Category: Let's talk
Why I Am Against Abortion
When abortion is discussed we either encounter the phrase “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” Recently an acquaintance of mine asked, “What do those phrases really mean? What does it mean when someone says they are pro-life or pro-choice?” Pro-choice and pro-life are politically correct, polar opposite terms that have lost their true meaning somewhere among the enumerable dead bodies. Pro-life means what it says, raise the baby. Pro-choice really means kill the baby. Most of society defines those phrases by using the words “pro-choice” or “pro-life” but somehow society’s definitions do not add up in my mind. Where I stand is clear to me and I know another perspective needs to be brought to the forefront.
We are often told by society at large that if we do not believe a certain way about important issues like abortion we are wrong, stupid, too young to understand or have not yet had enough life experience. Why are such discouraging and absurd comments automatically accepted as valid refutations? Why aren’t people who hold unpopular opinions about such a life-rendering decision encouraged to be as vocal about them as those who think like the “popular” crowd? Isn’t it crucial that everyone feel welcome and comfortable expressing their thoughts in order for us to work together toward making a difference in the world? To me there is no question; the answer is a resounding yes! All viewpoints need to be heard!
Scenario 1: A 19-year-old woman is pregnant with her first child. She is unmarried and is a heavy smoker and drinker. (She drank and smoked throughout her pregnancy); even though she had the child prematurely, what makes it okay for the baby to be punished for the mother’s bad decisions? By the same token, why should a mother allow the life within her to be taken from her? How is it justifiable to consider the child toxic waste just because she allowed other toxic things to enter into her body?
If this mother had decided like the pro-choice supporters would have encouraged her to do, allowing the baby inside her to be slaughtered, no one would know me or have the opportunity to hear the valuable things I have to say. No one could be a part of my life and enjoy my infectious personality. No one would be encouraged to think just by listening to the perspective I have on various things. No one would be moved or empowered by someone who is unafraid to be honest-sometimes brutally so – the way I am. Most importantly I would not be here today to spread the truth of how life-from conception onward-disabled or non-disabled, is the most precious gift anyone could ever receive. Aren’t you grateful that your mother did not choose to be pro-choice and have you killed? I know I am glad that my mother didn’t exercise “pro-choice” and have me slaughtered and thrown out like yesterday’s garbage like pro-kill the baby supporters champion.
Pro-choice means exactly that, having a choice. You don't have to support abortion enable for a woman to have a choice. I've done research into this, and I personally believe that abortions needs it's limitations. There comes a point in a woman's pregnancy that they are actually killing a child who had a chance...who had a precious cry...who had a name... and they knew it's gender.
I'd rather a child go at some point in the woman's pregnancy instead of the child coming out feeling and being treated like it's worthless, living in the projects, being bounced around in the foster system, and so on...
And, don't dare bring up adoption. Did you read that story about how a white woman got upset because a sperm bank gave her a black baby?
Oh god, this is a thorny issue.
It's made far worse by all the ad-hoc fallacies and spurious reasoning you're touting, Chelsea...but again, as in a different thread, I will tentatively agree with you...on one thing only.
All viewpoints need to be heard. Agreed.
But then, we cuull the bad ones, destroy the bad arguments and emotion-driven rhetoric masking as logical argument, and really get down to business. That, as always, is where you fail.
I am not rabidly pro-choice. I'm not pro-life either, by the way.
I do agree that when you end a baby's life, you ought to know what you're doing and own it. However, very early-stage abortion comes at a point long before identity is established, so the philosophical hangups are largely muddied.
I also think that sometimes, abortion is used perhaps a little too liberally. Not being a woman and not being in such a position, however, I recognize that this opinion is shaky at best. I hold it more because I am intensely aware of the throw-away culture we're fostering in so many other aspects of life. I don't want that being spread to unborn children, however indirectly or unintentionally.
Now, I do want to use a couple of emotional arguments just for fun. One is a potential refutation of a point you made, while the other is a challenge.
Scenario 1, as you laid it out:
Let's throw a wrinkle. Instead of just being born with blindness and some mobility issues, you were born with serious spina bifida. You can't move, you can't talk, you have severe cognitive impairment but are aware of the world around you. You are blind, but you can hear. Your mother, presumably, is going to have to take care of a child with all kinds of special needs...a child who may not even be able to communicate...a child who is definitely never going to live their own life.
The problem with your emotional scenario is that you're not accounting for the ugly side. Yes, there are people out there who smoke or drink while pregnant and give birth to babies with no defects. But fetal alcohol syndrome is a very real problem, and those first few weeks when a baby is developing are huge. Throw the chemicals out of whack, and you're begging for serious developmental issues.
Obviously I'm not trying to suggest that every "non-perfect" baby should be tossed out with the trash, but an argument can certainly be made that if the risks are great enough, abortion could at least be considered.
Let us remember that at fairly early-stage pregnancy, a mother hardly even knows she's pregnant. A baby is a cllump of cells with no emotional identity, no personality, no realism. You make a mistake if you think of it as a tiny human who will scream when they're mangled brutally as a means of so-called mercy. That's a common scare tactic for more extreme pro-lifers that is largely inaccurate.
Now, here's my challenge:
A seventeen-year-old woman who is living with her parents and going to high school gets raped by, say, a cousin (statistically, many rapes happen between people who are known to each other, so this is not far-fetched). She will not be done school before she begins to show. Are you suggesting that this woman should be keeping the baby purely because to kill it is sacrosanct? Because I foresee a couple of really big problems with this:
1. The baby is a product of unwanted and unacceptable sexual conduct
2. The baby may have serious genetic defects owing to the fact that the rapist is related; this is one of many reasons why incest is a bad, bad idea
3. The baby may be lucky and be free of defects, but no matter what happens, its mother will probably see her rapist's eyes, or face, or gestures, or hear his voice, every time she deals with her child. I'm sorry, but that sort of reminder is something most people neither want nor need, much less deserve
4. A seventeen-year-old woman who is not planning to have a child may be emotionally, financially or psychologically unable to give the child a good home, thus increasing the risk that the child is brought up badly, neglected, even abused
Now, in the face of all those risks, is pro-life really so clear-cut?
Thanks Chelsea, for this great post. I think it is sad how society has swung so far pro-choice. I don't even like the term pro-choice. The other day I heard a political debate where a candidate asked his opponent, "Are you pro-choice or anti-choice?" I screamed at the TV! It ought to be "Are you pro-life or in favour of abortion?" I mean, the whole concept of choice is a bit flawed if you're able to say that one is anti-choice if he believes the preborn baby is a living being that ought not to be killed. Terminated, whatever euphemism you want to use, abortion is a decision that willfully ends the life of another and I am not sure how that has become so accepted in today's world.
It is never the baby's fault that he or she is unwanted or came from an unfortunate event. So given that fact, it is not okay to kill the baby. The baby should not be held responsible for other people's actions. Why should the baby get the death penalty without even a chance at a trial? Why does society place more emphasis on the mother's life than that of the innocent babies?
Agreed. I am definitely in the pro-life camp. I know it can be a thorny issue in some cases, especially with high-risk pregnancies (multiples) where aborting one fetus could improve the others' chances of survival. There are issues where it is a more difficult decision. I have a hard time supporting it even in those cases, but at times there is at least a thought process that the family must go through even if it is a pro-life family. But by and large, abortions are a result of our throw-away culture. Oh fuck I am pregnant. I don't want this right now. The baby dies, and feels the pain might I add. So it is a pretty slippery slope on which we embark by saying that the mother has all the rights in the world, while the preborn child has no rights at all and no chance.
If we all have valid opinions and the right to be heard, then why was that woman stupid and crazy for blinding herself?
The answer to that, admittedly rhetorical question of whether everyone's
opinions should be allowed to be heard and weighed eequal is a resounding no.
Certain opinions should be done away with by intelligent societies. Like the idea
that government can tell a women what to do with her body. And the idea that
the world is six thousand years old. Or that its flat. Stuff like that we should do
away with and riddicule anyone who thinks that way, for they are deserving of
riddicule.
As for whether or not I'm happy my mother didn't choose to abort me, the
answer is again no. If she had, I would have no idea, because I would not exist.
None of us would know that we'd been aborted, and thus that entire line of
thinking is just dumb. Its like asking, "After your dead, won't you be glad you
died painlessly in your sleep as oppose to being tortured to death and eaten by
wild ferrets"? You're dead, you don't have thoughts anymore, nor emotions to
care about or be upset by anything. You're dead. Before you were born, you
don't exist. So stop trying to extort people's emotions with your empty ideas.
I have to disagree with you Cody on the nature of pre-existence, if for no other reason than you really can't know that for sure. :) But that's a matter for a whole other topic.
Otherwise, this is a really difficult issue. I notice nobody has addressed Shepherdwolf's senarios. I was going to put forth similar senarios. The problem is, this is not a black and white issue. On one hand it could be seen as a convenient way to avoid responsibility for your actions. Sexuality is, at many times treated by one or both partners as merely a form of recreation. But, and here's the thing lots of people seem to forget, a child can b e the result of even recreational copulation. Personally I think abortion is horrible in that regard. It gives us a sense of disconnection from our responsibilities.
