@Chris O'Neill. Just to be clear about this. Not all of us who oppose abortion on demand are Roman Catholics, and many are not even practicing religion. Opposing abortion does not have to be a religious thing, or rely on any ideological premises. Let's not dismiss values this easily. Besides, no one seems to draw our attention to the eugenicist ideology which premises most 'pro-choice' arguments.

@Antonio Muscio. "It seems clear to me where the best ethical position lies" Go for it, Anthony. However, your typology lacks context. Let me provide it for you here. Abortion: the killing of a live being, whilst trapped in a confined space on which it depends for living, by one or more of these methods asphyxiation, chemical poisoning, burning with saline solution, dismemberment and decapitation. I thus hope that your typology makes more sense now. Sorry if now it doesn't detract from the real issue as effectively as you have perhaps intended.

@Dania Ng Your description of termination methods as an argument is not in keeping with your otherwise respectful comments. I think perhaps you use it as unwisely as the person who taught you this.

Will you assert I must not "beat the eggs" ?

@Anthony Muscio. "Your description of termination methods as an argument is not in keeping with your otherwise respectful comments. I think perhaps you use it as unwisely as the person who taught you this". Actually, I watched "The silent scream" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gON-8PP6zgQ&feature=related, which had extraordinary impact on me. I have also read widely in order that I inform myself about this issue. Here are some other sources that you may find useful, but perhaps uncomfortable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgqUL0Y8WcE&feature=fvwrel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmytgRQ7hEY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3_Q8Jl1tQ0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnJbZmn67Uc (not if you're squeamish)
and where are the pro-choicers for women like these?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=YJyJu3exz_U&feature=endscreen (note the "respectful" way the pro-abortionists commenting in the thread youtube chose to treat this woman's story)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHKOhBYe_ks&feature=related
and listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzisHrqZAbM&feature=related
I see nothing disrespectful in describing facts.

There is an article here that addresses the very question of the safety of IUDs:

http://theconversation.edu.au/iuds-safe-effective-but-myths-live-on-10852

Hicks wasn't around for long...but what a punch he had, a great loss to this world.
Wild Man Bill!

Anthony, did you not know that Margaret Sanger founded the Planned Parenting movement? The evidence is plain to see. The stats indicate that most women that are persuaded to have abortions by these so-called clinics are from the 'undesirable classes' about which Sanger harped on about. They are the poor, uneducated, criminalised groups in society. The black in the US are over-represented (in the US, I don't know the figures here). Of about 500 women asking for advice at these clinics on whether to have an abortion or not, only one emerges with a live birth. Just because we don't call it eugenics, it doesn't mean that it isn't. I am sure that you and Chris are capable at looking at the evidence yourself, it's very easily found.
Chris, eugenics are bad. For one that holds so dearly to the pro-choice argument, the argument that 'selective genetic engineering is good' is really, really silly. If you are against me "telling someone what to do with their bodies", then who are you to tell someone else what to do with theirs?

You got that in one Al!

Lol Anthony, and you accuse me of using one straw man. How many have you used here?

Methinks your plotting to stem and leaf too much :)

@Michael Shand. Michael, they have two legs to stand on. And what double standard are you referring to? And why would pro-lifers make decisions for others, where did you get this nonsense? When I talk to someone contemplating an abortion, I am only concerned that they get all the information relevant to them, and that they don't just get the abortion clinic's view only. I may even plead with them on behalf of the life that they intend to kill. But the final decision is theirs, I simply want them to have access to all the information which explains the impact on their well-being if abortion is the option they settle upon. Surely this is something you would agree with?
My heartfelt thanks to your mum for deciding that you were potentially a human (despite the medical and legal speak) when she carried you, and gave you birth. Though I find your views loathsome, I would defend your right to life against anything; sorry for holding this view, it is due to my pro-life values.
I posted this on another thread, but here it is again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QfKCGTfn3o&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Rob, I am curious. Why has your prediction proven wrong?

Graeme. Unless you're talking about extremist groups here, which represents the view of a minority, I am wondering how you can put the words 'hate' and 'pro-life' together to describe someone? Are you saying that to hate killing is wrong? You are either for, or against life. And how do we educate people that it is okay to live an imperfect life, but that it is never okay to think of life as disposable? The controlling is done mainly by those who advise women that it is okay to kill a life they have created. Women are not controlled by those at a distance, but by modern norms which serve billion-dollar companies more than women. If I say here, "Think about what you are doing, consider the consequences, consider the life you have created" how do I control a woman's body? And what is the benefit to me? But if a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic (what an oxymoron!) advises a woman to kill her baby, then what is it that they stand to gain? Is it not money? Then who controls the woman's body? My pleas for life, or the need of abortion clinics for business?

So, Anthony. Say that some people do not believe in God, and yet they are pro-life (the majority of pro-lifers, actually). In the absence of religion, what drives them to cling to their values? And, having got rid of religion, what then? Will the world be a wonderful, utopian reality where we will simply employ scientific dogma (like eugenics, perhaps) to solve all our problems, with no sense of remorse, and automaton co-existence based only on the primacy of individualist wants?

