Originally Posted by
MK27
I do think one argument made is that it is not self-sustaining, so it is part of the mother's body in the same sense that the eggs perennially present in the womb are part of the body. It is kind of a weak/silly one tho, but IMO the whole debate is very silly to start with and has an obvious starting point.
The staying power of the abortion question is that it is not very easily reduced, and so it is always the same, simple question: do you think it is okay or not? mitigated by the length of the pregnancy. Few people would consider it fine and dandy a week before the baby is due, but I think at that point a fetus can be removed by Caesarian (eg, if it threatens the mother's life).
I don't believe in God, and I don't believe Christians do either, I think they just claim to (ie, they are lying) in order to preserve the Church and the social order it represents. In the case of fundamentalism, this is a very old school, non-democratic, explicitly patriarchal (hence the abortion issue) hegemony which permits some people to exercise strict control over the lives of other people (eg, men over women). Hence, religion is only tangentially about morality -- it is really about POWER.