The people who are against abortion believe that life begins at conception. It does not. Life begins when the soul enters the body. When Melanie was pregnant with Lily, she had a dream about Lily’s soul entering the body. This did not happen at conception. It happened one or two months into the pregnancy.

Not aborting Lily was the best decision to which I have ever been a party. She is an amazing kid. But in the abortion debate, the two stances are either that life begins at conception or that something is a part of another person’s body for as long as it is in the other person’s body.. On one side we see accusations of killing a living being, on the other side we see accusations of men wanting to control women’s bodies. When one believes life begins is in every way crucial to the stance that one takes.

I am not an abortion doctor, and I’m not an abortion clinic protester. My view on this has nothing whatsoever to do with my interests. I don’t want to screw every woman in the world. Neither do I seek to control what women do with their bodies. I want to bring sanity to an issue on which sanity has been lost a long time ago.

When really does life begin? I think that Melanie’s dream told the truth on this matter. It does not come at conception; but it comes earlier than when the embryo is out of the body. I do not believe that a clump of cells that the embryo is during the first trimester qualifies as human life. However a two-trimester embryo does, to me, qualify as human life, and in such situations it’s not about controlling women’s bodies but about actually protecting human life.

I had a friend named Linda who had an abortion. At one point she felt moved to make a painting, and the painting was that of a girl whom she aborted as a child. She went away from that bawling saying that abortion is one of the worst things that a person can do. However also bad is kids getting pregnant and raising their children to be gangsters. From Melanie’s experience, there is an opening shortly after the start of the pregnancy in which it should be possible to have an abortion; then that opening should rightfully close.

I therefore recommend making abortion legal before the soul enters the body and illegal after that.