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Most of what I dispute is your ability to walk in another's persons shoes and be able to pass judgement on them with a spreadsheet.

Well played. However, I did not choose the women's reasons for terminating their pregnancy for them. They chose the reason in the survey. The fact that the vast majority of the reasons do not seem compelling from the benefit of outside perspective does not minimize the weight of the decision. You cannot simultaneously claim the decision is weighty and then defend an abortion based upon the mother "would have to find a new place to live." Of course, the "spreadsheet" was chosen to simply display the reasons that the women gave in the easiest-to-read fashion. Moving anecdotes would be dismissed for the opposite reason, I'm sure.

Those I know who have had abortions, many for the reason you've described above -- nevertheless were touched forever by the event, and would never do it again. If anything, in their cases, it made them far more responsible with their sexuality.

I'm not sure that this point is a strong support for your argument. The fact that the women would never do it again does not seem to me to be good support. And if the option was not available for "convenience", would it have made them far more responsible with their sexuality in the pre- rather than the post- ?

I'm not sure that this point is a strong support for your argument.

I didn't know we were having an argument. Since I don't disagree with the points you have made about the reasons why women have abortions in the first trimester.

The fact is, I support legal first trimester abortions for reasons mentioned in my previous posts. The reasons woman have them is between them and their God. Since I am a Christian and personally pro-life I find all abortion is a tragedy -- a tragedy for the mother who has taken a human life, and a tragedy for the human life that has been lost.

But as I have explained, my religious views on abortion do not change the reality that we live in a nation of secular laws. And I think from the point of view of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence which is written with "individuals" in mind, one cannot (at least at this time) make a credible legal case that a fetus which cannot survive outside the womb and is wholly dependent on its mother does not qualify as a distinct and unique entity that could meet the legal definition of an "individual".

The point in the pregnancy that it does meet that standard of uniqueness is at viability. At that point, I beleive that the fetus should be given all the rights and protections afforded every other human being in this nation. And I can find no basis in those secular laws to view a fetus that cannot survive as a separate and unique being outside the womb as a "life" that is deserved of all the protections and rights afforded by our constitution