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not in her right mind, but then we don't have any laws limiting a pregnant woman's right to drive a car, gain employment, open financial accounts, or vote, so it would be a tough sell to say that a husband should decide about abortion for his wife because she's mentally ill or mentally deficient.

It could then be argued that it is the husband's duty to protect his prospective child from being destroyed by the mother, and pro-lifers do argue this point-frequently. To understand what is wrong with this argument, consider the relationship between a pregnant woman and the fetus ("unborn baby") she is carrying. She is essentially a life support machine for the duration of her pregnancy.

Can we think of any other medical situations which are equivalent to this? I can think of two: blood donation and organ donation. Now, by definition, in order to donate blood you have to be alive. You can also donate some organs and tissues while alive: for instance, bone marrow, kidneys, and pieces of your liver. (The latter regenerates.) So by definition, when you donate one of these things, you are being someone else's life support.

Can we donate blood, tissues, or organs to our born children? Sure we can; that's a dumb question. Now, here's the rub: Can we refuse to donate to our born children? Not only can we refuse, we can refuse when we are a perfect tissue match to our children, or when refusing to donate results in their deaths. We might be racked with guilt afterward, we might face censure from society for making that decision, but we will never be legally charged with a crime.

Now, in an abortion, if it is an elective abortion not done because of serious problems with the pregnancy, what the woman is saying is that she does not wish to be life support for her fetus any longer. The equivalent in donation terms is that we are legally allowed to change our minds about the blood or tissues or organs we've donated, right up until they're put into another person. Nobody questions this. If it isn't a problem when the prospective "person on life support" is born already, I'm not sure why it's a problem when the person isn't born yet. And innocence really isn't the issue; a one-day-old baby is innocent too, but you don't have to donate anything to your one-day-old baby ot keep her alive, either. You don't even have to breastfeed her. Heck, you don't have to keep her.

It is curious that certain segments of society present the husband as champion of the unborn, whose job it is to protect

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