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I have put this topic off for a while now, owing to the extremely controversial nature of it, but I think that we are all mature enough to cope without it becoming a battle of the wills – and if not – I will just turn the comments off! So, here is our most controversial your view to date! Remember, battle against arguments – not people – ad hominem attacks are a sign of a failed argument.
Should Abortion Be Legal?
My answer: No. I believe that abortion has become so out of control that it has become a form of contraception. There is a high physical and mental cost involved and many of the young women who have abortions are not always fully aware of these consequences. From a philosophical perspective I also wonder whether we would have a cure for AIDS and other diseases now if someone hadn’t aborted the child that was going to ultimately find the cure. Of course this also applies in reverse – how many Hitlers have been prevented from being born, but I think that society is better equipped to deal with that situation if it were to arise again.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Abortion takes innocent human life; it’s the ultimate act of murder. So, no.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Yes. It is not possible to take life where no life exists. The clump of cells that is removed in an abortion of any kind is not alive, it could not live outside the body of the woman. For all intents and purposes, it IS the body of the woman. It is also a threat to the health, autonomy, and future of the woman. You cannot remove the woman from the equation and call the fetus “life.” It does not exist without her.
Also, citing the potential grief of, or “mental costs” to the woman is an extremely patronizing and sexist way to view it. It strips the woman of her humanity, her dignity. I am able to make decisions for myself, and I don’t appreciate anyone telling me otherwise. That argument reduces women to dependent beings, unable to make choices for themselves, needed to be protected from the big bad world. It makes women slaves to their biology.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
In the society we have – yes. In the society we would want – no.
Abortion should not be legal because it is murder for the reason of not wanting a child. If you don’t want a child then you should not be having unprotected sex, and if you still do then you should have to live with the consequences.
Abortion should be legal because we live in a world where contraceptives are not a hundred percent effective, and the average woman is not big enough to love an innocent child when it was made by a rapist.
In the end I have to say… any persons right to their body is absolute. What I do with my body is of no concern to the next person, or should not be. You can argue as much as you want that a baby is a life – it is made of the womans body, it lives of the womans body, it is part of the woman. Until it has independent thought (which requires the brain to be developed) it is not a person in its own right. Hence, the woman has as much right to perform an abortion in early pregnancy as I have to take worm medication if I happen to get a parasite infection.
So my end statement is this: abortion should be legal because the government should not decide what I do with my body, nor what you do with yours.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:13 pm
If the unborn child is a part of your body, then it should have the same DNA as you. Everyone’s existence is dependent on others and the argument that an unborn child can’t live outside the womb is not much different than a four year-old child can’t survive in the wild by himself.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Something I would like to add- the term “pro-abortion” is bandied around frequently. There is no such thing as pro-abortion. I agree with Hillary Clinton that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Nobody here is advocating the use of abortion as birth control, or arguing that it is a good thing.
It is, however, a fundamental and inalienable right of women- of all human beings- to determine their own lives. I refuse to let the government decide what is best for my body, my life, my future.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Having an abortion is a woman’s unalienable right. However, I agree that abortion is murder, and that it should not be used casually.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Absolutely it should be legal.
A fetus lacks what all humans have- a functioning brain. Every living person from a newborn baby to a 120 year old woman has at least one thing in common: what makes us all tick, what separates life from death, the brain.
A fetus is not considered a person, why does a pregnant woman say “I have two kids and one on the way” instead of “I have three kids”? How come when there’s a miscarriage, there isn’t a funeral?
If abortion isn’t legal, then instead of women in doctors offices, you’ll have women in dirty basements with wire coat hangers up their uterus.
“Pro-life is anti-woman” -George Carlin
July 31st, 2008 at 9:37 pm
yes it should.
your not killing an innocent person because the fetus doesnt really have feeling. it doesnt know that it wont develop. and think of the women that wouldnt have to go through the pain, mental and physical, of pregnancy and birth just to give it up for adoption since they cant handle a baby. with abortion, that wouldnt happen. and yeah its the consequences of unprotected sex but things happen. and if you dont abort the baby and put it up for adoption, it might not get adopted and will have to grow up in foster care.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:49 pm
No, I believe it is a life. I don’t have the time or energy to provide evidence or reasons for this, but I believe that it is. With all the technology we have today we are able to detect and see so much more about the life inside of a woman, I am still amazed it can be so easy to abort them. Well, not easy, I am sure this is never an easy decision.
Another thing, if I am wrong, and this is not a life, would millions of women suddenly regret having children they really didn’t want? If the other side of the argument is correct, they are responsible for the murders of millions of unborn. Now, of course I realize, back alley abortions have resulted in the loss of many women, but I don’t think current facilities are even close to coat hangers. I think that’s a straw man argument anymore.
For those who think that women don’t grieve or endure incredible loss when losing an unborn child, I would like them to meet some of my friends. Their loss and their pain is very real when they have miscarriages, regardless of the stage of pregnancy.
And I have met and heard from women who have had abortions. And at least from that sampling, there is a very real sense of pain and loss. If it was just a matter of choice, I would think that wouldn’t exist, right?
Even though I am a pro-life, I will not stand on street corners or outside abortion clinics and protest. I will not judge or condemn someone who has had an abortion or plans to. I simply believe abortion is wrong, and if asked by a woman or couple seeking counsel, I will share my beliefs with her.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Yes, keep abortion safe and legal, in the US at least.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:16 pm
goof_ball: what’s wrong with foster care? I was in it for years and I’m not a serial killer. Growing up in foster care is a hell of a lot better than not growing up at all. Abortion is not giving the kid a chance. Sure, he may be the next Gacy, but not giving them a chance is ridiculous. Also, saying that you might hate the kid because his father was a rapist is (in my opinion) a bit strange. If I were to father a kid, and the mother was the worst women to ever plague the earth, I would still love the kid to death, anyone who hates their own flesh and blood is (again, in my opinion) sick in the head. The kid may be half rapist, but he’s also half you, and its not like there’s a rapist gene (that I’m aware of).
In others words, no, I don’t think abortion should be legal.
If this argument comes off mean or rambling incoherently I apologize, I was in the hot sun all day (Denver has been ridiculously hot lately!)and I’m just all around mad.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:21 pm
John G …. your arguments are poor.
“A fetus lacks what all humans have- a functioning brain.”
Wrong. A fetus has a brain, and brain stem, from an early point in the process. And it functions too. It regulates the heart, causes digestive processes to form, etc. If not, then when does it get one … when it is born?
“A fetus is not considered a person, why does a pregnant woman say “I have two kids and one on the way” instead of “I have three kids”?”
Why do we say the sun rises, when we obviously know that it is the earth’s rotation?
“How come when there’s a miscarriage, there isn’t a funeral?”
Stillborn babies (which fail to match your characteristics of being a functioning human being, apparently) are often “funeralized”. And the grief that most women feel after a miscarriage is real, funeral or not.
Your arguments are weak.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:22 pm
wow. so many people here don’t support abortion!
My answer: Yes, yes, yes! It is ultimately a woman’s right to choose and whether or not you agree with that, you should not infringe upon their rights. I believe that the fetus is just that, not a baby, not a person, until it can sustain itself outside the womb.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Ok… so i have a weird view on this.. I could never do it. NEVER. other than 4 cases. The baby would never live a normal life; the pregnancy would kill me; it was a product of rape; it was a product of incest. That’s it. I believe that a woman should have a right to choose, but i believe that you should only be allowed one a life time (unless your second has SERIOUS developmental problems and could never live).
July 31st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Having an intense fascination and reasonably thorough knowledge of neuropsychology and it’s surrounding academic subjects I have utilised the branch of thought I am most accustomed to in which to develop my argument on this particularly controversial topic as my own opinion could not be created based upon the fundamentals of the debate.
With that aside, allow me to outline my two key arguments. Firstly I am pro-abortion being legal (Political framing has become an evidently boring and overused gimmick which, in this context, merely causes unnecessary feelings of guilt and encourages a serious debate to become a competition of opinions) despite the fact, judging by what I understand of the subjects I previously explained to have a notable knowledge of, I believe a fetus to be a living human given time (Initially it is as many ‘pro-lifers’ refer to a ‘blob of cells’ in my opinion) and this is before the current period of time given until abortion is disallowed unless there are specific circumstances regarding threats to the woman’s health. The brain of a fetus grows particularly fast in comparison to many areas of it’s biology and is complete earlier than many other areas also, the spinal cord however is a different matter but I ramble.
By my understanding having a partially functioning central nervous system classifies as life, but yet, I agree this life should be allowed to be terminated without the possibility of legal interference. The underlying assumption of the abortion debate for both sides is that life is an extraordinarily valuable asset, THE most valuable asset one could argue but yet I agree that it can be destroyed if necessary. Soldiers are executed on both sides of a battlefield and become numbers to preserve their ideals. Animals are killed for our food. Abortions can also be made for our convenience. Granted ‘convenience’ is not a particularly astute term to be applied in a debate regarding such unstable and uncertain concepts but it is in my opinion the most fitting word; I do not refer to something being convenient in this context as being analogous to having a shop next door or owning some brand of toilet/chair hybrid but instead as convenient on a far greater level. Convenient in that the person shall not be required to spend approximately 18 years of their life raising a child whom they did not want; for that matter how shall this in-turn affect the life of the child? Yes, many of us would like to believe we would rise to the challenge of raising a child that was unexpected and make the best of it but such a thought is ecologically invalid; you cannot know what such a situation is like unless you have experienced it personally (Though I respect those who have)
My second argument is a very simplistic question of practicality, with abortion being known to the human species now, it shall use it. If there is a sociological, cultural, zoological or generally human pattern that could be confirmed beyond that of any other it would be that if humanity is aware that something is at their disposal be it knowledge, power, items etc they shall wish to use them and given the size of the human population it is overwhelmingly likely that they shall. My basic point here is that if abortion is made illegal people shall continue to do it but in less healthy conditions.
I could also raise the dispute of the population problem being related to abortion but that would be a moot point so I shall disregard the thought.
Before I portray my ending notes I would just like to offer a brief opinion on the protest of legalised abortion. Those who utilise images of aborted fetuses to reinforce their points, you are convincing no one. This topic is rather personal to me (Please don’t allow that to persuade you to not argue against me however, I welcome criticism of my perspectives) due to my closest friend being made to cry at one time and when reflecting on this event. She remains ‘Pro-Choice’ but is simply upset by the images depicted. Thankfully I am far less squeemish and feel unbothered by the images but yet I find it to be a very shallow and cruel fashion to protest in. I welcome the opinions of all people and yes, the images used in the aforementioned protests are generally how the remains of many abortions appear but that form of protest is not only cruel and potentially offensive but also counter-productive to the cause of those performing it as it is astoundingly unlikely that a person shall agree to change their perspective on a very serious topic because a group of people upset them over it.
To conclude, I believe that abortion, beyond a certain point, is the killing of a human but the lives of the humans who are already present in this world and environment should be given priority over those of the unborn.
Forgive me for the length of this text and I appreciate your patience in reading it – Niall
July 31st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Yes I think it should be legal but I also think that it should be more limited than what it is at the minute. For example if the pregnancy just was an accident then no I don’t think abortion is right but for those that have been raped or that it could possibly affect their mental health or could put the mother physical health under great strain then yes it should be legal. I mean those who are raped and made pregnant they could see the rapist everytime they look at the child and could end up resenting the child for what their father has done. And for those who it could affect there mental or physical health it could also end up killing them to a greater extent due to the fact that the birth may actually end up killing the mother or if it affects their mental ability could cause great strain on their health and they could end up in a psychiatric ward or worse suicidal. So in my opinion if it could cause less damage to the parents yes abortion is right but if its just because they dont want a child or something then they should have used better precautions.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:29 pm
If you want an interesting argument go read freakonomics. It makes a logical conclusion that abortion lowers crime rate. While there could be a few lurking variables there is definitely a correlation
July 31st, 2008 at 10:41 pm
There are some very interesting comments thus far – thanks everyone – and especially thanks for keeping things civil
It further enforces my belief that Listverse has the smartest and most polite citizens on the net!
July 31st, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Without a doubt it should be!, and a little
sidenote- A BABY SH0ULD BE B0TH THE (FATHER!!) AND
THE W0MAN’S DECISI0N!!, it took two 2 make- its the
guys sperm, if we dont agree then it should matter.
im so tired of woman that act as if they created the child
themselves like Mary.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:42 pm
It shouldn’t be legal. Weather is a bunch of cells or not, it is going to be a child, a human being, and well even if it is a buch of cells, we all know cells are living things, so even if a fetus is just a bunch of cells, it is a whole bunch of living cells
!! Anyways, I totally agree with the argument about women being able to make their own decisions, of course they can! They shouldn’t be limited in any ways, but then comes RESPONSABILITY, whichs comes with the power of making decisions, so while the argument of letting women decide what they want to do with their bodies is something good, they also have to keep in mind responsability, because an unwanted pregnancy can be prevented, (oh yes it can) failing contraceptives should not be an excuse because people are very different from animals, we don’t follow only our instincts, we have a conscience and an unwanted child can be avoided by not having sex until you are ready to take full responsability over a child in all senses, from the economical to psycological stuff. About the pain a women suffers in the future, well that is very real and there is medical proof of women that suffer the same syptoms that a veteran from war suffers, so there, women do suffer because of an abortion, maybe not right away but they do in the future. Also I have read testimonials of many people that their mothers tried to abort them (but procedures failed), and well they all seem to grateful for being alive but were once confused and hated their mothers. Also men should be held responsible, and not leave the whole responsability to the woman, woman can not reproduce by themselves!, hmmm I hink it all comes to good information, I’ve seen abortions many times and I also saw one through an ultrasound, for my surprise the futus moved like trying to fight for its life when pieces of it where been sucked and removed, even withouth its legs it was still moving around like trying to avoid being sucked, but then a huge clasp thinghy came and crushed its head. He was then extracted completely from the uterus. That made me consider the theory about fetus not being living things…Oh well, I just try to remembder that I can do whatever I want as long as I don’t affect other people with my actions… even if that other people resides inside of me.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:13 pm
You have got to be kidding me? Is this what people who can’t write, come up with? Are you just bored?
Well, remember the old saying, “If you’re bored, you’re boring.”
Smartest Citizens on the net?
July 31st, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I think abortion should be legal in certain circumstances – where pregnancy or birth would endanger the life of the mother, where the pregnancy is the result of rape and the mother is not psychologically able to continue with it, where the child would not be able to function alone (dependent on the definition of ‘function’ and applicable in some cases of incest and some congenital disorders), and possibly in cases where cultural conditions would endanger the life of a mother of an illegitimate child.
I don’t think it’s ethical to abort a nearly full-term child in most of those scenarios, not if it’s at the age where children born pre-maturely can survive.
Outside of those circumstances (there may be more that haven’t occurred to me) I don’t think abortion should be allowed. Human potential is too valuable a thing to be discarded.
I do feel quite strongly though, that the option of abortion should not be made inaccessible to people in the circumstances above, that government legislation shouldn’t be black and white. At the same time I find the procedure of abortion quite abhorrent – reading Samsara-gx’s comment above made me feel really ill.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:16 pm
I say yes, only because I support the woman’s choice to have an abortion. I do think that more education needs to be given on preventing pregnancy, other options besides abortion, etc.
I may support the right to choose, but I’m simply a pro-choicer. I don’t condone abortions and would also inform anyone that comes to me for advice that there are other options.
I also agree that it should be limited. If nothing else, I don’t believe in abortion after the first trimester, hopefully within the first month. I also think that women should discuss with their doctor before going to an abortion clinic, just to make sure that this is the right thing for her to do.
I can’t tell others what to do with the choices they made. I would rather them live up to their responsibilities or opt for abortion, but that’s not my call to make.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Oh wow, gross mistype: last paragraph, opt for adoption, not abortion
July 31st, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Oh, and one last thing (sorry for the triple post), about your “mental cost” argument — I know this might be true for some, but I know 4 women that had abortions, and they didn’t suffer emotional trauma. My grandmother is one of them. She will be the first to say that she did the right thing in her mind, and that she wouldn’t go back and change anything.
I completely understand that this is not the case for everyone.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:38 pm
It should be legalized. It should also be government controlled. They should place ridiculous amounts of taxes and fees on it. Do you realize how much revenue this would cause? Not only would this stop 90% of abortions out there by young teenage girls that don’t realize the emotional consequences, but like I said it would provide so much extra cash flowing in. Everyone complains because the economy is faltering due to no one spending money…this is because every other dumb teenage girl is getting pregnant(certain unfortunate circumstances not included naturally) and then getting an abortion. They get pregnant again and they get it aborted. Well, if they can’t afford it, they’ll end up spending the money somewhere else. Like…at a department store buying clothes for the baby. Thus…this boosts the economy. C’mon people, think.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I feel that abortion is as immoral as crushing a VEGETABLE.
I’m not a big fan of the “We could be aborting wonderful people” argument, because you usually get aborted when you can’t afford a child. Maybe it would me more worth it for a child to be dead than to be raised like crap.
Too many people on this planet anyway.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
wow, so many holes in some arguments so far. let me address a couple…
“nobody has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body”…what if that woman is a baby, inside the womb of another woman. is it then o.k. to tell that woman what will happen to her body?
for those of you guys that see your selves as middle of the road types saying it should only be allowed in certain circumstances…who are you to determine the value of a life yet to be lived? what makes your value judgment any greater than anyone else?
“a fetus couldn’t support itself without the mother therefore it isn’t a living being”…try that argument with a 1 year old. kill one of them and see where that gets you with the law.
niall: you are the first person i have ever heard say that you believe that an unborn baby is a living being and women should still have the right to kill it. wow. that’s all i can say about that. wow.
and the old tired argument that women will end up in back alleys with rust coathangers is laughable that anyone uses that in a serious debate. this would happen no more frequently than illegal drug users need do their behavior in a back alley with terrible equipment. the service will be provided by someone who feels they must break the law to do so.
just to sum up…no, it should not be allowed for the following reasons and many more; it is murder (if you don’t believe that life happens at conception, when does it happen?) it is torture, psychologically, on many women (regardless if you think this is demeaning, it is still true in many occasions) it is the quick fix solution to a mistake and those are hardly ever the right decisions, there are many families that are willing to adopt, and other reasons which i will bring to bear later.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:50 pm
To Laura re:comment #2
As a women who have given birth once, and is currently 17 weeks pregnant with my second child, I do not find Jamie’s comment patronizing or sexist one bit. It is a fact that many women deal with anguish and grief regarding the choice they made to abort their unborn child. Personally I believe there is no “dignity” in making a choice to kill an innocent life. Having emotions to go along with the choices that we make (be it good or bad) and dealing with them appropriately IS what gives us our “humanity”, NOT being tough enough to have an abortion and being unaffected by it.
The excuse that it’s just a “clump of cells” is a tired one. How then at six weeks, did that “clump of cells” in me have a beating heart that was clearly detected on the fetal monitor. Or how at 20 weeks did that “clump of cells” develop enough for me to see during an ultrasound that I was clearly having a hiccuping, thumb-sucking son.
Any woman who is able to go through 9 months of the miracle of pregnancy, and still think abortion is acceptable, is completely irrational. I cannot fathom how someone could do this.
If someone has the guts to stand for abortion- then have the guts to watch this video.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Just to be clear I was referencing Jamie Frater’s original comments, not Jamie comment #27.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:10 am
How about an alternate to abortion. There was a professor here in NZ who proposed putting a natural contraceptive in the water supply. and to counter the contraceptive when you want a baby, take the counter-pill.
Outcome: Unwanted births would plummet to almost non existent.
No to abortion.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:11 am
Question to the masses, how would Y0U feel if you were aborted, lets take time to think about it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..0K, you would’nt be able to answer.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:18 am
DiscHuker: What about the situation where a mother will die if the pregnancy continues?
And is it worth sacrificing the sanity of a raped woman? Or the life of a woman who will be killed to protect the ‘honour’ of her family?
If you think about humans in terms of resources (I am not saying we should) and disregard the idea of human potential then surely a woman who has survived until adulthood represents more value than an unborn child?
I don’t know the answers to those questions and they’re not intended as a counter to your argument in comment 28, but I would like to know what you think regarding them.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:21 am
justice: I wouldn’t exist, so I couldn’t give you an opinion. But we make these judgments on behalf of other beings that can’t give us an opinion when we implement animal cruelty laws and standards, so why can’t we make them on behalf of unborn children?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:30 am
Justin Anthony Knapp, you’d be surprised at exactly how much of your body doesn’t share your DNA;)
Anyway, abortion should be legal up to development of a central nervous system, as no harm is done.
I do, however, oppose the current practice of using abortion as a ‘form of contraception’. Luckily it’s more of a problem in repressed cultures – I live in a country where contraceptives and their use are covered in 6th grade.
As to the ‘cure for AIDS’ argument in original article – you do realize how many fertilized eggs abort spontaneously, do you? Artificial abortion is but a drop in the sea.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:33 am
Leo: You make a good point about spontaneous abortion, if I recall correctly, something like 20 – 30% of pregnancies are naturally aborted in the first few weeks and mostly before the mother even realises she is pregnant.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:38 am
I’m pro-choice.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:49 am
I’m not touching this one with a ten-foot pole
*runs away*
August 1st, 2008 at 1:01 am
Hannah,
I never said that women don’t feel grief and/or regret when having an abortion. It is a difficult decision, and one the no one, including myself, takes (yes, took) lightly.
What I said was that for the courts or the government to outlaw abortion based on the possibility of regret was extremely infantilizing. That argument says, essentially, that because the potential for grief exists, women ought not to be trusted to make that decision. The same reasoning could be applied to women making their own financial decisions- because the could possibly regret spending that money, we should outlaw women from having credit cards. I’m NOT equating credit with abortion, before everyone jumps down my throat, simply pointing out that the patronizing reasoning is the same. In both cases, a male-dominated authority is determining that women are unfit to make their own decisions, because the possibility exists they would regret those decisions. Surely you see how condescending this is.
This, of course, is just one of the arguments anti-choice activists use. There are similarly ineffective ones- to pick one out of a hat, letting a 4-year-old loose in the woods is NOT QUITE equatable to removing a wholly dependent fetus from a womb.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:05 am
Laura: What if it were women making this decision in a woman-dominated society? Your argument depends on the existence of a male-dominated society. It’s only condescending because you’re assuming that a man/men is/are making the decision.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:07 am
Or “What if it were women making this decision in an EQUAL society”, same reasoning applies.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:14 am
I am undecided on the issue – which hopefully I am allowed to be.
I would just like to throw something out there regarding Jamie’s comment on aborting potential prodigies that could cure HIV etc…
Looking from the other side, assume a 15-year old girl falls pregnant – abortion is illegal and she is law abiding – so she has the child. Drops out of school to raise the kid and ends up reliant on the state and crummy jobs for her and her child to survive. Had the same girl had the option of abortion, she could have stayed in school, gone to college…and ended up finding the cure to HIV.
Just throwing that out there….
August 1st, 2008 at 1:16 am
Tempyra,
I would object to this reasoning in any society. I don’t think it is fair or legal to remove the right of a competent adult human to make their own health decisions, whatever their gender. Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of making decisions in a female-dominated society or even an equal one. Historically speaking, women have been subjugated to men and to their own biology and therefore, as a woman, I find this line of reasoning particularly repugnant.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:26 am
Laura: Following that argument:
“I don’t think it is fair or legal to remove the right of a competent adult human to make their own health decisions, whatever their gender.”
Drugs would be legal, no? And people with incurable contagious diseases could screw whoever they wanted right?
August 1st, 2008 at 1:41 am
To everyone that says no to abortion, I suggest taking a few months to work for a charity in an orphanage or go work with social services. Kids that aren’t aborted before birth are often beaten and neglected by their parents that didn’t want them and then left to fend for themselves, often turning to crime.
I’m not for killing anything, but for me I’d rather see people having abortions than letting the kids suffer a neglected and unloved life.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:43 am
‘I believe that abortion has become so out of control that it has become a form of contraception.’
Then you need to look up the definition of contraception. Contraception works to prevent pregnancy. Abortion happens when there is a pregnancy, so it’s can’t be called contraception. Abortion is birth control, as it controls birth.
There is a high physical and mental cost involved and many of the young women who have abortions are not always fully aware of these consequences.
LOL! No.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
SAFETY OF ABORTION
• The risk of abortion complications is minimal: Fewer than 0.3% of abortion patients experience a complication that requires hospitalization.[12]
• Abortions performed in the first trimester pose virtually no long-term risk of such problems as infertility, ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) or birth defect, and little or no risk of preterm or low-birth-weight deliveries.[13]
• Exhaustive reviews by panels convened by the U.S. and British governments have concluded that there is no association between abortion and breast cancer. There is also no indication that abortion is a risk factor for other cancers.[13]
• In repeated studies since the early 1980s, leading experts have concluded that abortion does not pose a hazard to women’s mental health.[14]
• The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16–20 weeks—and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks.[15]
• Fifty-eight percent of abortion patients say they would have liked to have had their abortion earlier. Nearly 60% of women who experienced a delay in obtaining an abortion cite the time it took to make arrangements and raise money.[16]
• Teens are more likely than older women to delay having an abortion until after 15 weeks of pregnancy, when the medical risks associated with abortion are significantly higher.[17]
From a philosophical perspective I also wonder whether we would have a cure for AIDS and other diseases now if someone hadn’t aborted the child that was going to ultimately find the cure.
