[Gozer]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I don't think that is what is being advocated at all. I think that what is being argued is that in the society and culture that we have created, unwanted pregnancies will occur for many reasons, most of which are not the result of one exercising his/her right to reproduce. Practically speaking, abortion is more about addressing issues of emotional and societal health, family well-being and strength, and economic sustenance upon which our species has become dependent. There is alot more to the issue than merely an individual's rights.

Not to me.

The individual fetus has the right to not be terminated. I would argue that societal health requires a distinction of who we're allowed to execute to never be made.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

In industrialized nations, I would expect that a woman's "desire" for a "supportive and stable family structure for the benefit of the mother and child" has probably diminished. Women are by and large shedding their dependency upon men, and I would think that attitudes towards sexuality and family have followed suit.

I agree with your point.

The problem I have is that individual liberty is expanding to "new world" of sorts, based in freedom from others. But this movement seems to be tied to collectivism in the vein of IFF's posts. I consider these movements incongruous.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

Are these "pre-disposals" a matter of scientific record?

No.

Originally Posted by Textcritic

I haven't taken the time to read the whole thread, but I expect that it has been brought up. Before we can even consider the implications of the "right" to live, "life" must first be adequately defined. Rather than getting bogged down by the issue of when life begins, I'm more interested at the moment in the quantity v. quality element of what constitutes "living", and what deems an individual "life" worth the cost to protect. A part of what has been touched on in all of this is how humankind is slowly killing itself because of its inability to come to grips with the inconsistency of discerning between whether individuals or communities take precedence. By way of example, monumental advances in medicine and health care have made for huge increases in life expectancy, but at the same time have stretched our planet's ability to sustain massive population increases nearly to the breaking point. Natural, individual "survival" is often considered virtuous, but the cost to maintain it is truly escalating to the point that our species is badly upsetting the natural balance by its ability to defy nature. Abortion plays into that: the survival of aborted babies would tax the system even more than it already is; it would mean an even greater explosion in population, and because there are limits to how much life this planet can sustain, the survival of these aborted potential lives would mean huge sacrifices to other beings, the economy, our own artificially determined "quality of life" and other elements of the biosphere.

I have little to intelligently add to this, I will leave the bulk of this comment as an open rhetorical point.

However, suggesting that refusing to abort children will lead to a decrease in quality in life is both inaccurate and a morally reprehensible precedent.