But Shepherdwolf brings up some good senarios. Rape, insest, endangerment to the mother, all of these are very dire circumstances. Why should the woman be punished for actions which are not her fault? Pro Choice in this regard is the ability to choose. The services are there, a woman should have the right to choose for herself. If she wishes her baby to live while she herself dies, that's a choice only she - if able to do so - should make. A girl sleeps around and gets pregnant, then wants to use abortion as - pardon the vulgarity - a convenient waste disposal. To me, that is atrocious. These are two polar opposite senarios here. But there are a meriad of senarios in between to consider, and that's where the real trouble with this issue starts I feel. Pro life, as I understand the term, puts a blanket over everything. No choice, have that baby, every time, regardless of origin. Only the child matters. The mother, or how she became pregnant is of no consequence. That's how it comes across sometimes. Pro choice simply means ... choice: the agency to decide for one's self the path to follow, and the choice to accept whatever consequences, either in this life or the next arise from that choice. I guess you could say I'm pro choice. It is an option which should be made available, but not one to be abused. It's like nearly everything else in life; there are no absolutes; there is only individual circumstance, and the accountability that arises from that circumstance. And whether that accountability will arise in this life, or in the life to come is a matter of personal belief.
BG, you hit the nail directly on the head. I disagree with a bit of your reasoning - though you're right about it being for another topic entirely - but as for your overall stance? Spot on.
Chelsea, life is not the be-all and end-all of conditions. Sometimes, when saving a life will result in too many complications, that life's termination should be considered. This is especially true if the quality of the life in question is largely suspect. No, I don't just mean something like blindness or mild cerebral palsy...I'm talking about big stuff here, the kind of thing that would ensure that child is dependent and largely helpless for all of its life.
Let me put this in emotional terms, because you like those.
How necessary is saving a child's life if that child is only going to be a financial burden on its guardians? And how useful is saving that child's life if that child will never be independent? Are you saying that saving his life, with all those things in the balance, still trumps all? And if so, why?
To further the emotional heft of this position, I'll say this much. I hope you never have pets. You sound like the kind of person who would rather your dog died a slow, nasty death from an inoperable brain tumour than put your dog to sleep. Sanctity of life, and all that. It does have a dark side.
The whole concept of how would you feel if your mother aborted you before you were born has always seemed meaningless to me, whether or not I accepted the idea that there might bbe a life either before or after this one. Because assuming there is no soul and this is all there is, you would feel nothing before you were born, so would feel nothing after you were aborted. If you are sympathetic to the idea that there is a soul, then you might be born of different parents who would want you, and so the idea of being outraged at your mother for aborting you would simply have no meaning, because either way you would be born. But that’s a metaphysical argument that you’re not gunna solve no matter what. Because even as one of my Christian friends recently pointed out, none of us really knows for sure. You can cite scripture till you’re blue in the face, but all you’re doing is citing a book you don’t necessarily know is true. You can say you know, but you have to have faith for it to be true. Some of us got it, some of us don’t. Still others of us, like myself, are in the middle and don’t know what the hell we believe metaphysically one way or the other from one day to the next.
But ultimately the problem with abortion is that someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong. I have a feeling that the pro-choice camp is going to be ultimately right simply because you cannot stop abortion. Logically speaking, there are just too many arguments in favor of choice. Even the emotional arguments are more favorable. Take, for instance, rape. While there are relatively few pregnancies that result from rape, the fact remains that there are enough of them for such to be a concern. In my mind, it logically makes no sense to force a woman to give birth to a child conceived from rape if she doesn’t want to do so. Her body was violated in the first instance. She has the absolute, untrammeled right to make whatever choice she deems necessary for what she perceives to be her own good. If she feels herself to be mentally incapable of bearing the child, then so be it. You may not agree with it, but you do not, or should not, have the right to decide for her. She was already raped. The choice to have sex was taken from her in the first place. I, for one, think it a grave injustice to cause her further pain. If she is strong enough to bear the child, and if she’s even stronger emotionally to keep the child afterwards, the more power to her. Either way, it is not something I want to insert myself into largely because if I were in that position, I would not want someone deciding that for me. I daresay that in the event that we go back to a situation in which Roe v Wade were reversed one day, you’d have a problem not unlike prohibition. Let’s say some states were pro-choice and others were not. You’d have women traveling, say, to New York from South Carolina to have abortions because, hypothetically speaking, New York mmight be pro-choice and South Carolina would be anti-choice. How would you stop women from, say, taking a casual vacation from South Carolina to New York? Maybe they’d come to my state to have an abortion, or maybe they wouldn’t. You’d create yourself a fine mess out of things if you endeavored to stop it, and we’re already in enough of a mess here as it is on a whole host of other topics. Best let people decide for themselves and deal with their own consequences. In the event that there is a god and he/she/it is anti-choice, then let the person who has had an abortion deal with it. IN the event that there isn’t, then you don’t have any business minding other people’s business for them. Actually, either way you don’t.
This is a heavy topic.
Women have been choosing to baby, or not to baby as long as they have been able to understand they had options.
Now that women have safe and reliable methods, and medical methods are in place to help them do so, I am all for it.
Until a child becomes as actual baby, it is no more than a natural reaction waiting to develop.
So much can happen even before that time, and it be naturally aborted, so I can’t see why a woman can’t choose to abort it before the time it develops being wrong.
Recreational or forced sex should not be in the equation, because when a woman takes a pill, or a man puts on a condom, they are stopping the conception.
If a man or woman decided to have themselves altered so they can’t produce, have they aborted?
When a man masturbates, he is wasting sperm, and when a woman chooses not to have sex, so she ovulates, has she choosing abortion?
Should we pass laws that state all men and women of fertile age must participate in as many sexual acts as possible in a given month, so they aren’t tossing all the possible babies that could be born in the garbage?
We wish to force women to have the babies, but at no time are we willing to take full care and financial responsibility.
If you force a woman to have a child, shouldn’t you be responsible, because it is what you desired, not her?
I understand there is a point where I don’t agree the child should be aborted, but before that point, give a woman her choice.
Hey, guess what? I'm pro-choice. I had to face this sort of decision once. I was young, in a relationship--yes, but admittedly not ready for a baby. But I found out he was coming none the less. I had a choice. And I felt comforted by that matter of fact. I had a choice. Which weighed me down and made me think. No matter what choice I made, it would be one that I knew would alter my life irreversibly and completely. I had a choice, and I chose to keep my baby. Chose to raise it because I felt I had the wherewithall, the common sense, the resourcefulness, the support, and the love for my unborn child that would make me into an excellent mother for him. I didn't quite know how I'd do it; I didn't have the specifics down, but I had a choice, and I made a plan. And so, I'm pro-choice. You can't say I'm not, though I decided that abortion was not for me. I am not pro-abortion. I don't believe that an abortion is necessary nor warranted a lot of the time. i do agree that some people are flippant, even proud of their abortions. But I also do believe in individual circumstance.
I came to the conclusion that an abortion is not for me. But I'm grateful I had the choice to do so, not because the government told me to keep my baby, not because my family begged me to have or not have it, not because I was helld captive by societal pressures. My choice to have my unplanned child was born of hours, days, weeks worth of thought, a strong bond for the child, and the feeling that I couldn't, wouldn't have it any other way.
And to be honest, chelsea, good on you that your grateful that your mother didnt' have an abortion. Though your thoughts often lack reason and your oppinions tend to be brash at best, I'm glad you are able to formulate and present them as well.
But here's the thing. As a parent, the thing I can't stomach most is the mistreatment of children by clueless or unfit parents. Honestly. I can stand the thought of a clump of cells that could one day formulate into a human being extracted from a womb, more than I can stand witnessing the true, certain, unforgettable, alienating, undeserved torture that children hav to live through in the care of crappy parents who don't want them. You're right; the parent's screwups are not the baby's fault. Nothing's ever the baby's fault. and the baby doesn't ask to be born. The baby does not comprehend being born, even after it is, arguably speaking.
I always find the term pro-life amusing. If you people are so pro-life, why aren't you ever concerned about the life that is already here on earth. the life that is hungry, conscious, hurting, lonely, ignored, neglected, abused, and so forth. Why don't you care about the fragile life that is brought into this world partially thanks to your strong stance which you insist on spreading.
Here's some things you should take notes on:
1. don't guilt people into living out your idealistic standards because you don't walk in their shoes and haven't been in their circumstances.
2. unless you can guarantee a baby, or babies, the quality of life, shelter, love, etc. that they deserve, don't campaigne for them to be brought into this world by people who shouldn't have kids in the first place. That's actually cruel. Think about it. You're basically saying, well, kid, my hope was that you wer allowed to live. Now, good luck to ya. Hope you have fun with your crackhead mommy or that you might be adopted soon. So long, lost soul.
3. if you're really pro-life, you'd also be pro-choice. You'd be advocating the life that is already here on earth, the life that is already in motion, conscious, aware, and in many instances, badly in need of decent parents. You'd be pro-choice because you'd be empathetic to the plight of others, and though you'd hope that women would keep their babies, you'd let them come to that decision on their own so that their ofspring would truly stand a fighting chance.
If you have to think about what you want to do with your unborn child, if you have to make a choice, you become far more invested in his or her welfare. if the government makes the choice for you, well, the government will also end up taking care of it.
Amazing how many republicans don't connect the dots in this matter.
I agree, none of what Chelsea is saying makes any sense, but I totally agree with you Bernadetta. I guess that's what I was getting at when I made the adoption comment, but anyways.
In truth, pro-life people aren't pro-life. They're just anti-choice. They don't want to hear that because it makes them seem rigid or illogical or dogmatic.
Indivvidual circumstance rules the day as far as I'm concerned. And individual circumstannce will perforce necessitate making choices.
Of course they're not pro-life. Those are the same people who's perfectly ok with voting for a party who wants to increase the military so that America can keep up it's antics in the Middle East and other countries, and wants people on death row dead immediately.
To say that pro-life people are anti-choice is foolish rhetoric that feeds the pro-abortion cause. Everyone has all kinds of choices in the run of a day. Am I anti-choice if I think you shouldn't choose to steal a car?
