[this began as a comment on another blog, but it got so long I thought I'd just stick it here. My thoughts on this topic aren't (and could hardly be) original, and are covered far more eloquently and intelligently in other, more eloquent, more intelligent blogs]
So, according to the Sunday Times yesterday, the Tories intend to turn abortion into a 'keystone issue' for this year's election. My first question would be: why? Surely anyone who is against abortion will already be voting conservative*, so politicizing it as an issue will just drive otherwise conservative-voting women away from the party? **
Conservative thought (in the US predominantly but increasingly over here as Tories seem to think that Republicans are on to a vote-winner) seems to take the same tack towards abortion it does towards sex education- that is, if you stop providing teenagers with education and contraception, they'll stop having sex and getting pregnant.
This is manifestly not the case. If you remove the choice of women to have abortions in a sterile, safe environment, followed up with counselling, it will simply force women to have abortions in unsterile, unsafe, life-threatening ways. Beyond that, it'll force women to have children that they don't want, which kind of ruins two lives, instead of just the one.
I actually quite enjoy the debate side of abortion, because unlike a lot of political issues, it actually begins to get mildly philosophical. In how many other political arguments do you get to use the word 'ensoulment'?
Look, I don't know when conciousness begins, and I doubt anyone does, or even if there's a way to quantify it (I swear I've met several adults, and entire Irish rugby team infact, who are wholly un-self-aware). Does it actually matter? I suppose there's a certain horror in the thought that, moments after baby Jesus' first thoughts: "Hey! I think, therefore I am. These are my fingers. This is what a womb looks like. Hey what the...." CRACK! THUMP! WOOSH! You're dead! but beyond that, it's pretty hard to deny that abortion is, by definition, terminating a life that, whether you do it to a bunch of blastocytes, a mildly-developed fetus, or a full-term infant that you've delivered and then chucked in the trash***, would have gone on to become a properly alive human being, had you not interceded. Pro-choice people like myself need to stop dancing around the whole 'oh well it's alive at 20 weeks but not at 19 weeks' thing, as though that is the issue at hand. It's not.
The issue at hand is this: If you want to believe that abortion is murder and if you'll do it you'll go to hell, that's cool in the gang. No-one's out to take that away from you. Have your baby. Run organisations that try to support young mothers and convince then that they don't have to abort their baby. Fight your battle, I applaud that. But fight it in the moral arena, not the legal one. Don't force your decision on to others who may not believe as you do. No-one (particularly not any man, and particularly not any pastor with a corrected cleft palate) has the right to force a woman what to do with her body, or anything inside of it. You have the right to talk to them, show them the 3D images of the baby laughing, put the fear o' God's wrath into them if you please, but the moment you force, you're exercising violence.
Our legal system, much to the chagrin of Michael Howard, massively places the burden of proof on the accuser, based on the long-held understanding that the crime of taking away someone's freedom for something they didn't do is so heinous, that it's worse than murder. Abortion is, by one definition (to put an end to), murder of a kind, and it's tragic and awful and I wish it didn't have to happen. But forcing someone to bear a child they do not want, stripping away the freedom to control their own bodies, is a greater crime, in my belief, even than that.
d
*Oh, by the way, I love the new Conservative poster they've got out. The slogan is: "How would you feel if your daughter was raped by a criminal out on early release?" Nice one. Michael Howard also proposed repealing the human rights act this weekend. Classy.
** The Archbishop of Canterbury did make the point that Catholics, typically a strong Labour-voting core group, feel strongly about abortion, so this could be a vote swinger. I'm a Catholic, and we're largely too inebriated to let such things swing our votes.
*** There's been a lot of controversy recently about the possibility of stem-cell research to create 'organ-babies'- basically humans with no upper-brain-functions, that can be harvested for organs. This seems like a lot of work- can't they just skip the research phase, deliver a regular baby, lobotomize it, then grow the body for harvesting?
This is a 
You might find Gerts musings on this issue interesting.
Thank you thank you thank you.
Finally someone else has managed to nail MY thoughts on the matter perfectly. I've not managed to do that myself.
In short I agree, keep the law out of this. It's a choice and the law will only make what is a very VERY emotional and emotive issue into one of black and white decisions.
Life is a shade of grey.
For the record, I think you rate rather highly for both intelligence and eloquence.
One of the most disheartening side-effects of contemporary party-politics is the simplifcation of complex debates into the good (vote for us) vs the bad (don't vote for them). This an inevitable consequence of participating in a democracy that has failed to teach the majority of its particpiants the power of critcal thought. I reckon.
If only a politician would stand up and say, 'my party belives that this subject needs detailed debate not a headline-grabbing knee-jerk over-reaction' or 'hang on, this shouldn't be a party political issue' or quite simply 'Mr Howard, you're a total c*nt', I would happily be able to vote for them rather than my neccessary current practice of basing my voting preferences on the lesser of all the available evils . . .