Abortion and "Mitigating Factors"

I guess I'm still somewhat stuck in the mindset of deontology, because I found it much harder than Hursthouse to shrug off the claims of rights and duties regarding abortion. Still, I find her articulation of virtue ethics very appealing. Considering my rejection of previous theories in part due to their being paternalistic, it bothers me a little bit how easy I find this admittedly paternalistic position to accept. Is it just easy for me to accept because I agree with the universal goods it sets forth? Is my rejection of other theories really due to their paternalism, or was it just because I didn't agree with the objective goods they forwarded?

Regardless, the assignment was to respond to a claim. And I find Hursthouse's arguments here compellling. She doesn't seem to argue for the moral propriety of either aborting or not aborting in various across the board, rather she forwards that there is more than one decision one could make without acting immorally. Hursthouse emphasized that the gravity of such a decision should not be treated lightly. I agree with her. It seems immoral to me to treat an abortion with the same weight you would accord a haircut or an appendectomy. I appreciate Hursthouse's position of treating the growth of the fetus as a matter of gradation along a scale rather than being "morally right" prior to a seemingly arbitrary amount of days and "morally wrong" after that point. Things are never that simple. Hurthouse's allowance for mitigating factors also seems valid to me. The conditions the child can expect to grow up in and the difficulties a mother may face carrying a child to term, are just two of a host of factors that should influence our perception of the morality of a decision. These factors are especially relevant when striving for multiple goods, as followers of virtue theory do.