I don’t know why the abortion debate is so polarised. To be honest, I see merit in both sides of the argument, and my position is somewhere in between.

My perspective is that the question of “personhood” and when a fetus can be considered a “person” is more relevant than whether it contains human DNA or not. The question of “personhood” is not a moral question, but a rather social one. When do we consider a fetus having the rights we designate to “people”? Is it when it’s nothing but a small clump of cells, with no awareness and no ability to survive on its own? Doesn’t make any more sense to me than to designate a tumor a person, because it has the same level of cognition at that stage.

So where do we classify it as a “person”?

The question of consciousness is relevant because we can draw a parallel between brain dead human bodies kept alive on life support. These are human bodies which are “alive” in a physical sense but contain absolutely nothing of the person they once were. As a result I don’t believe it’s immoral to let them die. The “person” they were died before their bodies did.

At what point does a fetus become “conscious”? It’s impossible to pin-point where exactly it transitions to consciousness, but we can determine that it needs to have a brain, and that brain needs to be showing activity, in order to be conscious. This means immediately that “late term abortions” for genetic issues that severely affect the brain, such as the fetus developing without the frontal lobes, or without a skull, isn’t immoral under this view, because the fetus will never become conscious.

The other issue to consider is the agency of the woman, because you can consider the use of the uterus for the life support of a fetus as being equivalent to a temporary organ donation. Our society’s perception of organ donation is such that even if not donating an organ to someone would mean they die, you are under no obligation to donate that organ to them. Even dead bodies have that right (which I personally disagree with as I believe dead bodies are no longer people and no longer have rights). If society holds that view on organ donation, then it’s inconsistent to hold a different view on women’s “donation” of their uterus to support a fetus. Surely a woman has more right than a dead body?

As a result, I think that abortion should be legal until the point where a fetus could survive on its own (minimum 21–22 weeks) and after that it should be born alive and let take its chances surviving outside the womb. Later term abortions should be for instances where the fetus couldn’t possibly survive anyway, where the fetus’ brain is missing or so damaged it can never be conscious, and for situations where the woman would die if the fetus was carried to term.