And I realize that expecting intelligent debate on these boards is foolhardy at best, but after looking at all the recent news and views boards a question comes to mind. Are we all just here to shit on Chelsea no matter what she posts? Or is anyone still actually interested in exchanging, as the title suggests, news and views? I am not playing Chelsea's part here, merely playing devil's advocate. Everyone has been incendiary on these boards at various times. But I think these boards have become bullying and idiocy instead of reasonable conversation that actually stays on topic. And I know the answer that many of you will type: if you don't like it, don't read it. The self-righteousness and hypocrisy among zoners know no bounds.
If one wishes one's opinions to be intellectually debated, one must first have
proven that they are worth debating. Time and time again Chelsea has proven
herself to be bigoted, hateful, thoughtless and ignorant. Why should we debate
her thoughts when her thoughts aren't worth debating?
One man's opinion. Smile.
Anyones thoughts are worth debating if you think you have an opinion on that they post, not them personally.
This topic is worth a post.
I am pro choice, does that mean I like abortion? I hope I'm never in a position where I even have to contemplate getting an abortion, but I feel very fortunate to live in a country where I have that choice.
People seem to think that if you are pro choice you love the idea of abortions. I don't. They make me sad for so many reasons. Because a woman has to make that decision, and it must be so incredibly hard for her. Because many women will make that choice because they don't have access to good healthcare, or child services, or money to bring up their children. This is a discussion that shouldn't start and end with abortion.
Also, making abortions illegal won't stop people having them. And I'd rather know a woman could get one safely rather than end up bleeding out in some illegal clinic, because that's what used to happen in this country and I hope as a society we can move passed that.
The problem with many pro lifers, and I say many not all is they want to stop a woman having the right to choose but they don't want to change anything else. Ok, so if you think that married people should be baby factories then improve child services. Make sure these parents have access to good healthcare, to preschools, to healthy food options. Because you can't have one without the other.
And yes, even after all of that I still think a woman has the right to choose. I suppose it's because I probably disagree with you as to whether an embreo constitutes a life in the same way a full-term baby does, but that's just how I see it.
Posts 21 and 22 here are both good ones. I am pro-life but I do not discount anything Scarlet says here; in fact, I agree with the majority of it.
I have one thing to say to Chelsea: Pot, meet Kettle. You're calling the kettle black, and you are against other such sensative issues. I was curious, but now, the topic is pointless, as I see what you are getting at. As I pointed out in another topic, it's hipocritical.
Blessings,Sarah
Oh boy this is a really sensitive topic. I am in all likelihood a candidate for abortion, or would have been in 1970, being born of someone who was forced to leave town out of shame and embarrassment, and this person made the wise decision to give me up for adoption. I'm not anti abortion at all but life is probably a graduated process. So presumably the life form can feel more or less pain at various stages in the womb. As a zygote there's no brain, naturally. But what if the fetus can feel as much pain as a fish? Should steps be taken to ensure the humane euthanasia of the fetus at that point? Or should the Left give up on arguments for the humane treatment of fish altogether? What about when the fetus maintains the viability of your average kitten? Anyone prepared to suck a kitten through a vacuum cleaner? Or would you find a more humane method of euthanizing that kitten if it had to be put down? I don't know, there's so much unclear stuff here.
I admit that now I would not know, if when I was a fetus I had been deemed a parasite or a rapist for having put the mother out of consent to carry, and been extinguished. But if one is going to consider the humaneness of slaughter or euthanasia of lower life forms, one should equally consider such for a fetus when it gains varying stages of viability. No pro-abortion person I've ever spoken to has acknowledged this at all. Call us rapists, call us parasites for taking the mother out of consent to carry us, some of us have heard this for longer than some of you have been alive. But at least try to be somewhat intellectually honest if you're going to expose and get upset about inhumane slaughter or euthanasia methods for animals but not for developing fetuses when they gain a certain amount of viability.
Now that I've trashed the Left, I don't see how anyone could claim people are flippant about having abortions. I mean, try convincing a great number of people to even get a flu shot! Seriously, for as much as most people hate going to the doctor or dentist, it seems highly unlikely that women get abortions as an easy-out birth control method. I got the snip years ago, and it took guts, and yeah it hurt although it was worth it. I just find those tropes really difficult to believe, as hard to believe as the arguments about a fetus being a rapist.
As a non-statist I'd definitely agree that abortions shouldn't be controlled by the government at all. Except, once the fetus has developed to having a brain. Were the Wife's midwives and our birth class instructors talking to themselves and being fools when they talked to our daughter inside her mom's womb at 5 and 6 months along? I don't think so, but I'm not a doctor.
Any real pro-life efforts would involve an artificial womb, IMHO.
By the standard pro-choice arguments, any fetus at any moment can become a rapist / parasite as soon as the mother stops wishing to carry. Thus, it's only logical to conclude that to keep the woman from being raped or out of consent, and to keep the fetus out of what is arguably an extremely hostile environment, any pro-life movement who was actually pro-life would invest its money in artificial womb technology, and in the technology to make it extremely easy for women to have the fetus removed and transplanted there. Then women who wish to have the baby could do so with no risks anyhow, which is in line with everything else we do to eliminate life-jeopardizing risks in industrial societies.
I've raised birds, and in this manner I think the egg-laying species have one up on us live-birthing species. I've seen a male canary sit on rejected eggs from another female and father them to full fledge. If she had been a mammal and not a bird, she would have been being raped by these fetuses forcing her out of consent. But as things were as they were3, I put on a pair of rubber bloves, removed the nest and put it in the male's cage who proceeded to brood them to term and then rear them to full fledge.
Problem is solvable if pro-lifers wanted to: there's billions of dollars of pro-life money that if invested into the science of artificial womb technologies -- currently experimented with now in Sweden -- she could do away with it and others would take over.
For anyone arguing the personal responsibility argument? We've already solved that. We have safe baby centers, any fire station, any hospital, where a mother can drop off a child from birth to 2, sometimes 3 years, depending on the state. No questions asked. We do this, because as a society we're serious about the baby not ending up in a garbage can somewhere.
Maybe the pro-life and pro-choice women both are right to say I"ve no right to weigh in since I'm not a woman. Maybe so, maybe not. But I will contend the egg-laying species on our planet have one up on us in this regard.
I think leo raises some interesting points. And I do agree that abortion should only be an option up until a certain point. And yes, I hope, I guess, that people will find other options. But for so many those options just don't exist. Like, do all kids that get dropped off at these safe places end up getting adopted? How many end up going round and round within the care system, with no stable upbringing.
So that's what I meant by this shouldn't start and end with a discussion on abortion. We need to invest more in the care system, in services for families, in education. So that if a family is struggling then they actually have choices, a choice to raise that child as well.
I just want people to have choices at all stages really.
Another trope to do away with:
Women support abortion while men oppose it.
How stupid.
When I went to church with the Wife years ago, they had a program where you could donate and help young girls who had been planning an abortion but were talked out of it. I mean, actual help like bring them food and supplies, put stuff together, things like that. Did I help with that? Sure. I wasn't into the anti-abortion cause but the attraction was that primordial limbic-system emotion we call empathy. Do I regret doing any of the work? Nah, not if some poor chick got to benefit from it. They'd parade these baby chicks in front of us, young teenage girls, saying that their boyfriends were threatening them about getting an abortion, threatening to force them to do it, I guess. Can't remember the specifics, since when you get roped in by empathy you do tend to be light on facts. And I was indeed totally roped in, and even now don't mind any of the work I did, carrying in boxes, setting things up, cleaning up, stuff like that. I admit I never talked to the girls directly, that was more for people who gave advice or did the counseling / shrink / bible study things, stuff I didn't really do.
But guess who called me out for not being "sold out" for the cause? Some cis patriarchal great white male shitlord? No no no! It was an older woman looked like she was running the show who called a buddy and I out for not really believing in their cause. She was technically right, I can't really judge. We were in fact there because of the empathy factor, got "roped in" if you will to help out these baby chicks they said would end up on the street or physically damaged or something otherwise.
just throwing this out there, the trope don't always work. I was actually pretty impressed with the Center for Inquiry for acknowledging this, when they usually play to the male-is-shitlord topes.
Were we played for fools? Possibly. Did I end up helping someone get gulted and shamed into something? hope not, but possibly. Do I regret having helped out? Nah, looked to me like the girls got all the gear, it wasn't passed off to some higher organization or something, so I'm good as far as that's concerned.
I'm definitely more and more edgy the more developed a fetus gets, that's for sure. Within reason, the earlier an abortion is performed, the better for all involved, I'd think. Past a certain point of development I think it gets really questionable.
Artificial womb technology is also an option, or ought to be...although I've heard some pretty scary things about the adoption/foster system over the years. I'm not so keen on dumping more and more people into that system if it's flawed enough that most of the stories are bad news.
This is why I said I'm not rabidly pro-choice. When I say pro-choice, I mean it literally.
And to the user who was protesting my assertion that pro-life people are essentially anti-choice? You used some analogy which didn't make a lot of sense, and I think you missed the point. If I'm calling you anti-choice, then I'm calling you that based solely upon the right for a woman to choose to have or not to have a baby once she's pregnant. You're trying to invalidate my stance by including irrelevant factors; by your own logic, I can't be pro-choice and neither can anyone else, because there are certain things you do (like breathing, sleeping and eating) that are things you usually don't consciously choose to do day in and day out.
You're anti-choice in the matter of what rights a woman has to deal with the growing fetus in her own body. You think life comes before all else, even safety and suitability and quality of life. If you're able to accept that there are cases where an abortion should be allowed, then that makes you, to some extent at least, pro-choice; if not, anti-choice. Simple as that, really.
Another thing that just makes no sense at all. People who are anti-abortion and
also anti-birth-control. So, let's see: Birth control prevents abortions. Boys,
even Planned Parenthood will spring for the snip if you can't afford it. More birth
control = fewer abortions, fewer fetuses perhaps inhumanely euthanized by
means that you fool hipsters would protest if done to fish or kittens.