Anthony. I don't need religion to inform my values system, if that's what you're asking. It would be more precise to describe myself as a spiritual rather than religious person. Christianity informs my spirituality, as it provides relevant moral context for me, and the way I live my life. So I call myself Christian for this reason. It irks me to encounter simpleton arguments (not yours), reducing any opposition to a particular view on significant social issues to 'religion'. Simplistic conclusions seem to then emerge: "You are Christian, therefore you are telling me what to do with my body. Your opinion does not, therefore, count". This reductio ad absurdum is sad, because it most always leads to the discussion degenerating into an exchange of insults.
But I just wanted to make a point here which obviously escapes the simpletons. You see, it is okay to believe in something even when there is no 'evidence' in the sense that one wants that evidence to exist, if such a belief leads to good and desirable outcomes. In effect, that is the evidence and it is much more convincing than scientific fact that is twisted to fit the need of particular groups in society. So, for instance the Salvos believe that they ought, indeed they see it as their duty, to help those that are oppressed, hurt, despised, marginalised, suffering - they (and other Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and so on) are the ones who go 'down' to the level of untold misery. They do this not because of scientific or other 'rational' evidence that it is desirable to do so, but because of their religious/spiritual values systems. They believe in humanity and the dictum that life ought to be nurtured and cared for, that people are good and desirable, and ought to be loved and respected despite of who they are. Funnily enough, you don't see those that use 'scientific evidence' as the excuse for their value systems doing this, many in fact recoil from helping those whom the Salvos help, and instead they are concerned with evidence-based 'programs' and social engineering as a means of doing away with human misery. One such approach is eugenics. Funny that the pro-abortion ideology is based on eugenics (and in fact it practices it). Funny also that advocates of life are similar in important ways with Christian and other religious ethics, even when there is no 'hard evidence' to back them. Why have we come to demonise the latter?
In response to your question, yes, I subscribe to (more like, I am informed by) a range of philosophical arguments against rational individualism. But scientific reductionism is not one of them. It amazes me how people say that science is entirely objective, when it is not. Science is a means to understand the physical properties of objective reality. However, it is only through our subjective realities that we can make sense of them. I have read Marx, as well as Nietsche; Foucault and Habermas; Aristotle and Plato; Bacon and Bentham; Adam Smith and Locke; Hobbes and Rousseau. Is it wrong, then, to still hold on to my spirituality when defending life? Rather, what is the alternative? A return to a life that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"? Or one that everywhere one is born free, except that, yet. "they're still in chains"?

Anthony. Thank you very much for your thoughts, I really appreciate the time you took to clarify your position and explain some of your premises. It is very helpful, and it allows me to provide a more focused response, which I hope you'll receive positively.
Indeed, the scientific method uses falsification, perhaps best explained in the Popperian sense. My original education is in the social sciences, so I know a little about the scientific method. I am also aware of the experimental method, and have nothing against its use. But I do object to it taking primacy when attempting to explain social reality (as opposed to the natural world). Psychology, for instance, adheres closely to the scientific method, and hence can explain much behavioural phenomena (but not broader sociological ones). But even so, it can be wrong when it comes to individual cases, and can create much harm to people when used too mindlessly by practitioners who swear by the Bell curve rather than their subjective but professional insights. This happens with other social sciences, of course. For instance, it was anthropological research which provided scientific 'proof' that Jews and other non-Arians are inferior to Germanic people, simply by measuring their cranium, and arriving at a standardised format of the 'normal' among the "races". It was not science which rejected this nonsense outright, even in the face of 'science', but those with humanist backgrounds who knew it was wrong to do this, even if they could not refute the 'science', and were thus rendered 'irrational'.
Don't get me wrong, I love science, but I detest individuals who use it to occupy the high ground and dictate what is ethical or not to the rest of us, mere mortals. I would suggest you are mistaken when you say that "Science has little to say on morality beyond a range of fields making in roads into such a complex area". I would ask you to simply read the articles on this website, and then repeat this with a straight face. In fact modernity is made possible because power has shifted from religion to science. You only have to say, "There is scientific evidence for [my view]" and everyone is expected to acquiesce and genuflect to the great wisdom of science. But watch this space when one says, "God (Allah, Buddha, etc) teaches us to do this [in my view]" and see what happens! To say that you have scientific evidence is to buy into the power structure, and enables you to exercise power over those who cannot do so.
Science is great, it tells us much about physical reality. But it is generally darn bad at prescribing to us what we should do with this knowledge. A life begins when the pattern for it is set in place genetically (chromosomes which determine every aspect of the physical being of that life). Science is right to tell us this. Science is not right to proclaim that we're okay in not thinking of it as life, yet. It has no place here, because it transgresses into social reality, which must always be a normative reality. It thus replaces ethics and, for some, God. The real great scientists, the ones who made significant contributions to our understanding of the physical world, are those who didn't feel necessary to abandon their spirituality, and it is these scientists we should hold as models for what science can do for us, or at least ask why they still believed in God even though they practiced science? Why did objective facts co-exist with spirituality in their belief systems? Your use of the term 'objective truth' merits a pause here; I would propose that there is no such thing as 'objective truth', simply because truth is a human invention. You are perhaps thinking of objective fact. Truth must always depend on an arrangement of suitable objective facts. So we might for example say that foeti do not think, they are totally dependent on mothers for survival, and need care after they are born. These are objective facts. But when one declares that they have no right to life simply because this string of objective facts have been so arranged, I am afraid that, like it or not, we leave the realm of science and enter the metaphysical. It is thus that I like to throw in some other objective facts, like just how the foeti are killed and disposed of, so that we can balance the discussion and challenge 'truth' as some would like to think of it.
Anyway, like you, I am quite busy, and so I don't have time to engage with this fully. I do hope that what I have written does make some sense though, but I would be glad to clarify anything that I said if you'd like to continue this discussion.

