Wrong, wrong, wrong

I'm not particularly well equipped for wading through complex moral and philosophical mires but what the hell I'm going to have my while this is still a reasonably free-speech medium: the decision not to even countenance a review of the current legal maximum term at which an abortion can be performed strikes me as simple criminal irresponsibility particularly as the grounds for this seem to be that there's no reason to consider lowering the age from 24 weeks when the survival rate for babies born at 23 weeks isn't showing a significant improvement.

I guess I'm just becoming increasingly sensitive to this as my chances of having another baby gallop off towards the distant hills beyond which they'll be out of sight and irretrieveable.

There are unquestionably circumstances in which a woman can get to 24 weeks without being aware she's pregnant. Yes, there are.

But when that unborn is not just 'potentially' viable but where its chances of surviving and even thriving are very real what possible just cause can there be for killing him or her.

I've sympathy with the woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant; realising that plans however trivial or important are about to be overturned by what ever cause is a potential cause of distress. But a lot worse things can happen. Some of them probably will, and if you can't cope with this, how will you cope with them?

If you're that much of a loss when it comes to dealing the shit life can dish up, perhaps its you who should be terminated, and not your unwanted child.

Would a tightening of the abortion law lead to an increase in 'back street' abortions? Well, maybe. After all a law proscribing homicide pretty consistently in place down through the ages hasn't got in the way of people killing one another, but no rational or credible individual to my knowledge has ever argued for the abolition.

I'm not a pro-life fruit cake. Abortion happens, always will and I think on balance it better to facilitate this in safe (sanitary, skilled) conditions than otherwise. I also happen to feel increasingly powerfully the necessity for clear blue water between the shortest viable term based on current reliable medical evidence and the maximum termination term and absolutely not an overlap between the two.

Morally ambiguous? Yes. Pragmatic and workable. Yes. Painful. That's life.