I really take issue with equating an actualized human (the boy) with an unrealized would-be human (the embryo) parasitically existing within a female body, an actualized human.
Furthermore…though I find second and third term pregnancy abortions repulsive, I still value my physical autonomy to the extent that if I wanted to rip a tumor, parasite or another “dis-ease” out of my body, in order to save my life (physical, mental, or financial…the reason really doesn’t matter), that I will, and no other can force me otherwise.
Also, it takes sperm to create a pregnancy; so, why not start policing those males whose sexual penetration equally contributed to a pregnancy which the female wishes to abort. No sperm, no abortion…
Furthermore, it is rather illogical to purport an ability to retain first a general duty to preserve one’s own life, and at the same precise moment, have a duty to relinquish your life, on all accounts breaching that duty, in order to perform a “higher” duty of self sacrifice.
I wonder also, if it has occurred to anyone that this highest act of sacrifice expressed as such from the Queen’s Bench, was spoken of as a male prerogative, a duty bestowed upon men which increases their morality. By contrast, the women and children must have been either morally depraved or simply out of morality’s scope as only things to protect by the ones who were able to engage the mystical morality.
Either way, it’s just an interesting side note:)