Would I rather a child spend his or her childhood feeling unwanted and unloved, or be terminated before ossification occurs? In that situation, I know what I'd want.
I find it rather presumtuous to make life-and-death decisions for another person based on our expectation of how good or bad their lives might be. And of course, ossification has nothing to do with it. If projected quality of life is a valid criterion for ending someone's like at the embryonic stage, it is just as valid when they are, say, three years old (aside from the sentience issue raised next). Putting a three year old to death could easily be done painlessly, at your local veterinary office.
Also, a woman is a sentient being....a sentient being with rights. An embryo (which is usually what is aborted...it only becomes a fetus after the eighth week) is not a sentient being with rights.
This presumes that sentience is a precondition for the possession of human rights, which is "begging the question" when it comes to abortion.
I believe that a woman's rights supercede those of the embryo.
So do I, just as any parent's rights supercede those of any minor child. However, those rights do not include killing with impunity.
In addition, women would seek abortions whether abortions were legal or not.
Men would commit rape whether it was legal or not. Irrelevant to public policy.
Also, sometimes the embryo or fetus survives the attempted abortion and is born disfigured and deformed and lives the rest of its life in pain. I don't think anyone should have to go through that.
My left arm has been paralyzed since birth. My wife was born with multiple congenital heart defects, including the virtual absence of a pulmonary artery, and several other problems, which still limit her abilities even after several surgeries. I suppose we should have been put out of our respective miseries back when we were too young to object. Sieg heil!
Anencephaly is a good example; it is the near-total absence of a brain and spinal cord. Proceeding with such a pregnancy unnecessarily puts the mother's life in danger, since the anencephalic child almost always dies days after being born...if it survives the pregnancy.
OK, but a child who is essentially brain-dead is quite different from CF:
Some couples may choose to abort a child with cystic fibrosis. You may think this is cruel, but as a child I had a babysitter with cystic fibrosis. She lived longer than her doctors thought she would...to the ripe old age of 23. Her life was a constant struggle with medications, hospital stays, infections, and watching her friends with C.F. die one after the other, knowing that she had the same disease and that it would kill her in the prime of life. I'd rather abort a baby than have it live that way. This girl was never happy.
Why didn't you kill her when you had the chance? Obviously one only has a right to live if they have a reasonable expection of being "happy." In the opinion of someone else, of course.
By the way, due to my wife's aforementioned health problems, we will be adopting rather than having children naturally. And we intend to accept children of any ethnicity.