I think I'm going to make myself unpopular now.

In the first trimester, the central nervous system as such doesn't exist yet (isolated pieces do). Synapses don't form until about 20 weeks in. The capacity to feel anything, even pain, is just physically not there yet. The working nervous system at that point is significantly less complex than that of a common house fly, which humans kill with impunity. Calling first trimester abortion murder just doesn't make sense, because really, what are you killing?

Some say that life begins at conception. What they don't account for is that a majority of fertilized eggs never even make it to the second trimester. The fertilized egg may not attach itself correctly - this is absolutely undetectable by a woman, because it all just looks like her regular period. Now even if the egg does attach correctly, roughly 20% of those don't hold on through the first trimester either, and in 70% of the circumstances, the woman never notices except maybe an irregularity in her period that could just as well have been caused by regular ups and downs in the average life of an adult. If life truly begins at conception, then shouldn't there be funerals and obituaries all the time about these unknown lives that are constantly being lost?

Some say that abortion should be illegal except in cases of rape or incest. That logic makes no sense. If abortion is a bad thing (murder!), then it's bad to do a bad thing to an embryo or a fetus, but if that potential baby's very existence is owed to another bad thing, through no fault of its own, it's okay to do a bad thing to it? The circumstances of conception really should be irrelevant. A rape baby, a drunk-one-night-stand baby, and a consensual marriage baby in the same circumstances all have the same chances of being president, a criminal, a pastor, an unemployed drunk, or anything else later in life.

Finally, instead of having the debate about abortion, why not have the debate about education instead? Adolescents need to learn about this, because they will be fucking if you like it or not. Exemption on religious grounds isn't an excuse not to educate them, because that exemption is invariably based on the parent's views and not the child's views. Also, educate boys and girls together, not in separate classes as so many places do. It's the joint responsibility of all parties involved in a sexual encounter to make sure that things such as infections and pregnancy are talked about and dealt with.

Educate, educate, educate, and don't make it a taboo topic! Talking about sex doesn't encourage it, and statistics prove it: Countries that educate earlier and invigoratingly have less teenage pregnancies and unwanted pregnancies in general. And if you think abortion is icky (which I can understand), then what better way to work against it than to reduce its necessity?