In less than two weeks — on the 11th of February to be exact — Portugal will be voting in a national referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion. (Yes, believe it or not, abortion is still illegal in Portugal, save for a few exceptional circumstances). I will be voting 'yes', thus choosing to make abortion legal in the first ten weeks of pregnancy. I see this as the ethical choice to make, and starting with this post I will explain why. But first there's some terminology that needs straightning out.

Opponents of abortion label themselves as 'pro-life'; marketing-wise it's a clever move, since it implicitly labels the other side as being somehow 'against life'. Clever, but intelectually dishonest. The debate about abortion has very little to do with life in general; instead, the crux of the matter rests on what constitutes human life.

If the issue were simply life, then by the standards of anti-abortionists, we would all be guilty of a daily holocaust. Every time you ingest something, chances are that a living being died to provide you with that sustenance. And unless you are a vegan, your lunch or dinner most surely required the death of a feeling, suffering, animal.

To be alive is to cause death. Get over it.

'You're nitpicking', says the anti-abortionist, 'pro-life is just short-hand for pro-human life. All our arguments remain in place'. Well, I could almost accept 'pro-life' as simply a short-hand, except that as I explained above, it is one awfully biased and loaded with connotations. This is a case of terminology being used to subvert a debate before it even begins! It is for this reason that I would rather use terms such as 'pro-abortion' and 'anti-abortion'.