Thanks for replying, Anthony. You're of course right if you need to be right in your assessment of what I have said. I agree that there are extremes in the things which create issues, and these are often distorted by the haze of one's bias. Except for one thing. Killing a living being. There is no bias in observing that there is killing involved here. Especially when 'planned', killing cannot be prioritised out of the discussion or seen as an 'extreme', or ignored, because it is ALWAYS involved. By definition, then, it is not an extreme point to bring to the forefront of the discussion, it is a fundamental part of the issue - in fact, it is the issue!
In any case, I disagree with you about the use of 'extremes'. I don't use extremes, I use case examples as one very useful means of undertaking social research. You may not be familiar with science based on case work, or representative cases - though, judging from your postings, I think you would know of some famous ones. It is a methodology which most great scientists used, despite (or because?) being quite spiritual. For example, you may recall the story of Galileo Galilei and his experiment on the tower of Pizza in which, with the help of a weight and a feather, he demonstrated that Aristotle's theory of gravity is wrong. Or you may be familiar with the famous Newtonian observation regarding gravity when Isaac saw an apple fall to the ground. Or you would remember about Darwin's finches? All cases, not really experimental science. And there are plenty others. You see, a single example of a particular phenomenon can embody knowledge about all similar instances of that phenomenon. And the observations obtained in case studies cannot, by definition be falsified. A case of one woman being psychologically affected for the rest of her life because of an abortion is not an extreme case, it tells us, in definitive terms, that abortion can lead to psychological injury. The asphyxiation of a baby in their mothers womb is not an extreme example, it is a regular practice as RU 486 is being prescribed. Any scientist, even the savant completely lacking in empathy, would put the two together. If a mother aborts without being given the full story around the process and finds out later, what do you think could happen to her? So my examples are not 'extremes', they are only extremely-telling examples of reality - nothing grey about it, and in fact one does not need to be spiritual to understand the significance of each and every example which I have provided. Indeed, I am interested in what you might have said if spirituality didn't come into it at all, if I was an agnostic but nevertheless still opposed to abortion on demand (as no doubt some agnostics are)? In fact, unrepresentative examples (normally doctored for maximum impact) are actually regularly cited by the pro-choicers - like in the recent case of a mother's death in Ireland (it turned out that the gloating pro-choicers neglected to tell the whole story). Perhaps you might focus on these unsavory examples instead?
I don't need to abandon my spirituality to do good science and research, and I don't see that I want to 'sell' the principle of treasuring life and minimising death in a 'marketplaces of ideas'; resisting death is not some sort of good to flog in the bazaar of irrationality. Besides, I never felt the need to vendor my ideas - either people engaged with them, or they do not. Honestly, I don't give a shaize about "selling" my ideas - I am too old, and in my life I have seen too much hurt in people's lives to care when people dismiss my opinions and ideas simply because of my spirituality. If they think I am subject to irrational argument because of this, then that's okay. Voltaire expressed it perhaps better than anyone: "Prejudices are what fools use for reason".
Finally, I don't think I have argued for spirituality as such, so I am not sure why you refer to me as an apologetic. As I said above, I really don't care how you or anyone else thinks of me, but I do mind prejudice and ignorance based on intellectual dishonesty and laziness, hence my responses to some of the postings here and elsewhere. I am actually not sure that you understand what spirituality is, and it seems you confuse it with religion. Yes, my spirituality happens to be influenced by Christianity (because it provides such incredible insights for me), but it does not have to be so for others. Since I opened my fav quotes file, let me explain with reference to a famous scientist you might not think as spiritual - Einstein Here is something he said, "It is only to the individual that a soul is given". Here is something else he said, "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe forms my idea of God". Einstein also said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle"; and a final quote from Einstein, which I think is fitting here: "We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death" - go figure it!
Thanks for the conversation. I shall now return to the grey zone - I really enjoy it there.