Potential means squat in the abortion debate. The fetus that was aborted could have grown up, and raped and murdered a bus full of children. You might as well say a carrot could have found the cure for AIDS if it wasn’t made into coleslaw.
Considering the woman who have the most abortions are poor minorities, I doubt their kids would be able to get the education needed for them to get to college, let alone anywhere near a research laboratory.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
Educate yourself, because clearly you have no understanding of this subject. I’d also like to know why you didn’t put that little warning up on the homosexual question. Or were you already aware of your inaccuracies and didn’t want to get called out on them?
Tony S – Wrong. A fetus has a brain, and brain stem, from an early point in the process. And it functions too. It regulates the heart, causes digestive processes to form, etc. If not, then when does it get one … when it is born?
Educate yourself please. Having a brain does not make you capable of sustaining life on your own. Having a heart beat doesn’t mean anything if the heart isn’t strong enough to pump blood around the body. Having a brain isn’t going to do you much good if you don’t have a cerebral cortex.
theReal.34 – A BABY SH0ULD BE B0TH THE (FATHER!!) AND
THE W0MAN’S DECISI0N!!
When a man can take the fetus from the woman, implant it inside himself, deal with the pain, emotional, and physical effects pf pregnancy and child birth, then he can have an equal say. When a man has sex with a woman, he relinquishes ownership of his sperm. What happens to that sperm is beyond his control. If he chooses to avoid contraception, it’s his own fault. What you’re saying is men should have ownership of a woman’s uterus, just because his sperm impregnated her. By your logic, organ donators should be allowed to dictate what happens to their organs once their in another person.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:45 am
Tempyra,
C’mon, are you missing the point on purpose? The situations are not at all comparable. I don’t believe it’s necessary to get into a semantic debate as to why; I think it’s obvious that I consider an adult and a pre-20-week fetus different things entirely, with very different rights. Therefore, spreading incurable diseases among autonomous adult populations and making health decisions for yourself are very, very different things. To use your language, “people with incurable contagious diseases” who are “screwing who(m)ever they like” are not making personal health decisions, since other autonomous adults are involved against their will.
I also don’t think it’s very useful to consider theoretical societies where men or women are equal, as that is clearly not the society we are living in.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:50 am
Tempyra – ‘Drugs would be legal, no? And people with incurable contagious diseases could screw whoever they wanted right?’
Drugs would not be legal, as they hurt society. Drugs bring with them crime, death, and aid in the spread of infections diseases. People with incurable, contagious diseases already screw whoever they want, or are you unaware of the statistics of HIV/AIDS infection in the USA?
August 1st, 2008 at 1:56 am
To one of the above poster’s, a baby in the womb does not have the same DNA as the mother, entirely, just as living child does not share identical DNA.
Yes, I support the legality of abortion. I do think at times it has been used casually as birth control, but that in itself is not reason for it to be banned.
Also, the view that a parent does not want to deal with the “consequences” of their actions does not take into account that the child would also have to deal with consequences of which they had no control. Should a child be born for the sake of being born if it is in to a home where it is unwanted by the mother and in that already has a strike against it in succeeding?
While a very personal decision, I feel that it is worse for a child to be born where it does not have the basic want and affection and care of a mother than for it to never be born.
Lastly, legality assures a notion of quality and oversight. Simply making something illegal is not enough to stop the action from occurring. In legality, as least there is a safe option in having it done, rather than some black market “doctor”.
Anyways, I am a guy and think my views on the whole matter should be taken at the fact a decision of such a thing would have far, far less impact on me than female counterpart.
ehh
August 1st, 2008 at 2:00 am
If someone doesn’t want to have a baby, the baby is better off not being born.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:24 am
Reaper: Drugs hurt people (individuals) too and unborn children, not just ’society’.
“are you unaware of the statistics of HIV/AIDS infection in the USA?” – Yep, probably because I don’t live there.
Laura: I don’t think I was missing the point, I was just applying the logic of your statement to another ‘health’ scenario.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:39 am
No, if they don’t want babies, let them stop having fun!
August 1st, 2008 at 2:43 am
I absolutely believe abortion should be legal. most “pro-life” people state that we should have no choice on the lives of unborn children, by making abortion legal. Well don’t you think you’re drastically changing the lives of the mothers by not giving them the choice of abortion? the moment the child is BORN, your life changes completely. so why should you be the people to dictate how other peoples lives are lived? does it really harm society for people to have abortions? theoretically, yes. but every moment we have changes the future in some way. so if we abort a baby, maybe it was a ghandi, or aristotle, or something like that. but what if the baby was a hitler, or some evil person like that? we’ll never know. until you can glimpse the future, don’t preach about all the possibilities those lives would have had. because unless its written in stone, thats all they are. hopes.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:49 am
It should be legal, yes. And I believe it’s entirely the woman’s decision whether or not to have an abortion. After all, it is her body, no one else’s.
I think it depends on the situation the woman is in. They might not have enough money to support or family to help them out, so might be difficult to bring up a child without those kinds of support.
If a woman was raped, then it’s not her fault that she didn’t use contraception to prevent it. She might not even want a baby.
The only thing I disagree about abortion is that it should not be used as a contraceptive. People shouldn’t be so lazy as to think that forgetting to take the pill or where a condom is all right, because there’s ‘always abortion’. Stupid.
My opinion.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:18 am
I have never met anyone who uses abortion as birth control.
I’m willing to bet that most women who have had an abortion
weigh their options quite carefully. I think most places give counseling and a stern talking before a woman has it done, and that the women are fully aware of what they are doing.
I don’t know how anyone can really say if it should or shouldn’t be completely legal or illegal until they are put into a situation where they would have to consider it.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:37 am
I’m glad it is legal.
It would be far too much trauma for some women to go through it.
I don’t agree with people using it when they didn’t wear contraception.
I agree with it being used so that under certain circumstances, a child isn’t born.
However, in my saying I think that I’m glad its legal, I also think that just anybody should be allowed to give birth. It really makes me sad seeing so many of the next gen turning into… Well, you only need to see todays media to see what they are turning into.
To be parents should undergo intense training.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:06 am
I don’t like abortion, I’m basically against it, but I reluctantly say it should be legal. It needs to have restrictions.
(I’m not hitting the “notify me” box, this might become another 1000+ comment thread (haha) )
August 1st, 2008 at 4:39 am
As far as i know “termination of pregnancy” is legal in South Africa (where i am from).
In terms of the Termination of Pregnancy Act, termination can take place up to 12 weeks, voluntarily, after examination by a dr and so forth and so forth. between 13 and 20 weeks a abortion can be performed if it is “necessary” with certain stipulations in the act being looked at very carefully in each this case. After the 20th week of pregnancy a abortion can be performed but only in most serious cases eg: death to either mother or child, incest, rape etc…
what concerns me is that this act includes minors (due to the “new” Age of Magority Act 2007 minors are now under 18 in South Africa).
Minors are “advised” to talk to a parent or guaridan about the abortion and procedure, but it is not necessary and the counsellors do not need permission from parents to perform abortions.
EVERYONE KNOWS… not only does abortion cause serious emotional scars but the abortion causes serious damage to your internal organs as well… womb etc. There could be serious complications due to the equipment they use to remove the fetus, as sometimes not everything is removed and causes hectic infections and sometimes leading to having the womb removed or leaving some women unable to have children again.
There are 2 methods generally used. The “suction” method usually cases this… they use a long metal rob, stick it up in there and stuck the fetus out like a vaccum. (so nasty) The other method (i’m not sure what it is called)they give you 2 pills… filled with hormones and these usually make you seriously ill, vomitting, diaorrea, violent cramps etc… the first pill is taken in front of the dr and then second pill is taken 2 days later at the dr office and the strong dose of hormones expel the fetus. Also a rather disgusting process… as young girls going through this usually dont know what to do with the remains of their “baby” as it usually is just a mass of cells or half formed and the fetus can expel itself anytime, anywhere. so you cant be sure how to prepare yourself… talk bout emtional scarring hey!!
in terms of the law… a legal subject only comes into being at birth and the requirements for a legal subject is that there must be complete seperation from the mother and it must be able to breath and live independently from the mother (there is no need for the imbelical cord to be cut)
If you are not a legal subject you are not the holder of rights or the bearer of duties. THEREFORE… you cannot state claim to anything. There are various methods which can be put in place such as nascitus fiction where the fetus is presumed alive but this is only in legal disputes. A fetus cannot be a legal subject as it cannot live independetly from the mother.
Then we have the conflicting rights in the Consititution… THE RIGHT TO LIFE… and… THE RIGHT TO CHOICE OF REPRODUCTION.
When it comes to abortion these 2 rights are in serious conflict. As most people believe that the right to life should have preferrance.
The things is… we all have the right to choice of reproduction, the manner in which we choose to repoduce, the amount of children we choose to have etc… so when it comes down to it women can do whatever they please with thier bodies… AS LEGALLY STATED.
I, personally, think that abortion should be leagl internationally but should be regulated very strictly!!!!! i think that health officials are to “sloppy” when it comes to abortion (and many other things). There should be a serious amount of counselling offered before and after, a full medical examination and a follow up examination. Abortion should also only be used in serious cases such as rape, incest, could cause death etc. IT SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS A CONTRACEPTION… THAT IS WRONG ON SO MANY LEVELS… cause as i have stated previously the effect it has on your body could be disastrous and fatal.
just for the record i am studying law and practice as a paralegal so i’m always exposed to things like this. its sad how people misuse abortion.
I hope i have given you guys some food for thought…
Tee
August 1st, 2008 at 4:43 am
No,
Unborn children have been detected with brain waves. They can feel, eat, and move around. Just because they are inside a womb, they are not alive?
When you look at it this way, it doesn’t matter if the child is wanted or not; it’s not for you to decide. There will still be societal problems with legalized abortion. The whole idea of the Aryan race was to control birth; how did that little idea benefit society?
Looking at a toddler or baby playing should be a joy, not a liability.
All I know is if I was growing up in my mother’s womb, and there was any doubt by my parents to keep going with me, I would remind them everyday how “alive” I am now, no thanks to them.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:28 am
It really depends on when you consider life to have begun. Some people think that life begins at conception, some think that life begins at birth. Obviously, no one among us would dream of harming a newborn baby, which is probably the strongest reason we have for refusing to abort babies past a certain time. The human conscience has a problem with aborting babies after 3 or 4 months because they start to look human by that stage.
Theoretically, for months, human babies are just a little bundle of cells, going about doing their thing. You could argue that of course it’s alive, it moves every now and then, creates problems (I made my mum sick almost every morning for 8 out of the 9 months) but you could argue that viruses and bacteria that chill out all over us are equally living. Although the human body is comprised of about 100 trillion cells, only 10 trillion of which are ours. Considering most people have little problem with destroying bacteria (which makes up 90% of what we are), why should a small bundle of cells be any different?
In my opinion, it should be legal. If you consider the people most likely to get an abortion, it’s almost exclusively people who are unwilling, or unable to support a child, often because of age, and there are understandable moral issues for some people with adoption.
And as for the argument that destroying a potential life is as punishable a crime as destroying a real life? By that logic, every time a man masturbates, he should be punished for murder, for destroying lives (billions in fact) that could potentially exist, and I guarantee you, at least 50% of the population would vote against making that particular pasttime illegal.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:30 am
yes, & i wont go into detail because i have really harsh views on abortion, birth and families, and in the past ive offended too many people. Plus i find it hard to explain what i beleieve, it would just spiral out of control if i wrote everything down, and it even confuses me, so ill just leave it at a simple ‘yes’.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:32 am
Btw, just my opinion, I’m happy to debate, but don’t get all angry at me if you disagree!
August 1st, 2008 at 5:36 am
carpe_noctem: I see where you’re coming from, but bacteria don’t have beating hearts. What happens when your heart stops? You die. The same thing happens to a fetus. If its heart stopped beating it would die. And to die, it would have to be living in the first place.
“for destroying lives that could potentially exist”, yes, but a fetus is already existing, it will not potentially exist, it already is.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:39 am
Why would you want the State to decide anything for you?
August 1st, 2008 at 5:40 am
carpe_noctem: Regarding your last paragraph – those billions of lives are only 1/2 a life each and one sperm + one sperm does not = one zygote. Same with the un-used ovum that are reabsorbed into a woman’s body every month. I don’t think it’s comparable.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:41 am
wow. when I was younger, there seemed to be a more broad acceptance of abortion rights. now, not so much.
with government programs practically encouraging unwed, immature, uneducated women to have children, by offering various forms of monetary aide and free medical care, it appears to me to be a self-replicating problem.
I am sick of hearing the saying “it’s not the baby’s fault” and “you have to take responsibility for your actions”
as if society views children as the ‘punishment’ one must accept for a misbegotten night of reckless passion, or a broken condom, or a forgotten pill. I say bullshit.
since when is an unborn, unproductive, potential life more important than an existing one? Abortion is never something a woman chooses flippantly… it is often an agonizing time, unimaginable by those who have never gone through it first-hand. It is nights of fear and self-condemnation, tears and self-loathing… and it may even linger for some time.
Abortion should be freely available during the first trimester. by the time a woman is past her third month, if you don’t know your body well enough to realize you are pregnant, or are denying it to yourself, or worse, waiting for something tragic to happen (since quite a few pregnancies end in miscarriage), you are far to immature and irresponsible to become a parent.
Abortion, and the caring physicians who provide the service in a sanitary, compassionate environment, one that embraces a woman during a difficult time in her life, are truly a gift to society. Long gone are the back-alley abortion clinics, and the primitive forms of pregnancy termination, such as overdosing on penny royal extract, drug overdoses, and harming one’s physical body to cause spontaneous abortion.
It fascinates me that one of the most highly technologically advanced nations in the world (U.S. of A.) also has the world’s highest rate of teen pregnancy. it’s almost as if these children think the only thing they can actually accomplish in life is having a baby.
I went to a rural high school in South Carolina where a full 1/2 of the female student body either where pregnant, had a child, had an abortion, or had a miscarriage. Sex ed wasn’t even offered until senior year, and by then, well, it was too late for some girls.
And as such, the ignorance perpetrated.
Do not condemn the woman who has had an abortion-millions have and they are not ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ or ’selfish’ people. They are often successful women who eventually have children at an appropriate time in their lives, where they can provide and the emotional, physical, and financial means to raise a child. just because a woman (or girl, as the case may be)gets pregnant does not automatically give her the ability to be a parent… it doesn’t take a high school graduate to get pregnant… but it does take more than an 8th grade education to raise a child to be a productive member of society, and not to become just another clog in the machine living an unsatisfying life.
women have been aborting their undesired children since the dawn of mankind… and since a woman didn’t show her pregnancy until after her third month, it wasn’t even considered that a woman was actually pregnant until she felt her baby moving… it wasn’t until 1588 when Pope Sixtus banned abortions that it all became a social issue…and even then, there is little proof that there was an accept consensus that life started at conception…
here’s my real name, folks. that’s how strongly I feel about this issue.
Roxanne
August 1st, 2008 at 5:42 am
Krysten: See, that’s pretty much my point, you can view the fetus as already existant (which, with a beating heart, evidence of brain function and reaction to external stimulus, is not at all an unfair perspective) or you can view the fetus as non-living until the moment of birth. It’s really a matter of opinion as to whether you consider it to be alive pre or post-birth. But I do see what you’re saying.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:46 am
If a pregnant woman is murdered, are two people killed? How can we try this case as a double murder if that very same woman could have killed her own baby legally? I don’t see a way to justify this double standard?
This issue has become so politicized here in America that Democrats can’t even vote for a late term abortion ban for fear of angering their militant pro-choice base. Do you realize there’s controversy over whether to let a baby that lives thru an abortion be allowed to live? Lives thru an abortion. Think about that. “The human conscience has a problem with aborting babies after 3 or 4 months because they start to look human by that stage.” I quote from a comment above. Unfortunately, that is not true. Women are willing to abort babies well after the stage of viability. I don’t think they should be allowed to do this.
As far as I’m concerned, the “my body, my choice” arguement better applies to legalizing drugs rather than killing unborn babies. At any stage of pregnancy. For any reason. And did you know that the “life of the mother” clause includes the mother’s mental state?
Some people want abortion on demand, no questions asked. Other people want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.” Still others want no abortions at all, perhaps except in literal life or death situations. I just wish society would address the issue of unwanted pregnancy at the root, which is, in my opinion, lack of birth control information and a sense of personal responsibility when it comes to women. Last time I checked, only women get pregnant. Women are ultimatley responsible for whether they get pregnant or not, whether they use protection or not. Obviously, there are accidents, and there are rapes. If that’s all we were having to address, this would be a very different debate. But we all know, those cases are not the majority of abortions.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:58 am
If a pregnant woman is murdered, are two people killed? How can we try this case as a double murder if that very same woman could have killed her own baby legally? I don’t see a way to justify this double standard?
That’s a good point. If abortion in is legal at any stage of pregnancy – what is desired by the people wanting legal abortions becomes a sort of curse for those who are the mothers of wanted children. How would you feel if the mother of your unborn child was murdered but the killer only received one murder sentence? Because the defence would be able to argue in court that if abortion is legal at that stage of pregnancy then your child has no rights.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:00 am
Definately yes. I am not going to address the issue of religion, as I think it had no place in this debate. I will say that unless a fully developed human being has consciousness, cognitive ability and self awareness, then a ‘life’ does not exist, in my personal opinion. I do not believe that a 3rd trimester fetus can be considered a human being in the legal sense, and I also reject the argument of potential life. I think that saying that the abortion of a fetus is taking a potential life is like saying that men cannot masturbate due to all the potential lives wasted in that act.
I think that the reason abortion should be legal is that there is no definitive way of addressing and/or proving right or wrong all the opinions that people have on this matter. Some people believe life begins at conception, some don’t. Some people think it is murder some don’t. Some people believe that abortion destroys people mental health, some consider that condesending and patronising. However, if you criminalise abortion, you effectivaly take away the rights of a considerable percentage of people who have the pro-choice opinion. If abortion is deemed legal, then the people who think that it is wrong can clearly choose never to have one. The only way to preserve the rights of all people (excluding whether or not you personally believe that a fetus is a life) is to legalise abortion.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:16 am
Tough question to ask but sure to garner lively debate.
Abortion is currently legal in all states but the stage at which a pregnancy can be terminated varies.
I think abortion should continue to be legal up until the point that the fetus can viably support itself outside of the womb. If an entity can support itself and you perform a procedure to kill it then its murder. If the entity cannot support itself it has to be considered a part of the mother and she can therefore do what she wills with her body.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:26 am
Considering the fact that due to the miracles of modern medicine babies are being safely delivered and surviving at earlier and earlier stages of gestation, the age of viability is currently evolving with each successful delivery of every premie baby.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:32 am
Only if giving birth is going to kill the mother or baby. Other than that, no. You chose to have sex, you reap the consequences. And rape is not an excuse, the baby did nothing wrong. Show me a woman who wouldn’t love and take care of her child she grew inside her body for 9 months! If you can, she has some serious mental issues. Its not the baby’s fault you are irresponsible and incompetent. Adoption is always a better alternative.
And how the f@#K can you justify killing it just becaus eit can’t support itsself? Hell, why not off the old geezers on meds to live and machines and shit. kill every one that has dyalisis for their kidneys and all the retards ( pardon the laymans terminology, mentaly challenged if you will) that can’t take care of themselves. And cripples and anyone with a communicable disease.
You can’t say yes to part and no to part. Its all or none.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:33 am
It’s difficult to say, I truly value above almost all, our free will and the ability to make decisions for ourselves, without the government deciding for us. obviously in the case of something like murder, it is both reasonable and acceptable for the government to intervene. I believe that telling a woman that the government tells her she can’t have an abortion is wrong because I don’t believe that the government has any right to tell a woman, or anyone for that matter what to do with her body. There are cases such as rape where to have the baby would be to put her through a horrible situation.
Having said all that, I don’t believe any woman should choose to have an abortion. I feel there are too many better ways of making sure you don’t have to raise a child then killing it. Many hospitals will take newborn babies, there are adoption agencies, etc.
So in short, I am strongly against the idea of abortion when other alternatives exist, as they do, but I am also against the government deciding for a woman and their people what is morally right in such a controversial debate. Yes, I think it should be legal, but I don’t think anybody should ever do it.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:34 am
or on the other hand, should abortion become legal, i think the age limit should be extended to 18 years. Until you are an adult and can be held responsible then you should be able to be aborted. It every parents right…isn’t that the argument?
August 1st, 2008 at 6:42 am
Hello, My name is Elsa and I had an abortion.
I am an educated person of reasonable intellect.I am not promiscuous. I was on contraception. I was in a long term relationship. I had counciling before coming to a final decision.
And I thank the heavens that I didn’t have to let the Government decide what choices I had. One generation before me did not have that luxury.
I’ve noticed an extreme amount of stereotyping in people’s thoughts about this subject. And you are welcome to your opinion. Just don’t force your choices on me. You have yours, I have mine. I think that’s the hallmark of a free society.
I was smart enough to know that I was not ready emotionally or financially to provide a flourishing environment for a child at that point in my life.
I am nearly 50, was a virgin until after high school, have had a histroy of long term relationships and have only had 5 partners my entire life. The other women who were with me that day did not fit a single stereotype so far presented. I met women who already had the family they were capable of caring for and failed contraception (no birth control is 100% effective)also led them to make a hard decision. These were women who had followed the rules of society and were still faced with an agonizing choice. As I said I met these women during counciling. I heard the regrets and sadness that they had to work through to come to this decision.
To assume that it’s mainly young teens with no regards for the outcome of heated sex in the back of a car is burying your head in the sand, in my opinion.
This announcement may change some’s opinion of me, but I am ok with that. I know the hours I spent mulling over the different options I had, and I am at complete peace with the choice I made for ME. I also know it would not only have changed my life in a non positive way, but it would have also impacted on the future of the 3 wonderful children I did have a few years later when I was capcable of providing a proper and loving environment without having to rely on the government to foot the bill.
I remember my mother speaking in hushed tones about friends that were lost to botched back alley abortions (these are not a myth) or women who were rendered sterile after having their uterus destroyed, or infection set in ,scaring otherwise healthy tissue, that is if they were lucky to survive. These women were also not teenagers. They were family women who had already had their children, had little or no birth control options and were still expected to have sexual relations with their husbands. The stimgma they faced to try and take care of the children they already had if the abortion was found out was terrible.
Safe controlled abortions should be legal. For those that want to use extreme examples to back up their arguments, continue to do so. You may vote for whatever candidate you choose to have your voice heard at the law making level. I will do the same.
Hello, My name is Elsa, and I had an abortion. I am not ashamed, and know I made the right choice for me and my future family.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:43 am
i am appalled by this site, that i used to love. Anti-abortion and pro-death penalty? I’m not coming back. You guys are extremists. And you hid it well, at first. Don’t insult my intelligence, cause I have one. Adios and f*** o**.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:45 am
Gilles, you say something like that, and expect us to care that you’re leaving us?
August 1st, 2008 at 6:47 am
And Elsa, you’re right, that did change my opinion of you, but in no way for the worse. Thank you for sharing.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:47 am
gilles: so you are pro-baby-murder and anti-murderer-killing? Makes sense. Bye!
August 1st, 2008 at 6:51 am
Uh, Gilles, the differences of opinion here seem to be about even, which is I think a fair reflection of (American, at least) society. Why all the hate?
August 1st, 2008 at 7:06 am
This is deep. I think that abortion should be legal, but only under certain circumstances. It is sad that it is easier to get an abortion, than a credit loan from the bank. It is unfair that many of the fathers are not even informed of the abortions. Why does it just have to be a woman’s choice? I also think that the decision to have an abortion should be one that should not be procrastinated about.. either have the abortion before 12 weeks, or not at all. Year after year, women are becoming less and less “motherly”, and are concentrating more on themselves. Could this be evolution’s solution to population control? Who knows. But I believe that is is better that the baby be aborted, than to grow up in a home where it is unwanted, and possibly abused. I had a co-worker that had an abortion at a young age. Even though it was the best decision for her at the time, she has been tormented by it for her entire adult life. Having 2 wonderful children myself, I am thankful that the decision of abortion never crossed my mind, even though they drive me crazy sometimes. I am happy to be crazy, and in love.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:11 am
Elsa ~ I could not possibly respect you more. Your honesty is admirable and your intentions are clearly good. My mom ran a home daycare throughout my entire childhood. I was able to observe many moms and their varied lives. I watched two loving mothers struggle with this issue. They both ended up pregnant with babies they were told would have severe genetic disorders. One had the child and raised and loved her until she (the child) passed away and the other terminated her pregnancy. Both gave deep thought to their decision and lived with the consequences willingly. My brother was engaged to a lady who used abortion as her chosen form of birth control. She had three pregnancies in her teenage years and her third baby died of SIDS, after which she never wanted to have another baby, yet continued to have unwanted pregnancies. I also worked with a very smart, lovely woman who was a nurse who got pregnant in her thirties, wasn’t ready, had an abortion and now is the happy mom of a son she had when she was ready.