Here's something else for ya: These greater and greater regulations? They
actually result in later and later term abortions, meaning the fetus is likely to be
more and more acutely aware of the pain it is suffering during the abortion.
Again, cue vacuum cleaner, cue kitten. Especially late terms.
Even if you think the zygote has a soul, which technically means that the god is
responsible for literal billions of deaths seeing most zygotes never make it to
term and most women never know it. Even with that, you'd rather it was more
humanely put down than that it was made to develop enough to sufficiently
suffer.
Which, again, I don't believe the anti-abortioners are technically pro life.
Are some? My Wife is. She gets upset when me and my military brothers
discuss what She refers to as "unnecessary violence," She's not comfortable
with the death penalty and gave me some kind of words when after they got Bin
Laden I had said, "Boom, glad he's dead." She's not into the government taking
the right away from women just thinks they have troubles and need help,
So yes, there's real pro-lifers, if you wish to call it that, She is one of these. But
the grubbernment piglets grubbing about and making laws? Nah. Because what
they come up with actually makes for later term abortions due to the excess
regulations and reducing access to birth control increases abortions.
Look, I'm an anti-government man in many ways. But paying for birth control
IMHO is such a no-brainer I think anyone who buys into that must not be able
to do math. Birth control? Way cheaper than paying for kids that are
abandoned.
As to the scary nature of the foster system? The State and foster is shit. But
glad I am alive and was adopted.
Alternate thought alert: I might not've written my own ticket coming in, but I
fully intend to going out. Body rights are body rights, consent is consent, if one
really believes in that stuff it's good for the lot of us, not just some.
But yeah, there are real life oriented people, but they look quite different from
the typical pro-life political pundits.
Hey, I agree with you, Leo. I agree with the birth control thing one hundred percent. Hell, yours truly gets her birth control from planned parenthood each month on the government dollar. lol. Not ashamed of it one bit. and when my partner and I are sure we're done havign kids for good, he'll go to planned parenthood to get snipped... Doing our part in population regulation without aborting any fetus... but that's something to criticise by so-called pro-lifers too, isn't it?
Somehow I'm altering god's plan by stopping a fetus from developing in my womb through artificial means... Never mind that I'm not killing anything. Even altering the almighty's plan is a sin nowadays. lol. Good thing I'm an atheist.
Killing babies is not an issue that should be treated by society similarly to how people decide if they are going to drink milk or coffee in the morning. Most of society likes to act as though killing babies should only be discussed from the mother’s viewpoint. How about the innocent babies who have no chance to object about being killed? Why do people choose to hold defenseless babies responsible for the actions of people who knowingly choose to kill a living being? Why are the babies treated by most of society like yesterday's trash without a second thought or care in the world about their lives? Why are the babies portrayed like they are the ones at fault for being conceived, when the mother and a man were the ones who conceived the babies? This is not okay; yet people still remain of the opinion that thinking in such a backwards way is correct. Killing babies is never okay under any circumstances. None. Zero.
Chelsea, I have never yet met a single person who is anywhere near that blase about abortion. Even people who are pro-choice, more so than I am I mean, don't think that way, in my experience. If they did, I'd agree with you; people ought not be laid-back about the whole thing. You're still deciding, for one reason or another, to terminate a life, and you should understand the ramifications before you do it.
When you have a military situation where the greater good may involve a few sacrificed lives, it doesn't mean you don't give a damn about life in general. It doesn't mean you're a monster either. What it means is that you've looked at the entire situation and hopefully decided on the course which has the greatest net good for all involved.
Now, turn this toward abortion, and here's how it ends up. You, I think, are saying that baby's rights are superior to absolutely everything else, right down to the rights of the mother herself. The baby's right to life - nay, the baby's necessity for it - trump all else. This is not logical thinking; it's emotional thinking.
Okay, yes, the baby is innocent. And yes, there's really no easy way to get around the fact that abortion is the ending of what would otherwise be a human life. No one's trying to say otherwise. But as has been hit on multiple times before, and from multiple angles by multiple people, there are more things to consider than just the need for said baby to live. There are the financial, emotional and psychological needs of the mother or any other caregivers; there is the future health of the baby; there is the situation surrounding the baby's conception, and how it may iimpact on any of the aforementioned details. There are, I'm afraid, certain cases where baby's life, while still important, is not as important as the other things aligned against it.
I'm probably making it sound quite clinical, but let me assure you that most people who get abortions, as far as I've ever known anyway, are not happy about it. They're not skipping on their way to the clinic. They're not applauding the loss of life. They're not eager to get rid of the little monster in their belly so they can go out and do it all again. Most of them, I think, are pretty damned clear on what's going to happen. Most of them, I think, are far more emotionally aware than you give them credit for. The thought that a baby is about to die hurts them. It upsets them. They will never forget it. If the pregnancy came about as a result of carelessness, they will probably - key word, probably - become more careful so it's not repeated. They aren't just tossing out the trash; they are making a weighty, painful and complex emotional decision. You, in your ignorance, are attempting to cheapen it with the comments that appear in your last post, and elsewhere. I'd give that some more actual thought, if I were you, before you let your fingers start typing again.
I think we're all in agreement that casual abortion is pretty horrible. But since most abortion is not casual, then the simple statements about drinking morning coffee and tossing out trash aren't really germain to the discussion at large. They apply perhaps to a very small percentage of women who receive abortions, and should not be flung pell-mmell at the entire group. But I hate to say that I'm not surprised. Conservative pro-life religious arguments (as in, arguments of each of those types) often resort to such inexpert rhetoric. It fails them, and it fails you too.
Chelsea, let's flip your upside down view to reveal why choice should really be a factor in this matter.
babies. Yes. They are precious. They are innoscent. I love babies; I love them incredibly. All babies are innoscent. All babies are defenseless. None of them should be punished for being conceived, they never had a choice in the matter.
Right?
I agree.
All babies are innoscent... So why bring them into a cruel world where their parents might treat them like trash as soon as they're born because they are simply not equipped to care for them, whether financially, physically or mentally
Babies are defenseless, right? So why bring them into the world if there's a chance they will be abused, neglected, mistreated, discarded, taught wrong, right from the get-go. Babies don't have a fault in being conceived, so why punish them by bringing them into the world if there is no real place for them: in their families, in an overcrowded foster system, into slim chances of adoption... You think aborting them is punishment? The true punishment is bringing babies into the world that will know no love from the get-go. That may take years to find forever families and homes. That may suffffer at the hands of their flesh and blood. That's the real tragedy. That's the real punishment.
In your idealistic worldview, maybe babies are always loved and cared for once born. Maybe they do have open arms to cuddle into, and smiling faces to play peek a boo with. Maybe they do feel emotions as fetuses, maybe they are aware of what's going on when they are in the early stages of development in a mother's womb... But as someone who is in touch with reality, my dear, I have to break it to you: Your idealistic viewpoint is not only twisted but completely unrealistic.
You and your pro-life crew are actually cruel if you don't consider what happens to some of these babies that weren't planned for, wanted, afforded. No one suffffers more than they do. Not the mother, not the father, not the foster care system... No one. The babies are directly impacted, but they are impacted in later stages of the pregnancy and also once they are born. Not otherwise.
Do I wish I could believe in your la dee dah logic? Sure I do. I'm a mother. I fawn over babies, over any babies I meet. I wish I could take every single one of the disadvantaged ones from broken homes, who aren't wanted and aren't treated well, into my own care. But i don't let my soft spot cloud over reality. I don't let that happen because that's dangerous to the very people you pro-lifers claim to protect. You rally for every pregnancy to result in a birth, regardless of circumstance, you have more babies than our current foster system can ever handle, more babies than can be adopted, and a ton of children who are screwed from the get-go. You talk about not giving the aborted babies a chance... What about the fact that the born babies who are born into horrible circumstances not having a chance. They are born without a chance, which is a thousand times more cruel than the alternative.
Talk about treating babies like trash.
So you love your life and you're thankful to live it despite what you say was a crappy childhood. You're not in the majority, though. People who are born into shitty circumstances either hate their lives for a very long time, sometimes till the end, or they repeat the cycle of shitty circumstances with their own ofspring. How is that humane? How is that fair? How is that much of a chance. Just open your eyes to reality. Think for yourself instead of feeding us your brainwashed party line. Reality is uglier than we'd like it to be. If you're really for the innoscence and advocacy of babies, start advocating for the ones who are alive already, for god's sake. Seems like you're content to have them just pop out and woop tee doo. You're work is done. Have a nice life, unwanted baby with screwball parents. Hope you get lucky sometimes in this lifetime.
Can I just point out that the use of the word baby is wrong here? Its not a
baby, its a fetus. It does not meet any of the requirements for being a baby, and
doesn't meet the vast majority of the requirements for being called life.
Abortion, in the early trimesters, is not ending a life. Tehre is no life there to
end. No more than removing a cancer tumor is killing a life because you're
killing human tissue. NO more than removing my eyes was ending a life
because it also detroyed human tissue. yes, it may one day turn into a life, after
its born, but it is not a life then. It does not meet any of the requirements for
life. Especially in the period when most abortions take place, which is extremely
early in the pregnancy, as in a few weeks into it. It is just a collection of cells.
Now, I know a lot of people, pro choice included, are going to balk at me
using such clinical language, but using the word baby and life muddles the issue
because we're not talking about babies and lives. wE're talking about cells.
Collections of cells usually so small they can't even be seen by the naked eye.
So, if you're going to argue the issue, use the right terminology. If you're pro
choice, use it because its the right language to use. If you're anti-abortion, use
them because your arguments should be strong enough that you don't need to
appeal to emotion.
