...is it possible to govern the reasons people have for aborting the pregnancy?

Can you make abortions for one reason illegal, but abortions for other reasons perfectly okay?

I should think this would make most pro-choice supporters a bit concerned.

Being pro-choice is just what it says; pro-choice. The women gets to make the choice. END OF STORY.

As soon as there are valid \ invalid reason than one no longer has choice.

I also don't see how the reason really matters; To those where abortion is murder there can be no 'good reasons' for killing the 'baby'.

To those where an abortion is just removing 'cells' no 'good reason' is requried because, well, it is just cells!

The above is why I'm pro-choice. It is up to the women to decide these complex questions herself and decide how what action is 'right' for her.

Government can have competing demands, and if something is of sufficient governmental interest, even rights can be abridged. I don't think it is necessarily true that denying sex based abortions would be a significant impact on the right to choose. Government could, for example, decide that the impact of a significant gender disparity is sufficiently destabilizing and detrimental that sex testing is banned. This does not deny the right to abortion: it simply denies the right to test for sex. The parents can still abort, just without the knowledge of the sex of the baby.

They could do that, clown, but it would greatly undermine the pro-choice argument, which is based largely on the idea that a woman has ultimate sovereignty over her womb.

I disagree with jazzguitarman on abortion, but respect and agree with his intellectual honesty.

If, as he believes, abortion is no more than elective surgery, no motive can be used to refuse it.

If, as I believe, abortion is homicide, no motive can make it any "more" evil than it already is.

I don't understand the writers here, including Mr. Saletan, who want it both ways: abortion is elective surgery and a choice, unless the motive behind the choice offends their sensibilities.

She may have sovereignty with regard to her womb, but she does not have the right to genetic testing. I think that is a quantum leap from whether she has a right to decide whether to be pregnant. Congress can and does regulate all kinds of medical procedures, and bans many that some people consider helpful (ie medical MJ). Congress can do so for policy reasons.

Can a pregnant woman claim that she has a right to smoke pot because she believes it will help her pregnancy, or help determine sex, or even cause a spontaneous abortion? No, because despite having the right to choose whether to terminate, the emanations and penumbra of privacy does not extend that far: Congress can ban pot for reasons of its own.

Similarly, sex determination can be banned. I think it would require a fairly high standard for governmental interest, but if we were facing a crisis like China, I am sure it would meet that standard.

easy example: when a pregnancy is endangering the health of the mother....

I said that the women has to decide. PERIOD.

What I believe doesn't matter. PERIOD.

Abortion may very well be homicide or an elective surgery but that doesn't change my position (or life may or may not begin at some XYZ point). I'm still pro-choice. Again, it is up to each women to decide just what an abortion 'means' or represents.

So if I decide that life doesn't begin until a person actually can understand language -- say a year old -- if I then off my 6-month-old, I'm exercising my own personal choice, and the law has no regard to me, right?

You logic is really bogus and is is SOOO clear.

You use the term 'my 6 month-old'. Well WHY is this person '6 months old'????? Because THAT is when it was BORN..

You see there is already a LEGALLY defined state of being and THAT is being BORN. You see, one gets a birth date and everything. Even YOU understood this (since you used the term '6 month old').

So before BORN, the women has choice, after BORN, the law protects the person (and you know why, because they are NOW A PERSON!!!).

Simple logic isn't it.

That may be the law, but it's terribly unfortunate that it is the law. What about coming out of your mother's womb makes you so much more of a person? The fact that you're now breathing your own oxygen instead of depending on hers? I guess on that line of argument, Siamese twins are less human because they depend on each other. What if you had one Siamese twin who could live without his twin, but the twin can't live without him, and he decides, I'm tired of having this parasitic twin living off of me. Sure, he's just as conscious as I am, but he depends on me to live, so he's less of a person, and therefore, I have the right to dismember him. I don't think we'd be okay with that. So it can't be that being a parasite, in and of itself, means you're not a person. In fact, even if the parasite had the mental capacities of a newborn, I don't think it would be okay to kill it. So perhaps there's something else magical about coming out of the womb that confers personhood on a baby? If so, what might that be?

"The above is why I'm pro-choice. It is up to the women to decide these complex questions herself and decide how what action is 'right' for her."

too bad all these brave/independent women didn't go around demanding child support. too bad a man can't demand they get an abortion if they didn't want the responsibility.

just a double standard i guess. murder a women who is pregnant and you can get charged with two counts of murder.

the old double standards again.

stop blaming women like we're all running around looking for baby daddy's to steal money from. PUH LEEZ. whenever people make statements like this, they are projecting some personal experience on the face of women everywhere. i'm not going to feel any sorrier for men who don't take precautions than i do for women. since men have been the main denizens in the scientific community for generations, you tell me why male contraceptive methods haven't been more research. answer is that men typically consider pregnancy a "woman's problem", and until that mindset changes, i have no sympathy for you.

no the court system is not equitable when it comes to child rearing issues and parental responsibilities. but the reason for this is because not so long ago we lived in a society where men were supposed to "take care" of women. funny how quickly many of you hopped from complaining about women not needing men anymore to trying to shirk any responsibility and/or consideration for women at all. at least partly the child support idea came from the above mindset that while the father may have contributed to making the baby, many of them saw it as the woman's issue to deal with. another reason why many women resent the fact that men feel they should have any say on this. but these are all sweeping generalizations.

'no the court system is not equitable when it comes to child rearing issues and parental responsibilities. but the reason for this is because not so long ago we lived in a society where men were supposed to "take care" of women.'

bullshit. we come from a society where women cared for the children and didn't going around sucking the brains out of them when they thought the child may be an inconvenience.

A 6-month-old baby is legally a person. If you don't want the child anymore, you can give it up. If you are 10 weeks pregnant and you do not want to be pregnant, you can't take the fetus out and give it to someone else. This is the key difference. The right to choice is a question of being able to make medical decisions, not a question of whether you want to have a child or not.