life she's carrying in her womb?"

A woman who has conceived has a duty to consider her responsibility for the foetus and for herself. This isn't moral, it's practical. "Am I in a position to bear and raise a child?" is more important than "should I feel guilty about having conceived?".

"more & more young women to end up having abortions"
Define young women? The highest rates of abortion (in 2008) were for women aged 19-30, 80% of all abortions take place on or before week 13.

@steerpikelet I just think it's in poor taste to suggest that abortions are 100% A-OK and no woman should ever have the slightest tinge of guilt about having one.

You say "abortion is not killing fetuses" - but UK law allows abortions up until the 24th week of pregnancy. Talk to a doctor and she will tell you quite unequivocally that the procedure involves killing the foetus.

Alex -
''Des - Abortion is a feminist issue as long as there are patriarchal arguments being put forward like this:

"If a woman gets pregnant because she has willingly had sex, then she should live with the consequences. Now if she has been raped, abused, or her health is at risk of course she should have the option to have an abortion."

That's why I said ''personally'' because the above argument is one I don't subscribe to.

However, out of interest, if that argument had been advanced by a woman would it still be patriarchal?

M: You are not being 'vilified for your empathy'. You are entitled to your own feelings about abortions, and you are entitled to feel horribly guilty if YOU have an abortion.
What you are not entitled to do is dictate how other people should feel about their abortions. That is not empathy, that is brainwashing.

Have as much empathy as you like for foetuses, but have some for their mothers as well - and 'empathy' does not mean dictating what they should feel, it means understanding and appreciating what they DO feel. Some feel guilty, some feel sad, some feel relieved, some may not feel anything much - and that is not up to you to police. Go try and empathize with those people - the people in this equation who are inarguably complete human beings - and you'll probably get vilified less :)

A pro-choice stance is supposed to be about allowing women the right to choose, isn't it? Why allow them the right to choose what they do with their bodies, but not what they do with their emotions?
Are we entitled to physical but not mental autonomy now?

And to solve the supposed problem of population decline in UK lets import people instead of birthing them. Yes that will really do society a lot of good.

Why do people constantly harp on about the 24 week abortion limit, and tiny number of 22-24 week babies who live every year, as if there are loads of abortions carried out at 24 weeks? No, there are a small number, almost exclusively done for reasons of extreme medical crisis (i.e. the baby won't survive and will probably kill the mother) or extreme social crisis (many women go into denial about pregnancy when under extreme circumstances, or cannot have one any sooner, although these cases are very rare).

Anyway, to paint abortions as being either tragedies or something which is brushed off easily in an afternoon (as the two poles of the debate sometimes like to argue) is slightly offensive in the way it treats all women exactly the same - it's different for different people. Why must this point be ignored so much, although usually more by the anti-choice lobby than the pro-choice.

I also find it pertinent how many of the anti-choice brigade are so concerned about a child before it is born, but once in the world they don't want to give it a chance and will be vilifying it within years.

I don't think anyone is suggesting, M, that every woman who has an abortion should dance out of the clinic without a care in the world; what Laurie and others are arguing for is the right for women to say, 'yes, I had an abortion, and no, I don't feel wracked with guilt over it - I did the right thing for me'. It's that simple.

The fact remains that abortion, though regrettable, is not a crime and no-one should be stigmatised for having one. An unborn foetus is not a fully-fledged life, it's a potential one. It has (as far as we're aware) no conscious or memory of what happens in the womb.

But all the moral/ethical discussion aside, Laurie makes a practical point too: requiring any abortion decision to go through two doctors is lengthy and puts extra pressure on everyone involved. When people make other choices that result in poor health, like contracting lung cancer as a result of long-term chain-smoking, we don't refuse to help them.

When I was a student (a long time ago) there was a slogan I rather liked, it was every child a wanted child". I still like it!!

At one end of the scale say a woman has been raped and became pregnant as a result, should she be ashamed of having the child aborted? No I don't think she should.

At another point on the scale should a naive teenager who has been made pregnant by a persuasive boy who then abandons her feel ashamed of having an abortion? No I don't think she should either.

The logic that says "every pregnancy is a potential life and is thus a life with its own rights" is deeply flawed. On that logic we should punish male masturbation, all those thousands of potential lives... or ban the menstrual cycle itself which kills hundreds of potential lives.