To abort or not to abort???

Naturally if you live in this society and especially if you study science or philosophy you will run into some debate and discussion over abortion. Indeed a debate for one of my classes involved this issue and someone who is often a visitor in my boyfriend's office, as I am also a regualr visitor there, brought up the issue and how he often aggrevates girls with his views (which I happen to think are interesting and quite reasonable). I found a simple yet informative site at

http://www.btinternet.com/~l.element/pi1118/pi2020abortion.htm

that has helped me gather some thoughts. I have no answers except that I think it's sometimes the least of all possible evils, it's not good but maybe it needs to be done.

One point I have found very interesting is that if it's okay to turn off a person's life support whne they have no brain activity and cannot survive on their own, why is it not okay (according to some people) to do the same for a baby who is completely depentdent on its mother and has no brain activity (which according to the above site, starts at six weeks)? These people seem to do an almost good job of covering this idea:

"Presbyterians Pro-Life is committed to protecting the right to life of every human being from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death."

but what is "natural death" is someone dead if their brain isn't working and there is no clear evidence of the 'soul' still being present?

As with anything, there are pros and cons - the arguments I tend to think of are that abortion may help to prevent those too irresponsible or emotionally unfit to have a baby, having one and possibly stop them giving a child a more difficult and sad life than need be. A con to abortion is that it may increase irresponibility among sexually active people.

"For you created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body."
Psalm 139

It could be argued that God knits us together, indeed he knows us and has known us before we even came into the world, so how could he ever lose us and if he so chooses will create us again - were we to be aborted by the woman who conceived us.

What makes a person? Ah, the eternal question... this is an interesting idea from the lecture (even though my thoughts are fairly liberal for a stereotypical christian - I'm not necessarily that though)

"One definition: A person is an entity whom God knows and relates to. Following the above Psalm, then, we are already persons in our mother’s womb."

also

"At the moment the sperm fertilizes the ovum, the 23 pairs of chromosomes are complete – the zygote has a unique genotype distinct from both parents, which will determine its sex, the colour of its skin, hair and eyes, its temperament and its intelligence.

Each human being begins as one cell. An adult has 30 million million cells. 45 generations of cell division are in between conception and adulthood and 41 of these occur before birth."

and again

"The Bible has much to say about God’s care for the defenceless."

It does seem like they are little people that need our love and care. Darn reason and emotion! Sometimes they work together and sometimes they are passionately against one another, in the abortion case they do both!