This is called anecdotal evidence.
You bring up a good point, though. True accidental, unintended pregnancy despite careful attention paid to birth control. Sadly, these are the minority of abortions performed, statistically. If abortion were truly limited to cases of rape, incest, life of the mother, I don’t think a debate would even be necessary. It truly would be a decision to be made between a woman and her healthcare provider. But, since this is not the case, someone has to look out for the rights of the baby. I am so sick of hearing about the rights of the mother but completely ignoring the fact that the baby does indeed have rights. Should women be prosecuted for smoking crack or shooting heroin while pregnant? It’s her body, right?
August 1st, 2008 at 7:15 am
Carpe….
thanks for the support. Normally my history is not something I bandy about, but I thought a first person point of view was warranted in this case.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:18 am
Widely-quoted US studies show that some 2% of abortions are for given reasons relating to either the heath of the baby/mother (1.7%) or due to the consequences of rape/incest (0.33%).
As for the other 98% :
- too young/immature/not ready for responsibility (32%)
- economic (21%)
- to avoid adjusting life (16%)
- mother single or in poor relationship (12%)
- enough children already (4%)
[Source : Alan Guttmacher Institute; as also quoted in an earlier comment]
Does kinda imply that there is a tendency to resort to abortion for personal convenience…
FWIW, let me paraphrase Ronald Reagan :
I’ve noticed that all of the people that are for abortion have already been born”.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:20 am
Elsa,
Thank you for sharing your story. You’re right in that so many people stereotype the people who have abortions and don’t understand that it is a very difficult decision. Everyone should read your comment.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:21 am
A woman’s right to choose… It’s a term thrown about a lot in this kind of a debate. So much that it has become merely rhetoric. But if you really think about the term itself, you realize the essence of the pro-choice argument: it is the WOMAN’s right to choose.
It is not the government’s right to choose, it is not society’s right to choose, it is not the male partner’s right to choose. Until these people are smacked in the face with the prospect of
1) gaining 25-30 pounds at the least
2)feeling the pain that goes along with immediate weight gain and carrying a child to term
3)the nausea, heartburn, mood swings
4)loss of ability to work (the majority of women are not able to work into the end of their 3rd trimester)
5)the bleeding for up to 6 weeks after delivery
7)the pain of labor and delivery
8)the loss of sleep while pregnant
9)and the all around inability to sleep anywhere but on your left side… until all others are able to feel the abject fear of possibly being pregnant while being completely unable to have a child, I will not think of them as anything but laymen whose opinion is uneducated at best and misguided and abusive at worst.
I am older now and wiser, I have learned that I personally could not have an abortion. But I know what pregnancy entails and as a woman I know it is not to be taken lightly. Please understand that your right to an opinion, your right to drink alcohol, your right to do drugs or smoke is not diminished even though I don’t think you should do it. Just don’t take away my right to decide what I want to do with my own body be it harmful in your eyes or not.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:37 am
To answer the question put is simple. Yes it should be legal, and yes there should be rules. I realize that the rules are going to be arbitrary, drawing lines in the sand so to speak, but we do it all the time so it really shouldn’t cause all that much trouble. In the first 6 months or so, it should be a private matter between doctor and patient. After that it should be only in cases of dire need. A threat to the mother, rape, incest, and like circumstances.
A better question would be “How come the USA continues to have such a high abortion rate?” Canada’s rate remains at half the US rate. I’ll tell you exactly why. Because at the same time that near half the country wants to restrict women’s right to choose, they also deny their children the necessary education to lower the pregnancy rate.
How many people reading this view share the experience of Ringtail Roxy (Comment #12), no sex-ed until grade 12 and then a cursory glance? Seeing as girls can get pregnant at around 12 years of age, it is a little like closing the barn door after the horse has already left.
You folks ought to have proven to yourselves by now that ignorance about sex prevents no-one from participating in it.
Talk about hypocrisy. Contribute to the problem and then bitch about the consequences.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the considerable resources spent on both the pro-choice and anti-abortion sides of this debate were spent on education of the youngsters? It would be a win-win situation.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:39 am
Kiwi…..statistics can be dry and lifeless and not tell the whole story.I fit 3 of the 5 statistics listed in your example, and I can tell you that in no way did MY personal inconvenience ever come into consideration. There are real people behind those numbers and if you talked with most you will find there’s much more to the story.
You are still welcome to your feelings on the subject, as long as I am still welcome to mine.
I think that’s what anyone who beleives in the right to make a reasoned choice would ask.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:45 am
tempyra: i realize that the child of rape scenario is a popular one but look at this
“A number of studies have shown that pregnancy resulting from rape is very uncommon. One, looking at 2190 victims, reported pregnancy in only 0.6 percent.” (Abortion: Politics, Morality, and the Constitution [Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984], p. 283.)
even amongst those numbers, “…in the only major study of pregnant rape victims ever done, Dr. Sandra Mahkorn found that 75 to 85 percent chose against abortion” (Mahkorn, “Pregnancy and Sexual Assault,” The Psychological Aspects of Abortion, eds. Mall & Watts, (Washington, D.C., University Publications of America, 1979) 55-69.)
In 2000, cases of rape or incest accounted for 1% of abortions.(^ Guttmacher Institute,”Induced Abortion Facts in Brief” (2002) (13,000 out of 1.31 million abortions in 2000 were on account of rape or incest)
but forgetting all of these numbers, if this is the lgic we want to use to legalize abortion then we are making a value judgment on which life is more useful/valuable. please tell me that you see the problems inherent in this position. i realize that a slippery slope isn’t always the best argument, but when does this attitude leave crisis pregnancies and enter the world of convenience for the parents. if a parent decides that after 2 years that raising a downs syndrome child is too difficult and the child’s quality of life isn’t that good, could they kill that child?
August 1st, 2008 at 7:49 am
blacksunshine.I am very sorry you had such a terrible experience, but it sounds to me as if it was not YOUR choice. Being bullied into terminating a pregnancy would surely cause anyone mental and emotional anguish.
Have you thought of getting counciling to help ease your guilt and remorse? guilt and remorse that should not be your burden in the first place?
I wish you well and am sorry it was so tramatic for you.I can’t even begin to imagine.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:50 am
wow, I hope this doesnt turn out like the gay marrige one did.
I think it should be an option. So yes.
But only the last option.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:52 am
No except in cases of endangerment to the mother, incest, or rape. Please for one second ignore all of the scientific factual data or numbers and look at the big picture. I personally believe that the “facts or numbers” are a cop out for a decision which is often made out of convenience for the mother or father. Think about the fact that there is a life being created. It is amazing that the human body can do this. Creating a living, breathing, thinking being is truly something that should be valued and not taken for granted, which I feel abortion does. It is not just some statistical data to make you feel better about a “mistake.” The welfare and Medicare is out of control in this country (U.S.), but that it what it is there for. I do not think it is fair to decide on the fate of another innocent human life that can add so much to society. Just my two cents and I will not judge harshly on others opinions. I would much rather someone have an opinion that is different than mine than to be apathetic. (Btw apathy is really a problem that bothers me with people of my generation, I’m 20.) Have a good day!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:52 am
Hannah: Shame on you for showcasing that piece of propagandist crap. Who do you think produced that piece of sensationalist nonsense?
Read this, real doctors. A chief of pediatric neurology even.
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/issues-action/abortion/anti-choice-activity/reports/facts-speak-louder-than-silent-scream-6136.htm
August 1st, 2008 at 7:53 am
warningdontreadthis: It won’t – I am closely monitoring – if it gets out of hand I will close comments.
I am trusting people to be respectful!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:54 am
MOM 424 I agree completely.education is the key for teenage pregnancies. But having worked with kids of that age for the last few decades there is a frightening trend that having a baby is “cool” it’s considered an accessory, much like the latest shoes, as well as “company” or a living doll baby. I’m much more concerned with that mindset than a lack of education or the right to be pro choice or against abortion.
But I digress.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:57 am
Yes and what contributes to the mindset? What makes having a kid the best option? A lack of education, or a poor one.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:58 am
Mom424: I have to just remind everyone who the founder of Planned Parenthood was and what she stood for – it was Margaret Sanger – a woman who founded her society on eugenics:
“the most urgent problem of to-day is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.” She goes on to say: “possibly drastic and Spartan methods may be forced upon Americans”
Item 6 on 10 Books that screwed up the world.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:00 am
True accidental, unintended pregnancy despite careful attention paid to birth control. Sadly, these are the minority of abortions performed, statistically. If abortion were truly limited to cases of rape, incest, life of the mother, I don’t think a debate would even be necessary.
rushfan – firstly, I endorse the concluding parts of your earlier comment (#68), and I wholly agree with the comment above.
As for the “anecdotal evidence” remark you make in #83…right again; and this is a nuance most people miss. Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but adds little to the substance of a debate. There are many, many people who could relate a story similar to, but without the eloquence of, Elsa. I am in no position to judge anybody else, but such tales in the context of this discussion do bring to mind the remark made by the pro-choice activist Kate Michelman regarding the only 3 real reasons for abortion :
rape, incest, and “my situation”.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:04 am
patty; your list of all the bad things that happen during pregnancy is what millions of women all over the world gladly accept daily.
and you forgot the one main reason why they do so, the get the priviledge of bringing new life into the world. ask any mother, most likely yourself, if it was worth it.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:04 am
Elsa, thank you so much for sharing your experience. I was just wondering why you had decided abortion instead of adoption.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:06 am
jfrater; Her comments were taken out of context. I am actually disappointed that you believe the propaganda around Margaret Sanger. I suggest you read this.
http://fundamentalistdeceit.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
August 1st, 2008 at 8:09 am
MOM424.I wasn’t dismissing education, simply commenting on a trend that I see. It’s a social issue here in the US that I am disturbed by and at a loss on how to combat.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:12 am
“Abortion takes innocent human life; it’s the ultimate act of murder. So, no.”
http://www.abort73.com
August 1st, 2008 at 8:13 am
DiscHuker: I agree it was worth it. Personally I have never entertained the thought of abortion. I don’t believe that for me it would be an option. But, I am not everyone else, and I don’t have the right to make that decision for anyone else either. Not my body, not my choice.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:14 am
Elsa: Better alternatives. Better education, better opportunities. I would suggest voting Obama a step in the right direction.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:15 am
I think it should be legal. Where I am from, and where I live, not only it is illegal but also others birth control methods are kind of rare (actually, what it happens is that birth control pills are quite expensive, and condoms are not that cheap). We usually don’t have sexual education at school, so unless your family teaches you about contraception methods, you have to learn it the hard way. There are many many teenagers (not only poor, uneducated ones, I’m talking about middle-upper class kids) that believe that the first time you have sex you cannot get pregnant. Or that if you wash yourself after sex, you won’t get pregnant either. And as the abortion is illegal, we have lots of teenagers (and actually little girls, girls of 11 or 12 years old) pregnant or with kids they cannot take care of.
Here we have to get a special authorization from the government to abort (it is legal in certain cases). Last time a woman asked for this (she had a mental disease and was raped by her uncle) the justice took so long to give her the authorization that the baby was born (it was a horrible story actually, and quite controversial, it is said that the judges were influenced by member of the church, that has a great political weight here).
Getting an abortion is quite expensive here, if you don’t want to end up dead or sterile or with a massive infection, so only few people has access to it (ironically, the people who could support a child, at least economically).
However, I think that along with legal abortion, sexual education has to come (so abortions rates can be reduced), as free access to contraceptives and a different view of what a woman is and what her rights are.
As for if the man has the right to make a decision about this? I think it depends on the situation, he has the right to say what he thinks, but I believe the last word has to come from the woman, after all, it is her body and her life what will be more affected.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:17 am
Obviously some people are bringing up very good points. Most people know what they are talking about. However I should like to point out some things.
First of all, I am totally against abortion, for any reason. I am not the type of person who often goes around preaching her belief on things like this, however I feel I must comment on this subject.
To those who are mentioning rape as a reason to abort a child, or a will-be child. It is a fact that during a rape a woman’s body is under so much distress that it is very hard for her to get pregnant by it? It’s true. Now I am NOT saying that this is true in every case, in fact I am sure that this is not true in every case, however I think that those of you who mentioned rape think that pregnancy by rape happens much more often than it actually does.
Also, for those who mentioned teenage girls who might have otherwise might have gone to school and college had they just aborted their baby. Um, if you are talking about 15 year old girls getting pregnant, I am sorry but do you know how much more likely it is for teenage girls who have gotten pregnant once to get pregnant again? Why wouldn’t they? They dont believe in using protection obviously. Now maybe it was a one-time deal with these girls, but in my opnion, if you are old enough to have sex, then you are old enough to take care of the baby that may come along with it.
ok, and what about grown women with familes who want abortions for one thing or another? Well this is a true story that i heard from the source just a couple of years ago:
A women has friends with another woman who had a husband, and three girls. The woman found out that she was pregant again, and when she went to the doctor to find out the sex of her baby, she found out that it was another girl.
Her and her husband wanted a boy, so the woman aborted her child. JUST because it wasnt a boy.
I was almost sick when i heard that. I couldnt believe that abortion was legal when someone could do that to an innocent child.
Im sorry the length of this comment, i greatly appreciate you reading all of it.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:21 am
krysten,
Adoption was definately an option I spent a great deal of time considering. I know me. If I had carried the pregnancy to term I would have had a hard time relinquishing the child to another. And I think that would have haunted me on a daily basis. Is my child healthy, happy, being loved by nuturing parents? Or was my child a last ditch effort for a couple to try and save their marriage, etc, etc. Instead, I chose counciling and an early term abortion. I knew I wouldn’t be able to turn over my child once it was born. And the child would have most likely suffered for my selfish choice. I was not ready emotionally, financially or mentally. As stated above, when I was ready to have children and support them with all my facilties, I was blessed with 3 wonderful children who have grown to become amazing people and contributing members of society. Even in my own household there are pro-choice and pro-life proponents and I give equal weight and the right to opinion to each side. I simply ask the same courtesy in return.
I had another friend who was pregnant at the same time I was with my first child. She chose adoption, well actually, her family chose for her. She is haunted to this day by her choice. That’s been 25 years ago. I am sure there are many that this is a good option for if they want to go through with the pregnancy, but once again it boils down to it has to be the individuals choice, not pressure from society or family.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:30 am
oh, I understand.
Does your family know about your choice?
August 1st, 2008 at 8:32 am
I am going to attempt to make a correlation to something I’ve experienced. Please understand I am in no way trying to make abortion less that it is.
I’ve been hospitalized against my will twice for anorexia. The first time. my doctor at the time called the police to my house and they led me to the hospital as a dnager to myself. I was 17 years old and being treated like a criminal. I was thrown in a bed and force fed through tubes because it was “what was best.” I understand now that I was close to death and it was best for me at the time. However, having all choice and all control over whats happening to your body stripped away from you is the most awful thing I’ve ever felt.
Anyone I’ve ever known who has had an abortion was much like Elsa. They were smart women who weren’t sleeping around and who, in most cases, were on pills or using condoms. Having someone else decide “what’s best” takes people down to their most base level. No one should have the right to control someone else’s body.
I used to think if I got pregnant I could abort. After watching someone very close to me try for years to get pregnant and suffering four miscarriges in the process, I personally couldn’t do it now. I’m also older and more established to the point where I could technically support a child if I ever slipped up.
However, my personal beliefs will never stop me from supporting the right to choose. Your body is your body, and you deserve control over it no matter what.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am
absolutely not. if you didn’t want a child, then you should have thought about that before you fooled around with that guy. abortion is a very selfish alternative.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:39 am
Laura2,
Thanks for sharing your perspective from living in a society that does not allow “choice’. It’s heartbreaking to hear, but needed to be told.
Thank you
August 1st, 2008 at 8:40 am
Callie:
I think you are spot on.
Of any partner I’ve had, they’ve all said the same thing.
My personal thought is that it’s much better not to bring a child into the world at all than to bring a child into the world who isn’t wanted and who can’t be provided for.
The only stipulation I have on my opinion is that it should be within a reasonable time post-conception.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:40 am
i think a distinction must be made on somethings as to your private experience and your public stance. this is one issue that it is far better to state a general public view than to go on public record w/ details of your own experience. unfortunately people do sit in judgement of other people’s choices and can make sweeping generalizations about the person simply on the basis of one comment they have made about themselves in a public area such as this. it is not right or fair but it will happen. so i would strongly urge anyone to not share personal details that you do not want the public to know or that you do not want to be a matter of comment record for this site. comments may be changed on site but not on the feed. this is an extremely private matter than i would urge people to not share their own personal details about, simply state your public position.
and frankly..this goes for any subject, any comment. consider what you are saying. to whom. and about yourself. and that it will remain for public view.
there is no need for personal testamonials, simply state your opinion.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:40 am
DiskHuker: That millions of people agree in doing something doesn’t make me do it. There’re people who like onions, probably millions of them, and I still hate them. I know an onion is not a baby, but I don’t think that a couple of cells without much organization are a baby either. It’s just a bunch of cells. Ok, those cells can lead to a baby, but also every time I ovulate and don’t get pregnant (because I used a condom or because I didn’t have sex) I am letting a possibility of a child go and nobody considers me a murderer for doing that. So do you (you sound like a man) every time you masturbate.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:43 am
Laura2
That reminds me of a George Carlin joke.
“You don’t call a woman who’s had more than one period a serial killer do you”? “No, so let’s try to use a little consistency in these arguments”!
Not an argument in itself, but a reasonable point.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:45 am
Krysten,
My husband does, but it has never come up with my children. If they ever ask me I will be honest and truthful. I will also support whatever choices they make concerning an unplanned pregnancy,Pro-Choice or Pro-Life, should it ever come up.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:47 am
Completely, you are not taking life; you are taking the potential for life. If you removed the fetus, it could not survive on it’s own. It’s just tissue and growing organs. That is not a person you are killing. Even though it’s sad, and it’s a shame, it’s the same as wearing a condom, taking birth control, or abstaining from sex. It’s taking away potential for life, not life itself.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:48 am
Cyn:
I disagree. Public stances are garnered from private experiences. Someone who posts “I think it should be legal/illegal” should have a reason why they feel that way. The internet is a good outlet for people who may not be able to tell anyone else their secrets anyway. Plenty of people know mine, but that’s immaterial.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:52 am
Cyn,
I understand the point you are trying to make, but such an intense topic brings forth personal opinion, stereotypes, and mis-information -on both sides. I posted my personal experience fully prepared to be flamed. I am not ashamed of my choice or the reasons behind it but felt it important to give a first hand example of someone who did not fit the stereotypes being bandied about in the hopes of showing there is more to the issue than convenience or lack of self control.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:00 am
It must be legal. When the pro-lifer’s which by and large = religious conservative, stop beating and murdering kids and adults when they find out they are gay or transgender, advocating war, pushing the death penalty, then they can talk. Until then shut up and keep your hands out of my womb you fucking hypocrites.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:03 am
frank, it’s not that simple. If every woman in the world had the right to make a decision about where to stop when ‘fooling around with a guy’ then she probably would use a contraceptive method. But we are living in a society (at least I do) where not having sex is not ‘cool’. When I was at what I think you call High School (17 yo) all of my friends had had sex, many of them unprotected (and I repeat, not because coming from a poor background, but because they lacked sexual education). I was mocked because I was still a virgin, and I luckily come from a family where sex is not a taboo, and knew how to stop and say no when I didn’t want to go any further. I actually had a difficult time with my friends (yes, they’re still my friends) but I knew they said those things just because they didn’t want to look stupid, as I did for being a virgin (one thing, I never thought that my virginity was a prize or something like that, but I also knew that I wanted to spend my first time with someone I choose and because I wanted to, not because I didn’t want to be laughed at).
I still think it nearly all a matter of education
August 1st, 2008 at 9:04 am
this is about ‘commentor’s remorse’. i would urge anyone on any list to consider what they are posting publicly. if you can stand by your comment and live w/ the consequences…fine. just stop for a moment to consider that before you hit enter on a topic as intimate and sensitive as this.
personally-
i do not think you necessarily have to justify a stance on this topic ..pro or con…w/ intimate, personal details. simply stating you are for or against would suffice.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:07 am
@ rushfan + Tempyra – ‘If a pregnant woman is murdered, are two people killed? How can we try this case as a double murder if that very same woman could have killed her own baby legally? I don’t see a way to justify this double standard?’
Then you don’t understand how the law, and basic logic works. If I get a tattoo I am making the choice to change my body. Does that give someone the right to drug me, and give me a tattoo against my will? If I choose to cut off my finger and refuse medical treatment (which I have every right to do), should someone else be allowed to chop up my finger against my will? There is a law called The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which protects a woman from violence against her, and her fetus. In the event that a woman is killed along with her VIABLE fetus (ie. if she was 10 weeks pregnant, the fetus wouldn’t be viable), they treat it as a ‘double murder’. This is because the woman obviously had her rights violated. It was her body, and her fetus, and no one has the right to kill her.
Now before you talk about “but what is the doctor doing with an abortion?”, read the law. It clearly states that the woman’s right to terminate her fetus is not challenged. If she seeks the aid of someone to terminate her pregnancy, with her consent they will not be prosecuted.
Also, abortion isn’t legal at every stage of pregnancy. Please provide proof that it is anywhere, or drop that subject.
@ rushfan – ‘Considering the fact that due to the miracles of modern medicine babies are being safely delivered and surviving at earlier and earlier stages of gestation, the age of viability is currently evolving with each successful delivery of every premie baby.’
Except the evidence says you’re wrong.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7390522.stm
‘Babies born at 23 weeks or earlier are no more likely to survive than they were a decade ago, a study has found.’
@ Elsa – I applaud you, and I’m so glad you were able to make the decision that was best for you. People like to forget about the actual women with lives, families, and emotions in this debate. I have friends who have had abortions, one of them being a mother of a small child, and one of which I believe would be dead if she hadn’t aborted. I also agree 100% regarding your comment about teens. Only 19% of all abortions in the USA are performed on teenagers.
@ jfrater – By your logic, no one should by a VW car, because it was created by Hitler. Are you honestly saying Planned Parenthood should be shunned, and not allowed to provide low income women with not only abortions, but sex education, contraception, pap smears, pre, and post natal care, and STD/HIV/AIDS tests? Really? If you have a problem with someone using PP as a method of debunking (for the umpteenth time) pro-life propaganda and inaccurate fetal development, then I’ll point you in the direction of an unbiased website aimed at spreading religious tolerance.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_fetu.htm
@ DiscHuker – While what Patty provided about the effects of pregnancy are correct, she oversimplified. I will provide a link to the effects that are associated with pregnancy. Read through the list, and explain why anyone should be forced to undergo that kind of treatment, for a pregnancy they don’t want. Any of the effects can happen at ANY time with little to no warning. One minute a woman can have a healthy pregnancy, the next she’s dead. It happens that quickly. Pregnancy should never be forced on anyone. To do so not only reduces women to nothing more than incubators, but it cheapens the women who made the choice to give birth, and raise children.
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/liz/004.htm
August 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am
Regardless of modern-day abuse of abortions, it should absolutely be legal.
When someone is raped, or protection fails, how is it justifiable that they should not have access to abortion, when a fetus is not capable of existing outside the body of the mother, and not technically a human?
Also, when a mother has no intention of stopping a drug or alcohol habit, bringing a baby into the world is unfair. It will almost certainly suffer greatly.
The most important factor validating abortion as a necessary thing for me is that people abort because they are not ready to raise a child, and deal with the stigma that pregnancy has in our society. Perhaps in an ideal society women would not suffer in the workplace and in social matters as they do when pregnant, regardless of marital status. The fact is, we do not need unwanted, neglected, and poorly raised children plaguing our society. Statistically, odds are poor that they will grow to be productive members of society when born to a 14 year old with a crack dealer for a babydaddy.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:17 am
My answer on this one has to be yes, abortion should be legal. Of course with regret.
I’ve never been happy about taking a stance on this issue. I’ve mentioned here before that during my life I’ve crossed over the boundaries of the political spectrum; in my early youth, I was rabidly liberal. Then in my early twenties, while in college, I swung over to the right. This was the result of the times, and my age, and the culture. I was part of a generation looking for a distinct break with it’s older siblings’ or parents’ left-leaning tendencies… in other words, we were looking for anyway to define ourselves that was “anti-hippie.” So I became a College Republican and a Reaganite, and worshiped at the altar of William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. It never really sunk in wholly—I retained a brain and a sense of balance and I was of course no religious conservative; consequently I remained hostile to religious interference in politics, and I remained in favor of gun control and never really felt comfortable about opposing abortion. (You might wonder how I was therefore in any way conservative, beyond fiscal considerations, but trust me, I was, and I’m just too ashamed to go into all of it now). In time my political orientation was tempered–I had wanted a radical conservatism that would help the poor to better their position and so on, and I saw those ideals betrayed more and more by Reagan’s followers and successors (and indeed perhaps Reagan himself never really held those ideals, and Buckley, I think, was incapable of understanding many of them… perhaps Goldwater did, but who knows) and so some time later I began to move back to the center and finally a bit more to the left, where I am now. In all that time my thoughts on abortion changed barely at all.
