Over on Liberal Conspiracy a very good debate is formulating over a series of posts about abortion and the liberal/left stance, with a surprising amount of decent interjection coming in from those that tend to always disagree with the postings on there. Once again I found myself responding to something on there and it getting too long to be a comment, so here is my view on the very muddy subject.

I can't bring myself to support abortion or oppose it on the basis of socially prescribed ethical codes, religious belief or, most crucially, the date at which a foetus has at least some chance of staying alive if removed from the womb…currently found to be 24 weeks and being argued by conservatives and more sensible religious groups to be lowered to 20 weeks. To me the issue is about the life of a child, just as it is for the god squad or those that put a great deal of weight on the rights of the unborn, it is just that such a question of quality of life and reasonable expectation have to enter the debate.

As far as I'm concerned a child's life is only as good as the parents that bring it up and the support it receives. If a mother doesn't want a child then forcing her to have the baby doesn't necessarily result in a positive life for a child, of course I do understand the argument anti-abortionists put up that people that don't want children but find themselves with one can ultimately be very good parents when faced with the situation, just that such an argument looks at the picture a little too black and white.

Up until recently I was under the belief that abortion should be restricted to before a foetus becomes a sustainable life, that is to say that if it were taken from its mother it would be able to pump blood by itself, have mental function, breathe and swallow. Obviously I didn't view this quite so simplistically as it has to be within reasonable comparison, if a child is unfortunately born with a respiratory disability then one can reasonably assume that it is normal for it to need assistance to breathe and so on. However through the course of the debate on Liberal Conspiracy I have found that I'm not sure I agree with the rights of a "living" foetus still trumping that of the mother.

There is the effect of "starting a family" on the aspirations and lives of the parents after having a child, and if this is grown from the starting point of being forced to have a child that you didn't want but have now accepted then I don't feel that is acceptable. While they may be good parents or bad parents, there is the potential there for parents to feel they have missed out on life, that they are being stifled by this commitment and that they are essentially stuck in a place they can't get out of. To deny the parents the ability to make decisions about their life in this manner is an ancient one still born out of religious sentiment, that somehow having a child should only be seen as a miracle that you should be thankful for and to like it or lump it. We may have moved the goalposts, but ultimately if parents decide after the 24 weeks that they are not ready and that it is not conducive to their life to have a child then why should anyone stop an abortion? We're still in these situations living under "old rules".

And the argument of adoption after this period is not one I buy, deciding to not have the child that'd been growing inside you is an undoubtedly emotional experience and no more so than when you're deciding not to have it. While I could make a reasonable argument for compulsory caesarean/induced birth leading to adoption rather than abortion if the choice is made by the parents after the point at which the child has a significant chance of survival, we again have to respect the wishes of the parents. With law being as it is currently such an act is not abortion by proxy, children are given more and more rights to find parents that didn't want them or didn't necessarily care about their existence directly (in the case of sperm donors) and so in a sense the government itself has sabotaged any route for adoption to be an option instead of abortion.

So, if a mother wants to not have her child that should be her choice at any point, not just if there is a life threatening situation on her hands (or in her belly), how she does that should really be her choice. Safeguards should of course be there, I don't agree that a woman should just be able to walk in to a clinic and order an abortion to go…there are psychological assessments that need to be made, is the mother doing this because she wants it or is in a brief period of depression for example, and also a consultation with invested parties. But should the professionals deem that it is ok to do so I don't believe that anyone should stop them.

Some have argued that a doctor swears to "do no harm" and therefore can't ethically perform an abortion, certainly not on a foetus after 24 weeks. This is of course utter rubbish as shown by the fact they are able to take more than one variable in to account when it comes to the pregnancy being life threatening. The ultimate question is why do we only restrict it to these purely physical grounds? Is the quality of life of the parents not also an over-riding factor? Is the potential poor quality of life that will be supplied to the child not wanted worth it when parents can offer a greater quality of life when they actually want to get pregnant?

The only people that know whether or not they can give their child the type of life that is worth having while also not being detrimental to their own life is the parents. It's all subjective and it's all personal. No set of state prescribed rules can change that, and to effectively legislate that the only option for getting rid of an unwanted pregnancy after 24 weeks it to put it up for adoption when it's born, along with all of the future complications and emotional conflict that may bring, is a very cobbled compromise to somewhat try and appease both sides of the argument.

The rules have to be based on something and currently I can understand why the rules stand as they do. While it is not unacceptable it is not, in my mind, the best solution. The current position on abortion encourages argument and conflict rather than resolving the issue as the policy revolves around numbers that can change and can be interpreted differently in various reports and studies depending on bias and opinion. It mixes religious ethics with personal choice and looks very, very messy.

If we must have this compromise rather than one of the two truly simple stances on the subject, that either all fertilised embryos must be born or abortion must be allowed up until birth, then two things need to happen. More protection of privacy needs to go to those that put their children up for adoption. It is the right of the parents to leave that part of their life behind just as it is the right of the child to not be involved with their biological parents, adoption, along with donor births, must serve to be the very first point in a new life with no link to the situations preceding that beyond medical history. The second thing is that the definition of "life" needs to be put in to much more solid ground, it needs to be based on what Unity in his post on Liberal Conspiracy describes as "viability" in terms of natural ability to live and not on what Frankenstein-esque technology we can use to keep a foetus alive and developing.