It’s always a complex and emotional debate. It could be said that the pro-lifers trumped it years ago by pointing out the many pro-choice people who campaign against the death penalty for hardened murderers and yet have no qualms about killing the unborn.

And there is something a bit too convenient about the insistence on the abortion “rights” of women. Society at large also has rights in this debate since it is the obliteration of future generations we are talking about. And with the term at which abortions are allowed always on the upward curve, how far are we from killing infants at birth if they are found “undesirable” for whatever reason?

And with the struggle to make euthanasia acceptable, how far are we from an unthinkable result of these two trends from opposite ends of the spectrum of life meeting in the middle?

But requiring a rape or incest victim to carry her pregnancy to term is a step way too far. I could be wrong here (and not keen on Googling at the moment) but I believe even the Calvinist apartheid regime in SA made an exception in cases like that and in cases of mentally-handicapped rape victims and allowed abortion.

One may disagree with the extreme beliefs and tactics of some of the pro-lifers, but there should be a degree of understanding for their repugnance of abortion.

Kahlil Gibran, the great Lebanese-Christian poet had this to add to the debate, though the subject was not specifically abortion:

Your children are not your children; they are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.