Respectful disagreement is always welcomed in my comments because it gives readers something new to think about - thanks for your kind words and for rocking up to dissent to my world view. Your views are compelling and interesting - and I don't think they're wrong, I just disagree with them and that's exactly how a democracy should function.

My views on this matter are quite complicated and they are two fold - the first is the sovereign right of the individual to be as free from State interference as possible. In this instance, the individual would be the mother... the fetus is not an individual. If the State could find some way of separating the foetus from the mother and growing it in a embryonic sack (I'd suggest this isn't far off technologically) then we have a different question and I would not support abortion in favour of pregnancy displacement.

My second issue is the hands off approach that the US has with it's citizens after they are born. The country hasn't signed up to the UN Rights of the Child, there is very little in the way of social security, free health care, free nursery care - I don't believe that foetuses have achieved 'personhood' as I think happens as a result of parental input after birth occurs. A newborn child evokes love (as happened with you) in well adjusted parents who have the psychological and physical capacity to cope. Take away that capacity and you are condemning a child and future adult to a life of poor mental health and poor outcomes. The US does not have enough adoptive or foster parents - and seems unwilling or unable to embrace the sort of soft socialism that would increase life chances and choices for some of its future citizens.

It's a complicated discussion and one that is fraught with good points on both sides - I don't think there is likely to be an answer as the morality underpinning the question is often due to deeply held beliefs that are at the core of what it means to be us..