> > I am not fully sure when the nervous system is developed enough to
> > feel pain, but I think it is fairly early on.
>
> I would not think so at the moment of conception. Therefore, if we use
> this criterion the question becomes, "At what point in a pregnancy
does
> abortion become cruel to the unborn child?" I don't know the answer
> either, but it would be a far cry from saying abortion is wrong from the
> moment of conception.
I do not accept the criterion of pain at all.
If I pack somebody full of morphine, can I then kill him and say, oh well,
it was not painful?
The issue here is that a fertilized egg is a human being as much as a human
newborn baby is (a human newborn baby btw is certaily less self-aware and
more stupid than a cow that goes for beef is). So, basically it is not right
to kill a newborn human baby NOT because of what it is (a blobby and noisy
lil bag full of shit, snot and puke) but of what it will become. Well, the
value of "becoming" is still present in the fertilized egg.
My view is that once an egg is fertilized it is a human being and killing it is murder. Therefore, my opinion is that abortion should be illegal. Abortions being legal is just another case of legalizing what is convenient regardless of moral responsibilities. Much like the beef thing.
> What if you believed that the mother would die in childbirth, and the
> child would live in agony for six months after birth and then die?
>
This is an easy question in my book. Of course, perform the abortion then,
as long as the mother does not object to it.
The question is easy because I base my moral code on empathy and logic: not
God's law. Making choices based on our, as educated as possible,
convictions, views and theories is all we have and we got to go with them or
become victims of predestination in a dull deterministic universe or pawns
in the hands of an irrational invented God.