Your posts are interesting Thyme2dream. Both you and I agree with legal abortion in certain cases but not in others, so we're neither strictly pro-choice nor pro-life, but we both find ourselves falling into the pro-life camp when an argument develops. I wonder why that is? Maybe because the pro-choice side is more dominant in our culture, and if we lived in a predominantly pro-life society, we'd be seen as pro-choicers.

Why do you see a difference between the first trimester and later pregnancy, i.e., what's the difference between "a bunch of cells" and a "living kicking being"? It seems that those who endorse a compromise view of abortion do so either according to the stages of the pregnancy or according to the circumstances of the pregnancy. The circumstances of the pregnancy seem important to me, but I've never been able to understand why the age of the pregnancy would be ethically important.

Flattop, I was ticked off at you but now you've made me laugh twice. I'll post my story about the dangers of music tomorrow for your education.

But seriously, it seems that half the time when people are criticizing the pro-life position they are not actually criticizing the pro-life position (i.e. that a fetus is a full person with a right to life) but rather making unsubstantiated accusations ("You would be pro-choice if men got pregnant", "You would never adopt a child with challenges"), or arguing against some other position that is held by some, few, or extremely few pro-lifers ("You expect people to raise children in impossible situations", "You are against birth control", "You support capital punishment", "You want to kill doctors").

The only logical way to argue against the pro-life position is to demonstrate that the fetus is not a person with rights, or that the fetus' rights are less important than the mother's. Everything else is a straw man argument.

Marion