Agreed on the fetus thing. Disagreed on the life thing.
Life is not necessarily defined as a period of existence which begins "after birth", and as such, the clump of cells in the womb is technically alive. It's a zygote to begin with, then a fetus, and that mass of cells very quickly gains cohesion. I would personally argue that life for a human being begins at the point where the fetus forms its own closed system with the mother, the point at which it is recognizably more than just a bundle of cells without other identifying marks. Once it starts developing an actual brain and organs and stuff, in other words, I'd say it's alive. And that happens fairly early...not right away, but early enough that I think part of your point goes awry, Cody.
Regarding baby vs. fetus, though...baby is shorthand, it's a word everyone likes and is used to. Fetus sounds clinical, and might even be argued to sound like it's missing the point. Some people use the word baby because it's an immediate emotion grab. So on that point, we're in agreement. I use it not because it's the right word but because it's what I'm used to using, frankly, so I don't mind you calling me out on it.
I totally agree. You want to make things right, helpe the actual babies in this world.
The fetus doesn't need helping until it becomes a baby.
Next if you care so much about the fetus, teach people to use proper birth control.
Put all that enerty in to sex education in schools, money for free birth control.
Now you're doing something.
It would appear the pro choicers, also known as pro death to babies group are way out classed, as it looks like Chelslicious is running circles around you. I am certain the pro choicers missed Chelslicious' 'tipping the hat' to ‘To Be Or Not To Be," Original Words Spoken by Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1:
http://nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes/hamlet-to-be-or-not-to-be/
The Pooka will let the pro choicers attempt to figure out the implications, since they were clearly too busy erroneously ranting to pay attention.
Nicely done Chelslicious!
The Pooka - watching 'Much adieu About Nothing' - (William Shakespeare)
“….it is scientifically correct to say that human life begins at conception.”
Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard Medical School: Quoted by Public Affairs Council
The Pooka - perusing a random Harvard Journal of Medicine and watching Harvey with James Stewart
If you are in the very small minority who think a Harvard medical doctor is not expert in what he is talking about, (see above) here are several resources from the Princeton University library:
Life Begins at Fertilization with the Embryo's Conception
Life Begins at Fertilization
The following references illustrate the fact that a new human embryo, the starting point for a human life, comes into existence with the formation of the one-celled zygote:
"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[England, Marjorie A.
Life Before Birth
. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L.
Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."
[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."
[Dox, Ida G. et al.
The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary
. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146]
"Embryo: The early developing fertilized egg that is growing into another individual of the species. In man the term 'embryo' is usually restricted to the period of development from fertilization until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy."
[Walters, William and Singer, Peter (eds.). Test-Tube Babies. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 160]
"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Langman, Jan.
Medical Embryology
. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3]
"Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism.... At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.... The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life."
[Considine, Douglas (ed.).
Van Nostrand's Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943]
"I would say that among most scientists, the word 'embryo' includes the time from after fertilization..."
[Dr. John Eppig, Senior Staff Scientist, Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and Member of the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 31]
"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the
spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Sadler, T.W.
Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."
[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr.
zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."
[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N.
Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]
"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within
female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J.
Human Embryology
. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the
zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."
[O'Rahilly, Ronan and M ller, Fabiola.
Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29. This textbook lists "pre-embryo" among "discarded and replaced terms" in modern embryology, describing it as "ill-defined and inaccurate" (p. 12}]
"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual."
[Carlson, Bruce M.
Patten's Foundations of Embryology
. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3]
The Pooka - enough said
By that argument egg cells in women would be considered life, and periods would be
considered a miscarriage. That definition doesn't work for the issues that we're
specifying here. It also ignores the needs for abortions that may be due to serious
health related issues - where if the baby is not aborted, both will die. Regardless of
whether or not a Harvard University professor said it or not, it appears that the
citations you're using don't really apply to this situation at hand.
My personal opinion is that I'm pro choice but I can understand why people are pro life,
and if other alternatives were viable I would lean more pro life outside of instances of
rape and medical need.
Aha, another of our resident trolls hath returned.
Love the implication that Chelsea is dancing circles round us when quite frankly it's the other way round. No one, least of all Chelsea, has yet been able to address my scenario about the seventeen-year-old who gets pregnant by her own cousin via rape. Maybe they missed it in all the banter, so I'll paraphrase.
To anyone who calls themselves trulyl anti-choice (Chelsea, Pooka, whoever), I dare you to work your way out of this one:
A seventeen-year-old woman is raped by her cousin and gets pregnant. She is still in high school and will begin to show before the school year finishes. Her family is quite poor. And, oh hell, let's throw in an extra wrinkle. The seventeen-year-old is a fairly habitual pot-smoker, and likes to drink (yeah yeah, it's illegal, but lots of teenagers drink underage). Not a great environment for the baby, even if the girl stops on a dime the moment she knows she's got a fetus. Now, anti-choicers say "baby's right to live comes first", but let's level out a few facts first:
1. Rape from someone you know is actually statistically as common as, or even more common than, rape from someone you don't; ergo, the cousin thing can't be shot down as statistically improbable.
2. Incest, even in the case of first cousins, has a nasty habit of resulting in genetic defects.
3. The higher the risk for either genetic defects or medical problems, the greater the chance that the baby, if born, will present high medical upkeep costs. Let's remember: poor family here. And let's put them in the good old US, since that nails the coffin shut.
4. It is statistically likely that a seventeen-year-old who was raped by her own cousin is going to have some very serious psychological fallout on account of that crime.
5. That psychological fallout is not likely to be completely cured before the baby is born.
6. That baby may, in fact, contribute largely to yet more of said psychological fallout if the pregnancy runs its course. Quite apart from the serious hormonal changes going on in the body, there'll be the very real emotional baggage that the fetus growing inside of her is a tangible reminder of the man who raped her.
7. It needs to be mentioned that even carrying the fetus all the way to term and giving birth may present problems; it is not just growing up with the baby that's apt to cause difficulty.
8. The foster/adoption systems are woefully inadequate, so the automatic easy-out of "give it up when it's born" puts the baby at non-negligible risk of physical and emotional abuse, quite apart from whatever they might feel once they got old enough to know that their biological mother didn't want them, and quite apart from knowing that they were the product of a rape.
So with all of those complicating factors in play, or potentially in play, you're going to tell me that the sacrifice of one net human life is completely unthinkable? You're going to tell me that the multiple lives that might be negatively impacted, including the child if it lives, are valued less than that of one unborn child who is the physical representation of a criminal act? If so, you've got a pretty big hill to climb.
It seems to me that you're not really about life for baby's sake. You're about life for life's sake.
Anti sex, and pleasure.
You must pay for your sins.
That girl that got raped had sex, and that was wrong.
If she hadn't been a pot smoker, and drinker and been in church, she'd not have gotten raped.
On the doctors from Harvard, no less, soon as he can explain to me and solve other medical conditions, I'll agree he's 100% correct.
He's highly educated, but still guessing.
He does have the money to take care of unplanned babies, and can pay nannies, and such so he and his wife/girlfriend/mistress, don't even have to deal with it.
He has access to the best birth control too.
If that girl that got raped had him as her dad, she wouldn't even need to worry about it at all. After the birth if everything wasn't correct, he'd simply pay and put her child someplace she didn't need to be concerned about it anymore.
He'd have her put to sleep, and after the birth, she'd wake up and not even see the child. It be like a bad dream.
What part of "killing a baby is never okay, under any circumstances" don't you all understand? Call it a baby, fetus, human life, whatever the hell terms you wanna use; killing is killing, no matter how you pro-death people wanna slice it.
Oh, and let me let you all in on a little secret: there is this thing in the world which exists when people who are pregnant and do not feel they will be able to care for their child that is called adoption. There are many families who would love to take care of a child, who could not birth any children themselves, who have not had luck trying to have children, ETC. Adoption is a wonderful thing. Life is precious, no matter where it comes from.
So, give us statistics on how many babies get adopted each year, and stats on the foster system. Has any of you pro-lifers even looked this up?
Well, I didn’t go to a very good med school, but aren’t there times when the mother’s life is in danger where the fetus does have to be aborted? So, you sacrifice the living for the yet to be born? To me, that’s not acceptable. And whether or not you find this acceptable, in my worldview, the woman or girl who has become pregnant as a result of rape has more rights than the fetus who has yet to be born. I’m not budging on that. Her rights prevail. If she decides to bear the eventual child, that’s her choice. If she decides to abort, it’s also her choice. You won’t convince me otherwise, and I think you’re on the losing side here, even if you manage to get abortion outlawed in this country. Because even if that happens, there’s probably always Canada, or Europe,, or anywhere else in the world where abortion will be legal and safely practiced. So, consider this scenario. Two women become pregnant. The circumstances don’t matter, except for one thing. In the former instance, one has the means to travel to Europe or wherever to get a legal abortion, and the other one doesn’t. That woman of means goes to Europe or Canada and gets the abortion. She comes back to the United States, where abortion is now illegal all across the land, and no one is the wiser. You have not prevented that abortion.. Now, in the latter, legal abortion is not available to the poorer woman or girl who comes from a lower-class background where her family is just barely making ends meet. Maybe she gives birth and maybe she doesn’t. So, you may have prevented that abortion. But maybe you haven’t. Maybe she goes to an illegal clinic where the practices aren’t the best and she gets an abortion and later suffers complications in which she dies. Or becomes sterile. You haven’t prevented that abortion either. Or maybe she gives birth. Congratulations, because you’ve prevented that abortion, but you still haven’t prevented the other one, and you won’t prevent all the others in which women or girls of means have families or are independently wealthy enough to get abortions where it’s legal to do so. In short,, you’ve set up a scenario that in my mind is very, very similar to prohibition. Prohibitionists didn’t prevent alcohol from being consumed, and the 18th amendment was repealed. You won’t prevent abortions from taking place whether or not you agree with them.. Basically you’re hosed on this one.
