Most places it's illegal to dismember a live puppy or kitten.

Abortion is dismemberment. The 'fetus' is torn to bits while still alive.

Be a little charitable. We can at least give it a little dope before we pull it apart.

when you chose to refer to it as a 'clump of cells,' a 'mass of tissue,' and anything other than what it truly is. I support an adult woman's rights to her reproductive health, and I don't play semantic games with what an abortion is, either. Perhaps if those of us who truly support reproductive health were to acknowledge the truth we'd stop losing battle after battle to the idiots on the far right.

Oh, no! How terrible that a woman should have to read and try to inform herself before making a huge life choice! The only people who think this is a clear-cut issue are fanatics on both sides. There's a lot of grey, and trying to act like it's all so very evident is pure crap.

Maybe after the doctor reads the law he can put down the paper and say, "However, just because the law says it doesn't mean it's true. As far as we know, during the time period you're allowed to have an abortion, the law's pretty much full of shit."

Just a thought.

Because of the standardizing voodoo the medical establishment uses to determine due dates, "20 weeks past fertilization" would average roughly 22 weeks pregnant. That means all major organs have developed and you've started "showing" and feeling movements (unless there's something severely wrong with the fetus, though of course there likely IS, if you're getting an abortion at that time). Perhaps the good folks at NARAL are reacting the way I am. I don't give a damn about the science - especially since doctors until pretty recently didn't even offer anaesthesia for infants receiving circumcisions because THEY allegedly didn't feel pain. If I had to have an abortion after I had developed a relationship with a wiggly person I already thought of as my baby, I would ABSOLUTELY want to be offered anaesthesia for the fetus.

Of course, the politics of the matter are another issue. For all we know (will someone who has had a late-term abortion weigh in? Probably not, since hardly ANYONE has them), women are already offered that option and the whole thing is just another circus. (Gosh, do I sound cynical?)

Still, I am so glad to hear that NARAL is being open-minded about this issue, because I really don't want the pro-choice community to be viewed as the NRA is. I hate that the right keeps cooking up ways to put us into double binds (the late-term abortion thing is a huge one, and this looks like part of it) that make us look stupid either way we answer. And I wish that the media would actually let the public in on why certain people choose late-term abortions at the advice of their doctors (usually something like uterine cancer in the mother or a fetal disability so severe that the baby will not be viable if it lives to the full term of the pregnancy) - that this is not some frivolous decision that some woman woke up one day and didn't feel like being pregnant anymore because she was getting too many stretch marks. But I don't think it's totally outrageous to have legal guidelines about when late-term abortions are acceptable and when they're not. And it freaks me out that I might get slammed by my pro-choice sisters for saying that in public.

It's the jerks on the left. I support an adult woman's reproductive rights, but I don't for a moment pretend an abortion is anything but chosing to end a life. As far as I am concerned every adult woman has that right. And I think we'd win a lot more support if we stopped dancing around the terminology and pretend it's anything but human until birth. And I don't give a hoot what my pro-choice sisters think about that.

fetus and parenthood, planned or not? should this group then change its name to something more appropriate such as planned fetalhood. what kind of science do they use so that we cannot see the child in this blob, sometime even hysterically referred to as a parasite. i know ideology when i see it and it has come to this. no health advice for gestating women and their blobs, no ultrasound - too emotional, nothing that connects you to the blob. one must wait for the magic moment of birth to connect with = the child. what has planned parenthood and their ilk wrought. do i look at my own children as former blobs or did i await the birth of a child. there is enough ideology in all the female empowerment talk to sink the entire abortion ship. as a society perhaps abortion is ok in limited circumstances but dont set up this polyanna universe where all is ok and sweet and anything one wants,just dont look.