[Goto]

Well, I don't think that last point is particularly fair. If you can't decide on a coherent point at which an embryo/fetus/baby changes from being a thing to being a person, then neither can you make value statements about abortion not being a bad thing. It can't be seen in black and white so it's natural and completely understandable that people are going to take a shades-of-gray approach of it being 'the lesser of two evils'. If you're basing your pro-choice argument off the inability to form intentions, then as you pointed out abortion is equally as bad as killing babies. No clear reference frame means those saying it's not wrong and those saying it is wrong are themselves both equally wrong.

Anyway, that's all just arguing semantics. I would describe myself as pro-choice, but much like Neraphym I don't really a logical and coherent explanation for why that should be the case. Regardless, I guess I'll share a few thoughts.

A common argument is that of giving everyone a chance to live, as has already been suggested in this topic. So we're not really killing humans, we're killing potential humans. But how is that any different from forcing (or heavily recommending) abstinence, no-sex-before-marriage, etc. ? Both deal in a potential life not coming to fruition. By that reasoning, you're killing people by not having sex all the time to random strangers. Probably the most obvious answer is that in the former example of abortion, no positive action is required for that life to come into existence, merely the absense of negative action. To which the counterpoint would surely be the high mortality rates (both to the children and the mothers) without modern medicine and so forth (hence, positive action to provide a decent chance of that life surviving). Anyway, taking an argument along those lines (unaided potential life compared with something that requires a jump start) turns the examples of scratching your nose, cloning, etc. meaningless, which is probably for the best as I don't think they're all that valid. While those cells could potentially be a new lifeform, the amount of outside effort required to make that happen is enormous, hardly the same as merely choosing not to take action via abortion.

That got a little convoluted, but hopefully it's at least slightly followable. It seems to me that while conservative bodies such as the church were dictating all the rules, a pro-life approach did actually work. If it's already unthinkable to have sex outside marriage, and you're expected to have children once in a marriage, then from the point of view of society there wasn't really an issue with enforcing a pro-life policy. It's just that in recent decades/centuries a great amount of flexibility and choice has been provided, and this has left us with some rather odd issues where some rules haven't quite caught up with others. There's no longer reason to assume that those that are getting pregnant are in a stable marriage (not that this was ever truly the case, but we're dealing in ideals here), so as well as the choice of the parents you have to take into account the welfare of the child. While some might argue that a poverty-stricken child has at least some chance to survive while an aborted child doesn't, in my view that's a fairly short-term view. An aborted child now can mean a healthy and happy child in a safe and caring environment 5 or 10 years from now, where otherwise a single mother might never have gotten to the point where they could offer that, while struggling to support the child they already have.

Meh, things get vague when you're talking potentials rather than definites. I'm low on time now so I might add more later, didn't really express all that I was intending to.

[Neraphym]

If you can't decide on a coherent point at which an embryo/fetus/baby changes from being a thing to being a person, then neither can you make value statements about abortion not being a bad thing.

I can decide on what the point is, I just lack the appropriate knowledge of our anatomy to know when it has reached this point. Additionally, I would assume that this point would probably occur at different times in different fetuses, so a sharp line cannot be drawn in acceptable abortion times after conception. I belief my position to be clear and concise in principle, though inapplicable in practice for the above reason. For that, it is necessary to use the dreaded semi-arbitrary line that our societies use so much.

Nothing occurs that makes 18 year olds decent voters on their 18th birthday. Nothing occurs that makes people able to better imbibe alcohol on their 21st birthday. Nothing occurs to make us better able to drive on our 16th birthday. These things are arbitrary lines, meant to cut off as best they can, a portion of the population that is unable to do something well from the portion that is. If such a division is necessary, an arbitrary line must be drawn. This line will be just in most cases, though there will be many cases where it is not just.

I believe abortion will require just such a line. Birth is an easy, and somewhat appropriate place to draw the line, even though the line probably extends too far into the period where a child has a developed nervous system. I find such a line acceptable. A better option would be to take a statistical analysis of when the average baby develops the nervous system, and draw a line two standard deviations from the left.

Also, I would like to point out that I think I do have a logical and coherent reason for being pro-choice, I just lack one for being a carnivore.

[Goto]

But by putting that concrete line where you potentially would want to, it would seem you're illogically prizing underdeveloped babies over far more complex animals which you're still willing to kill (albeit painlessly if possible). If not for the potential of what they could become, I can't see any reason for that to be. On that point, why should the development of a nervous system be a turning point if the plan is to kill them in a painless manner? It seems as arbitrary as any other choice, which is why I maintain that it is perhaps not a logically coherent way to go about the issue. Perhaps abortion should be legal until the baby develops fingernails.

I do agree that any set of rules dictating abortion probably will boil down to an arbitrary line, simply because the issue is not clear-cut. We still have such a murky definition of life that our chances of coming up with a non-arbitrary way of telling when non-sentient life becomes aware are not high. Even disregarding the fact that different fetuses are going to grow at slightly different rates, as you pointed out.

[Zziggywolf5]

Slightly Off-Topic: I just wanted to point out how science has confused the very idea of "life" and, by extension, "alive." We have alive, dead, brain dead, comatose, "was dead, but revived", asleep, unconscious, terminally ill, and thing like viruses (I couldn't think of an adjective).