And this made me realize–abortion really isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a political issue. Or at least it shouldn’t be used as such–it shouldn’t be so cheapened. It has too much gravity surrounding it for that. It can be, depending on the circumstances, a necessity, a convenience, a tragedy… it can be abhorrent and can also be not only understandable but imperative. (When the mother’s life is threatened, for instance). But it’s never as simple, I think, as politically it’s made out to be.
I understand people who oppose abortion on religious or other principled reasons; I could never be one of those in the crowd who shouts down such people just as I could never join the opposition in doing the shouting. But… I do think it’s wrong to try to make abortion illegal.
It isn’t only simply a matter of a woman’s choice. That’s a huge argument in and of itself. But involved in this are also some unpleasant facts about the life we human beings live on this world of ours, in the relatively brief time we have. Being intelligent and aware, we think of there being something deeply sacred and sacrosanct about our lives. Surely to some extent there is. Certainly there’s something vital and mysterious and powerful to us, about our human lives, and we don’t always restrict these feelings to ourselves as individuals or our immediate loved ones. We’re social creatures and we have some understanding and compassion and empathy with our fellow humans–we recognize on some gut level the single boat we’re all in when it comes to the nature of life and its brevity. We don’t like to think about death… and many of us choose to believe that there is life after death, so that we can cling to the notion that somehow we carry on. I don’t say this is wrong. I happen to not believe it myself, but I confess I wish it were so sometimes. But all of this colors our view of Life. We don’t like to get near considerations that sometimes life is less expedient and vital than *not* being alive. We tend to more often ask the question (and probably rightly so) that goes, “who are we to decide who should die?” And life being precious and wonderful, it’s a good question to ask. But sometimes the opposite is also a good question, and strangely just as vital in some ways: “who are we to decide who should live?” Or “who are we to decide that a life *must* be, that a life *must* happen?” On the face of it we don’t like to face that question, and some people will dismiss it, even. But it really is just as important and vital.
When a life is created, it isn’t only an abstract–”human life.” It can become, in time, far more complex. Usually this is the reason people bring up for opposing abortion. But thought about another way, it also become problematic. Who, after all, will look after that life? What sort of life will that person have? What life is it without parental love? With possible abuse and neglect in it? With tragedy? No matter what these aren’t easy questions. Many people who are anti-abortion walk away from these questions. They don’t answer them. And yet, one wonders–if a life is saved and allowed to continue–will those people who saved it be there to save it again, when it’s being neglected or hurt? The one difference between a person and a fetus that is more or less certain is that one possesses awareness that grows in time–the other much less so, if at all. And if one is to face a life of misery or even torture… then an ending while awareness is still small is, perhaps, a kindness. In the grand scheme of things.
It is, again, not an easy question either way. We can only observe that an unwanted child remains, usually, unwanted.
Unfortunately for us, life is all about hard questions like this. That’s the one sucky thing about being alive.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:18 am
@ Callie – I’m very sorry to hear that, but I know what you mean. I’ve dealt with clinical depression since my early teens (I’m now in my 20’s and still deal with it every single day), and at my lowest point I tried to commit suicide. When I was at the hospital I felt like I was under arrest. No one looked me in the eye, they left me alone for hours in a dark room, and the nurses were far from the caring people they should have been. When I was given injections, they acted like they didn’t care if I was in pain or not, and just jabbed at me. It was one of the lowest points in my life, yet they found a way to make it worse. They made me wish I’d succeeded in my attempt.
So when I hear people say I should just deal with getting pregnant, regardless of the effects it’ll have on me mentally (ignoring physically, as I have conditions that would reek havoc on my body if I was pregnant), it hurts, and makes me feel like nothing more than an animal. Hell, even animals are treated better if they are unable to handle pregnancy. Being told I shouldn’t make love to the man I want to spend my life with, because someone else thinks I should keep all pregnancies and be grateful, is like reducing me to a walking womb.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:18 am
If you abort a baby you should be aborted with it, end of story. Everyone knows the consequences of sex and there is always an alternate solution to abortion. It’s comparable to suicide, taking the easy way out just cause you can’t handle the baby. Unless you live in Africa and the baby will be born with AIDS or live a malnourished life, end up as a slave, or something along those lines, I can’t even begin to fathom the idea of someone aborting a pregnancy. Forget the circumstances surrounding the pregnancy, that kid could grow up to be the most influential person in the world or at the least live a long a fruitful life whether it’s with you or another family or is dying to adopt a child.
Has anyone seen the movie Idiocracy? The only argument I can think of for abortion is that movie. All the dumb people in the world have all the babies cause the smart people are too busy to. Eventually everyone turns dumb and society falls apart.
All the smart people with money will be having the abortions while the lower class people who can’t afford it have to keep their babies (unless they throw them into a dumpster after birth).
August 1st, 2008 at 9:19 am
#
119. CFEstes – August 1st, 2008 at 8:47 am
Completely, you are not taking life; you are taking the potential for life. If you removed the fetus, it could not survive on it’s own. It’s just tissue and growing organs. That is not a person you are killing. Even though it’s sad, and it’s a shame, it’s the same as wearing a condom, taking birth control, or abstaining from sex. It’s taking away potential for life, not life itself.
The same can be said for terminally ill people, mentally challenged, and people of life support IE: kidney dialysis and hospitalized people in a coma. Should we kill them too?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:23 am
Yes, it should be legal. At least during the first trimester. This world is already overpopulated, and there are a lot of unwanted children already, so why bring more to this world.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:26 am
I feel pretty strongly about this issue, and I’m pro-CHOICE. I like to say if you don’t like abortions, then don’t have one. My body, my choice. Your body, your choice.
I think if the father wants to keep the baby and the mother doesn’t, she should gladly let him carry it. Oh that’s right, guys don’t come equipped with a uterus, therefore they must own ours. I forgot.
If you’re so concerned about the wellbeing of the fetus, open up a fetus orphanage.
I get sarcastic and sort of snarky on this topic, it irritates me to no end that people who have NO BUSINESS telling others what to do are trying to make likely one of the biggest decisions of one’s life for them.
This is going to sound really mean, but I think I’d rather see people having abortions than people having kids on the government’s dime. I’m tired of seeing people making procreation a career. It’s a perpetual cycle, their kids grow up to do the same thing, because that’s all they know.
How about we educate the people we have living here now?
(Tara, I agree with you wholeheartedly.)
August 1st, 2008 at 9:30 am
I think it should be 100% legal. No terms. No limits. I still can not believe that there are people who think otherwise. It is NO one’s business but the woman.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am
The alternative to legal abortion is illegal abortion.
End of.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am
@ B_Rad – ‘If you abort a baby you should be aborted with it, end of story.’
That proves you have no actual sympathy towards the fetus, but you have a problem with a woman having sex. Please explain how having an abortion is ‘the easy way out’, when women have to deal with comments like yours? In case you weren’t aware, women in the USA, UK, and Canada are being used as slaves, both for work, and sex. The risk of poor, and minority women contracting the AIDS virus is on the rise, due to sub-par sexual education and the lack of access to birth control. In 2006, 9.9% of people in the USA were living below the poverty line. Of those 7.7 million people, 2.9 million were married, where as 23.8% were single women/female householders.
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/010583.html
Please explain why you have to live in Africa before you have some kind of help, when the minority women in the USA are being screwed over by their government?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:32 am
“From a philosophical perspective I also wonder whether we would have a cure for AIDS and other diseases now if someone hadn’t aborted the child that was going to ultimately find the cure.”
I wonder how much more widespread AIDS and other diseases would be if we had a greater number of poor, uneducated and to some extent unwanted children in the world to spread them.
Should abortion be legal? Absolutely yes. If there are issues about how it is being used then they SHOULD be cleared up by our governments giving more than a half-arsed sexual education to schoolkids. Abortion being made illegal is like curing a headache by cutting off the head.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:33 am
129. B_Rad
First of all, intelligence is not necessarily genetic, and to a large degree, nature vs. nurture takes control in that particular matter.
Secondly, is an unwanted child, raised in a family that cannot provide the material things, not to mention love and belonging that a child needs to flourish, more likely to grow up ‘to be the most influential person in the world or at the least live a long a fruitful life’ or to go in a different, darker direction?
At this point, I’m willing to bet your answer is adoption. Many children suffer emotionally from adoption, regardless of when they find out. Also, what about a baby born to a mother who drank throughout the pregnancy? An FAS child has very little chance at a fulfilling, healthy and most importantly happy life.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:35 am
TO say that a woman isn’t “big enough” to take care of a child produced from a rape shows your ignorance of the mentality of human beings. Why would you want to have something you had no say in. It’s like the government telling you that you did nothing wrong but you will also be punished. Is that right? And I see everyone writing that it is due to unprotected sex. All sex that is “protected” has at least a 0.1 chance of producing a fertilized egg. Also, I think that if women knew there bodies better or were at least encourage by society to learn about themselves then we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.
A woman can only get pregnant at a certain time frame every month…let’s just not have sex then. I think that’s doable.
But even so, abortion should be completely illegal because its not impeding on anyones life but the woman’s. If the woman told no one she was pregnant or didn’t know she was pregnant and go a hysterectomy, would you say that was an abortion. Trying to control women is what the government, which is run by men, has been doing for the last 200 years.
Better decision making is the key to this problem and teaching people how to do so is the solution. A person shouldn’t have to pay for some small slip up which produces nothing. On the far side of things, what if a woman becomes pregnant from a rape and doesn’t tell anyone that she was raped then the man decides he wants partial custody. Should he be allowed to do that? Termination of pregnancy doesn’t kill anything that is, only something that could be. That’s just like imprisoning a the next man to cure cancer because he hit a pedestrian with his car. It’s not what will happen, but what is happening. When it comes to changing the entire course of your life with one decision, how can you fault someone for playing it safe and not taking the risk?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:36 am
Correction: Abortion should be legal…then the rest
August 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
@ longball – ‘The same can be said for terminally ill people, mentally challenged, and people of life support IE: kidney dialysis and hospitalized people in a coma. Should we kill them too?’
Fetus – It’s life depends on a human being, who runs the risk of infertility, permanent paralysis, and even death.
Coma/dialysis patient – They are hooked up to a machine.
Mentally challenged – They are not dependent on another human’s body.
Terminally ill patient – Is being kept alive by machines, and in Oregon, can choose to die with the help of a doctor.
Unless you believe people should be forced to donate kidneys, or have a person surgically attached to them, a fetus and those other people are not even close to being the same.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am
I didn’t read all the comments, so excuse me if I am repeating. Abortion has to be legal because it will always be “available.” People used to have abortions before it was regulated and infection was high and death could be a consequence. Women will ALWAYS have abortions legal or not. Better to keep it legal and safe than have it done in dirty places by uneducated people posing as doctors to make some money off some scared desperate woman. Making it illegal is a power issue.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am
I’m from Canada and am a dual Canadian/American citizen, and I can honestly say, I get such little pleasure from visiting the States anymore it’s very sad. It has basically become a dumbed down, blinkered, theocracy. This debate is about something bigger. I don’t know of very many people in Canada (or I should probably say Vancouver more specifically) that wouldn’t be pro-choice. Of those that would be staunch pro-lifers, they hold this (wrong) belief due to strong religious views. So what’s the real issue here? I see it more as a separation of church and state. I am horrified at how religious America has become and am appalled that there is such a heated debate that is so obviously just a weak facade over the issue of this insane neo-crusade.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
Looking at some of the comments of males, I find this to be more and more outrageous, and an infuriating example of unwillingness to recognize that it takes two to tango.
‘If you don’t want a child then you should not be having unprotected sex, and if you still do then you should have to live with the consequences.’
Any sexually active men in here willing to give up sex because they don’t want a baby? Nope, it’s all on the one with the uterus to abstain, OR make sure there is protection, and deal with the consequences if it happens to fail.
Until that attitude changes, or men are able to successfully carry children, there is absolutely no reason that they should get any bloody input.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:46 am
“It is not the government’s right to choose, it is not society’s right to choose, it is not the male partner’s right to choose. Until these people are smacked in the face with the prospect of
1) gaining 25-30 pounds at the least
2)feeling the pain that goes along with immediate weight gain and carrying a child to term
3)the nausea, heartburn, mood swings
4)loss of ability to work (the majority of women are not able to work into the end of their 3rd trimester)
5)the bleeding for up to 6 weeks after delivery
7)the pain of labor and delivery
8)the loss of sleep while pregnant
9)and the all around inability to sleep anywhere but on your left side… until all others are able to feel the abject fear of possibly being pregnant while being completely unable to have a child, I will not think of them as anything but laymen whose opinion is uneducated at best and misguided and abusive at worst.”
Because, of course, all of those things are SIGNIFICANTLY more tragic than the death of an innocent human being. *eyeroll*
When it comes to abortion there is only one valid question: Is it human or not. Nobody would support killing a newborn because his father was a rapist. Or because her mother had to quit her job. And God forbid we should bring up the possibility that all the retarded and handicapped should be put out of their misery at their parents’ whim.
In other words, no, abortion should not be legal under any but the most unthinkable of circumstances (IE as an absolute last resort to save the life of the mother.) Nobody has the “right to choose” whether an innocent human being lives or dies.
Susan B. Anthony is rolling over in her grave at the thought that this sort of abomination has become the litmus test for whether one can be considered a “feminist” these days.
———-
Mom424 said, “jfrater; Her comments were taken out of context. I am actually disappointed that you believe the propaganda around Margaret Sanger. I suggest you read this.”
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/3003757?n=2&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.25
“Those least fit to carry the race are increasing most rapidly.”
“Many of the children thus begotten are sub-normal or feeble-minded.”
“Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of those who lower it.”
And that’s just from the first paragraph!
That’s not “taken out of context.” That’s not “misquoted propaganda.” That’s directly from the primary source! Margaret Sanger was an unapologetic eugenicist. Whether or not she was racist is still open for debate (although the ABCL certainly had no hesitations about giving them a platform for their views.)
“The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out or one or two generations would give us only partial control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble-minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded.”
“But in its so-called “constructive” aspect, in seeking
to reestablish the dominance of healthy strain over the unhealthy, by urging an increased birth-rate among the fit, the Eugenists really offer nothing more farsighted than a “cradle competition” between the fit and the unfit.”
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/8/1689/1689.txt
Tell me what kind of “context” justifies this sort of filth? It amazes me that people can consider Carrie Buck a tragic case and Margaret Sanger a hero without their heads exploding from the contradiction. Sanger would have been the first in line to support Buck’s sterilization, and any attempt to claim otherwise is willful blindness at best.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:47 am
Sorry, I had some formatting errors. The last two quotes come from the second link.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:47 am
@ nerdlette – I agree with you regarding adoption, but I would like to add the fact that minority children are far less likely to find a home, than those born to white people. When you take into account the fact that the majority of women who are having abortions are low income minorities, you get an idea of just how many children would be left to rot in the system (which is highly racist, and ageist).
August 1st, 2008 at 9:48 am
#
140. Reaper – August 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
@ longball – ‘The same can be said for terminally ill people, mentally challenged, and people of life support IE: kidney dialysis and hospitalized people in a coma. Should we kill them too?’
Fetus – It’s life depends on a human being, who runs the risk of infertility, permanent paralysis, and even death.
Coma/dialysis patient – They are hooked up to a machine.
Mentally challenged – They are not dependent on another human’s body.
Terminally ill patient – Is being kept alive by machines, and in Oregon, can choose to die with the help of a doctor.
Unless you believe people should be forced to donate kidneys, or have a person surgically attached to them, a fetus and those other people are not even close to being the same.
Hey, i’m from Oregon and I hate that law. I’m just saying that just because they can’t take core of them selves without someones help (ie: Mother, caretaker, machine, whatever) that doesn’t mean you should kill them
August 1st, 2008 at 9:52 am
854,122 legal induced abortions (2003)
Top five reasons (Wikipedia) on why women have abortions
25.5% Want to postpone childbearing
21.3% Cannot afford a baby
14.1% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy
12.2% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy
10.8% Having a child will disrupt education or job
No wonder this country is in the shape it’s in. Seems selfish to me but that’s just my opinion. No shouldn’t be legal.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
@ 147. Eddie – http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
• The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.[8]
So it’s ’selfish’ for a woman who knows she can’t provide a decent home for a child, to abort? It’s ’selfish’ for a woman to feel she’s too young, and can’t provide for a child? It’s ’selfish’ for a woman to think of the future of her possible child, and that of her born children (as 60% of women obtaining abortions already have at least one child), and act accordingly? Wow, I guess a hell of a lot of people in this world are selfish. I hope you donate a lot of your money to charity, and do a hell of a lot of volunteer work.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Can you people not worry about your own bodies? I love how people have all these high faulting moral reasons why abortion is bad, but they offer no real substance other than they do not like it. Good, do not get one.
You want to live in a theocracy do so, you choice, I won’t stop you. This country is not one however, its a goddamn Constitutional Republic. You do not get to complain that there is too much gov’t intervention in our lives then tell others how to live theirs.
The beautiful thing about choice is that you get yours too. Choose not to, hell, hate me for my beliefs. I encourage you to despise and decry me, but do not think yourself special enough to legislate my body.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:07 am
GettyB: You said “A woman can only get pregnant at a certain time frame every month…let’s just not have sex then. I think that’s doable.” That is NOT true. There are women who ovulate at different times of her period each time, women who ovulate twice a month (it used to be my case), and spermatozoids live a wide range of time, depending on the man and woman (I know a case where they lived more than two weeks).
So abstaining from sex during certain days is not an option (of course is doable, but it’s highly likely that you get pregnant). I had a friend that being on pills and even using a condom got pregnant. For a lot of personal and economical reasons she decided to have an abortion, unfortunately, she didn’t have the money to do it in a private clinic (it costs around 2000 dollars, more than what I make a month (I’m a scientist)). Unfortunately, she died.
Lots of girls die because they had a cheap abortion. If abortion was legal, it would save literally thousands of lifes.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
nerdlette: “Any sexually active men in here willing to give up sex because they don’t want a baby? Nope, it’s all on the one with the uterus to abstain, OR make sure there is protection, and deal with the consequences if it happens to fail.”
No condom, no pill, no contraceptive whatsoever…no sex. Maybe I’m the only responsible male around but if a dude doesn’t man up and take responsibility if he gets a woman pregnant then that guy needs to be neutered with a dull knife.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
I don’t think anybody should have a negative view on this until they find themselves in that position.
Personally, I am pro-choice, but I doubt I could go through with an abortion.
My best friend had one at 19, and it hasn’t bothered her at ALL, so saying it mentally affects all women simply is not true.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am
This is a very touchy subject, especially for me, because unlike some of the people posting here (I’m not saying no one has, but some of you HAVEN’T), I have lived through the emotional turmoil of an unwanted pregnancy. My son was NOT conceived in a consensual manner. It has taken me months and months of expensive therapy to even be able to sit here and write about my experience, but to be blunt I was drugged, beaten, and sexually assaulted while staying over at a friend’s dorm.
It is difficult for me to sit here and read people condemning those who have considered or had an abortion, calling us “murderers” and whatnot. Personally, I struggled for weeks over whether or not to abort my pregnancy — ultimately, I decided that emotionally and physically stable or not, I couldn’t go through with it, and I am now the proud mother of a beautiful five-month-old son. Granted, I was nearly done with my education, I had excellent job prospects, and a family that was willing to help me heal and become the mother I needed to be. Not everyone who is put into my position has that.
So my personal view? Abortion should not be made illegal. Whether or not it is morally wrong (which I have believed my entire life), it is not fair to put a woman through a pregnancy she is not willing to go through. Pregnancy is difficult. Child birth is scary. The fear that you might not love your child because he may look like your attacker is terrifying. Yes, adoption is always an option, and no, foster children do not automatically turn out bad, but some women can’t even make it through the entire pregnancy, and it is not fair to force her to do so.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
Well I have read most of the self-righteous comments posted and I must say the sentimentality is a little silly. I feel that its immoral to ban something that a woman or couple feel so strongly needs to be done. The only reason that having children is encouraged and abortion is discouraged is because of modern society’s “growth mentality” which so strongly encourages us to get a higher population in order to create more customers. This way of thinking is also encouraged by religions, because if Christians (for example) have children, they make more Christians. More Christians mean more money for the Church. Thats why religions don’t like gay marriage, abortion or contraception. Wake up. The people who go around saying it should be illegal because “it’s a life” are the same people having steak or chicken for dinner tonight, guaranteed.
The earth does not need more people and if anything could do with a lot less. Besides that if abortion became illegal it would lead to illegal practioners who could not be regulated by the government and could cause the death of the people who would feel compelled to utilize their services. The teenaged girl who had a condom break? check. The woman who makes $7/hr ringing groceries? check. The woman who would be killed in her country for premarital sex? check. I would rather have people with established lives with friends and family and careers then countless children who were born out of moral guilt or law restrictions, whom may suffer from many serious problems due to the fact that they ‘had to’ be born to a teenage mother or a single woman who can barely support herself. AND before you play the adoption card, remember, we don’t need any more people around!
August 1st, 2008 at 10:15 am
@ jfrater – Seeing as you have no responded to the people who have provided evidence to counter your claims, I’d like to you take a look at this blog post, which explains exactly why pro-lifers do not care for the well being of the fetus, but are actually protesting women having healthy, NORMAL sex lives.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2006/03/21/why-its-difficult-to-believe-that-anti-choicers-mean-what-they-say/
Also, I realised I didn’t address your last statement of your original post.
‘[...]but I think that society is better equipped to deal with that situation if it were to arise again.’
Two words. Darfur, Rwanda.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am
@ B_Rad:
‘Maybe I’m the only responsible male around but if a dude doesn’t man up and take responsibility if he gets a woman pregnant then that guy needs to be neutered with a dull knife.’
…And then what? Will that make him help pay and care for the child? I’m glad you are safe when sexually active, but a lot of men aren’t. And when they bugger off and do nothing to support the woman they made a child with, who’s willing to help? You?
August 1st, 2008 at 10:29 am
are you kidding? this seems like an easy, dumb way to stir up debate on the site. i don’t come here to read about people’s arguments for or against the legalization of abortion. i come here to read awesome lists.
my biggest problem with posts like this is that is leads to the polarization of visitors.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:33 am
Okay, I read several, but not all of teh comments, which is not normal for me, but I just see things going around in circles. I personally don’t think I could ever have an abortion, I probably wouldn’t unless the pregnancy was going to kill me. However, that is my CHOICE, and I don’t have the right to make that choice for any other woman. There are certain circumstances such as risk to the health of the mother, product of rape/incest, etc, where I think abortion should be allowed absolutely if that’s what the woman wants. I do think that abortion is overused as a form of birth control. However, I also know that abortions will happen whether they are legal or not, whether it’s some skeezy back-alley doc, or a woman starving herself or throwing herself down the stairs to induce a miscarriage, it’s gonna happen. So I am pro-choice, I say it’s better to have the abortions carried out properly by a licensed doctor in clean & safe conditions, potentially saving the life of the mother, than in an alley with a rusty wire hanger.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:39 am
@ 148. Reaper
I respect your opinion but disagree. Yes I feel it’s selfish. I feel as that life begins at contraception so abortion is taking away an innocent life that did not have a choice in the matter. I think it’s ironic that pro-choice is pro women’s or mother’s choice and not pro-unborn child without a voice choice. But we can argue until we are blue in the face and it probably will not change either of our minds. See my post at #93. I respectfully disagree with your opinion but support your right to have one.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:42 am
@ 159.Eddie
Do you eat meat?
August 1st, 2008 at 10:50 am
Phender Bender: “anyone who hates their own flesh and blood is (again, in my opinion) sick in the head. The kid may be half rapist, but he’s also half you”
That’s like saying that if someone came along and cut your arm and you bled onto the person that cut you that y’all belong together or someshit. If a person gives you no choice in the beginning, what makes it okay to not have a choice in the end. Oh yeah, hating your own flesh and blood…did you think about person that get abused sexually or physically by their parents, uncles, cousins. Do you think Oprah loves all the people that raped her when she was young? FLesh and blood don’t mean anything.
I would have to press the fact that when it becomes about your life…the only thing you really have…there are no rash decisions. That like saying a person trying to kill you has the right to because he has the potential to not be a killer once you are dead. And to some women, that’s what being forced to have a child you don’t want, can’t support, and won’t love feels like; death. What happens to the 13-yr old girl that gets pregnant by her biological father?–And just to let you know that’s a real story. He school called the police on the dad when she told him and a judge said that not only did she have to live with the dad, but she COULDn’t live with someone else since he was her only guardian. THat girl has two kids/siblings by her father and that judge, luckily, was disbarred.
“Well, it’s a living being that;s growing inside you” says a lot of people…let me direct you to CANCER, all of them. But because these cells have potential they should get to live…And the same people are against Stem Cell Research, which are…survey says…cells with potential to help already living people.
The fight against abortion is deep seated in the fact that human believe life to be a precious thing…but we still have the death penalty…but don’t those same people have the potential to be good citizens when given the chance.
