Now and then, get an interesting hit on my blog, like one of this post from Charles Darwin University, Australia. I'm glad, since it was one of my better posts; a taste:
An argument was made that life in prison was crueler than execution because the former consists of spending life in a hellhole. Since it is equitable to execute those sentenced for intentional murder, this suggests that capital punishment is more humane than such an alternative. ... This has surface appeal, but is wrongheaded on many counts.
The author of the third book added to my side panel, the abortion one, also has an Australian connection. It was an interesting book that argued that choosing an abortion is ultimately understood by the woman as a moral choice of what it means to be a good mother. The people she interviewed, on both sides, did find her mentor's (Peter Singer) hypothetical solution satisfactory on this front -- an artificial womb. It would in effect be trusting something that was the woman's responsibility, even if it was just to stop the process by an abortion.
I found the short book a bit to reductionist ("the" bottom line was argued to be this basic question, when a person's stance on abortion is a combination of various things), but the basic point is improtant. That is, we cannot just focus on legal matters, and even the issue of "viability" will not solve matters, especially in the future. Ultimately, an important moral question is at stake, and the alleged "value voters" anti-abortion choice side has no monopoly. To quote Justice Douglas' pre-Roe opinion on the point:
"There remains the moral issue of abortion as murder. We submit that this is insoluble, a matter of religious philosophy and religious principle, and not a matter of fact. We suggest that those who believe abortion is murder need not avail themselves of it. On the other hand, we do not believe that such conviction should limit the freedom of those not bound by identical religious conviction. Although the moral issue hangs like a threatening cloud over any open discussion of abortion, the moral issues are not all one-sided. The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson stated the other side well when he suggested that 'The most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit.' There can be nothing more destructive to a child's spirit than being unwanted, and there are few things more disruptive to a woman's spirit than being forced without love or need into motherhood."
The full title is a bit misleading: The Abortion Myth: Feminism, Morality, and the Hard Choices Women Make by Leslie Cannold. But, especially if you want to skip the introduction and appendix stuff, it's a good quick examination of the subject -- under 140 pages. Quotes from real people (at first, I thought there would be more, but there is also much analysis) from both sides also adds to the mix. Finally, interesting perspective of the British and Australian situation, which at least in 2000 left (and seems to still appear to leave) much more to the doctor's discretion.*
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* The author notes that dislike of doing the messy work of abortions, not moral disapproval alone, seems to be a major reason why many health care providers refuse to do second trimester abortions. She notes that it is in effect their duty to provide health care, even if they rather not. Also, "health" here is understood to include such things as affect on the family or being able as a whole to handle another child.