Now for this I have been called a misogynist by both pro-life and pro-choice
advocates.
If we assert that a fetus can be put down at some point along the cycle, it
should be done in the most humane fashion. I agonized over the best way to
euthanize a bird, and settled on helium gas at the time. Who is ready to suck a
bird or a kitten through a vacuum hose alive? And yet partway along a fetus
development it becomes as alive as one of these. Earlier, it is as alive as a fish.
Who's ready to suck a fish through a vacuum cleaner?
No, we put down animals in clinical settings in the most humane fashion we
can. If we are going to extinguish fetal life, which clearly we are and nature
does to a greater extent than humans do, we should do so humanely. My baby
nephews at 5 months along, when they were born, were not a clump of cells
right before they were born, then to magically mythically become live babies
right after they were born. In fact, the idea that a baby becomes alive after it
takes its first breath is a Christian idea from the Old Testament, and was
overtaken by the modern pro life movement via Francis Schaeffer et al as a way
to get Republican money from the Catholics. So ironically the pro-choice people
who accuse fetuses of rape are in line with the storm god Yahweh, Baal's
competition, on this regard.
Me? I think it's most logical to assert that life is a continuum, and we should
acknowledge its development, and when it must be done away with, it should
be extinguished with all of the humanity we afford to pets. But hell, guess that
makes me a misogynist to one camp, a hedonist to the other, both camps
merely congruent representations of one another.
Then again, I also support my own personal right to self-terminate cleanly
should I hit a brick wall / be diagnosed with a mentally debilitating condition
etc. The difference is that a woman seeking to euthanize a fetus ought to have
medical services and the fetus put to sleep like they would a kitten or a bird.
Nobody wants to talk about that part.
Also, has anyone else seen a chick after she's had a miscarriage? They cry and
are devastated. They are broken people and sometimes have trouble getting
around etc. So, how does all this work out? Clearly they are losing someone. I
don't know. Frankly, we can't make laws about things we don't technically know
about. I don't agree with the storm god Yahweh that a baby only becomes a life
when it draws its first breath. If pro-choice advocates want to side with that one
that's fine. But if I was going to agree with that, the people talking to my
daughter when she was still in the womb were talking to themselves. Midwives?
Other competent chicks helping us? Talking to themselves? I don't think that
was the case. Nor do I accept the accusation that somehow I was responsible
for putting a person out of consent by remaining in the host until birth. I don't
accept that for anyone, no matter how popular that notion is.
I think to a point Greg is right -- people aren't flippant about this stuff. Only I'd
go a bit further and say I don't think anyone is, who has to take that step. I
don't know what the difference is between them and someone who has a
miscarriage. But there's probably differences, and similarities.
Government is such a shit way to solve anything, and abortions is no different.
Prick Perry et all making stiffer regulations actually causes fetuses to develop
first so that they can be terminated alive via vacuum hose or saline (like salting
a slug) in ways the hipsters would go full chimp on a veterinary office who
euthanized animals that way.
The problem is the system, not the mother. And, yes, call this misogynist if you
want, the problem isn't the father either. Bureaucracies by definition are
inefficient.
Oh and as to Planned Parenthood? No, your birth control is not coming from the
government. Not very much of it. Most of PP's dollars are private foundations
and fund raisers. Yes, they get some money from the government but the
numbers are rather inflated as part of a right-wing shill situation.
Leo, I agree with you. If you take away life in this matter it should be done as humanely as possible. Even if the fetus is not capable of feeling pain - frankly we don't know for sure - we should take pains not to make it any harder on anyone than it has to be. That sounds reasonable to me.
I'm also of the opinion that Pooka is actually right about life. Life is a continuum and begins far before the first breath. However, that's where I stop.
Chelsea, I'm going to lay out another much simpler scenario because you refuse to accept the ramifications of the last one.
A woman is pregnant. She has AIDS, and is already very sick. Bringing the baby to term is going to take a huge toll on her...it might even kill her.
So are you saying that if there's a choice between killing a fetus and letting its mother die so that the fetus can live, the mother should die?
Personally, I've actually heard of a couple of hospitals which do this, and it sickens me. You are sacrificing a life to save a life for no other or greater reason than that the life being saved is innocent. I dunno about you, but depending on the person who might die, that's an awful lot of sacrifice.
And, if the mom dies, who's going to take care of the baby? I know social workers who has to find homes for babies who doesn't have a mother, and it's hard for everybody...
A simple question seems in order: Is it permissible to kill?
The Pooka - humming 'Sweet Nothings'
And the rebuff to that question is, is it killing?
I'll bet you enjoy America's army and like the security.
Want to do without that killing machine?
Babies, and I use that term because it is exactly what I mean, don’t always make it.
Without modern medical care, and even with, many don’t live.
The mothers receive proper care, but at the end, the babies, having all their toes, fingers, arms and legs, and even features, developed brains, don’t breathe.
They are still born or some other complication happens and they don’t breathe.
Was that baby an actual life in the womb?? Why can’t doctors know that baby was not going to breathe if they know for sure when a life becomes a life?
Most abortions happen when it is just a tissue.
On the sick mother that can live for years, you kill her to have a baby that is also sick, and probably will die shortly after birth. Was her life worth allowing her sick child born?
Now you’ve got two deaths.
People with means don’t even need to travel in many cases were abortions are not legal. We’ve got private hospitals, and clinics for the wealthy.
Making abortion illegal will only make the poor suffer as was pointed out.
Not only the mothers, but the children as well.
Is it permissible to kill? Frankly, if you want to try that card, my answer is situationally yes.
And after all, let's remember that there are cases where not allowing a fetus to be aborted may well kill the mother later on. It may even kill the fetus later on; you'd just be delaying the killing.
I don't mind if you want to throw that strong word around, because there are cases where anti-choicers are technically advocating someone else's death as long as the would-be baby survives.
As I think I said very early on, for me it's about making the decision that is best for the greater good, and owning it for exactly what it is. Most rational people can do this. It's also about not using abortion as a "get out of pregnancy free" card. We already have a throwaway culture in a lot of ways; the less we can do that with life itself, the better.
Hmmm. Is it permissible to kill. I suppose if the state declares war against an enemy state, aren't they permitting, and even demanding, their soldiers to kill the soldiers (and sometimes civilians) of the enemy state? How do you expect to win wars if you don't kill? What about justifiable homicide in the defense of oneself or others? And doesn't the person who asked this question reside in a state where capital punishment is the law of the land? Seems disingenuous to ask that question in my mind.
Ah, it is interesting how the people against abortion are also for capital punishment.
Just wait until they grow up.
Right, And it strikes me that Texas (not where this person is from), which is one of the strictest and most anti-choice states in the union, is also the state with one of the highest execution rates. Maybe one day they'll get the wrong person and we'll have an honest debate about the killing of innocents.
I brought that point up in one of my earlier posts, but you all seemed to ignore that while arguing with Chelsea and her ally over whatever. lol
Um, sorry.
Killing is never okay. Not situationally, not because so-and-so says it is, not because people feel there are sometimes justifications for killing human beings or for any other reason. Justifications only exist in the minds of those who wish they were really true.
Besides, how can people treat killing an innocent baby like it is perfectly acceptable, yet those same people are in favor of killing an actual criminal? Since when has killing ever been an option in the first place?
I meant since when has killing anyone ever been an option?
It appears we can safely say, the majority of the vocal participants here find no issue with killing human beings, under certain extenuating circumstances. (Anyone disagree with that synopsis)?
Is capital punishment OK as well?
Definition: State killing someone convicted of a felony punishable by death.
The Pooka -- viewing 'Dead Man Walking'
I would say the answer is obvious. It is permissible to kill other human beings in some circumstances. And that includes abortion. Even if some abortions are done as a matter of birth control and arguably should not be done, there are still instances in which it is medically necessary to abort a fetus to protect the life of the female who is actually living. And whether or not you agree with abortion, the fact remains that abortion is legal.
So because abortion is legal, that means it is therefore justified in some cases? Is that what I am seeing the majority tout? And you all say I am the cruel and hateful one...
Correction: since killing babies is legal, that means it is therefore justified in some cases? Is that what I am seeing the majority tout? And you all say I am the cruel and hateful one...
The same people that think it is wrong to kill these babies are exactly the same people that believe in capital punishment, not the other way around.
We could abolish abortion, and raise all the babies that aren't wanted to be soldiers. Sound good?
Once they are 18, because they weren't aborted, they must serve in the military. If they happen to live, good, if not, well.
We'll train them from birth to be fighters, girls and boys.
Whether you deem it killing babies or not, sometimes it is justified. I have called it abortion, and I have already stated that where the life of the expectant mother is in danger and it is medically necessary to perform an abortion, it is justified. Whether you like it or not, a life that already exists outside the womb is more important to herself, possibly her mate and possibly the other children she already has than the life that may yet come to pass -- a life that may kill the expectant mother should it be born. Call me cruel, call me indifferent, call me a murderer. None of these are true, and they are your opinions.
We are getting off track. Is capital punishment ok?
The Pooka - regarding the clock
I'll give you credit for a sly try, but it doesn't work. Here's why.
In order to make cogent comparisons between capital punishment and abortion, you have to play the innocence card. But when you abort a child, innocence isn't the reason you do it, nor the reason you stay your hand in most cases. Criminals, on the other hand, are punished by determining innocence or guilt based on actions.
An unborn child has not acted, has not had the chance to act, so it cannot be accorded the same adjudication. As far as innocence in reference to guilt, this unborn child is a nonentity. A criminal, whether innocent or guilty, can never attain this detachment from his case.