A woman is more cognizant of everything that goes on in her body, so much that men don’t have the mental capacity to understand what a PMS and bloating feels like every month. How being told that you must suffer if you take the chance of having sex with someone you love and end up pregnant.
I say that if abortion is to be made illegal, every man that gets a woman pregnant that doesn’t live or support her, must pay child support. None of that shit about her making too much money to need it. She doesn’t have a choice in something that y’all both did, and then neither does he.
70% of all kids born nowadays are out of wedlock…so what;s that going to do to the economy.
Also, if making abortion illegal is an answer to keeping potential children alive at conception, then chemical castrastion, or vascetomies should be given to every man that doesn’t play by the rules and impregnates multiple women and isn’t there a father figure. That would most definitely remove the need for abortion when there is no possibility of conception…Sounds like that’s the real answer since a man can impregnate as many women as possible but a woman can only be pregnant at once in a 9-month time frame. One womans impregnator can be the same as 100 other women, but the mother is only the mother to one child, from one man at a time.
CHemical castration…the wave of the future.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:51 am
Yes
August 1st, 2008 at 10:57 am
jadester*I just read your previous post and wow. I’m not even going there. I do not even want to humor you. BTW I believe contraception is a great thing and should definitely be practiced much more and promoted worldwide but abortion is not a means of contraception. Why wouldn’t I eat meat? It’s a means for sustaining human life, unlike abortion, so I do not see an argument there. I’m out.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am
B_Rad
If you abort a baby you should be aborted with it, end of story
Unless you live in Africa and the baby will be born with AIDS or live a malnourished life, end up as a slave, or something along those lines.
People who think like this are still pro-choice. TRUE pro-life is such a difficult stance to take because it seems like there’s always an “unless.” You may think abortion is abhorrent and that the only women who get them are dirty uneducated whores. That’s not true at all, but I suppose you’re entitled to think that way. However, your statement only serves to shine a light on why abortion needs to be legal. There needs to be a safe, sterile legal way for all these “unless-es” to not bear children, therefore it needs to be a legal practice.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:04 am
Well it just is very in line with your “taking away and innocent life” and “the one without a voice choice”. If you are so strong in your convictions about taking away an innocent life then why would not the same kind of morality be extended for animals? I know lots of people who don’t eat meat inclduding myself who sustain their lives just fine. It’s not a good arguement.
I don’t expect you to write back since you said “I’m out” but I did want to point out your hypocrisy. Sorry if my thinking scares you.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:04 am
previous post ^ is at eddie.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am
159. Eddie – ‘I think it’s ironic that pro-choice is pro women’s or mother’s choice and not pro-unborn child without a voice choice.’
Irony doesn’t mean what I think you think it means. To give a fetus rights is to take away the rights of born humans. If a born human can’t use another person’s body to sustain their life, then why is it ok for a fetus? If a fetus is the same as a born human, and deserves the same rights, then you should either a) acknowledge a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy, or b) support mandatory organ donation for the living, and the dead.
The reasons that support a woman’s right to choose, also protect you from having your blood type in a government database, that allows the highest bidder to find you and demand you give them blood/marrow/organs.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am
…pro-lifers do not care for the well being of the fetus, but are actually protesting women having healthy, NORMAL sex lives. [ Link to amptoons.com ]
Gee Reaper…at least you’re not just pointing jfrater to a biased (feminist-activist) blog;
Oh wait…it is a feminist activist site!
Here’s a sampler “it’s my intention that most of the discussions here be dominated by feminist and lefty views.” http://www.amptoons.com/blog/to-anti-feminist-mens-right-activist-and-right-wing-guests/
Hmmm…never mind, it could have been worse; it could have been the front for a bunch of porn sites.
Oh wait….bizarrely, it is!
A comment on the sale of amptoons : “Critics of the sale were horrified that a feminist website was connected to pornography, especially of the Bang. Bros style where exploitation is celebrated at every turn.”
http://adonismirror.com/08152007_leader_amptoons_porn.htm
http://easypersiflage.com/blameforum/index.php?topic=5339.0
August 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am
and I’m sorry but that whole “what if the kid grew up to be a superhero and cured cancer and found atlantis!!?!?” argument is about the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard. What if he grew up and became a crackhead kiddie rapist? What-ifs won’t ever help this argument.
Plus, everyone on this board was born, none of us have cured cnacer, found atlantis, become crackheads, or raped kids (I’m guessing on those last two). Chances are any aborted fetus would grow up and be just like us.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:13 am
“And rape is not an excuse, the baby did nothing wrong. Show me a woman who wouldn’t love and take care of her child she grew inside her body for 9 months! If you can, she has some serious mental issues”
Umm, Yeah…that’s why people with mental issues aren’t allowed to have kids.
And if you do have some mental issues that become unseated when you get pregnant then you are obviously at risk of post pardum depression and of doing harm to your baby.
It’s not that hard…oh yeah, what if you get pregnant and the man has AIDS, give you AIDS, and you have a baby with AIDS and is mentally retarded, physically retarded, both. THere may not be a rapist gene but there are things that genetically make people delusional and make them become serial killers and kill yo ass. Do you really want to take the chance when you didn’t even get to know the man?
That’s why we get the vagina and uterus, so we can weed out all the bad traits that we don’t want our kids to have. FUcking fight or flight…Darwin anyone. Because the way some of you are talking sounds like you’ve jumped right out of the worst parts of the Bible…which we all know can get pretty bad.
Oh yeah, for the person that said that you ovulate at various points in the month…a woman that a) knows her body, b) gets to know her body, and c) gets the chance to know her body without it being invaded by some potential life, will be able to show the signs of ovulation. But I do agree with you, but responsibility and knowledge are the preventative measure that we need to take so that we don’t have to go under some procedure to fix a wrong that we could have avoided. Just like understanding your body when a comprising situation happens like landing a back flip, preparation, practice, and knowledge about what you are doing needs to come before the need for back surgery.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
I think everyone should watch videos of abortions. From early in the pregnancy to third trimester abortions…quite the experience. Funny you should say that, I have a cousin who is a dirty uneducated whore and she has had a couple abortions. But no, that’s not the case for everyone, not at all.
I used that “unless” as a way to show that we do not live in a third world country, there just aren’t any excused to have an abortion other than the woman doesn’t want to have it for one selfish reason or another. And I say selfish cause it’s in the best interest of the woman…is it not?
The world is the way it is though. For this subject, it will be a neverending cycle. All we’re all gonna do is go back and forth but does it really matter? There’s really no point in all of this. I’ll follow Ron Paul and say it should be left up to the states to decide.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:23 am
heatherrr: Then don’t read the Your View threads.
This isn’t about being entertained by reading other’s arguments, its about jumping into the fray and entertaining yourself by having a stimulating conversation. If you are unable to do that, stick to the lists.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am
Not if the woman believes it’s in the best interest of the child for her not to be it’s mother. Then it’s a difficult, and unselfish choice to make.
If we let the law take over out bodies, tell me where it ends? Should we outlaw obese people from eating because they’re killing themselves? Should we outlaw pregnant women from driving because they could crash and kill the baby? Should we outlaw all sex in general because it’s specifically for baby-making?
Something tells me everyone on here who isn’t a virgin has had sex for fun. Safely, unsafely, whatever. If it was safe, should we make the pill and condoms illegal because they prevent the conception of new life? That’s stopping a life that never started.
Yes, these are silly, far flung, reching arguments, but the second we our bodies in the hands of people other than us,they become all too real. Until you have unwillingly relinquished control of your body to someone else, you will never know how it feels.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:32 am
I got a little too passionate there..
REACHING arguments
the second we LEAVE our bodies
August 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
This seems to be a very heated topic. I have my own views on the subject, but without trying to get very philosophical, yes, abortion should be legal and well-regulated. The value of an autonomous human life is greater than that of an unborn fetus. I may not agree with the decisions other people make, but I am outside of my rights to try to dictate to them how to live their lives. And that’s all I’ll say.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:34 am
B_Rad, how selfish is it to decide other peoples choices for them? That is what pro-life people want to do. No Gov’t including states should have any say on this issue. I think spending money on plastic surgery is selfish. Does that mean it should be illegal.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:34 am
*I* found Atlantis. It’s off exit 6 on the Massachussetts Turnpike about a half mile from the Podunk River. A boarded up hardware store, a Stuckey’s, a seedy looking Stop N Shop and a florist. That was *it.* Not even any place to get a latte. I bought a little plaster bulls-head souvenir that had “You’ve Found Atlantis! Now Get the Hell Out!” painted on it in cursive writing. I don’t think the poor schmucks even have cable.
I left and continued on my way to Portland. I’m happy to say, however, that I did take a leak on Atlantis, as I was headed out of town. So I can say that at least.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am
fuck fetus’
August 1st, 2008 at 11:46 am
Randall:
Well it is supposed to be underwater…I suppose you’re just helping out in your own small way there…:)
August 1st, 2008 at 11:46 am
In an ideal world, every one would know their body, would have access to preventive medicine and sex ed. Everyone would be in one or another contraceptive method and no woman would be raped because men would understand that we are not to be treated as property and that just because they are stronger than us it doesn’t mean that they can force us to do what they want. So every pregnancy would be either planned or a severe case of bad luck, so abortions would be minimal. That’s not our world, at least not now. Not everyone, not even the majority of the people has access to education, and even less have access to sex ed, girls (not women, girls) have sex because our society tells them it’s ok, and only on rare occasions they are told about the consequences. It is easier for a man, he can run away from an unexpected pregnancy, a woman can’t. Is it the girls’ fault to live in a world where having sex is considered the greatest thing it can happen to you but if you get pregnant you are a whore?
Lots of woman have consensual sex BUT forced to do it without protection, and if they refuse they suffer the discrimination of her partner and her friends (I had students who said “It’s only one time” and got pregnant the same). We still live in a world where men have the last word, where if a man has sex with tons of girls is kind of a hero, but if a woman has sex with several men is a whore. When you get pregnant you don’t get pregnant by yourself, you need a man who gave the sperm. Why do women have to carry all the responsibility??
August 1st, 2008 at 11:52 am
Remember these arguments are against other arguments not people. I am not scared by your way of thought; I am intrigued by it because it is the opposite of mine. I find these opinions and arguments interesting so I visit the site. Anyway “If you are so strong in your convictions about taking away an innocent life then why would not the same kind of morality be extended for animals?” Plain and simple a human life is greater than an animal life. I do not promote the needless harm of animals and I am very sensitive to animal’s rights as I am a pet owner. I choose to eat meat because it is life sustaining and I do not think or care to live a life purely vegan or vegetarian. If that is your choice to do so fine. But that is really off topic because they do not equate.
Reaper I see your point and it is ok for a fetus because they had no choice or say in the matter. I do not think “use” is the right choice of wording, however. The parents made the choice to have sexual relations. You make a valid point and I can see your correlation between if you must keep the baby without choice to keep it alive then you must donate your organs without choice to keep someone else alive. My rebuttal to that would be someone made the conscious decision to have sex knowing full well of what the repercussions may be. Mandatory organ donation would not be fair because an individual played no part in the other individual getting sick or needing an organ. These two scenarios do not equate because to have a baby one must make a thought out decision to have relations. One does not make the distinction on whether someone gets sick or not. Like I said above, in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening danger to the mother or fetus abortion should be an option. Btw I am an organ donor. I have enjoyed this discussion but really must go finish up some work!
August 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Eddie. How would you feel if someone took away your right to eat meat?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Eating meat and aborting a life do not equate in my opinion. Thanks.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Sad fact in life is that there are people who need to be told what to do. Besides, you’re analogies are way off base.
“Not if the woman believes it’s in the best interest of the child for her not to be it’s mother. Then it’s a difficult, and unselfish choice to make.”
Who are you to say that? How do you know? In a courtroom I would say “Objection, speculation.” You talking about abortion or giving up for adoption?
“If we let the law take over out bodies, tell me where it ends? Should we outlaw obese people from eating because they’re killing themselves? Should we outlaw pregnant women from driving because they could crash and kill the baby? Should we outlaw all sex in general because it’s specifically for baby-making?”
Places are already doing that like with the trans fat stuff. Those people are only hurting themselves though, not an unborn baby. Driving a car is intended to get you from point A to point B while abortion is intended to kill the baby. You mean like in Demolition Man where sex is icky and gross? That would NEVER happen. I’d kill myself if that was ever the case.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Eddie, That is your opinion. What people are talking about is legality. Someone out there does make the equation of meat and human life. Should they have the ability to legislate your right to eat meat away because they find it objectionable?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
But murder is illegal and if I feel that abortion is ending a human life, or murder (murder is a very harsh word), then, yes I feel as if that right should be legislated away.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:15 pm
You saying all abortions are for selfish reasons is exactly the same. That could be called specualtion as well.
I’m just saying you can think what you want about abortion but it needs to be legal. Morally, I don’t agree with abortion in most instances, and I know myself well enough to know I’d never be able to do it, but at least I have the right to make that choice. The people who use it as a means to an end repeatedly, or as a method of birth control, make me sick. However, because I recognize the right to choose, unfortunately I have to recognize everyones right to choose. We can’t place arbitrary “only if you were raped, only if you have AIDS, only if there was incest” rules on it.
As a woman, I also really fail to see how any man can put himself in a pregnant woman’s place. That’s why I’m making analogies. Even I can’t put myself there because I’ve never been pregnant, but I have been out of control of my own decisions.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Eddie, you are missing the point. Many many people feel that eating meat is murder. By your logic they should be able to render it illegal based on their feelings. Their feelings being equal to yours. Correct?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Yeah. Easy and simple. Nobody has the right to tell a woman what to do with her body and no matter how you twist and turn it: as long as the foetus is in the woman’s body it’s her call and not some judge, lawmaker or religious freak’s opinion.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
I’m definitely pro-choice.
For one thing, most accidental pregnancies aren’t the result of being irresponsible (unprotected sex), they’re the result of a failed contraceptive. Pregnancies that catch women at a bad time in their life- a time when they would not be able to deal with having a baby- that baby should be aborted.
Then there are health risks in birth to think about. In the Jewish faith, the mother is more important than the unborn baby, and if there is a serious chance that something could go wrong and hurt the mother during pregnancy, we believe the baby should be aborted to save the mother’s life and let her conceive another day. There are, of course, health risks in abortions as well, as with any surgery.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Elsa: Thank you for your honest and emotional post. I am pro-choice. Of course I don’t beleive it should used as some sort of birth control but as a woman, I feel better knowing I have options should an unwanted or unplanned pregancy were to occur.
And as far as the argument that women carry the children and are ultimately responsible and men are “off the hook for responsiblity”, then it makes sense that we have the choice to decide what we do with our bodies.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Eddie:
Just a few points about the meat/abortion thing, then I will stop comparing it. Eating meat from factory farm IS supporting animal cruelty, plain and simple. The animals are tortured, crowded and diseased and no living thing should have to live like that. Further, you have not given a reason why human life is greater than animal life. No good debate is ever won by the “just because” clause. Now if you want to stop comparing them I can respect that.
Now my knowledge of stem cell research is rudimentary, so bear with me, but isn’t stem cell research a product of abortions? And then, woulnd’t this stem cell research lead to something that would ’sustain human life’ – your very arguement for eating meat?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Okay, I have read the last 186 comments so far, and now I dare myself to be thrown into the lion’s den with this;
I believe that abortion is the equivalent of murder. At least, up to the second trimester on. If you think about it, it makes sense. During the first trimester, the fetus is developing the body and as such, the nervous system will not have enough time to develop the cells necessary for pain, right? And the brain, although a tad bit developed, is not developed enough for the fetus to live outside th womb.
However, at the beginning of the second trimester, gasp!The fetus has developed enough to survive the outside of the womb…in an incubator. But it can survive nonetheless? Think I’m wrong? Well, there have been cases were premature babies are born as early as twenty weeks! And they survived into childhood, and adulthood without any physical/mental defects.
I am all for a woman’s decision on abortion, but when it comes to times when the fetus has proven to live outside the womb, with the help of doctors and incubators, and well into growing up into a healthy adult, then what arguments can come into that. Okay, there can be plenty of arguments, but let’s focus through another flaw; Why should a fetus have less right than an unconscious man or an abused animal? Sure, for the unconsious man whose plug is to be pulled, he lived a good long life, but what about when his family, not the man himself, decide enough is enough and they decide to pull the plug? What if deep down in his subconscious, he still want’s to live another day just in case his body can heal up and he can wake up good as new? Or what about the case of abused animals? Animals can’t talk, they can’t understand emotions and words, and many believe that they don’t formulate thoughts but live only sense and instinct, so why is it that there are more laws on animal abuse then there are for unborn children? Animals aren’t registered as humans, yet when we hear of cases of horrific animal abuse, we become disgusted at the way they are treated, yet when human fetuses come into play, we either fight for the abortion or against it? There are only a few key ways of preventing a pregnancy with a chance of it being aborted, and since people don’t seem to happy on abstinence and contraceptives, then there’s no chance for laws to outlaw abortion during and after the second trimester.
Of course, that’s just what I believe.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The question is whether it should be legal, not whether abortion is right or wrong, so i’m leaning towards yes it should be legal. In much the same way that smoking, drinking doing drugs should be legal. That doesn’t mean you should do them, but they should be legal.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
169. kiwiboi – ‘Gee Reaper…at least you’re not just pointing jfrater to a biased (feminist-activist) blog;
Oh wait…it is a feminist activist site!’
And your evidence that the article is wrong is where exactly? I love it when people spend all of their time trying to bash the source, in an attempt to ignore the actual issue raised.
172. B_Rad – ‘I think everyone should watch videos of abortions.’
I have actually. Mind you, it wasn’t The Silent Scream’, or some other pro-life propaganda film that makes up fetal development stages. I have absolutley no problem with the way safe abortions are performed. By your logic, no one should eat meat unless they’ve seen an animal being slaughtered (which I have). Saying things like “You’d have a different opinion if you saw it” isn’t much of an argument. It just proves you have no acutal logic involved in your argument, and your points only stem from, and count on making people feel guilty, and ashamed of their choices.
‘I’ll follow Ron Paul and say it should be left up to the states to decide.’
That right there explains everything.
182. Eddie – ‘Mandatory organ donation would not be fair because an individual played no part in the other individual getting sick or needing an organ.’
The problem with your view, is all you seem to see is ‘dead fetus’. If you actually thought into the future, and the kinds of laws that could stem from abortion being illegal, you would realise that the comment I just quoted proves my point.
You’re saying a woman shouldn’t be allowed to have an abortion, because she chose to have sex, yet you make an exception for a fetus conceived from rape. This shows that it’s not the life of the fetus that matters to you, but the fact that the woman had sex you don’t approve of. First, who made you the sex police? Second, why is a fetus conceived from rape less worthy than a fetus conceived from consensual sex? There is no biological difference, and the physical, emotional, and mental effects of pregnancy, child birth, and raising a child can be the same. An unwanted fetus is an unwanted fetus, regardless of how it was created.
On to my second point, that mandatory organ donation is a likely outcome of anti-abortion laws. You say the sick person wasn’t made sick by anyone. What about people who contraceted AIDS from someone who knew they were infected? What about the rapist who tortured his victim? They knew they were doing harm, so logic would say they should be made to donate parts of their body to help the person they injured, correct? Now, some people might say this is fair, however they don’t understand that this is a direct violation of our constitutional, and human rights. What about the burgler who was going to rob, and rape a family, but the husband shot him? He was injured by someone. Should that husband then be made to sustain the potential rapists’ life? If your answer is ‘no’, why not?
Here, I’ll make it easier for you since you like to through around hte word ‘innocent’. A man rapes a 10 year old girl, and tortures her to the point where she needs a new liver, and he is the only available donar. Should he be forced to give up his right to his body to save the girl?
@ 187. Eddie – ‘But murder is illegal and if I feel that abortion is ending a human life, or murder (murder is a very harsh word), then, yes I feel as if that right should be legislated away.’
Oh Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. You opened the door, so I’m going to walk right through it.
Murder is a specific legal term with several prerequisites. First, the murder victim must be born. If there is no born victim, there is no crime. Second, you must be able to prove malicious aforethought. There can be no murder without malice. Murder has nothing to do with how you ‘feel’. Murder is not simply ‘ending human life’. If it was, the woman who fought back and killed her rapist would be on trial for murder. The soldier in Iraq who shot back and killed his opponent would be on trial for murder. The doctor who’s diagnosis was incorrect, and result in a person’s death would be on trial for murder. The woman who swerved to avoid a child in the street, but in the process crashed and killed her passengers would be on trial for murder. Please don’t throw around weighted words that have more meaning than you’re giving them.
US Code: Title 18,1111 – Murder
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00001111—-000-.html
August 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I’m going to have to split the field on this one. I agree that abortions should be legal under certain circumstances. If a female is too young, meaning that she is fully aware that she will not be able to provide this child, she should be able to have the abortion. Also in hand if you are old enough to make that decision to have unprotected sex, than you are old enough to care for a child. If a female is raped and the child would cause any type of stress or turmoil in her life, it should be allowed. For that one to work, I also believe that the female should provide proof other than being pregnant that she was raped, such as a disclosure with her doctors signature. Any one can say they were raped but I firmly believe that the ones who truly are, and are scared and don’t want a “rape baby” will go threw and make sure that it gets terminated. I don’t want to seem insensitive about this subject, but I also want to have a decent comment. On the other side of my argument, it is always an option to carry the child and once born, put it up for adoption. I can’t begin to say how many families unable to have a natural child would adopt. I am kind of young, but I have dealt with the abortion thing with some of my female friend s and helped them reach a solution. Majority of the time they have it but put it up for adoption.
So to spell my answer out, Yes abortions should be legalized, but with restrictions.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Personally I think abortions are disgusting, and under most circumstancs, UNNECESSARY. I don’t think that way because of any religious reasons either because im Atheist. But with that being said I also believe a woman has a right to choose. I agree with allowing abortions up to a certain point in the pregnancy, unless there are complications that could end up killing the mother. If the mothers life is in danger then she should have every right to terminate the pregnancy regardless of how far long she is.
I knew a girl in high school who had 5 FUCKING abortions before we graduated. Women like that should be charged for criminal negligence in my opinion for being such stupid fucks.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
@ 194. Riya B – ‘However, at the beginning of the second trimester, gasp!The fetus has developed enough to survive the outside of the womb…in an incubator.’
If that’s all you’re going by, then it’s only the people in developed countries that shouldn’t have abortions. Your average American could get to a hospital, whereas your average person living in Afghanistan doesn’t have the luxuries we do. They can’t get to a hospital, complete with the equipment needed to sustain the life of a 24 week old fetus, so their cut off point for abortion should be much later.
‘Well, there have been cases were premature babies are born as early as twenty weeks! And they survived into childhood, and adulthood without any physical/mental defects.’
By your logic, a doctor shouldn’t advise against a woman drinking during her pregnancy, because there are people who were born to alcoholic mothers, but they’re perfectly fine! Never mind that there are some women who drank very little, and their child was born with FAS. Let’s gamble with people lives!
I’d also like to point out that not everyone in the USA can afford the medical insurance that would allow their premature child to survive in an incubator. What about them? Would you be willing to pay more in taxes to make sure those women can have healthy babies? If not, why?
Also, if you’ve read all 180+ comments, you would have seen my link to an article stating the fact that babies born prematurely do not have a better chance at life.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I was referring to someone else’s analogies, sorry. I know what you’re saying. There’s always a good and bad side to everything, pros and cons, whatever. I agree with the “only if” stuff. If something is morally wrong though, why should it be legal?
August 1st, 2008 at 12:47 pm
197.Gematria~Exactly! There are plenty of other ways aside from abortion , and it also makes sense that women who are old enough to care for a child but don’t want to would play the rape card and make the real rape victims more like the bad guys, and excuse me for sound a little insensitive for that. And there are plenty of people who would want to adopt a child regardless of the history of it’s conception. Think about that, people!
August 1st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
sdggrant, Thank the Goddess herself that your opinion means exactly squat.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Also, I think fathers should have some say in Abortions. If a man is willing to take custody of the kid and raise it on his own, then the abortion should not be allowed to happen(unless of course its for health reasons). I think its a double standard, and women cry all the fucking time about double standards and yet they take full advantage of the ones that fall in their favor.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I’m pro-life and I always have been. I am also totally for adoption. If you get pregnant and don’t think you can take care of a child, give it up for adoption! There are so many families that would do anything to have a baby and I believe that it is selfish to have that baby murdered.
Also, when you get pregnant, you begin sharing your body with another human being. You are in charge of two lives and I think that it is very selfish to make a life altering decision for another person.
http://www.AmericanAdoptions.com
I totally agree with Eddie.
I think he sounds like the type of guy I would marry.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Reaper ~ You should really consider changing your name to Ranter, as you are quite good at it. Do you have a *link* for your claim that “some women who drank very little” had children born with fetal alcohol syndrome? Also, as someone who works in the medical field, families who acquire high medical bills often qualify for charity or reduced medical bills or medicaid or, as one of my co-workers is going thru at this very moment, some families have fund-raisers and communities come together to support familes in need.
