E.N's Thoughts on Abortion

Ahh.. Another controversial topic.

I know some of you women out there might hate me for this, but hey, my thoughts are my thoughts and your thoughts are yours.

Now there are many ways I could approach this...
I could go all bible-thumping or curse or shame you for not believing what I believe. But that's neither effective nor logical nor nice, in general. I could present you with skewed facts that only support my beliefs, but that's invalid.

So, here are some facts that I've found on the internet, that seemed to have a good source.

WORLDWIDE
Number of abortions per year:
Approximately 42 Million

Number of abortions per day:
Approximately 115,000

Where abortions occur:
83% of all abortions are obtained in developing countries and 17% occur in developed countries.

UNITED STATES
Number of abortions per year:
1.37 Million (1996)

Number of abortions per day:
Approximately 3,700

Who's having abortions (age)?
52% of women obtaining abortions in the U.S. are younger than 25: Women aged 20-24 obtain 32% of all abortions; Teenagers obtain 20% and girls under 15 account for 1.2%.

Who's having abortions (race)?
While white women obtain 60% of all abortions, their abortion rate is well below that of minority women. Black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are roughly 2 times as likely.

Who's having abortions (marital status)?
64.4% of all abortions are performed on never-married women; Married women account for 18.4% of all abortions and divorced women obtain 9.4%.

Who's having abortions (religion)?
Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as "Born-again/Evangelical".

Who's having abortions (income)?
Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%; Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%.

Why women have abortions:
1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest, 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).

At what gestational ages are abortions performed:
52% of all abortions occur before the 9th week of pregnancy, 25% happen between the 9th & 10th week,12% happen between the 11th and 12th week,6% happen between the 13th & 15th week,4% happen between the 16th & 20th week,and 1% of all abortions (16,450/yr.) happen after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Likelihood of abortion:
An estimated 43% of all women will have at least 1 abortion by the time they are 45 years old. 47% of all abortions are performed on women who have had at least one previous abortion.

Abortion coverage:
48% of all abortion facilities provide services after the 12th week of pregnancy. 9 in 10 managed care plans routinely cover abortion or provide limited coverage. About 14% of all abortions in the United States are paid for with public funds, virtually all of which are state funds. 16 states (CA, CT, HI, ED, IL, MA ,MD, MD, MN, MT, NJ,NM, NY, OR, VT, WA and WV) pay for abortions for some poor women.

Now the facts both astound me and scare me and make me mad.

...you can kind of guess where I stand on this now, can't you?

You could say I'm against it.

Now taking it from a human rights point of view and using general ethicality approach is easiest to convey because no religious factors/opinions are involved and thus no "your religion is incorrect, therefore your argument is invalid" responses will come up.

I feel like every human being has the right to get a chance at life, let's start at that.

But from when/where does life begin?
I don't think it's up to us to decide. I don't think there is a specific point in time or a cutoff date where you could say, "now he/she is a human" and every point before that is when it is an "it" and not a person.
So with this non-specification on life,

how is one supposed to know when it is okay to abort a child?
My answer to that would be we don't, so never. Since we can't set specific rules on what defines "alive" or "human", we can't decide what to do take away from it.

But, Experienced Novice, what if the child is conceived under cases such as in incest or rape?
Here is where things get complicated because, I can't speak from Experience, as I have never had sexual relations with anyone before. If I knew what I was like to be raped, realistically speaking, my opinion would likely somewhat change from what it is now. But my opinion now is... I think it would still be wrong to abort the baby either way. Yes, yes, I understand that it's a lot of pain and sacrifice for a woman to go through. But to be honest, she's likely already going to be emotionally/mentally scarred either way. Why kill the child, who had no say and no fault in this? She could go through with the birth and put it up for adoption, giving it a chance at life; I doubt there is as much regret from letting something go and giving it a chance at a good future than being the one who chooses to deny it a chance at life and any future at all right then and there. In cases of incest, it still deserves a chance, I think.

But what if the baby has a small chance of living or the woman's life is at risk?
Oooh. This one's a toughie. I still argue against myself on this one. Every life is valuable....

There is definitely more to this and I have a lot more to say... hopefully I can continue later or with a part 2 to this.