What are the moral reasons that precipitate the need for abortion to be available and safe? Rape, Incest, mother’s health, and fetal development. Rape would include the qualification that if either party, male or female, were under age it would be considered rape and any baby conceived would be aborted. If the mother is physically endangered at a terminal level abortion would be deemed a necessity. If through extensive scanning it is found that the fetus is developing abnormally, defects rendering quality of life impossible, the fetus should be terminated. Perhaps other reasons will be determined deeming abortion moral in the future, but these are all that seem moral now.
Feminists desire total control of the reproductive process. The “my body not yours” mentality. Yet, the fetus is treated as a separate individual in cases of murder. If it were a separate individual then the fetuses body does not belong to the mother and to terminate the fetus for any other than the moral reasons stated above should be considered murder and prosecuted as such. There is no reason for demanding abortion on demand as it is tantamount to demanding murder on demand.
Quality of life arguments cannot be used as an excuse for abortion where finances are concerned since adoption is possible and many barren mothers await to adopt them.
Whereas a malformed fetus is grounds for abortion, that abortion should be a decision of the individual. If the mother is of such mind and does not care whether she spends all of her time caring for a newborn with disabilities, possibly a short-lived child, or even a lifelong dependence of constant attention, then she should be free to make that choice.
These changes in my thoughts about abortion are the result of readings that suggest that a fetus may indeed have a mind… one that is subject to a high rate of development which necessarily results in the elimination of memories from life in the womb, and up to certain ages where long term memories are left untouched by rapid neural development.