And there’s a difference between the age of successful preemie survival and the rate of survival of babies born prematurely.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
B_rad:
Because everyone’s opionion of what’s morally wrong is different!
August 1st, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Really, Tara, you want to turn this into a personal attack? Comments like yours are what turn these “Your View”’s into utter shit-holes with insults being thrown left and right.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:57 pm
B_rad. Your morals and mine are fundamentally different. As it should be.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Reaper~ Didn’t I state that there were flaws and arguments against my ’second-trimester-fetuses-have-a-chance-at-survival’ theory? Yes, there are people who can’t afford the medical bills, and of course there are plenty of countries that aren’t advanced enough to have the technology to support a premature babies! I’m not insisting that we gamble with peoples lives, and didn’t Einstein state ‘ God does not play dice’? I’m only saying that in many parts of the world, aside from the U.S, there are places(such as Third World countries) where premature infants can live outside the womb and lead normal lives?
And just to inform you, I did see the link you provided. That is where my argument stems from.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
@ 197. Gematria – ‘I can’t begin to say how many families unable to have a natural child would adopt.’
Then why are there 500,000+ kids in the foster care system?
The adoption system has become a way for ‘Traditional’ (Read: wealthy, white, Christian, and yes, ‘Traditional’ is their word) couples to adopt healthy, white newborns. The couples you’re thinking of aren’t interested in the crack babies, or the children with mental or physical conditions. Every time a white woman gives in to the people calling her a ‘whore’, and a ‘baby killer’ and puts her newborn up for adoption, a child already in the system gets bumped out of the way.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
All countries need to invest more in sexual education which in turn will prevent most unwanted pregnancies. I was lucky enough to go to an elementary, middle, and high school that ALL taught about safe sex and condoms. Its sad to know that there are some places in the states where they still only teach abstinence. The religious nuts (of ALL denominations) need to realise that their strict opposition of sex ed is directly causing most these abortions that make steam fume out their ears.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
No, not at all. Point of fact. It is not an insult to point out that opinions are meaningless. It makes me very happy that opinions of one person do not create legislation. I did not call you ignorant or even wrong. Everyone has an opinion on just about everything, they all mean squat. Your opinion of me does not effect my existence in the least.
You seem to have reacted quite strongly. I observe that it is precisely that attitude that starts mud slinging. If we could first distance ourselves from the emotionality of our arguments we could see them from both sides.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
If it is legalized with restrictions, who decides what restrictions to put? How young is too young? What if a woman gets pregnant during protected sex? If it was unprotected, would the father be forced to support the child and its mother?
I know being pregnant is not a proof of having been raped, but your sentence “Any one can say they were raped…” makes me remember and old lady I had as neighbour that said that the women that had been raped where guilty of being provocative and that they deserved it.
Sorry for my grammatical and spelling mistakes, English is not my language and I hope you had been able to understand what I said
August 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm
@ sdggrant:
That girl in your school who had 5 abortions, would you have rather have had her have 5 children???
(And don’t pull the adoption card, we can both agree she probably would not have had the sense.)
And while I agree the father should be involved in the descision making process, such a thing would be very hard to regulate.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
ONLY if the mother is ABSOLUTELY going to die as a direct result of the child being inside her…and cases of rape
Otherwise…no, never, non, nyet, nein, nuh uh, NOOOOOO way at all, not even a maybe. The above two instances are the only exceptions…otherwise, it is selfish and irresponsible.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
You went out of your way JUST to point out someones opinion is useless, and you don’t expect them to see that as an poke at them? I’d fully expect someone to get irked if I made a post, for absolutely no other reason, telling them their opinion was useless. Maybe I just have an abundance of common sense, who knows. I wont bother responding to anything else that is said between us, so cheers!
August 1st, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Because morals are personal beliefs shaped by one’s own experiences with the subject. All those who don’t eat meat are jusified in their beliefs, and all of us who do eat it are as well. But those who believe it’s morally wrong aren’t trying to outlaw it.
You can think something is wrong and still recognize the legal need for it. Someone way above me (I’m sorry for not giving credit where it’s due) pointed out that this isn’t about right or wrong its about legal vs. illegal and that sums it up perfectly. There is a need for legal, safe, abortions in this country, however unsavory those of us morally oppossed to it find it. Everyone deserves a choice.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
If men gave birth, it wouldn’t be against the law, IT WOULD BE THE LAW. YES. It should ALWAYS be a womans right.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
If men bled, tampons would be free.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
@ Callie:
Le poste juste.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
@jadester
No, I think she would of been a horribly irresponsible mother, it would of negligent, bordering on criminal, to let that CHILD be in charge of a baby. Adoption was a choice, but like you said someone like her wouldn’t have the sense, so unfortunately the only other choice was abortion.
I would of liked to see some sort of punishment bestowed upon her for being so careless. This girl had complete access to condoms(free at nurses office) as well as a planned parenthood two blocks from the school. She could of EASILY been put on the pill seeing as how planned parenthood doesn’t even require parent permission to hand it out.
It all came down to her being lazy, careless, and stupid. At the very least she shouldof been sent to mandatory sex ed classes.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Have you ever had a child put on adoption? There are some people here that have kids, would you do it? Having a child is not like buying a coffee machine, not even like having a pet. Can you imagine how difficult it is for a woman to give up on her baby? A sperm cell and a ovule by their selves, are a human being? A recently fecundated egg, when the nucleus aren’t fused yet, is a human being? I think the main point here is when abortion becomes ‘murder’. I’m against abortion in the lasts periods of the pregnancy (unless the life of the woman is in danger), not in the first month (or two). But I think a lot of people here talks about giving up babies without understanding all that it involves, and what a difficult decision it is to make.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:20 pm
And your evidence that the article is wrong is where exactly?
You need to educate yourself.
One only needs to read in the introduction the underlying assumption upon which the entire “article” on this feminist-activist site (gee, no bias there) is founded. ie. it sets out to show that those who are anti-abortion are “motivated by a desire – perhaps an unconscious desire – to punish women for having sex.”
Moreover, anti-abortionists are referred to – explicitly – as “opponents”.
And there’s even more. It sets the scene by claiming that “a lot of people say” that abortion is equivalent to “shoot(ing) a four-year-old in the head”.
I love it when people spend all of their time trying to bash the source, in an attempt to ignore the actual issue raised.
Such biased and baseless sources do not merit anything other than a brief glance.
Still, at least it is clear where you are coming from, given that you support this “perspective”…
August 1st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
sdggrant, Respond or not, does not change anything. You stated your opinion, I stated mine. You gave my opinion power by being offended. You and I, we should in theory neutralize one and another. Your opinion has at much weight as mine, no more no less. However, you think your opinion has merit enough to legislate, you opened the door for commentary by claiming in a round about way that your values supersede mine. They do not.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Yes, and it should be promoted as population control
August 1st, 2008 at 1:32 pm
This is such a simple argument.
Is a baby in a womb a human being? If it is not a human, than abortion is not murder and should be allowed. If it is a human, than abortion is murder and should be illegal.
Right? No? Oh yeah your right…it is way more complicated than that because of things like mental capacity and a woman’s rights and money and poverty and blah blah blah of over 200 comments of this crap…
Compared to a human life what do those things mean?
To many of you it obviously means more than a human life.
I know many of you will find amazing ways to counter this argument, but hey, until you can prove to me that a fetus is a not a human being I will continue to see abortion as killing a innocent human child.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Yes, it should be legal. If it is a religion thing backing up reasoning as to why is should not be legal then the real question goes to should the government be ruled by religion. In medical terms a abortion is when the pregnancy is aborted, which can be natural way, like a miscarriage. An ectopic pregnancy is also called an abortion, should this life form carry on in the fallopian tube or be aborted, any reasonable person would say abort because then the mother’s life is at risk. For a normal pregnancy and the woman wants to abort the fetus this could be the only option that mother has to take. Are there women out there who think of abortion as another birth control? Maybe, but you have to realize that there are too many people in this country to try to be able to control everyone. Plastic surgery is a good example of this, people who are in need of it do not abuse it, but there are also the perfectly healthy people who abuse the practice as well.
This then should be up to the doctors who have to make a ethical decision whether or not they would like to have the person as their patient. And doctors have the right to turn down a person for what ever reason they have. There is just too many people to decide something so personal, and so I feel that the choice should be open for the woman to decide the fate of her fetus.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Yep, and you have the right to do so. But you do not have the right to force that OPINION on anyone else, by that I mean legislation.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm
@ 205. rushfan – I love how me disproving the many myths surrounding abortion, and the people who have them is now considered ‘ranting’. Thank you for proving that you don’t understand the subject you are discussing, as you have yet to address the issues I presented to you.
‘Do you have a *link* for your claim that “some women who drank very little” had children born with fetal alcohol syndrome?’
http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_for_families/drinking_alcohol_in_pregnancy_fetal_alcohol_effects
http://alcoholism.about.com/od/preg/a/blnu050614.htm
‘”It remains unknown how even a small amount of alcohol exposure can affect the newborn infant in terms of infection, particularly before or early in the pregnancy,” said Gauthier. “Therefore, all women of child-bearing age, including teenagers, must recognize that drinking alcohol before or during the time when they may become pregnant is dangerous for themselves as well as their baby.”‘
http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/14332_1170.asp
‘Although many women are aware that heavy drinking during pregnancy can cause birth defects, many do not realize that moderate—or even light—drinking also may harm the fetus.
In fact, no level of alcohol use during pregnancy has been proven safe. Therefore, the March of Dimes recommends that pregnant women do not drink any alcohol—including beer, wine, wine coolers and hard liquor—throughout their pregnancy and while nursing. In addition, because women often do not know they are pregnant for a few months, women who may be pregnant or those who are attempting to become pregnant should abstain from drinking alcoholic beverages.’
SOME families who acquire high medical bills get government help. SOME woman who are in lower socio-economic class can receive help. SOME women live in communities that will help them. However, you’re forgetting that the US government is cutting programmes left and right, and leaving low income families with no options. I’m glad you know someone who could find help in their time of need. It’s funny how I know women who couldn’t, no matter how hard they tried. Either they made too much money, or they didn’t work enough hours.
@ 209. Riya B – ‘I’m only saying that in many parts of the world, aside from the U.S, there are places(such as Third World countries) where premature infants can live outside the womb and lead normal lives?’
What you’re saying, is women shouldn’t be allowed to have an abortion, based on their ability to receive medical treatment. If a woman has access to the care needed to sustain a premature baby, there should be no reason for abortion. This cuts out the woman who don’t have that luxury, and has nothing to do with the well being of the fetus, and everything to do with your personal belief.
@ 223. kiwiboi – I support that funny notion that women are more than walking wombs, only capable of spitting out kids and servicing their husbands. The fact that the major pro-life organizations are trying to OUTLAW CONTRACEPTION is proof that the pro-life side isn’t for fetal life, but against a woman’s sexuality. Please provide evidence to refute this, or admit you’re just trying to argue semantics.
And yes, anyone who is against a woman’s right to choose is an ‘opponent’.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Catty, I agree with you 95%. A Dr does not have the the right to turn a patient down for any reason they want. They are part of the public trust. That is why they have to help people even if they disagree with the person.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
sdddrant:
So do you think then that abortion should be legal but with punishments meted out to those who use it?
Don’t you feel the punishments (depending on what it was)would deter people like your highschool girl from having the abortion and raising the kid anyways?
In a perfect world yeah her parents would have sat her down and said, this is what you need to do, this is where you need to go. Or she would have not assumed she would without child if she pulled out/used rhythm method etc.
But its not a perfect world and this is a nescessary evil.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Reaper ~ You claim “there are some women who drank very little, and their child was born with FAS.” No one is disputing women shouldn’t drink when they are pregnant. I didn’t. Drink when I was pregnant, that is. One of your *many* links states “Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a more specific set of symptoms caused by drinking alcohol while you are pregnant. A child is diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) when there is prenatal alcohol exposure and:
Facial deformities, Slow or delayed growth, Brain and neurological problems.” But none of your many links say anything more than drinking any amount of alcohol at any stage of pregnancy is not recommended. Duh.
Your passion for what you believe in is admirable, however you are young and misguided. You should use your powers for good instead of evil.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:59 pm
What? Morals are morals! If one person grew up killing people and raping children cause that’s how he grew up and it was his belief that it was ok, you’re saying that is morally acceptable? Take the general consensus of everyone in the CIVILIZED world about what is right and wrong and there are your morals. The 10 Commandments are morals in that I’d say about 95% of the people who read them would agree with them. You guys are trying to make excuses, not pose reasons. It’s not a matter of morals if someone chooses to be a vegetarian.
If you feel it’s ok to kill a baby even though it’s still inside you, then go for it. But, let’s say you are christian and believe in God. What do you say when you die and go up to the pearly white gates and St. Peter asks you why you decided it was ok to kill a baby before it even got a chance to experience the reality which God created for it?
We should make it legal and have places made specifically for drug users to shoot up, share needles, etc? For child molesters to molest children? Hey, it’s morally right for these guys so it should be made legal for them…right?
August 1st, 2008 at 2:02 pm
I support that funny notion that women are more than walking wombs, only capable of spitting out kids and servicing their husbands.
Reaper – as do I (notwithstanding the unnecessarily emotive – not to mention sarcastic – way you choose to express this).
The fact that the major pro-life organizations are trying to OUTLAW CONTRACEPTION is proof that the pro-life side isn’t for fetal life, but against a woman’s sexuality. Please provide evidence to refute this, or admit you’re just trying to argue semantics.
I am not a member of any “pro-life organisation”, nor am I trying to outlaw contraception; so why would I care to “refute” the tenor of the article you referred us to? I took the trouble to read the article you referred us to and then called you on its credibility.
You are the one claiming that those who are anti-abortion are “motivated by a desire to punish women for having sex.” Not me…
August 1st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
B_Rad, you prove my point for me. You show that your morality comes from biblical sources. The problem is that this country is not a theocracy. You cannot legislate based on your feelings. you descend into hyperbole and equate abortion to molestation. Thats comparing apples and child rape. Come on.
Morals are not Morals. Hindus believe it is immoral to kill a cow. Should it be illegal?
Where in the 10 commandments does it day “Thou shalt not abort”. It does say “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors ox” Ever wanted something that someone else has?
Take a step back and realize that morality is based on opinions of right and wrong.
I think it is morally wrong to impose your will on another. Therefore your belief runs 100% counter to mine. Should I be able to decide legislation based solely on my morality?
We are a Republic, made up of many many people who all have different ideas. The only way to do that is to make choices for OURSELVES and leave others alone.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Reaper ~ Also, as far as the unborn victims of violence act, it states, and I quote, “The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) is a United States law which recognizes a “child in utero” as a legal victim, if he or she is injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines “child in utero” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.” At any stage of development. Riddle me this…How does a society reconcile the fact that it is a crime to kill a baby in one instance and yet a mother can choose to kill that same baby legally?
August 1st, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I think your whole argument is bull (is this considered an ad hominem attack?).
//My answer: No. I believe that abortion has become so out of control that it has become a form of contraception. There is a high physical and mental cost involved and many of the young women who have abortions are not always fully aware of these consequences.//
While I agree that this is possibly true, so what? There are many examples of women actually needing abortions, so they should remain legal. We should of course do everything to avoid abortions and that includes increasing the availability of proper contraceptive methods and good sex education.
//From a philosophical perspective I also wonder whether we would have a cure for AIDS and other diseases now if someone hadn’t aborted the child that was going to ultimately find the cure. Of course this also applies in reverse – how many Hitlers have been prevented from being born, but I think that society is better equipped to deal with that situation if it were to arise again.//
This is not the way science works now. Science is a group enterprise. Laboratories, not individuals, will find the cure to AIDS and cancer. Of course, laboratories are composed by individuals and the glory will go to the chief of the laboratory that actually makes the discovery, but that non-aborted individual based his/her works on the work of many other scientists.
Besides, for your analogy to work (that we might have aborted the individual that was supposed to discover the cure to AIDS), it would have to be that the knowledge necessary to do that was in that person since he was conceived or born. If destiny is a real thing, and we were supposed to have a cure to AIDS, we would already found it. Maybe the person that was supposed to discover the cure to AIDS or cancer was already born, but we killed him or her in some war, or is dying right now due to famine or AIDS.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:40 pm
This is my writing from c-ral.org
1. In Any Pregnancy, Both Of The Parents And The Developing Child Have Limited Rights
No one has unlimited rights. An individual’s rights are limited at the point where he is infringing on another’s rights. For example, the right to free speech is limited at slander – one can not knowingly lie about someone else in the media. Similarly, a woman’s right to her body is limited when her developing child has rights that could be taken away.
a. Woman’s Pregnancy Rights
A woman has the right to practice birth
control in any legal manner she chooses, including abortive methods up to the
Point of Personhood of the child. However, abortive actions are limited by the
father’s rights.
b. Father’s Pregnancy Rights
The father of
a child has the right to contribute to the decision-making about the welfare of
a child. A father can not force a woman to terminate a pregnancy, and a mother
should not be able to terminate a pregnancy without permission from the father,
unless the father has abdicated his rights [these conditions to be developed].
This permission or abdication does not have to be legally documented,
but may be documented through the notarized signature of a Release of
Pregnancy Rights form, or if a court has determined that a father has
otherwise abdicated through criminal activity or abandonment.
c. Unborn Child’s Rights
After the point of personhood, the child has the
right to life and protection of that life under the law.
2. The Developing Fetus Has Human Rights After a Defined Point in a Pregnancy – The Point of Personhood
There are many possible ways to determine when a fetus becomes a person with rights. Many have argued forcefully for defining the starting point based upon genetic uniqueness (fertilization), by discovery time (giving the woman ample to time to discover her pregnancy), by viability (can the fetus survive out of the womb), by actual birth, and by other ethical and moral teachings and standards.
We believe those arguments to be insufficient, and believe that the beginning of human life ought to be defined by the same measure we use for the end of life. However, even this is controversial.
Science has given us many early developmental milestones that could be considered as the starting point for life and personhood. They are (References: Baptists For Life, Religioustolerance.org):
* Presence of Blood
At around 18 days, the heart begins to beat (see below). But blood forms just before that, so many argue that at around 14 days, we should consider the unborn child a person
* Heartbeat
Today’s technology can detect a baby’s heartbeat 18 days after conception. That is only four days after most women miss a period and begin to suspect they are pregnant.
* Brain waves
6 weeks after conception signals from the fetal brain can be detected. Dream patterns have been discovered around the 8th or 9th week
* Independent movement
At about the 6th week, the baby in the womb can move spontaneously: Kicking, swimming, jumping and stretching.
* Sensory Response
A baby in the womb is capable of responding to touch and sound by about the eighth or 10th week. A child at that age will move away from painful stimuli.
* Breathing
By about the 14th week, a baby’s lungs are functioning and he or she will practice breathing. Vocal cords are formed by the 13th week.
* Ability to Cognitively Experience Pain
Recent studies may indicate that although a fetus withdraws from painful stimulus much earlier, the part of the brain that makes them able to consciously experience pain does not develop until the 26th week (this point is, however, contested)
We believe that good persons can disagree on which or how many of these conditions need to be present before we believe the unborn child has rights. We propose that the presence of brainwaves and heartbeat at 6 weeks sets the latest limit of the abortion timeline, and we should discuss moving it back to 3 weeks, which is when the heartbeat begins. This 6 week upper limit is a compromise, and not an absolute.
3. Terminating a Pregnancy Based On Physical Attributes such as Gender, Race, Sexual Orientation, or Treatable Medical Conditions is Not Acceptable
Pregnancy termination based on basic physical characteristics amounts to killing for convenience (at best), and at worst, genocidal murder.
Regarding treatable medical conditions, the threat of a child’s potential suffering, physical or emotional, does not justify terminating its life via abortion.
We also understand that science is still debating the physical origin of sexual orientation. However, if a proposed physical or statistical measurement of the possibility of same sex orientation is used for fetal testing, the results of such a test could not be used as justification for terminating a pregnancy.
4. Terminating a Pregnancy for Severe, Untreatable Fetal Conditions Must Be Preserved as a Parental Right, but Not Required by Law
Some conditions are not treatable by today’s standards. Untreatable medical conditions that cause intense suffering AND death within the first two years of life (arbitrary?) may be candidates for abortions throughout the term of a pregnancy. However, terminations should not be mandated by law in such cases.
5. Terminating a Pregnancy Based on the Means of Pregnancy (Rape, Incest, Artificial Insemination, Natural Insemination) is Not Acceptable
Beyond the point of personhood, an unborn child has the right to life, and the method of its creation does not diminish these rights.
It is understood that a woman who has an unwanted pregnancy due to rape or incest is under extreme duress, but we propose that abortion will not in any large measure cure her anguish, and may actually create new emotional suffering of its own.
We believe that the best way out of a woman’s emotional duress is for her to make ethical and moral decisions in her pregnancy-related decisions. These include:
* allowing the child to live
* working through her anger and hurt to a point of healing and forgiveness of the perpetrators (if any)
* the pursuit of justice against the perpetrators in a court of law
* providing or helping the child find a good home where it is wanted and loved.
We also expect that other means of support, both private and public, will be brought to bear to help such women with pre- and post-natal care, adoption services, counseling and other services.
6. Terminating a Pregnancy to Protect the Life of a Mother Must be Preserved
There are some medical conditions where the abortive methods must be used to preserve the life of the mother.
However, mental anguish over a pregnancy, and any resulting physical problems from the mental anguish, are not justification for abortion.
7. Abortion as A Medical Procedure Should be Protected and Taught In Medical Schools, but Should Not Be Mandatory
Due to the remaining cases of early term abortions and rare but necessary late term pregnancy problems, many of the current abortive techniques should be taught in medical schools, at the discretion of the faculty. However, practice of these methods should not be a requirement for graduation or certification in any medical specialty.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Yun: I don’t know where you got your quote, but here is the entire essay. She is outlining the inept attempts by others to handle the problem. She is describing them in order to criticize them. Be careful, many have hijacked her work and taken paragraphs and re-ordered them to support their views.
“At the present moment, we are offered three distinct and more or less mutually exclusive policies by which civilization may hope to protect itself and the generations of the future from the allied dangers of imbecility, defect and delinquency. No one can understand the necessity for Birth control education without a complete comprehension of the dangers, the inadequacies, or the limitations of the present attempts at control, or the proposed programs for social reconstruction and racial regeneration. It is, therefore, necessary to interpret and criticize the three programs offered to meet our emergency. These may be briefly summarized as follows:
* Philanthropy and Charity: This is the present and traditional method of meeting the problems of human defect and dependence, of poverty and delinquency. It is emotional, altruistic, at best ameliorative, aiming to meet the individual situation as it arises and presents itself. Its effect in practise is seldom, if ever, truly preventive. Concerned with symptoms, with the allaying of acute and catastrophic miseries, it cannot, if it would, strike at the radical causes of social misery. At its worst, it is sentimental and paternalistic.
* Marxian Socialism: This may be considered typical of many widely varying schemes of more or less revolutionary social reconstruction, emphasizing the primary importance of environment, education, equal opportunity, and health, in the elimination of the conditions (i. e. capitalistic control of industry) which have resulted in biological chaos and human waste. I shall attempt to show that the Marxian doctrine is both too limited, too superficial and too fragmentary in its basic analysis of human nature and in its program of revolutionary reconstruction.
* Eugenics: Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the danger of irresponsible and uncontrolled fertility of the “unfit” and the feeble-minded establishing a progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the birth-rate among the “fit.” But in its so-called “constructive” aspect, in seeking to reestablish the dominance of healthy strain over the unhealthy, by urging an increased birth-rate among the fit, the Eugenists really offer nothing more farsighted than a “cradle competition” between the fit and the unfit. They suggest in very truth, that all intelligent and respectable parents should take as their example in this grave matter of child-bearing the most irresponsible elements in the community.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
It was used as an example, not the foundation for morals. I wasn’t equating abortion to molestation. I was arguing your point on morals, your argument had a flaw, I pointed it out and you went back to telling me I’m comparing two different things. I never said abortion is the same exact thing as molesting kids, it’s the morals behind it.
I said civilized world, not a third world country.
Abort->kill->murder…thou shalt not murder, there you go.
Where did I say it’s ok to impose your will on another? Find it and quote it please.
Why do people think we live in a place where everyone can take care of themselves, where everyone takes responsibility for their actions, where everything is exactly how you think it is? There are a lot of fucked up people in the world, someone has to tell them how to behave (to a degree anyways)
August 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@Mom24
I’m sorry that you think a video of a 12 week old “fetus” trying to get away from abortion instruments is “propaganda”. In the see-it-to-believe society that we live in, I am baffled that you don’t believe video evidence. Clearly, once a person’s mind is made up, anything to disprove their beliefs is considered media bias or propaganda these days…
August 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I do think the decision should be completely up to the TWO people who created the child. If a person is against abortion then I feel they are against birth control. The logic is that you should not destroy human life. I say if you feel that way then you should also feel that humans should not block or interfere with nature taking its course. A person should be able to make their own decisions. Sometimes people can not afford to properly take care of a child. I also feel if you cannot afford to take care of one you should not participate in baby making activities. But what are the odds of every person living by that. None at all.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
What a touchy subject.
