You wrote:
"If we're going to keep abortion legal, and obviously we are, then the only appropriate people to make the call are the people who created the fetus."

Then you conspicuously omitted mentioning any rights of the putative father. As it stands today, the woman can: a) choose an abortion, no matter what the father wants, b) choose to have the child, no matter what the father wants, c) in either case, choose to notify the father of the existence/non-existence of the child, and d) in the extreme (and I admit, rare) case, not tell the father of the child for years until the father becomes rich, and then cash in with a paternity suit. If the woman chooses to have the child (case b above), she then has the ability to garnish a portion of the father's income, regardless of whether he wanted her to have the child or not.

In other words, the father's rights pretty much end at the point of ejaculation. The fetus's rights are non-existent until the moment it passes through the birth canal. The woman, on the other hand, has options and "rights" every step of the way. Sounds to me like some animals are more equal than others.

Kevin - while I appreciate the sentiment, at least in part that's because "some animals" bear a disproportionate share of the burden of both a pregnancy and a new-born (and thereafter) child.

Kevin,

This wasn't really about father's rights, and I deny any conspicuous omission of anything. I acknowledged that the creators of the fetus should have equal rights in the sentence you quoted and then I retreated to the real world where women generally make the final decision on account of the fetus being, you know, inside them.

I agree that within the rather severe limits of biology fathers should have exactly half the say. It's a pretty easy ethical question to answer: absent some sort of written pre-coitus contract to the contrary, either the mother or the father should be able to decide unilaterally that the baby be carried to conception, and that shouldn't affect either of their individual financial responsibilities to care for the child. But this utopian vision is not especially relevant in the real world, I'm afraid.

The fact that it's difficult to claerly mark the second a fetus deserves protection, taken to the extreme that you take it, can lead to the ridiculous conclusion that a blastocysm deserves (or does not deserve) the same protection as an overdue fetus.

The difficulty in placing a border does not - can not mean we should treat all unborn babies the same.

Why is a well developed baby that is a few weeks overdue deserve (the night before it's born) less protection than one that happens to be two months early?

I'm not suggesting that setting an obviously arbitrary limit is a perfect solution. But ignoring reality to the extent that you do surely can't be a good policy guide.

"The irony of hard-line abortion rights folk claiming that abortion is a medical procedure just like any other while fighting against mandatory parental consent, which is required for every medical procedure except abortion, has always struck me as especially stark.)"

That's hypocrisy, not irony. Aside from that, I generally agree with you, although Joe has a valid point.

While I agree 100% with the sentiment you express in your final sentence, I've got to say that Joe makes an excellent point, and I'd add the following: our laws are rife with arbitrary cutoffs of all sorts, though most of them are thankfully less fraught than this one. Just as there's no significant difference between a fetus at day 89 and the same fetus one day later, there's no difference between a person of 18 years and 364 days, and the same person one day later. But the latter person is legally allowed to drink alcohol and vote, while the former isn't. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, does that make sense? (Cue the Chewbacca Defense...) Why are our tax brackets at arbitrary points X, Y, and Z, for that matter? Why is 65 the mandatory retirement age? Why is the age of consent at 14? Point being: sometimes you need to have a cutoff somewhere, even if that somewhere is more or less arbitrary. And though I have serious reservations about all the cutoffs I mentioned (I think the mandatory retirement age cutoff should disappear altogether, for instance), that doesn't mean that there's never a justification for any cutoff anytime. Or am I mangling your argument hideously?

Joe does indeed make an excellent practical point, which is currently rattling around in my brain.

"An abortion on day 89 is the same as an abortion on day 90 "

We know what a fetus is at day 89 and day 90.
Fine.

"It only follows logically that an abortion on day 90 is the same as an abortion on day 2"

If you look at a fetus at day 90 compared to day 2 and still believe your 'logic' holds up....

What I mean is...

Fetus at day 89 equals fetus at day 90 within 'measurement' error so we can say that there isn't any logic in outlawing something for one but not the other.

Fetus at day 2 does not equal fetus at day 90, or to make a more forceful point, at day 150 by any method of comparison. It is entirely logical to say that we could makes laws regarding one and not the other.

You say "killing a baby at year 1 is to killing a child at year 8"

I think our laws often do make a distinction between these two - while the former may be viewed as infanticide or 'failing to provide the necessities of life' the latter will be murder.

But, back to the real point. I agree with you "that setting day 90 as a limit wouldn't make an abortion at day 91 more or less moral than it was the day before the legislation passed".

My view is that this is an unfortunate grey area that would have to allowed in order to allow for the real moral distiction between ending the life of a 2 day old fetus and a 200 day old one.

Chris -- The person you really need to respond to is MGL, who very effectively explains the problem with your argument, though his point itself is so obvious I can't believe it hadn't occurred to you previously. Had it? Either way, I think you need to address it. And if you're going to insist on objective standards, it seems to me you also carry the burden of defining the exact moment the fetus becomes a human.

Abortion term limits are like tax brackets and speed limits and drinking ages in one way and one way only — arbitrariness. They are unlike those other things in every single other way.

We can't have objective standards with term limits, Taka — that's my point. We have objective standards now, which define birth as the moment the fetus becomes a human.

But just because we can't have objective standards doesn't mean we can't have any standards, and that applies to abortion as much it does anything else. I would support something like a first trimester cut-off, and I suppose I reach that position because I start from a totally different premise from you. Whereas you're saying an eighth month abortion is equal to a second month abortion, I say that it isn't; that the former is clearly more troubling and morally dubious. And from there it makes sense -- unless abortion is to be totally outlawed -- that we attempt to draw the line somewhere. I think something like three months strikes a balance -- it allows legalized abortion, for the reasons of pragmatism and liberty you cite, but requires that the decision be made early in the pregnancy.

Taka,

If it's "clear" to you that an abortion at eight months is more morally dubious than one at two months, can I ask you to explain why? Believe me, I'd love to believe the same thing. I certainly agree that late-term abortions are more "troubling", but as I've said, I think that's an emotional response and not a moral one. Fetuses are more like human beings than they are like anything else — drinking ages and speed limits, for example — so I need to understand why it's okay to have one standard for human beings and two (or more) for fetuses.