Put in plainer terms, you abort a child for the greater good (hopefully), while you convict a criminal based on his guilt in the matter of one or more unlawful actions. That child's innocence doesn't matter, philosophically speaking. We aren't aborting a fetus because it's guilty of something; we're aborting because not doing so poses more risks to child, mother and others than can be justified.
For the record, though, I am not one of those "life is sacred" people. I'm not 100 percent against capital punishment, and in fact my main objection to it is that I'd hate to see a life, an actual life, cut short in complete error because someone bungled a case. God knows it's happened before. I'm also in favour of things like assisted suicide for those who are in terminal pain and don't wish to live anymore.
Here's my thing with life. It's important largely because of what you do with it. If you're a clump of cells in a womb, you aren't -able to do anything with your life because it's hardly begun. If you're someone wrongfully convicted of a couple of murders and sentenced to death, you might be a very good person with a large circle of friends and family, all of whom will suffer terribly when you die. So if I shrink a little from capital punishment, it's not just because "killing is wrong". It's because snuffing a life meaninglessly is sad. I feel much the same way about murder victims a lot of the time, people who did not deserve to die and who will be greatly missed.
And let me finish by reminding you that I don't think anyone is blase about this. I bet you 99% of mothers who abort are devastated to do it. They're not smiling about it; they're not happy about it. They understand that they are ending a life before it can blossom, and potentially robbing themselves, and others, and the fetus itself of course, of the experience of that life. That's a damn big deal, so one should never enter into that choice lightly.
the question of whether capital punishment is okay is based on belief. Some people believe it is okay, and some believe it is not. I believe it is no longer a viable option because of one major point. If you kill an innocent human being after finding them guilty of a capital offense, you can't bring them back and say you're sorry. I am no longer okay with it. That to me is the answer. Someone else would have a different answer. Completely different animal from whether choice versis non-choice is at issue where abortion is concerned.
I'm against abortion because you are killing a child.
Applegirl22, what if you let that child live, and it cost thousands of dollars its family didn't have in order to keep it alive and give it a good quality of life?
What if that child lived, but its mother died in its place?
Is abortion still not okay by you in those cases? Because in the first case, a lot of money that needs to be there and isn't...well, that can cause all kinds of problems. And in the second case, you're trading one life for another, so what makes one greater or less? I'd argue, were it me, that the mother, who's already alive and living her life, has a greater life than that of her unborn child at that point.
And this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of stuff like children born of rape, or children born into broken homes, etc.
I think that overall, Johndy has the right of this in his last post. And congratulations, Johndy, for getting me to think twice about that...because for all the thousands of times the courts get it right, they definitely do get it wrong, and killing someone only to realize you did it to the wrong person is awful.
Do you use birth control AppleGirl?
If your birth control method is chemical, you are killing possible life each time you use it.
You have acted on your body to prevent a life from happening when you have sex.
You have changed the natural course of things.
The chemical kills the eggs and your body expels them.
That way you and your boyfriends can have recreational sex and not worry.
This is what other woman do when they don’t use birth control, or it doesn’t work for some reason, or they are abused.
They are altering the course of life by a chemical means when the abortion is done in the proper time span.
The people against abortion if they had the say, would also cut off your birth control methods because of the above reasons.
Do you feel you should have the choice to use, or not use birth control?
SW, I doubt you've ever asked women how they feel about killing their unborn babies. You constantly use words like "might" or the phrase "I think women" but that does not make a case for any argument. Not just that, but you can't sometimes be okay with killing people and sometimes not be okay with it. That is a flawed way of thinking that many people in this topic are displaying. And you say I'm illogical.
Definition of illogical taken from Merriam-Webster: "Not thinking about things in a reasonable or sensible way" which is what you SW and most others here are doing with every post I make.
I suggest you all stop playing kindergarten games as though you're at recess and every one of you is yelling at the teacher that your feelings are being hurt because someone said something that you didn't like. Because, like it or not, numerous doctors all saying that life begins at conception-which it does-is not something to strongly disregard as you all have almost gleefully done time and time again.
Don’t see anyone being gleeful here about this topic. Don’t see anyone figuratively or literally shouting about hurt feelings either. Frankly it’s a serious issue. There are far too many thorny issues within thorny issues in this particular topic to make it something that should be resolved by the government or anyone else, for that matter, than the potential mother and possibly her family. I have said earlier what trumps the issue of the death penalty for me, and that is the fact that once you have executed an innocent person, you cannot bring them back to life and say you’re sorry. It’s done. It’s over. You have killed a person who has done nothing to deserve it. I don’t care hhow rare it is; I don’t wanna take that chance. As for abortion, I can tell you what trumps it for me. It is this: If you were pregnant and faced a choice of whether to terminate or whether to bring the fetus to term, I am not equipped to interfere in your decision either way. It is not my business. I wouldn’t know the circumstances inherent in your particular pregnancy. You mmight have been raped. You might not be emotionally equipped to bear your rapist’s child. You might, even if the child was wanted, be in a medically compromised position such that bearing this wanted child mmight cause your death. Who am I to make your decisions for you when I might not know what I’m doing? Frankly, I refuse to be that arrogant, and I think that’s what this amounts to. There is a certain degree of arrogance in wanting to make these kinds of decisions for someone whom you don’t know and have no connection with. And even if you do have a connection with that other person, it’s still arrogance. You simply have no right to make some other person’s decisions for them when it comes to their own body. You may not like the idea of abortion, but that’s your choice. If you are ever faced with a pregnancy that you didn’t want or didn’t plan for or may cause your death, you can decide for yourself. No one has the right to decide for you, and you have no right to decide for someone else. It’s that simple.
Wayne, don't mislead Apple girl. Women are not killing babies by taking birth control pills--birth control pills prevent women from conceiving or getting pregnant, they are not abortion pills. There is a huge difference between what each pill does.
Also, birth control is not only taken because women don't wanna get pregnant; women may take birth control because they don’t want heavy periods. I thought you would've learned that in the sex ed classes you liberals look on with such favor. BTW, a menstrual cycle is not a miscarriage or killing of a baby either.
There's this lovely thing called judgment. Logical people use it to do different things in different circumstances. I'll give you an illustrative example.
Lying is generally wrong, wouldn't you say?
Well, what if your friend asks you point-blank if you're planning a surprise birthday party for him, and what if you are planning it? He's gotten wind of it somehow. You either tell the truth, or you lie.
A logical person will say "Okay, so lying is normally not good, but there's a reason this time. I really really want it to be a surprise." A logical person may also say "He's gonna flip if he finds out I lied, so I guess I'm stuck", if that friend hates being lied to.
In short, a logical person weighs their options and decides accordingly. Right and wrong do enter into it, but they are not the be-all and end-all of the process.
So when I can say that killing someone might be okay in one way but not in another, guess what I'm doing?
I'm being logical and saying "there are mitigating factors here which complicate the issue". I am not just saying "RAAAAA LIFE!" like you are. I am, in short, using logic where you are not.
I am not presuming to have the right or the ability to choose for other people what's right for them. That's the height of arrogance. Extreme versions of that line of thinking were what led most of the Catholic church's higher-ups to be able to read, while its constituants could not. Far-reaching implications of insisting that you're going to decide what's best for everyone else are pretty ugly and draconian, and frankly I'm glad that people like you don't have any clout in the real world.
Just so that we're clear on a couple of things though:
1. No, I don't exactly go around polling people about how they feel about abortion, but I'm almost thirty-two, and I've talked to an awful lot of people about this; I have a fairly good idea of what goes on.
2. I am not simply turning my morals on and off to suit the situation. If I look at a situation where someone aborted a fetus, and I say to myself "Yeah, I can see why she did that", that doesn't suddenly make her choice noble or uplifting. It's still sad. It's still upsetting. But it might have been best, or at the very least necessary, so I can justify (that's a key word there) what happened. I'm not saying it becomes morally right or morally good. I'm saying that it becomes justifiable. There's a difference. And again, this ability is largely what separates logical people from illogical people. Problem is, you're on the wrong side.
Chelsea.
I know about all the benefits of birth control pills along with abortion pills too. Both help women greatly.
Suppose you happen to be a woman that could benefit from the birth control pill due to these heavy periods. That choice is taken away from you by the Catholic church, because they get the law passed they’ve been trying to get past that birth control is not moral.
This medication is available, but you can’t have it.
Now let’s move on to the abortion pill. You’ve been doing everything you can not to get pregnant, but you are a married woman who loves her husband, so you have sex often.
The reason you are trying not to be pregnant is you have the condition where your pelvic bones are too small to have a baby naturally.,
You can’t afford the operation to be sterilized, and you can’t afford a C section. Your insurance doesn’t cover it, nor does your state.
Want a choice now?
I love women. I want them to have a choice no matter what I think.
If these things weren’t available, they’d have no choice, but they are. I want my women happy and free to live, not bound.
You can go ahead and have the heavy periods, and die trying to birth a child if you wish.
