My own personal philosophy is that as a society we can decide the relative moral or ethical value of certain decisions. We can weigh the interests of the state, the mother, the father, the sperm/egg/zygote/fetus/infant and decide where the line can be best drawn.


I believe that the moral wrong created by giving the state control over a woman's body to interfere in this most personal and private decision complicated by all manners of individual circumstance produces a greater immorality than the elimination of a potential human life in utero.

I think that for the most part, Roe v Wade established a fair system where the further developed the potential human is, the more rights they have. At conception and for some weeks after they are merely a clump of cells and therefore the mother should have an absolute right to terminate the pregnancy. In the second trimester, the state has some interest in regulating the practice but its role should be to encourage women to make their decisions as early as possible in the pregnancy. In the third trimester during which the fetus becomes viable, the state may rightly weigh rights of the child to live as being superior to the mother's inconvenient circumstances, but in cases of emergency the life of the mother is more important.

Religious positions on abortion differ. While some religious groups believe life begins at conception and abortion is always wrong, even going so far as to proscribe birth control because they believe, mostly wrongly, that it kills fertilized eggs, other groups specifically require that the life and health of the woman be considered as superior to the life of the child even to the point of its birth.