I’m not a devout Christian by any means but I do classify myself as conservative. Conservatives usually support the death penalty- true. Conservatives usually have a pro-life position on abortion – true. Inconsistent? Hardly. The difference is choice. The criminal chooses to commit the crime. Arguably, most choose where they live – I am not a fan of blowing up countries, oddly though most of our blowing up was done by liberal democratic presidents (Roosevelt –WW2 & Johnson -Vietnam). A couple chooses to have sex in a risky manner. A child does NOT choose to be conceived.

I have read this whole thread. Again, the flaw I find in your abortion reasoning is that you do not hold the pregnant parties responsible for their actions. Both mother and father are responsible for their choices and should be held accountable for them. We all know that even if you use protection there is an infinitesimal chance that you can get the girl knocked up. It is a small risk you run when you have sex. When you fail to use protection, the morning after pill is a very real solution. When I say we must hold the parents accountable I mean for them to keep and care for the child/baby/fetus until such time that they can responsibly find another to take up their burden. In rare cases it may not be your choice but sheer dumb/#### luck that you find yourself in such a scenario.


A lot of ‘reality’ reasons have been mentioned as to why holding the parents accountable is not feasible. I did a little research on the demographics of abortion. I found my information on the website: http://www.third-way.com/ . According to this study most abortions are performed on the poor and young. However, most of these people are not living in poverty; they simply are too young to have a high paying job. Most abortions are performed because the pregnancy was unplanned. When I look at the data, unplanned to me appears to mean careless. Condoms are cheap, use them. The pill is affordable, use that too. If the condom breaks, go get a morning after pill the next day. Over half of the abortions performed in this country are done to women between 20 and 29 and most of them are done because it is inconvenient for them to have the child. The woman chose to engage in an act that could produce a child. Her body is the kid’s temple that she invited him into with her risky behavior. The baby lives at her sufferance true, but she chose to undertake the action to invite it. Therefore it is my opinion that she has little right to demand its life because it would be convenient for her. Drawing a line anywhere is ludicrous. At what point is a baby human? 1 month before birth when it can survive outside the womb? 4 months when it looks vaguely human like? Making such an arbitrary choice has little to do with what is right and wrong but with what is easy or potentially difficult. Being responsible isn’t always easy but can you argue that it is wrong?

Ideas for dealing with the burden (or gift – as you perceive it) of an unwanted pregnancies are many. I personally think that we should make it easier to adopt and put some dollars in R&D for better and cheaper morning after solutions. Both of those ideas are band-aids for the larger cause of abortion which is a cavalier attitude towards sex in our culture. I would say it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw that so many unplanned pregnancies happen because both men and women don’t take the consequences of pre-marital sex seriously. It is an attitude adjustment that I think would help best for the dilemma, and talking about it is the first step towards realizing it.

All that garbage said there are many extenuating circumstances in this issue. The woman may have been raped, it may be unsafe for the mother to bear the child, and the baby may be deformed. I grant in some of these cases being arbitrary and aborting the child may be the right thing to do. The problem with this is that at the very largest, this whole group combined is less than 7% of the total abortion cases. What is the purpose of laws other than to legislate morality? With that question in mind I believe law should be written for the majority and exceptions made for the minority. Would you have wanted to be aborted because your birth would make your parents change their lifestyle? I could very easily have been an aborted child myself and I thank god and my parents that they chose to keep me.