I often read The Foul Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart's journal and since he (I think?) doesn't have comments on his journal I wanted to mull over his most recent entry here. Abortion is a topic which is very important to me. I really think this a topic men cannot understand because pregnancy is something they can never experience. Someone forcing you to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term isn't a treat to them. Abortion is such a complex topic because pregnancy and childbirth are also complex.

Childbirth is brutal. The only way to get through it emotionally and physically intact is to see it as a right of passage. Whatever the method, the baby isn't coming out without a great deal of pain, and that pain doesn't end with the birth. To a woman who wants to be a mother and wants the baby inside her, it's worth it. It's something she has to go through to get what she wants. To a woman who doesn't want that child, forcing her to go through it is tantamout to torture.

This is why there is such a difference in the status of an embryo based on whether or not the mother wants it. Yes, a miscarriage at even 4 weeks is mourned. But I believe that even a woman who has had multiple miscarriages would agree that losing an early pregnancy is not the same a losing a living child.

Even though I don't believe that this early it is a life, as a mother I know that what it is is potential for a life. You know that, unless something goes wrong, you will be holding a beautiful baby in 9 months. You plan for it, and think of names, imagine what the terrible two's will be like and wonder what that child will be whey they grow up. But you still know it's not that baby yet.

I don't think abortion is a good option. It would be far better to prevent the pregnancy than to end it once it's begun. In the journal I mentioned, he discusses where viability actually lies. He discusses whether we should determine viability based on lung development or brain activity. To me, it's simple. If taking the fetus from the mother's body would produce a living person that has to be killed, that's murder. If the fetus could not survive outside the mother's body, it's not yet an individual. I honestly don't know at how many weeks this change occurs, but that's my definition of viability.