What kind of being is a human foetus if not a human being? A small and not fully developed human being, but human, and "a being" by virtue of existing.

First off, forget religion. If we're talking souls here, that's a faith-based argument and as such is not capable of discussion. If that's an objection, I'm not going to start, because it'll go nowhere.

The foetus is a *potential* human being. Is it human? Well it's made from human cells, but so are all my individual organs, and no-one complains about operations to remove a kidney. Does it exist? Yes, but so does my liver. More importantly though, my liver isn't capable of perception itself, and until my liver shows signs of independent perception (such as shouting "don't drink any more beer, you pisshead!" ;-) it's a part of me. Hence a foetus is simply a part of a woman's body until it is capable of perception.

It's only possible to do harm to something which can feel that harm. For that reason, most of us would object to animal testing without anaesthetic, or cosmetics testing like the soap-in-bunnies'-eyes kind of thing, but very few of us would object to selective breeding of amoebas or even fruit flies by killing off the remainder. That's where the general ban on abortion after the first trimester comes in - after that point, the foetus has been shown to avoid discomfort. Note that it's not possible to say it feels pain, because no-one can tell what a foetus feels, but erring on the side of caution is OK. Before that point, the foetus is a clump of cells, possibly in some rough form but incapable of perception. If it's not capable of perception, it's not capable of being harmed, whatever happens to it. But once it can avoid discomfort, the law says that it gets the benfit of the doubt, which is perfectly sensible.

Someone's probably going to say that denial of potential forms harm. I don't believe it does, unless the subject has the ability to perceive that harm before or after, or unless the denial of the subject's potential causes harm to others. It's also a denial of potential which is built into human existence, since most foetuses are miscarried.

That's abortion in general. Then there's the late-term abortion problem, which is something else again.

If the mother's going to die before the foetus can be viable out of the womb, then the foetus is going to die anyway. "Do no harm" then becomes "do as little harm as possible" - in other words, do you want one actual human and one potential human dying, or just one potential human? Also consider that the method of death for the foetus is chosen to be as quick and painless as possible, namely instant braindeath, where the alternative is basically death by suffocation. If there was a way of preserving the foetus outside the womb then killing it would surely be wrong, but with our current medical knowledge that isn't possible, so we have to choose the least worst option.

Then there's foetal injury or deformity. This is way open to debate, but for myself, I'll go by my line above - "incapable of independent movement, incapable of conscious thought and/or in constant intolerable pain forever". This doesn't provide justification for termination of foetuses with Downs Syndrome, mental handicap or physical disabilities such as malformed limbs. But hydrocephaly or a whole bunch of other major woes (mostly thankfully rare) have to be considered. And again, as with euthanasia, I'd say that if you consider a human being to be at least equally deserving of relief from suffering as an animal, you shouldn't subject that human being to conditions of life that you wouldn't tolerate for an animal. Yes, this requires a value judgement, but if we can trust vets to make that call on a daily basis, I think we can damn sure put some trust in multiple doctors and parents to come to a rational decision between them.

Graham.