[James90]

Originally Posted by thierry henry

????

You have to draw a line somewhere, arbitrary or not, otherwise a mother could kill her 40 year old son and argue that it's arbitrary to say that life begins at any particular point and therefore you can't say for sure that he was alive

And don't tell me that the line is when the baby comes out teh vag, because that's just too arbitrary

In fact it's the only time that isn't arbitrary. It's the only time when you can definitively say that the child is living independently of the mother.

Having said that, I would have serious reservations and be quite traumatised by the thought of aborting a child after the stage where it could survive if born prematurely and even more so where it could be born prematurely without severe complications. However, not being the person who has to go through the pregnancy or the one with breasts who will subsequently be the primary carer, the mother would have the ultimate decision.

I can foresee scenarios where at 32 weeks an event happens, or a realisation occurs that leads the mother to make a perfectly rational decision that the best outcome is for the pregnancy to be terminated. But I don't think anyone would make that decision on a whim and under current laws it would be illegal.