I suppose that my views on this topic are more conservative than most people's these days, though they are much more liberal than the mainstream opinion of a few generations ago. Despite many arguments having been made both for and against, I have never really heard a compelling argument for either side. It is the vexed subject of abortion.
 
One argument commonly raised in support is that the child would live an unhappy and often poverty-stricken life if it were born. This may well be true, but a consistent position would be to oppose funding for suicide prevention groups, and to actively encourage suicide for those who are poor and unhappy - which would be patently ridiculous. Yet the only differences in these situations are that in the case of abortion it is suspected that the foetus will have an unhappy life, whereas with suicide the person knows for certain that his life is unhappy, and that with abortion it is someone else making the decision for the person (which, if nothing else, fits in with the concept of the nanny state in which we currently live) and with suicide it is the person's own decision.
 
The welfare state that we have at present provides support to a lot of people. Although growing up in one of Australasia's poorer families would be very little fun, it would be infinitely superior to the same experience in virtually any other country. It's a very long time since anyone starved here.
 
The other popularly used argument is that it is 'every woman's right to choose'. This is true - in practice, if not in law - but the question is whether it should be, not whether it is. It is every woman's right to use the contraceptive or morning after pill, to make her partner wear a condom or to not have sex in the first place. It is not, however, her right to abandon her children once they are born, and it is not a father's right (and nor should it be) to shirk his responsibilities by abandoning the mother and refusing to pay child support. There are only some things about which we have the right to choose, and making such a unilateral decision on behalf of another seems to be the ultimate example of the modern tendency to put ourselves before others.
 
Women who have had abortions are more likely to suffer mental illness in subsequent years. This is true, but as far as I can tell the implication that the abortion was responsible for this has never been questioned: the woman may have suffered even if she had given birth or not fallen pregnant in the first place. What caused her to fall pregnant in the first place - beyond the obvious - may have been unhappiness, or insecurity, or carelessness, or depression. One of these four is a mental illness and two others are possible early symptoms of mental illness. So it's hardly surpristing that those who have had abortions are subsequently clinically depressed.
 
There is such a huge outcry whenever a child is deliberately killed twelve months after conception and so little when it is deliberately killed four months after conception. And this brings me to the final point often made in favour of abortion - essentially, that a foetus is not yet a person. This is sometimes extended to say that it is totally dependent on the mother, so it is the mother's choice. There are two arguments against this.
 
Firstly, I, and I suspect most other people, would see the murder of a pregnant woman as being worse than an ordinary murder, because the unborn baby is lost as well. Similarly, if someone were to poison a woman in such a way that she was physically unharmed but her unborn baby died, this would be a matter for the courts. But if we mourn the loss of this unborn baby when killed at the behest of someone else, why not mourn it when killed at the behest of the mother?
 
Secondly, advances in medical science mean that a foetus is viable without its mother at an earlier and earlier age. When, as seems inevitable, a baby delivered at twenty weeks or earlier can survive on its own will those in favour of abortion oppose it in such cases?
 
The final argument for abortion is that if it were men who needed abortions they would have been legal for centuries - possibly, but two wrongs do not make a right, and this doesn't help establish whether it is right for anyone (female or, hypothetically, male) to have an abortion.
 
That said, for all the flaws I find in the pro-abortion argument, I find myself not anti abortion. That's because the question has to be asked: who does it benefit? Certainly it benefits the mother, but given that she's at least partially responsible for her own fate this argument is of dubious merit. But it does benefit society as a whole.
 
Women who have abortions are unlikely to be able to be great parents for their kids. This can be because they are too young, too poor, too immature or too busy raising other children, or because their partner has left them. In other words, the reason that they want an abortion is the same reason that they would be a poor parent. Yes, many mothers with these characteristics do a fine job of parenting. But they are more likely than others to do a bad job.
 
Bad parents do not raise good kids. Their children will be trouble makers at school, will be less likely to succeed in education and will be more likely to commit crimes. This may sound like nothing more than rhetoric. But there is strong evidence to support it. In the United States, there was a noticeable decrease in crime rates in the mid 1990s. Many possible reasons have been given for this. The only one that cannot be explained away is that this was 20 years after American abortion laws were loosened considerably, allowing more women than previously the chance to have abortions. Late teens and early 20s, of course, are the most likely time for people, particularly men, to commit criminal acts.
 
The other argument - callous, inhumane, but appealing nonetheless - is that the fewer people there are, the fewer people there are to pollute the planet. The world is rapidly approaching overpopulation, and anything that can be done to reduce the number of people on it should be welcomed.
 
This is a debate that is often very emotional. This is understandable - women's rights and the infants' right to life are both important issues. Emotion turns very easily into emotiveness, and thence to hysteria. Both sides are prepared to use trumped up arguments to argue their cases.
 
When emotion comes in, the phrases 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice' are often used. I personally think that both life and choice are excellent things, and so am both pro-life and pro-choice. I can even say both of these without opining on abortion. We hear of individual stories, and it's almost guaranteed that, whatever you're on, and whichever bizarre true story you're looking for, there will be someone out there living it. We have irrational feminists on one side and irrational Christians on the other (which not to say that all Christians or feminists are irrational, nor that only these people debate the issue emotively).
 
But what I would hate to see more than anything else is people falling silent because their views were unpopular and they feared the reaction of others. It does affect all of us, if only indirectly, and so everyone should be heard and nobody should be pilloried for their views.