"Despite that, though, I'm not, and you shouldn't, be willing to compare the victims of abortion with the victims of execution."
I don't know... to me, it's murder with execution. We're taking a thinking person's life. Whereas, with a fetus, it's not a thinking person. A fetus doesn't have any ideas or curiosity or anything like that. They may have brain activity, but I think that's probably just synaptic response, nothing more than instincts or nothing more comparable than a hard drive starting up when you turn a computer on. A baby doesn't either until some time after it's birth. So it's difficult for me to rationalize banning something that I don't feel is significant. Partial-birth abortions are rather disgusting, and from a doctor's point of view, I can't imagine it's a pleasant procedure. And, despite my point of view on newborn babies, whether that baby is a thinking being is still something for debate. It's not like I've done exhaustive reading on the subject.
Something I've always felt is that although we shouldn't ban abortion procedures, I think we ought to encourage adoption more. One of the biggest complaints about adoption, though, is that agencies are very lacking in compassion and that the children are often abused. It's my understanding that executions cost quite a bit of money, what with appeals and all that. If we stop (not ban) executions, we could use all of that excess money to maybe reform adoption. I think it's a much better option than abortion.
All in all, I think what bothers me is that if we can't interfere with the birthing process I don't think we should be able to interfere with the death process. If we can't kill things which are questionably human beings then we can't kill things which are human beings which are questionably guilty.
That's just me, though. I can see the gravity of the convicted killer/rapist versus the newborn child and I understand it perfectly, I just don't fully agree with it.
I wonder how those robots from Asimov's novels would feel? Heh. Are you home yet, Stone man?
Knaa'mean?