Harpgirl - I don't think the ability to choose or not choose an abortion is anything like "freedom." Most women would vastly prefer not to ever have to make the choice. If abortion weren't an alternative because there were no need at all for it, I think the world would be a better place.

Rapaire - "I Think I'm gonna regret this but I need to know what you mean by "full equality with men". And don't women already have the only right to chose to have an abortion!"

Not by a long shot. Until women can soley decide whether or not to get pregnant with their accepted partner, then we can discuss whether a woman is the only one making a choice. Just because in some places a woman has the opportunity to make a final choice about the aftermath doesn't mean she was the only one involved in getting there. For example:

See, the whole point of the pro-life movement is that we don't see it that way. We see TWO lives in a pregnancy. (John Hardly)

Funny how the pro-life movement never holds the man accountable or even is an issue. They want the man to be able to decide -- but not to be held responsible for the choice. All authority, no responsibility.

Because the so-called pro-life movement is not about human life, it's about potential male life. They don't care they carrying a pregnancy to term is more dangerous and life threatening than an abortion. Who cares if the woman dies? They don't care that lack of available medical care may kill the fetus anyway, and maybe the mother with it. They don't care what happens to the baby after it is born, as long as it gets born. They don't care if a woman has access to safe and effective birth control, in fact, many will protest any kind of birth control as immoral. They don't care that many women don't have access to the reproductive health services they need to be as safe as they can be about having a baby or not having one. They don't care that dozens of zygotes are killed during in vitro fertiliation -- for some reason that's not a crime because you probably eventually get a BABY out the process. God forbid you then use those doomed zygotes for stem cells though!

The worst of them advocate the death penalty for women who get an abortion and the doctors who provide them, but the men who impregnated them get off scot free.

And then there are some of us who have faced the "pro life" movement's real beliefs first hand and have been seriously injured for it. I wasn't getting an abortion, but that didn't stop them from attacking me for entering a women's hospital that provided reproductive health services of all kinds.

I may believe there are some serious and principled people against abortion out there, but you won't find them defining themselves according to a "movement" whose actions are as immoral as the ones they claim to protest for immorality. The exception is the Catholic Church, whom I may disagree with on many matters, but they at least are consistent when it comes to what they consider killing.

Nah. Women aren't the only ones who make a choice. They're just the only ones who HAVE to pay the piper. That's not equal rights by a long shot.

Until every woman can make a choice about becoming pregnant or not without fear of physical, economic or religious reprisals, abortion is the cruel escape hatch that a lucky few have access to. Those who would seek to close that door without addressing the issues that cause it to be there have no moral ground to stand on. They simply seek to impose their definition of morality with providing an alternative.