Some... "pro-choice" arguments, with pro-life responses. An unborn child is not really a human being. Life begins at conception, when the father's sperm cell unites with the mother's ovum or egg cell to form one cell, a fertilised ovum. A baby is genetically complete at conception. The baby doesn't feel anything. An unborn baby feels pain. When aborted by hysterotomy (i.e. a caesarean section) he kicks, tries to breathe and may even cry. If he is pulled out by forceps he probably won't die until the surgeon tears off his head or pierces his abdomen. When he is sucked out by machine his end will be swifter. But he will still feel pain. A grown woman is more important and valuable than the unborn child. Not more, but equally. If you measure importance and value by age and size (as abortion does) you are practicing the same sort of "bigger is better" discrimination, with an extreme result, as some women complain men have been inflicting on them for centuries. We all want a society in which every human being has full equal protection of the law. Why discriminate against smaller and younger people? Abortion is a personal decision between a woman and her doctor. Since abortion involves destroying the life of another human being, it can never be considered a matter of personal choice a woman makes for herself, but a life and death decision she enforces on another human being. Isn't it better to have safe legal abortions rather than to force women to resort to "back alley" abortionists? In India, prior to the legalization of abortion, there were about 3.9 million abortions each year. Going by these figures, the number of legal abortions between 1972 and 1983 should have been 42.9 million. However, during this period there were less than 3 million legal abortions indicating that, contrary to popular expectation, the law was not able to make even a dent in the illegal abortions. Isn't abortion necessary to control population? Abortion is an ineffective, expensive and inhumane method of attempting to control population. It is a violent and unacceptable means, just as war and famine are unacceptable means. In many countries, the abortion law was passed as a "health" measure and not as means of population control.