I was born in the early sixties before Roe v. Wade. When my mother got pregnant, my parents were unmarried, but they got married and I was born 8 months later. On the whole, I've had a wonderful life and I'm so grateful that I had a chance to experience it. I can't help thinking that if my mother had had an abortion, she would have done a terrible thing to me. She would have cut my life short--so short, in fact, that I wouldn't have ever had a chance to experience anything at all! If murder is bad because it denies a good life to a person in the future, then isn't abortion even worse?

When considering abortion, the Roman Catholic Church uses the principle of double effect in order to allow abortion on the grounds that their primary intention was to save the life of the mother, e.g. in an ectopic pregnancy. However, surely the doctors (or whoever) know that the embryo will be aborted as a consequence of their action so how is the principal of double effect justified?

How many cells does a 6-week-old human fetus have? And how many cells does a fully developed human adult have? Comparatively, how many cells does a 6-week-old chimpanzee fetus have? And how many cells does a fully developed chimpanzee have? I am interested because I want to see if the abortion debate could be drawn along the lines of personhood relative to number of cells. Do you think this is a plausible way to think about the debate? Also, where could I find more information about this topic? Thank you, Alexander

Given the claim by some on the pro-life side of the abortion debate that 'life is sacred', how might we go about assessing the value of different lives in a situation in which one is likely to be negatively affected (perhaps fatally) by the birth of another?

How useful is Kantian ethics when discussing an issue like abortion? Is it easily applicable in real life situations and does it leave any room for meaningful discussion on the issue?

Is there a moral difference between killing a newly born baby and having an abortion? To be consistent, do we have to say either abortion/infanticide is morally wrong OR that abortion/killing a newborn can be morally permitted if the circumstances are right?

If a person claims to be both pro-life and pro-choice regarding the abortion controversy, is that person necessarily practicing relativistic moralism? The person in question claims to believe that abortion is morally wrong. However, he also claims that despite his personal beliefs he believes it is a choice each woman should be allowed to make.

I have read many philosophic essays pertaining to applied ethics in the abstract, and many political essays dealing with specific ethical questions. There always seems to be a gap between the level at which the former leaves the problem and the latter takes it up. Why is this? How can this gap be bridged? For example, I (like most rational people I think) am bothered about the ethical issues involved in the question of abortion. Yet I have never seen a systematic treatment of the question beginning with philosophical principles? Does such a treatment exist? If not, why not? If so, why does it not enter more into the public debate? Thanks.