I am Democrat but when it comes to Abortion, I am no fan of it. However I am pro-choice because I know some people will see my views entirely different from mine.

Can't say I expected this.

I consider abortion killing an unborn child. I'm against killing in general (war, death penalty, etc. etc.), therefore I am against abortion.

If you don't consider it a human being yet, then morally, the destruction of a "fetus" doesn't matter. If you consider it a yet-developed person, it suddenly gets a lot trickier.

Anyway, I just noticed the thread, so I figured I'd throw in my two cents.

I think the general consensus is that it's not a human, so that human right don't apply. At least from the pro-choice school of thought.

I'm pro choice.

First off, in such life and death situations, I think how much moral consideration you should give someone (or something) comes down to how affected it is by the decision, the capacity for feeling pain or happiness about that decision. As an example, you could morally consider to take someone who was a complete vegetable off life support. It's because someone who is that brain damaged lacks the capacity to reflect on or even care about that decision. However, you would probably not consider taking someone who was fully mentally and emotionally functional off life support.

When it comes to the yet-developed person point, for myself, I find it tricky to give a fetus the same moral protection as a healthy adult person because it isn't. Treating it as the person it could be is a fantasy scenario to me. You don't know what's going to happen to this fetus even if you don't abort so you're setting aside the parents wishes in order to morally protect a person who does not even exist yet.

Needless to say, in the question of abortions, I think it is better to make decisions based on the present than what could be.

Yeah I'm in agreement. The baseline human drive is to live, but that desire and drive only initiates with the functioning of the human brain. Without it, there is no desire or care either way so it is, as you said like a person in a vegetative state. To extend human rights to something that is not yet human just doesn't make much sense.

Being that I am 100% pro-choice I think it's up to the woman to decide whether it's human to her or not.

The implication is that if it's human, it should be entitled to human rights and no other man or woman should have a say in it. If it's not, then it's up to the woman to decide if she wants to keep it. Thats my opinion at least.

To some people, it's a clump of cells. To others, it's a human being. However, it should never take precedent over a grown woman. That's what people seem to be missing lately, what with the whole Savita thing in Ireland :( I think that if it's your body you're carrying it with, then you define what it is to you: parasite or child.