Should the government stop abortions?

[AOL_blows911]

Originally Posted by devonin

You know, I'm starting to think that the phrasing of the question is all wrong here. by asking "Should" the government stop abortions, we're losing ourselves in the morass of "Is abortion right, wrong, neither or both"

Instead ask: Does the government have the -right- to make abortions illegal, and the only question is "Is there a point at which the fetus has rights that -supercede- that of the mother's right to control her own body" and whether you think abortion is right or wrong, I'm much more apt to say that "The government has no right to say one way or the other" than I am to say "The action itself is morally ok or morally not ok, so they should or shoudln't."

Good point. It was an interesting discussion, to say the least, but an off-topic one. Having already brought up what I consider to be "human life", I think that the government should hold no sway over what the mother and father do before that stage. That is to say, before the embryo is developed enough to sense its surroundings and recognize stimuli. However, I believe that the government should allow abortions for special cases. A law for that would be hard to phrase, to say the least...one of those "the mother and child will both die" or "the child will live in constant pain and die young" situations would be what I consider to be "special". True, the parents had 2-3 months (depending on the individual pregnancy) to come to a decision as to whether to have an abortion, but if the child being born would be fatal to the mother, the child, or both, then a later-stage abortion would seem justifiable.