Agreed with Jeordam here. There is only one way to treat all fairly in this matter without prejudice and that's to define life as beginning at conception. Every other definition is dealing in arbitrary shades of gray.

And I'm not an ardent pro-lifer. It's just logical. This isn't even a top issue for me.

As I mentioned in a completely different political topic, you're talking here about what a person has the right to do. You have a right to own a gun, & drive a car, but as you'll note in those two examples, all of your rights bare with them an amount of responsibility. In the case of abortion, you do have the right to have sex, but again that comes with responsibility to yourself and to the person you conceive, if in fact you do. But getting an abortion does not bare with it any responsibility. It relieves you of responsibility, and therefore by a pretty simple definition, it is not a right.

For those who may not be aware, the Roe vs. Wade decision did not establish abortion as being legal. It merely states that a woman's right to privacy prevents others from knowing she had one. By that definition I should be allowed to murder people so long as I do it in private. That's simply what the opinions in that case state.

Now I do make exceptions. If you were raped, then you were put under the responsibility of carrying a baby under no will of your own and I personally don't hold you responsible for carrying the child to term. If the baby threatens the mothers life, I place higher value on the mother. If your baby has severe deformities, I honestly think it's acceptable to abort, but in all of those cases I feel it must be done within the first tri-mester.