Hi KitNyx,
Personally if I were going to have an abortion, the only thing I would want to have to decide is whether to have the abortion. At the point that I wanted the abortion I would not want to be given the total choice of what type of abortion I wanted or at what stage I wanted it. These might be viewed as medical questions, but I think they have such a large social and cultural part that medical boards is not the place to decide them. For example take the question of how ‘young’ should the foetus be for abortion. It might seem like a science question, but relies a lot on what our society thinks is alive (brain development, nerve connection, movement).
I would also want there to be the offer of a support network, and counselling. I would not want to be harassed on my way to the clinic. I don’t think of these as my rights, but rather it’s the way I want my life to be, and I think it is the governments job and mine to inform it that it should produce such a system.
Part of why I find it difficult to talk about rights, is that in the UK (where I am) the legal system is different and does not depend on the ‘rights’ of a person, but on the medical necessity of it, and I understand that historically pro-abortion used this to push it through quicker in the UK.
Rereading your post, I should make it clear that I take abortion as a different issue from that of stem cell research. Stem cell research calls for the production of research material, and abortion is a technology used in its production. It’s not the abortion issue that I have a problem with in stem cell research. But rather the question of where the foetuses are coming from, who’s making money from them, and if both the mother and farther have given informed consent to list a few.
cheers
Ps, The us government has been laying down the law for abortions since the 1800’s, can they really give up now