When my wife was pregnant with our first, we had to have many ultrasounds from week 6 or 7 through 15, and a few more times from 20 on. I don’t care how anyone else defines it: when I saw that little fetus in there, I knew it was a life, and should be protected at all costs, period.
Prior to then I had been of the opinion that abortion should be allowed prior to the point that a baby could be viable outside the womb, with medical intervention. When I saw my son in there, moving around and sucking his thumb so early… I just couldn’t bring myself to think in quite the same way about life anymore.
However, like many people, I feel there are circumstances where abortion is justified, and thus a woman’s right to choose should be protected as well- rape, incest, medical necessity. I do not think that economic situation should be a considered a legitimate reason, nor age, nor any reason that is purely a preference for the woman. Though I’m also not opposed to the morning after pill, however, I feel torn about it.
The problem is that I think it would be impossible to legislate my individual opinion. Both sides of the issue, in the USA, are extreme in either direction- any compromise would be seen as a defeat- any infringement on a woman’s right to choose is unthinkable, and on the other side, life is protected so fiercely that it would be hypocritical to give ground.
Since I can’t stand behind either side’s philosophies, I opt to stand behind the right to choose, and hope that when my opinion is asked for, it might sway the mind of a woman who is looking for guidance.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:28 pm
B_rad if you come at this from a religious standpoint you open a whole new door.
You say that these women who abort will have to answer to God when they die. If you believe that fine, I don’t subscribe to any particular religion but I honestly admire those who do. However, you’ve also stated that it’s ok for a mother to abort if she’s in danger, if the baby is in danger of being born unhealthy, etc. So those mothers get a free pass from God on judgment day? I doubt it. If it’s illegal, it’s ILLEGAL, which means the mothers you say its ok for still can’t get them even if you think it’s less morally wrong for them to do so. How is it better if a 15 year old gets pregnant and can’t handle it, aborts, and goes on to lead a life until she’s old enough to make her choice about children than if a 30 year old winds up with an ectopic pregnancy that puts her life in danger? According to you, both of those could grow to be babies, so why it it ok for one mother to abort and be called a baby-killer and the other to be called a tragedy? It’s the same procedure.
And if there is a God to answer to, where’s his benevolence to the mother that honestly thought she had no other option? He turns her away? God is either wrathful or forgiving, not both. Picking one is a dicey subject.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
“However, you’ve also stated that it’s ok for a mother to abort if she’s in danger, if the baby is in danger of being born unhealthy, etc. So those mothers get a free pass from God on judgment day?”
No, no, no. I never said that. The question is, should abortion be legal or illegal…in this country. I said something about living in Africa with AIDS or something, but this isn’t Africa. These are hypothetical situations I’m proposing, such as the God situation I used earlier. That’s all it is.
If she is 15 and make the choice to get knocked up, she should have the ability to raise it or at the least give it up for adoption. Now you’re just twisting it around and coming up with situations to go around the basis of the argument. I’m talking in general terms, not specific life threatening situations for the mother. In that case, all efforts should be to help the mother but still try to deliver the baby.
It’s all good though Callie, you’re still my girl. We’ll always have the Greatest Rockers list. I see Randall is still causing trouble over there =)
August 1st, 2008 at 3:45 pm
B_rad, By telling me that you fel your morality is valuable enough to legislate and override my body choices you are attempting to put your will over mine, to subjugate me to the rules of a book you yourself cannot likely follow word for word.
You made a comparison to attempt to illustrate a perceived flaw, you made the comparison I just stated it was hyperbole.
I have another tack for you. Why is abortion not like removing a tape worm? No emotionality, no hyperbole. How is it different and why?
August 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Finally some more pro-lifer’s. Anyways this is a difficult subject that people will always differ on. Reaper you seem very zealous and in your face about your points but to each his or her own. I just do not feel that is the right way to go about it. If everyone would just think about what it means, morally I would hope everyone would see that an innocent life is being taken away, unfortunately not everyone will every see it that way.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Well now you’re just being funny.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
You say hyperbole cause you can’t argue it. And how is anything I said an exaggeration of any kind?
August 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
No I am completely serious.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Sure, why not, it should be perfectly legal to allow innocent babies to be tortured to death out of a bimbo’s self centered convenience.
August 1st, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Reaper (125): no – by my reasoning, if Adolf Hitler had created a plan to rid the world of retarded and malformed people- I would say no one should use it. If Margaret Sanger, despite being an evil witch, had invented the safest form of transport in the world, I would use it.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Tara: if you are allowed to decide to murder the human inside you, why should B_rad not be allowed to decide to prevent you from doing so by legislation? It is easy to forget about the rights of the child – whose rights are completely ignored.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm
jfrater, maybe you can answer me the the question that B_rad cannot.
Why is abortion not like removing a tape worm? No emotionality, no hyperbole. How is it different and why?
August 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
B_Rad I say hyperbole because you went from a discussion of abortion to.
“What? Morals are morals! If one person grew up killing people and raping children cause that’s how he grew up and it was his belief that it was ok, you’re saying that is morally acceptable?”
That is hyperbole, that is BS rhetoric. It is so far beyond the pale of the current discussion, it is an attempt to gain a gut emotional response to dilute the discussion.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Everyone starts out as a tapeworm in their mother’s womb?
End of discussion.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
GettyB: “That’s like saying that if someone came along and cut your arm and you bled onto the person that cut you that y’all belong together or someshit.”
What? Getting cut and having a baby are way different… I’ve been cut many times, I would know.
“Flesh and blood don’t mean a thing”
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but both my birth parents, siblings, foster parents, or foster siblings can do no wrong. My birth brother was hooked on meth for about two years, he stole thousands of dollars from me while I was in the army, I still love him. Flesh and blood mean everything.
“THere may not be a rapist gene but there are things that genetically make people delusional and make them become serial killers and kill yo ass.”
Ted Bundy lost it from nurture, not nature (he had a twisted mother). David Berkowitz (A.K.A Son of Sam) lost it after he found out his birth parents put him up for adoption, but kept his sister. Bad people aren’t born, they are made.
“FUcking fight or flight…Darwin anyone.”
I don’t think thats what Darwin had in mind. A uterus isn’t some sort of security screening room, and I’ll bet you feel big tough talking an unborn baby.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:11 pm
B_Rad? Thats it? That is all it took? I do not even know what you ment by that.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
No. You made an argument about morals. I explained it to point out the flaw in your argument against mine. That’s all. You’re the one making a big deal out of it and trying to turn it into a whole new discussion. Geez, I think we need a beer break or something, you down for that?
August 1st, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Come on guys – keep it friendly
August 1st, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Fair enough. I have to bail anyway. The point at its core I am trying to make is that we as humans are defined by intellect. Without talking about potentiality only about what is, then there is no person there. There is only potentiality. So let people make a choice for themselves. Abortion should not be mandatory, but it should be an option, a personal choice that no one should be able to take away.
essentially my closing statement.
I would love to hear your last thoughts.
It has actually been a pleasure.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It HAS been a pleasure. My first real discussion on here where the other person didn’t become maniacal. *cough*randall*cough* =)
August 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
kiwiboi (169): best comment on the debate
August 1st, 2008 at 4:32 pm
heatherrr: part of the new design of the site is that your views are now more clearly separated from the lists – this allows people to ignore things they don’t want to see. The Your Views have proven to be very popular and so I continue to post them for that reason. Furthermore, considering I expected this to be the most controversial one to date, it has been the most reasonably debated of all.
August 1st, 2008 at 4:54 pm
143. nerdlett – read all comments up to 143 and agreed so wholeheartedly had to skip down to comment…until men are held accountable to the same degree as women, I have trouble hearing them on this issue… I can’t imagine a scenario in my own life where abortion would be an option. However, I know nothing of others lives, struggles or beliefs and couldn’t imagine trying to make that decision for someone else.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pm
@ jadester
In some states a girl doesn’t need parental permission to get an abortion if she is over the age of 15.
I KIND of agree with that law. A girl who fucked up and has to get an abortion should have some anominity. The problem is, is that these same girls are coming back TIME AND TIME again. They BLEW their second chance and the parents should be notified/OR the state should make her complete some sort of sex ed/community service when she comes back for multiple abortions. Just letting the girl cut up the potential baby inside her does NOTHING to solve the problem. Only education can do that.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:37 pm
@ 143 and 265
By that train of thought, shouldn’t men have some sort of say in wether or not an abortion should be allowed???
Thats like saying that women should have absolutely no say in our wars because women aren’t allowed to hold combat positions.
For the record I believe abortion is a right that all women should have, but it should not be a form of birth control.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:47 pm
For some people, it should be illegal to have children. Why is it that the people who don’t have money to support children, who live a lifestyle that is not good for children around, are the ones who have the most. There are plenty of people out there who would love to adopt a child who is not wanted by the person that is pregnant. Making this legal only tells young kids that it is okay to have irresponsible sex because there is a solution to pregnancy that results in not having to carry a child, ultimately little consequences.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
There is no right to take a human life, and for those who say it isnt a human life, You are still denying someone their life
There is no reason we should ever have abortions, morning after pills and condoms as well as many other safety nets are available
a funny thing though, if you are raped the bible says you should be punished(If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. — Deuteronomy 22:23-24 )
August 1st, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Not a man’s decision, this one is for the ladies to decide….their bodies, their choice.
August 1st, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I think that every woman should have the right to a limited number of elective abortions in their lifetime. Yes, it is VERY wrong to use it as a form of birth control, which many women do, but one must also take into account a few things. Birth control is NOT 100% effective, so there is always a chance of pregnancy. A young couple starting out in life, not ready emotionally, financially, or maturity wise, that gets pregnant out of the blue, even when all preventative measures have been taken should have the right to postpone such a large step. Pregnancy is so rare when using birth control properly that 1 allowed elective abortion per woman is very reasonable. Emergency abortions, for medical reasons, should NEVER be banned. Whats a more valuable life, a woman with a family, friends, husband, other children, or a clump of cells or fetus. What it all comes down to is personal responsibility, if you are not ready to have kids, do not have unprotected sex, and if you are not in a stable relationship, its probably not a good idea to have sex at all. America has become very sex based, it is everywhere we look. (I live in vegas, so this may be more so for me), and the 10-12 year olds here know more about sex today than I did when I was 16, and not in a responsible way.
Abortion spares many children the abuse, neglect, hunger, and trauma of growing up in a family that was not ready for them, cannot afford them, did not want them, or is unable to take care of them. That is the only way children factor into it, because at the time of abortion, we are not dealing with a child, we are dealing with a grown woman (or scared teenager) and a clump of parasitic cells, which may one day become a human.
Abortion should remain a choice for those women who choose to postpone a very large step in life, rather than have it cost her or her child years of hardship, or to cast another burdon on the state. If some women choose to waste their given chances, then they will suffer the fate they could have avoided.
And before you accuse me of hating children, I am a 19 year old father of a 2 year old precious little boy, who while I write this is sitting in my lap munching on an apple. I love children, and I love my son. My wife and I discussed if we should keep him, and we found that with hard work and sacrifice we could provide a decent life for him. But we made the choice, and every young woman out there who made a mistake should have the choice for a second chance, or to play the cards fate dealt them.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
ericxdravenx26:
Funny thing, but I don’t find that funny at all. Do you believe that raped victims should be punished, or are you just stating some historical opinions on the subject?
August 1st, 2008 at 7:06 pm
malfore: You are a rare gem. Bravo.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
I believe it should be completely legal. It boggles my mind that people would think otherwise. It is not the governments place to decide on issues that are religiously motivated. What one person believes, may not be what another does. I believe life starts when it is possible for the fetus to live outside of the body on it’s own, without the mother to continue it’s life. I understand that others disagree, but where I am from, that is usually the ultra religious people who are more than willing to speak out about the atrocity of it, but you don’t see them lining up to adopt these children.
Also, I had a friend who was gang-raped by five men after being slipped some sort of drug at a nightclub. Afterwords, she found out she was pregnant and was horrified. She had no clue which would have been the father, she already had two children, whose father basically refused to support them, and she was being reminded of what had happened to her. So, she asked me to go with her to the clinic, and I more than willingly went along with her to support her. As we approached, people with signs were harassing her, calling her a murderer. They didn’t know what had happened to her, or how hard a decision she was making, but that didn’t stop them from having their say. I felt so angry towards them, to me they were the monsters. So, think how you want, but I will always be pro-choice after seeing that. The point is, no one knows the circumstances in every case, and I personally do not think it right that people use it in a way that is a form of birth control, but it definitely is none of my business, because I haven’t walked in their shoes. Unless all the people for pro-life are willing to put their name on an adoption list to save these so called babies, then they should not even be talking about the issue.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:39 pm
o.k. seriously people. do you not see the hypocrisy of the main argument in favor of an abortion?
correct me if i am wrong, but it would seem that most in favor would say that the main reason is that no one can tell a woman what to do with her body. you should not be forced to do anything you do not want to do.
(my apologies to cyn for yelling but i feel it is appropriate) A CHILD IS BEING KILLED AGAINST HIS/HER WILL!!!
where is the concern for their autonomy?
also, if you want to be consistent, you must say that if a child is not viable until it is delivered then abortion for any reason at any time is fully permissable. it is either wrong or it isn’t. consequently, partial birth abortions must be seen as acceptable as well. (quite possibly the most vile thing modern man partakes of)
August 1st, 2008 at 7:43 pm
i tried… i simply couldn’t read more than the 1st 110 comments or so…
I had an abortion back in 1996. I was young, madly in love, and in Job Corps. I had nothing of my own, and was really doing nothing with my life. i had nothing to offer a child, and was scared.
so, after much discussion with my boyfriend and a counselor, we decided that the best thing for myself, my unborn baby, and the man i loved was to have a termination.
and guess what? i not only am STILL involved with the man who impregnated me, we are still together and in love! it was an accident-but not one that we had to pay for with our lives. i do, occasionally, wonder what life would have been like if we had a child… but he was 18, i was 19, and we had our whole lives ahead of us!we would most likely have split up and i would have been an unwed teenage mother… living in a trailer park, driving a 22 year old car, and working at Wal-mart.
now we are both in our mid 30’s, have lived a good life, explored and traveled, and own our own home and vehicles. as soon as i finish college, then, and only then, will we try to have a child to add to our lives… since now, we have the means, emotionally, physically, and financially, to provide for another human being. the greatest gift anyone can give another person is a happy, fulfilling childhood-not like the ones my boyfriend and i experienced! (poverty, government cheese, and second-hand clothes from the church bazaar)
if any of you choose to no longer appreciate my comments or humor, then you judge me upon a decision made during a tumultuous time during my youth… and i am certain each and every one of you have done something you are none to proud of, but believed was necessary at the time…i am not my past, i am what my decision are TODAY.
here is my argument to those who feel abortion SHOULD BE illegal-
Exactly what way do you use to enforce this? What consequences are issued for performing pregnancy termination? For having one done on yourself? Do you punish the woman, as well as the physician who did the procedure? If so, what is the punishment? A fine? Forfeiture of medical liscensure? Community service at an orphanage?
things to be considered….
ringtailroxy
August 1st, 2008 at 7:53 pm
ringtailroxy: thanks for being so open – your comment certainly won’t change my view of you or your comments (which are always welcome and appreciated) – even if we are not in agreement on this topic
August 1st, 2008 at 7:59 pm
disc-
A CHILD IS BEING KILLED AGAINST HIS/HER WILL!!!
Where is this child’s will? A few week old fetus has no more will than the carrot stick I’m currently munching on. Should I put it up to my ear and see if it’s screaming as I eat it? It’s nothing but a clump of cells. A fetus has no will. I’m not now, nor have I been for 260 odd comments, advocating abortion. But really. There’s no will involved for the “child.” That’s an awful argument.
B_Rad-
Randall and I have made our peace, but I’ll always love you best. I do like that we’ve been able to take different viewpoints on this eloquently and like adults. That goes for everyone.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
ringtailroxy: I think that if you are going to have sex while not on a pill, or without a vasectomy or any other 100% chance of contraception not happening, then you should be mentally, and financially prepared to have a child. Its a lot like one of the main rules for firearm safety (do not point the gun at anything you are not fully prepared to destroy). I understand accidents do happen, but I believe that when you have sex you accept the consequences. As for the punishment, I believe that the mother should be at least charged with manslaughter, if not murder, and the physician, willing accomplice. I don’t speak for every pro-life person out there, I just have very strong opinions towards this. I feel that all life is precious, born or unborn.
As for the people that say things like “It saves the child from growing up in broken houses,” well, it also saves the child from growing up at all.
I apologize for anything I have said that may have sounded mean or callous, I just sometimes come off as quite mean (which is why I always avoid talking about politics).
August 1st, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Oh, and if that post sounded mean, then tell me, I’m really really hot right now, so I get frustrated easily
August 1st, 2008 at 8:26 pm
I think abortion is unfair to the unborn child, but I also believe people should have the right to decide for themselves. Ultimately it should be up to the mother and father. People have already made this point , but it is valid so I’ll state it again, whether or not abortion is legal or illegal, women who don’t want the child will get an abortion, so a safe and clean place would be ideal.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Jfrader, I think its starting to get to the point of close monitoring..you may need to shut this down soon
August 1st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
@ malfore
I completely agree with everything you had to say and I give you much respect for keeping your child, considering your age.
August 1st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
“Thats like saying that women should have absolutely no say in our wars because women aren’t allowed to hold combat positions”
And why aren’t women allowed to hold combat positions? (your view…what would the world look like if women had been in charge)
I have to say my mind has been changed…slightly..by the civilized debate here…my view of pro life thinking was regilous, uneducated zealots…after reading the comments of the thoughtful people here, I;m not sure you’re all uneducated..
I’m not very controverial so don’t contribute much to these debates, but thought it was worth while to thank those of you with strong opinions for sharing them…we that lurk here get a lot out of it
August 1st, 2008 at 8:47 pm
malfore: watchful eyes are upon the comments – believe me
August 1st, 2008 at 9:05 pm
if you made it you can kill it, the end
August 1st, 2008 at 9:22 pm
jesse: what kind of logic is that, where filicide is legal?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:42 pm
I agree with you a 110% J, abortion should not be legal. Just look at our society today. Kids as young as 15 are secually active, the stats on teen pregnancies are alarming enough to give you nightmares (especially if you’re a parent!). To legalise abortion is like giving your teenage daughter a license to have sex. It will further increase the amount of irresponsible sex that is alerady rampant.
And for all the people who are coupling abortion with ‘women’s rights’, thats not fair. If the woman does not want children then why is she having sex without contraception. Jfray, you hit the nail on the head when you impliend that abortion is NOT a form of contraception.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Phender_Bender -
“I feel that all life is precious”
i have never thought i would ever say this on this website-but are you for real? as in, seriously, charging women with manslaughter for having abortions??
how do you feel about the death penalty?(which has been proven time and again NOT to be a deterrent to heinous crimes and costs taxpayers much more $$$ than incarceration for life?)
how do you feel about factory farms, that pollute our environment, exploit the lives of MILLIONS AND BILLIONS of chickens, turkeys, cattle and pigs, and cause wanton suffering beyond human comprehension??
how do you feel about puppy mills and catteries?
if you want it across the board, then across the board it shall be, in reverence to ALL conscious life!
oooo… I am unbelievably fired up right now… although not directed at me, you have basically said, in not as many words, that I am a murderer! and that is an ultimate judgment you DO NOT HAVE ANY RIGHT to impose!
although i completely accept your right to state your opinion, and I feel fortunate that there is a place we can all express ourselves in a (relatively) civil manner.
which, by, the way, I feel you are a pompous humanitarian whom is ignorant of the fact that there are over 6.3 billion human beings on this planet and it’s not going to take to much more before we are like deer loosed upon a habitat with no predators to keep us in check…we will eventually eat ourselves right out of existence… a more self-righteous speciesist i have not met in my 33 years…
human life is NOT the most important form of life on this planet… and the sooner we as a species realize that, the better our lives will become…
ringtailroxy
August 1st, 2008 at 10:37 pm
I find it confusing that the argument is that “no one should tell a woman what to do with her body”. Yet the woman asking for an abortion is doing JUST THAT!! She is making a decision for another male or female life inside of her. A decision that is a matter of life or death. Why do you view a fetus to be nonhuman one day, then the next day it is human, the only thing separating it from the label is whether it is inside or out of the womb. My friend was advised to have an abortion. Being a devout Catholic and HUMANIST, refused even if her life was at stake. That is being a real mother. A good mother doesn’t kill their unborn children. Turns out her baby was born and with few complication they are now a very happy and very alive family. Thank God she didn’t go to the evil extreme the doctors were pushing her towards.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
With all due respect to those who have commented before me, and I was particularly interested in ringtail’s comments, I believe it shouldn’t be legal.
I know that’s a hell of a lot easier for me, a man, to say and that some people’s decisions are a serious matter. I do believe that abortion has become birth control in quite a number of occasions. It’s difficult for me to accept in any case, but people, this is the 21st century. With all the STD’s out there, some of which can kill ya, and the possibility of making another life, I find it the height of stupidity and ignorance that some people still go into that ‘transaction’ without some sort of protection. And when the inevitable happens, some folks make the decision to end the pregnancy. And that angers me. I’m not saying this directly to anyone here, but abortion as birth control is just wrong to me. I’m a hell of a lot more sympathetic to someone who literally fucked up and isn’t mature enough to be a mom or a dad, but some of these people who have gotten multiple abortions need to grow up. I’m talking about some of these people with 5-6 + kids running around living off the government tit.
I understand mistakes happen all the time. Hell, my brother got his girlfriend pregnant, got married, had the kid, and got divorced and this happened in the 70’s and he is still paying for that mistake. But he gutted it out and tried the best he could. I know not everyone can do that. Life sometimes deals out some brutal, brutal cards.
I also think we’re cheapening the value of life when we accept abortion. But I’m not trying to preach to anyone here. Your business is your business. But as someone who’s been around for a while, I can tell you that you pay prices for the decisions you make in life.
Just my opinion. . . .
August 1st, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I was adopted.
I had a miscarriage at 16. Tried to kill myself.
Was pregnant again at 18 (failed condom). Terminated pregnancy.
Now have 2 beautiful, healthy children.
How do you classify me? I am all over the page.
Shame on you all.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:22 pm
This is an informative message to Tara, I am glad that you have seen my point. But your statement about the doctor is incorrect. Yes, a doctor can turn down any patient, it is called divorcing of the patient. The doctor must present a notice to the patient that they have to see another doctor in a timely manner. Once a patient to doctor relationship has been established the doctor can evaluate the patients condition and see if he, the doctor, is fit to perform medicine on the patient. I am sorry that you have been misinformed by whatever source that you have learned your information from. The information that I am relaying is from a doctor, my dad, he has had to turn down patients before and not just because of his own personal beliefs. But you also have to remember that there are doctors, presidents, and people in power who choose to operate by their own moral standards.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Whether it is Legal or Illegal? These are the laws of man. whether or not you do it, and what it does to you….those are the laws of a more supreme power…
But whatever you believe, in my opinion, Forgiveness is greater than Judgment
August 1st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
Sympathetically for 292 and any others here with heartrending direct experience or involvement,
I’m reminded of a simple cliché, “It’s easy to talk”. There are people who shouldn’t, and there are times not to. This is certainly one for me to say no more.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:11 am
Quoting Tomo: “…abortion should not be legal. Just look at our society today. Kids as young as 15 are secually active, the stats on teen pregnancies are alarming enough to give you nightmares…”
I get nightmares thinking of all those 15 year olds who would be forced to give birth to unwanted babies that will either end up stuck with their teen mothers who cannot provide for them, or stuck in the foster care system because there are not enough families to care for them. Sure, some might get lucky enough to have extended family members who might want them. But let’s face it, and I think this has been said before, unwanted is unwanted.
I understand the whole “if you can have sex you should be able to have a kid” argument, I really do. But I don’t think ADULTS should be told how to conduct their sexual business. (With the exception of being upfront about any STD’s they have and not screwing around while they’re infected with stuff.)
Teenagers, sure, they need to be EDUCATED and given better options for birth control and contraception, absolutely. Adults should be educated as well, I know. But people (adults!) like me who are in monogamous relationships and don’t want children (at least not yet!) should not be punished and be told we’re “not allowed” to have sex. That’s ridiculous.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:23 am
This probably sounds callous and maybe I’m only saying this because it’s late (early?), but I’m not entirely opposed to the 1-abortion-per-woman concept. Abortions definitely shouldn’t be used often and maybe if young girls knew that they were only able to get one, they would be more careful. However, for those whose method of birth control failed (even the pill isn’t 100% effective) it’s nice to know that you’re not a slave to a pregnancy you were working so hard to prevent.
I could never get an abortion but I don’t want to prevent someone else from controlling their own future.
However, my idea is just somewhat ridiculous because I have no idea how it would be enforced. And a lot of ideas are good in theory but don’t work in reality (communism anybody?).
So essentially, while there are a lot of dandy ideas out there for how the abortion problem can be solved, the only real solution is that which was reach in Roe v. Wade: women get to choose.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:29 am
Ringtailroxy:
“how do you feel about the death penalty?(which has been proven time and again NOT to be a deterrent to heinous crimes and costs taxpayers much more $$$ than incarceration for life?)”
