If you believe in God and also believe that only God can give and take away life then you probably believe that a woman does not have the right to decide the fate of their unborn child. You would be anti-abortion and anti-women's rights.

If you do not believe in God at all then it is only a matter of deciding when abortion is appropriate. You would be pro-abortion and pro-women's rights. But you would apply rules to abortion so it doesn't get out of hand in our society.

For example, if a baby's body is sticking half way out of the mothers body during the birthing process, head first, is it appropriate to abort it and kill it? If the baby is in the first trimester of the growth process and still remains in the womb, should you be able to abort it and kill it?

These are two extreme conditions that a woman may find herself in during her painful contemplation as to whether or not to have an abortion - the various stages of the childs life both within and without the womb.

If this issue is truely a religious one, and since no one really knows for sure anything about God, then like all religious issues it should remain a private one between the religious person and their God. And the government should not pass any laws regarding it.

But when you think about the child that is half way outside the mother's body during the birthing process, whether it is religious or not, it is hard to say that it should be okay to kill it. Most people would think that at this point this is a living, breathing human being that has already come into this world.

So at what stage of the birthing process should abortion be allowed? My oppinion has always been that society should set a standard for defining permissable abortion. I would suggest that we have a law that says that if three independant doctors (not affiliated with each other in any way) should examine the patient and if two or more of them decide that if the child were pulled out of the mother's body at the time of the examination and the child could live on it's own (without any assistance from resperators or incubators) for more than one day it should be considered a human being that can not be aborted or killed.

You might say why such a stipulation? Why not two days? Why not five doctor's? I say simply that you must resolve this issue somehow and do it in such a way as to establish an acceptable benchmark for our society to adhere to.

For if it is a personal issue, the mother is going to do what she feels is best for her and her baby anyway! Either inside the law or outside the law!

And when she does do what she thinks is best, society needs some way of measuring and judging her actions as to whether they are acceptable or not.