I dislike the death penalty and think it should be done away with (but I’ll leave my reasons for another Your View
)
“how do you feel about factory farms, that pollute our environment, exploit the lives of MILLIONS AND BILLIONS of chickens, turkeys, cattle and pigs, and cause wanton suffering beyond human comprehension??
how do you feel about puppy mills and catteries?
if you want it across the board, then across the board it shall be, in reverence to ALL conscious life! ”
Let me rephrase myself, I think all HUMAN life is precious, but the way that some people can treat animals is just disgusting, I get really angry even thinking about it.
“which, by, the way, I feel you are a pompous humanitarian”
I may be pompous but I do not consider myself a humanitarian
.
“the fact that there are over 6.3 billion human beings on this planet and it’s not going to take to much more before we are like deer loosed upon a habitat with no predators to keep us in check”
Overpopulation is scary, but how do you deny someone their right to a family?
“human life is NOT the most important form of life on this planet… and the sooner we as a species realize that, the better our lives will become…”
If human life isn’t the most important, then what is? People come first. If saving a species of toad means killing 1000 people then I’m sorry, the toad is gone.
“I am unbelievably fired up right now… although not directed at me, you have basically said, in not as many words, that I am a murderer! and that is an ultimate judgment you DO NOT HAVE ANY RIGHT to impose!”
See this is why I don’t talk politics, I knew I would offend you, but I didn’t mean to.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:36 am
No. A woman has a responsibility to keep her child alive, not the right to kill it.
If I was raped, lost my virginity and got pregnant at the age of 12 I would have kept my child. Never ever would even consider an abortion.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:39 am
I believe if you aren’t prepared to handle the risk of pregnancy then KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 am
I know I’m coming into the posts late, and I apologize if I’m repeating what anyone else has said, but …
First I should say that I believe that its entirely possible to make a mistake and then choose to either keep the baby or have an abortion and then have a happy ending either way.
But, I have to say that agree 100% with this statement issued by the leadership of my church:
“The Church opposes abortion as one of the most revolting and sinful practices of this day. Members must not submit to, be a party to, or perform an abortion. The only exceptions are the rare cases where, in the opinion of competent medical counsel, the life or health of the woman is in jeopardy or the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape. Even then, the woman should consider an abortion only after counseling with her husband and bishop or branch president, and receiving divine confirmation through prayer.”
Source
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:02 am
Phender_Bender :
i was not entirely offended… just deeply saddened that other people could feel like those among us who have faced tragic decisions could be held accountable so heinously…
but, like I said, I appreciate your ideas, and if they differ from mine, it does not harm me-it is all part of the diversity of our ability to each have individual thought! (or else we’d be ants!!!or bees… bees are more cute & fuzzy…)
i will choose to agree to disagree that “People come first.”
to me, and my boyfriend, people are important, but not the most important. what a pompous thing to say! i am not saying that “a species of toad means killing 1000 people”…
but i am saying that if saving a species of toad, which is intrinsically connected to the food web, that eats a specific fly, that carries a parasite, that carries a disease, that could kill 1,000 humans, might mean that a new, multi-million dollar sub-division cannot be developed in the everglades, then yes.
thousands of people and millions of acres have been damaged more by what we do to ourselves… no other species so wantonly kills it’s own kind for so little legimitate reasons. NONE.
bucslim~
i will agree that abortion is being over-used as a form of preventative birth control. i can think of 5 women i know right off the bat who have had 3 or more terminations in their lifetimes! that does bother me, and i feel it is being done to frequently… becasue, obviously, these women feel that ‘it’s no big deal’.
but i think that has less to do with the availably of abortions, and has more to do with these ladies’ individual value-system. now, 2 are my friends, and i love them dearly… but like any love, you don’t have to always like what your loved one does!
when i was 19, i was on a birth control method called Depo-Provera…it was an injection given every 3 months…and you have to get it within a week or so after your 12th week… and i just didn’t. i thought i would be okay for 2 extra weeks while i scrounged up the cash… but i wasn’t.
my fault entirely, but an accident is no excuse for forced parenthood! i was so immature back then…
ringtailroxy
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:20 am
I am a firm believer in letting women decide for themselves. For me personally I could not get an abortion, however I don’t feel right forcing my feelings on everyone else. Abortion is not just a way for a woman to rid herself of the responsibility of having a child. There have been cases where a woman was raped or sexually abused by a family member and the woman had an abortion when she found out that she was pregnant. There are also cases where the child is a serious hazard to the health and well being of the woman carrying it. To make abortion totally illegal would only result in, as I think someone else has stated, women getting abortions any way at the risk of their health and well being. How many places in the past have had antiabortion laws that have found out the hard way that women are still going to get an abortion whether its legal or safe or not.
Just my two cents, sorry if I rambled or repeated anyone else’s arguments.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:28 am
Ringtailroxy, I am on depo as well, I love it and I hate it. Love Love the fact that it has kept me kid free all these years. Hate Hate the side effects, but then i compare those two things to myself and say well a kid is going to a side effect that lasts forever so why not prevent it before the little bugger starts growing.
And I have to disagree with some people saying if they were raped they would Not get an abortion. Here’s a question… Have you ever been raped? Do you want to keep the kid and have it as a constant reminder of something terrible that happened to you. This can effect how you parent that child, and can be very cold towards it even though it is just innocent, but it was made from something so wrong and terrible. A child is supposed to be formed from love, not an act of power and control from a man.
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:34 am
Only if it endangers the mother’s life should it become an option.
I believe in cases regarding the emotional turmoil of the mother (ie rape) or deformed infants (either physical/mental) should not consider abortion as an option. All humans suffer to various degrees but I do think that the fetus should have a right to be born. I think aborting those with disabilities is wrong. For rape/incest victims, I think suffering is a given, regardless of pregnancy and wouldn’t be solved with an abortion (not that anyone is saying that.).
Adoption is expensive and takes years for applicants to go through the system. I find the majority of abortions to be a waste, given all the women who can’t have children of their own. I think adoption should become an easier process and abortions saved for medical emergencies.
Regardless of my opinion on the matter, I respect the opinions and stories from you all. I think this has been a pretty decent debate for such a controversial subject.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:17 am
yes, if you have been raped you dont want a child of a raper
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
My opinion is:
Birth Control should be far more readily available. I personally would like to see a better version of the birth control patch. Then both partners could be assured.
If the woman can’t afford and take care of the child; she should abort.
Condoms Break, Morning After Pill Fails, crap happens…
Seeing as the survival rate for premature birth for babies born more than 22 weeks early is less than zero; as long as the abortion is preformed 22 weeks or earlier than projected birthdate you aren’t destroying even a potential life.
After going through labor and see the *cuuuute!* baby; most women won’t give the child up. And both of them become the byproduct of the welfare system.
I’m not concerned with ethics or morality. I prefer to focus on the survival of the human race… and it is better for one child to be aborted when a 18 year old girl is pregnant than for it to burden her for the rest of her life.
I’m Brutally Honest and most Abortion are for predominantly for economic reasons.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:35 am
Ringtail, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I know this is an extremely sensitive and personal issue. I totally respect your position and reasoning.
It’s just that this is the kind of thing that most people don’t have a sense of humor about, and nothing will change their minds until they have to make that decision.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
RTR ~ “when i was 19, i was on a birth control method called Depo-Provera…it was an injection given every 3 months…and you have to get it within a week or so after your 12th week… and i just didn’t. i thought i would be okay for 2 extra weeks while i scrounged up the cash… but i wasn’t.
my fault entirely, but an accident is no excuse for forced parenthood! i was so immature back then… ”
Gotta say that made me cringe a little. My fault entirely but an accident is no excuse for forced parenthood? Forced parenthood? I think the biggest problem I have with the pro-choice crowd is this mentality. Nobody forced anybody to *get pregnant* *You* got pregnant and would like to not be pregnant, but it’s too late, you’re already pregnant. It’s really hard to be a parent, but that in no way justifies avoiding it at all costs, even once you’re *already pregnant*
The whole mentality is reactionary and defensive. “How dare you tell me what to do? How dare you force me to have this baby?” Well, that completely avoids all responsibility up to the point of pregnancy. Just something to think about. Honestly, I wish everyone would just use more than one form of birth control and we could seriously cut down on unplanned pregnancies. Most of us live in countries where we have that option, we just fall back on the fact that the option for a last-resort abortion is also there, so there’s less of a sense of personal responsibility. Once you absolve yourself of any morality on the issue, it’s much easier to see it as a “choice” and not a baby.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
ringtailroxy: Now I know what you mean by the human race isn’t the most important. You mean like the world and all its life are greater than the human race, right? I agree with you there, but unfortunately to some people money is everything, which is why there are housing developments where there shouldn’t be, and people still make clothing out of fox. At first I thought you meant that the life of a cow was more important than the life of a human.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:47 am
I didn’t mean for that to sound as harsh as it may have come across. Sorry. I, too, was on Depo for 6 years. I love the convenience of it, just every three months, no thought necessary. When I got off and my husband and I were ready, we had our little bundle of joy.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 am
I posted my thoughts on this way up in comment #127, and felt there was little more to say. But as should have been expected, much of the anti-abortion rhetoric here has been simplistic, injudicious, and narrow-minded–and in a few instances downright ignorant and ill-informed. (Though please note, I said MUCH of the anti-abortion rhetoric. I’m not referring to *everyone* here who expressed anti-abortion views).
I have no interest in debating individuals on this topic. Certainly I’m sure many people are deeply sincere about what they believe to be an altogether proper reverance for human life, and are deeply sincere in their feelings that the fetus should be considered as much a human life as any adult or child.
I’ve already spoken on my own stance in this regard, in my earlier comment. No need to repeat.
But in reading through these comments, we see the sort of attitude one always hears: that abortion is murder, and should therefore be made illegal.
But of course we rarely, if ever, think of the woman who has an abortion as *actually* being equivalent to, let alone equal to, a *murderer* who actually kills another adult human being or a child, in cold blood or otherwise. Oh, some people may stand up and say that this is the case–but don’t we all more or less reject that, when you get down to the heart of it? People prefer viewing abortion as “murder” but are not quite as ready to call the woman who has one a “murderer.” (They’re somewhat more prepared to call the doctor who performs the procedure a murderer, but this strikes me as a species of evasion, if you follow me). It interests me that this is so, and to me indicates something about our deeper nature that many people are not prepared to recognize or accept. In essence people are, perhaps, viewing the fetus as a *potential* human being–how can you view it otherwise, after all–and as such, in their deeper minds they are unwilling or unprepared to give its existence *precisely* the same weight as a human being who has been born and has found awareness and experienced the world, and developed a persona and mind of his or her own. This is a more difficult debate, and people aren’t as ready to indulge in it.
But I note also that, in reading through the comments, there is nowhere in evidence the associated concern one should logically expect for the life *after* it is born. If life and its sanctity is the core concern for those who are vehemently against abortion, then what do they have to say about what becomes of it once it is brought into this world? They demand that the life be protected and forced to be delivered, but there their concern ends; indeed, this seems to be the entire point. No one is (or very few are)stepping forward to say “I will rescue that baby and raise it since the mother cannot do so, and I will protect it from the abuse and neglect and poverty it may have or would have faced otherwise.”
It’s easier to demand that others be forced to live up to our black and white notions of right and wrong, but much harder to face the grey reality of life and step forward to accept our mutual responsibility in that grey world… to not simply *demand* that it conform to our morality, but to bring our personal morality to bear on the world around us.
The thoughts here are not so much for the child that will come from a prevented, illegalized abortion–but simply for making the statement that abortion is wrong and that we have done our duty in stopping it, in criminalizing it.
It’s that kind of low, singular, superficial take on this world we live in–and each other–that contributes to the misery of human life.
I don’t say that everyone who opposes abortion should be forced to or even be willing to adopt an unwanted child. (Though of course that would be an admirable way of demonstrating one’s convictions). But the consideration of that life, in this manner, *after* it is born, would go a long way to proving that the true concern we should all be expressing here is for the quality of human life in general.
August 2nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
268 karma: That’s called eugenics. It has been proved that even ‘letting’ people with physical or mental diseases have children, the world WILL NOT become a place full of physical or mentally ill people. That’s called population genetics. What is worse, you are not thinking about physical traits, but social ones. YOU decide that being poor is a wrong thing, so poor people cannot have children, and you are kind of saying that poverty is inheritable.
Other people I fail to find now: You can get pregnant even if you are on pills AND use a condom. It happens. Sex is not only for making babies, I agree that 12 years old is a very young age to have sex, and sometimes at that age your body is not even read for it. But again, we see everywhere that sex is desirable (movies, TV, etc) and who is more influenciable ??? (don’t know the word) than a teenager?
Now let’s consider my case. I’m 26, I’ve been in a relationship since I was 21 and I moved in with my boyfriend a year ago (for my age, I consider this a long time relationship). Do we want kids? Absolutely. But right now, we cannot afford one. I’m in grad school and the chances are that if I get pregnant I loose my job. My boyfriend is writing his thesis, and if I loose my job he will have to find a better one for himself, so good-bye college. Of course we use protection when we have sex (I’m on the pill and he uses a condom, just in case). And I got pregnant, fortunately I miscarriaged 3 weeks after. If I didn’t, I would have had an abortion, because I wouldn’t have been able to give the child (though what I lost was not a child for me) the life I think a child deserves.
The thing is that if you don’t kill a human being then you are not a murderer, and I believe that a fetus with a couple of weeks is not alive (or just as alive as the cells in my fingers that I’m killing while I type), and it’s not a human being.
As I said before, I’m not in favour of using abortion as another birth controll method, but seeing what happens where I live (abortion is illegal, however the abortion rate is the same that the one of countries where it is legal, but getting a safe abortion is really expensive so most girls end up dead or injured), I am totally in favour of making it legal.
gabriel1836: So if a woman gets raped and pregnant, she cannot make a decision but the men that surround her can (husband, bishop or branch president). Again, what it is in stake here is not abortion or not abortion, but the right of a woman to make decisions about herself.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 am
of course it should be legal, it stops people having children they dont want and/or cant care for. its not much of a life if they are going to grow up in crappy conditions with a crappy mother.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 am
I can’t say how glad I am to live in Canada where we have put this debate behind us legally, if not ethically. Thankfully, we have the Charter of RIghts and Freedoms which prohibits discrimination against sex, amongst other things. That discrimination extends to legislation, which means its illegal to have a law that is applicable to one segment of society exclusively. Which means that abortion laws are anti-constitutional by nature since they can only apply to women. That’s not to say our ultra-conservative government might not try to re-criminalize abortion, but any attempt to do so would ultimately be struck down by the Supreme Court.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
Randall: I have 3 adopted kids (one from China). I guess thats why I feel so strongly against abortion. My wife can’t have kids, and when I see the baby aborted it feels like such a waste, there are so many families that are willing to take these kids.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 am
Pregnancy takes 10 months from start to finish, plays hell on your body (I have a kid, I saw what it did), makes you miss work, makes you eat a lot, destroys your figure and can mess up your self esteem and cause depression and diabetes, and childbirth costs a LOT of fucking money.
How is it the government’s right to force you to go through that for what’s essentially a parasite. A tapeworm’s alive, should we not remove those either? You’re killing a living creature when you take medicine to kill a virus. Doesn’t the flu have a right to live? After all, it’s a collection of cells just like a fetus, and it’s fully developed.
Are you a vegetarian? No? You killed some animal that probably had a lot more ability to think and reason than a damn fetus does. AND it was probably, unless you’re eating only organic, kept in conditions that can only be described as slightly cruel for it’s entire life. Don’t get me started on veal.
Why is it that the same people who oppose abortion are almost universally for the death penalty? What, your government can’t let you remove a clump of cells that’ll cause you almost a year of pain, illness, distress, and financial hardship, but it can kill your citizens? How is that fair?
I think it should be legal up to 3 months (that’s where the brain forms to be fully thinking and self aware), and I think you should only get 3 a lifetime. If a first abortion isn’t going to show you that you need to wear a condom, you get 2 more chances to try again. The federal government already has 3 strikes and you’re in jail for life for felons, why not make pregnancy work the same way?
And, for the record, I’m personally for myself against abortion. I wouldn’t be ok if my girlfriend did it, I’d probably leave her. But, I use protection of a few forms, so wtf.
Why is it always males and old women who are vehemently anti-abortion? Can you have one? If not you’re never going to be in a position where the law would effect you. I find it rather unfair, though, that a woman can abort a fetus without the father’s consent, and he has to deal with it, but she can also ignore his plea to have her abort it, and then sue him for child support. It’s a gross double standard.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:17 am
iamaneviltaco: “How is it the government’s right to force you to go through that for what’s essentially a parasite. A tapeworm’s alive, should we not remove those either? You’re killing a living creature when you take medicine to kill a virus. Doesn’t the flu have a right to live? After all, it’s a collection of cells just like a fetus, and it’s fully developed.
Are you a vegetarian? No? You killed some animal that probably had a lot more ability to think and reason than a damn fetus does. AND it was probably, unless you’re eating only organic, kept in conditions that can only be described as slightly cruel for it’s entire life. Don’t get me started on veal.”
None of those things can ever grow up to be a human.
“Why is it that the same people who oppose abortion are almost universally for the death penalty? What, your government can’t let you remove a clump of cells that’ll cause you almost a year of pain, illness, distress, and financial hardship, but it can kill your citizens? How is that fair?”
I’m against the death penalty, but that logic works better the other way, how can someone kill an innocent baby, but not kill a serial rapist-murder.
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 am
I believe a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her body and the government should not regulate it.
If a young girl is raped, I don’t think she should be forced to carry that memory around for 9 months or more. And I know getting an abortion won’t erase the memory, but she could at least get back to having a normal young girl life instead of carrying a baby.
That being said, I think women who go out and have unprotected sex all the time and get pregnant should not just have abortion after abortion. That makes abortion an “easy way out” and let’s them be irresponsible. But I have a feeling that most women who live their life like that are the kind of people/ having sex with the kind of people we don’t want procreating.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:31 pm
This is a topic that I find myself leaning more to the right than the left on, but my general answer is still YES.
First, I would never have an abortion unless it was going to kill me. Whether my child had severe disabilities or I was just too young, I would have it. I do not believe, however, in forcing that opinion upon others.
I would highly regulate abortion. It is abominable, whether the child is functioning or not, to destroy an almost completely formed human as a form of contraception. I believe the mark for me would be the heartbeat- when a doctor can detect a heartbeat, it ceases to become a parasitic life form and moves into being an unborn child. That point occurs WELL into the pregnancy. There’s just no reason for partial-birth abortions. It’s sick.
I do believe that until society sets up proper programs to help support these children that have been saved from abortions, that they should still be legal. As people have stated above, it’s very taxing on the body, the mind, time, and especially the wallet to have a child. It can be a great blessing to many, but to some it’s nothing but pain. Why force someone to go through that if they choose not to?
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I apologize if this was already mentioned, I have read a lot of the comments, but not all 300+, but what about the father? It’s his “clump of cells” too, and no one ever mentions his rights, and what if he wants to keep the baby? I hate that men are given NO choice, whether the woman aborts the baby, or keeps the baby and extorts him for child support for the next 18 years whether he wanted the baby or not.
But, for the record, I’m anti-abortion, and I think the laws should be changed to say if a woman was raped, or there was incest, or there is a life threatening situation to baby and/or mother, that abortion would be okay, I think that would cut down the number of abortions and pacify most anti-abortion people.
I just hate that it’s used so frequently as a form of birth control, and I don’t think women realize the emotional turmoil it will cause them. Maybe not right now when they are a stupid, knocked-up teenager, but later, when they get married, settle down and want to have kids, and then it will hit them.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
iamaneviltaco – how come almost no one uses the reverse of the statement you made:
“Why is it that the same people who oppose abortion are almost universally for the death penalty? What, your government can’t let you remove a clump of cells that’ll cause you almost a year of pain, illness, distress, and financial hardship, but it can kill your citizens? How is that fair?”
So why is it that the same people who are pro abortion are almost universally against the death penalty? Pretense runs both ways, methinks. You’re willing to end an innocent life, but have reservations about some of the most heinous lumps of crap ever to come out of a womb. Yeah, let’s let Jeffrey Dahmer, Tim McVey, and Ted Bundy continue to convert oxygen into carbon dioxide because all life is valuable, er . .uhm unless I forget to put a condom on, then it’s ok.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Yes. It keeps the minority and female populations in check. I’m being a smart-a** by the way, but the above fact is all that Roe vs Wade has really accomplished.
The Feminist movement should have had the foresight to realize that by legalizing abortion in 1973, they inadvertantly sparked off a Holocaust that has so far resulted in the deaths of millions of unborn American women!
Here’s a question…What has killed more Blacks: The Jim Crow South or abortion? The answer would surprise you.
That, and children are a gift from God. That’s why I can’t support the legalized abortion. Yeah, it’s a woman’s body, and she can do whatever she wants with it, but she also has to respect herself, act responsibly, and be a good gatekeeper (wink, wink) if you know what I mean…Men are only half of the sex equation.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:47 pm
yes. many teenagers are becomn pregnant and they should be banged from havin a abortion.
if they didnt want a baby they why have sex.
i should know
im 14 and have a 2 week old baby.
so as i was saying woman or teenagers shouldnt have abortion unless they are either unfit 2 have a baby or medical resons
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I have seen very few comments mention the male’s role in the pregnancy/abortion decision…
and here is my take on it…
ever notice how little some men seem to be involved in the abortion decision? some men demand it of unwilling partners… others, suffer silently as they acknowledge what they know (or believe to be) unborn child terminated…
but what about men who don’t want to be fathers, but the women decide to have the child anyways?
or men who want to be fathers, but have a partner terminate the pregnancy? what about them?
if the decision to have sex takes two people, then the decision to terminate a pregnancy, or to have a child, should be between the two people involved. and if one person (or the other) can’t accept how their partner feels on that decision, then they aren’t going to stay together for very long anyway.
Bucslin~ thank you and I always respect you. you an me r pals, no?
Randall~ I agree! all these “Hope” pregnancy centers will ‘help’ you get government help and food stamps, WIC and Medicaid, maybe second-hand baby supplies… but where are they when the child is 2? 5? 10? it’s almost as if these pro-life, crisis-pregnancy organizations just care to help babies, not the children and adolescents they mature into…
and since when where pregnancies ever considered a crisis? an ectopic pregnancy , maybe…
Phender_Bender~ thank you for being open-minded enough to see where I was coming form that “humans are not the most important species”
I do think ALL species and life is important, and all other life on this planet ultimately benefits, harms, or affects us… if one species dies, then another, it can cause a cascading effect that ultimately will cause our own demise.
and yes, overpopulation is horrifying. that’s why I support this organization:
http://www.populationconnection.org/
check it out! I most certainly do not want to infringe on anyone’s right to have children… just as much as I desire them NOT to infringe upon my right to not have children until I am emotionally, financially, and physically capable of doing so to the standards I have set for myself. (and my future family!).
Jfrater~ this discussion, for the most part, has been impressingly civil, and I hope I am not speaking just for myself, but I applaud all who have commented! right or wrong, opinions or facts, FEARS OR TRUTHS, this has been a powerful, enlightening, and emotionally-charge discussion… one I have thoroughly enjoyed and learned much from!
ringtailroxy
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
272. kittym
not funny as in i think the situation is, i find it funny and idiotic that people believe a bible where it says both “he who is without sin among you cast the first stone”(jesus said when a woman who had committed adultery was brought to him and asked if they should stone her)
and then things such as that and “though shall not suffer a witch to live” “he who lies with man as with woman has commited an abomination and shall surely be put to death”(or something very close)
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
301. gabriel1836
children are born sin free, while a mother must have some sort of sins, making the child’s life more valuable than the mothers
I do not believe this, but by following the bible, this is a “logical” outcome
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:46 pm
The most incredible is how much people care about abortion, discussing about if fetus is “life” or not. Of course is a living being, but this doesn’t mean anything. A chicken is a living being too. Terrible sentence, indeed.
But we live in a terrible world.
Every minute we discuss about that in here, 10 childs die of starvation in the world. And I don’t see “pro-live” organizations caring about it. ¿How can we take so seriously something related to a “presumed human being” and close our eyes to something related to CONFIRMED (yes, they are) human beings?
Of course. Abortion MUST be legal ever.
The day starvation will be ilegal; The day that those who deffend “pro-live” stop killing people in other countries or in theirselves; The day suffering will have ended; In that day we will be able to discuss about de “moral” legacity of abortion.
324. sarah:
“if they didnt want a baby they why have sex.”
Well. Maybe cause you’re living in another set of values…
August 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
326. ericxdraven26:
I don’t think bible sais anything about abortion. It says that having sex without wanting a baby is a sin.
¿why?
By the same reasons we’re deffending abortion. Couse a non-wanted child always carry problems. Of course you will love him but it changes your live and whatever future you’re expecting.
What Bible means is “If you don’t want a child, don’t have it”. In ancient times that mean not having sex. Nowadays means taking preventions. And if it fails (rarely but sometimes happens) then abortion is the solution.