While I’m decidedly pro-choice, I might just be willing to let the other side have its way. Why? Because I’m pretty sure I’m right. I’m pretty sure that were there to be a constitutional ban on abortion in this country, it wouldn’t work. Could be wrong, but I’m reasonably certain that it would result in some of the possibilities I’ve outlined in earlier posts. We’d see rich women and girls being able to get abortions say, in Canada or Europe, while the poor would either be forced to bear unwanted children or to get back-alley abortions that could lead at best to medical complications, and at worst to their deaths. Might we see legislation designed to empower law enforcement officers to try to stop women from leaving the country to get abortions? I wouldn’t rule it out. Could we see wealthier people being able to spend enough money to persuade some law enforcement officers to turn a blind eye to some women leaving the country to get abortions that would be clearly illegal in this country? Uh, yeah! Our courts are backlogged enough as it is. Might we experience a greater backlog when zealous prosecutors seek to make examples of women who would quote end-quote so cruelly snuff out the lives of their innocent babes? I’m gunna give that one a nod as well. Would we be a less happy society overall? That’s a decided yes again. Will we see more strife and worry than we do now? Most assuredly. Could we eventually see a mmove toward repealing such an odious amendment that succeeded in doing nothing but, among other things, creating more corruption, underscoring the disparity between the rich and the poor, clogging our legal system, creating even more partisan resentment and hostility than we have now and ultimately solving nothing? Gunna say that’s an affirmative on all counts. But I’ve been wrong before.
Hell, I'll chime in and go even a step further.
You know that really uphill battle women have been fighting to be treated as equals? Now women can vote, can have the same jobs men can have, ought to get the same pay, etc. Well guess what? If you take away a woman's right to abort, you are shoving her ass-first right down that slippery slope again. It's this "women cannot" or "women must not" crap that doesn't apply to men. And yes, I'm a man saying this. It's disgusting, watching a woman suggest that all women should be lawfully unable to abort a fetus. You are, in a way, basically furthering the role of a woman to bear a child; you are reinforcing that dusty old stereotype, a part of it anyway, which says that a woman's job is to be a good wife and a mother and all that jazz.
News flash: some women don't want to be mothers, but getting a tubal ligation isn't something a doctor will up and do for you on request.
Another news flash: Sometimes, even if a woman would be willing to be a mother, she has extenuating circumstances which will make mothering a risk to herself, to her pre-existing family or to the unborn child.
So not only are you trying to support part of a mentality that most of society is working extremely hard to undo, but you are putting a woman's need to fit into that gender role above her very safety, her well-being, her happiness.
Honestly, I have no further words. What kind of lunacy is this?
Even if I felt is was totally wrong, I don't have to do it, right?
I don't believe eating to much sugars good for your body, but I don't wish to ban it.
I have lots of things I don't think others should do, but it isn't my right to dictate to them.
I wonder why this topic keeps popping up! I believe the first thread I commented on, after joining, was on this very subject.
And since it's the choice of each individual, there seems no point debating it, but it's especially infuriating and mind-boggling to debate this topic with other women, who really should see the value in having this choice, freely.
Well, at least the internet has made acquiring information easier. You can learn that there are herbal options. Vitamin C and blue cohosh saves the world., and doesn't cost much.
There should be no unwanted babies, for the reasons outlined above.
And no one should force another human, an adult person, against her will, to endure a condition which takes such a toll on the body, as pregnancy does.
If you want to know, it's the collusion between the Evangelicals and the Republican Party in the 1970s. Read the article, and wonder if their ideology is so profound, why it is so important that they lied to you in the first place.
My fault, here's the correct link:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2014/07/the-actual-pro-life-conspiracy-that-handed-america-to-the-tea-party-far-religious-right-an-insiders-perspective/
or in case it's not made clickable:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankschaeffer/2014/07/the-actual-pro-life-conspiracy-that-handed-america-to-the-tea-party-far-religious-right-an-insiders-perspective/
See, if I’m any judge of the future as based on previous history, this whole anti-choice thing won’t work in the end. We Americans are a very complex people; so complex that I wonder whether as a nation we’ll be around in another 100 years, but that’s a topic I don’t necessarily wanna get into right now. But we’re also very, very similar to most other human societies around the globe. In the end, we will move toward a more liberal perspective because to do otherwise is just too taxing. The Spain of Phillip II and the inquisition eventually led to the Spain of very limited monarchy in the 21st – a Spain that welcomed Jews once more and, eventually, now supports gay rights and the freedom to divorce. The England of the Puritans is now the England/Great Britain of religious toleration and social mobility. People don’t want to live in a world in which it is too intolerable to live. I venture to say that we’ll even see a united Korea under a democratically elected government. We get there in fits and starts, but we are a far more democratic species, even in the last 50 years, than we were inn, say, 1900. To mind other people’s business is in large measure just too impossible to do. Just the very thought of it tires me out. I don’t want to dictate to someone I don’t even know what to do with their bodies. I wouldn’t want others to do that to me. Why does this not make sense? That’s the thing I don’t get,, and I believe that’s the thing most others won’t get either. And they won’t get it enough to start asking why. The more they ask why, the more people who want to mind other people’s business will have to justify their beliefs. After a while, entropy sets in, and you eventually get a situation in which people in large measure say fuck it, and move on. It will happen with abortion just as it did with gay rights, civil rights and a whole host of other historical issues. I may be pretty pessimistic in the short term, but in the long run I have to believe we’ll get through this okay.
Well played, Johndy. It is pragmatism, not "political correctness," better described as authoritarian Leftism, that drives a more alliance-driven society.
I'm afraid pragmatism demands we leave the Shrill Right and the Shrill Left behind us, the people who on the one hand would restrict a woman's reproductive decision by protesting clinics, and the other inverse end, restricts research into a male contraceptive that is more effective, even to the point of protesting at the UN that males possessing this autonomy restricts a woman's choices.
We need to see both as the mere inverse of each other, and opt out, or be the canon fodder / shields as the middle men.
No longer food, I no longer accept the cross of the Christian, or the white feather of the feminist. Let them fend for themselves for a change, no support, no military industrial complex backing every little thing they want. Let them feast on one another, and the working person merely walk away from it all.
LeoGuardian, you are a left-wing radical conspiracy whacko. If that blog post is your best evidence for killing babies, then I will sell ya some beach front property in Arizona real cheap.
Left wing, huh? Poor Lefties, I fear you insult them, for most of them can't abide me.
Ah well, the poor furries are so fragile and easily insulted they probably won't notice.
But if you care to sniff around a little you jjust might find my politics don't march in time with the American Left. I'm afraid Frank Schaeffer after his kiss and tell has jumped from one pool into the other, from fundamentalist right to fundamentalist Left. I am neither, even if I do support the protectionist ideas of some of your so-called fringe right.
But tell me, where is Schaeffer wrong? What parts of the backroom deals do you know about that he does not? Have you dug around just a little bit into old Christianity Today articles from, say, 1968?
For those who insist that until a baby is born, it is just a "lump of tissue," here are a few medical books with page numbers for your reading edification. The question is if you are one of the left wing radical whackos referred to in an earlier post, can you read? smile
41 Quotes From Medical Textbooks Prove Human Life Begins at Conception
National
Sarah Terzo Jan 8, 2015 | 11:59AM Washington, DC
Here is a list of 41 quotes from medical experts and medical textbooks that prove human life begins at conception/fertilization.
“The life cycle of mammals begins when a sperm enters an egg.”
Okada et al., A role for the elongator complex in zygotic paternal genome demethylation, NATURE 463:554 (Jan. 28, 2010)
*****
“Fertilization is the process by which male and female haploid gametes (sperm and egg) unite to produce a genetically distinct individual.”
Signorelli et al., Kinases, phosphatases and proteases during sperm capacitation, CELL TISSUE RES. 349(3):765 (Mar. 20, 2012)
*****
“The oviduct or Fallopian tube is the anatomical region where every new life begins in mammalian species. After a long journey, the spermatozoa meet the oocyte in the specific site of the oviduct named ampulla, and fertilization takes place.”
Coy et al., Roles of the oviduct in mammalian fertilization, REPRODUCTION 144(6):649 (Oct. 1, 2012) (emphasis added).
******
“Fertilization – the fusion of gametes to produce a new organism – is the culmination of a multitude of intricately regulated cellular processes.”
Marcello et al., Fertilization, ADV. EXP. BIOL. 757:321 (2013)
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National Institutes of Health, Medline Plus Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary (2013), http://www.merriamwebster.com/medlineplus/fertilization
The government’s own definition attests to the fact that life begins at fertilization. According to the National Institutes of Health, “fertilization” is the process of union of two gametes (i.e., ovum and sperm) “whereby the somatic chromosome number is restored and the development of a new individual is initiated.”
Steven Ertelt”Undisputed Scientific Fact: Human Life Begins at Conception, or Fertilization” LifeNews.com 11/18/13
******
“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”
Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.
******
“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”
Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life, page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974.
******
An embryology textbook describes how birth is just an event in the development of a baby, not the beginning of his/her life.
“It should always be remembered that many organs are still not completely developed by full-term and birth should be regarded only as an incident in the whole developmental process.”
F Beck Human Embryology, Blackwell Scientific Publications, 1985 page vi
******
“It is the penetration of the ovum by a sperm and the resulting mingling of nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the initiation of the life of a new individual.”
Clark Edward and Corliss Patten’s Human Embryology, McGraw – Hill Inc., 30
******
“Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal and postnatal periods, it is important to realize that birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment.”
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology fifth edition, Moore and Persaud, 1993, Saunders Company, page 1
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******
“Your baby starts out as a fertilized egg… For the first six weeks, the baby is called an embryo.”
Prenatal Care, US Department Of Health And Human Services, Maternal and Child Health Division, 1990
******
“Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., P.h.D. was first scientist to succeed at in vitro fertilization:
“The zygote is human life….there is one fact that no one can deny; Human beings begin at conception.”
Zygote is a term for a newly conceived life after the sperm and the egg cell meet but before the embryo begins to divide.
From Landrum B. Shettles “Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence for Life Before Birth” Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983 p 40
******
The medical textbook, Before We Are Born – Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects, states:
“The zygote and early embryo are living human organisms.”
Keith L. Moore & T.V.N. Persaud Before We Are Born – Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects (W.B. Saunders Company, 1998. Fifth edition.) Page 500
*****
“Thus a new cell is formed from the union of a male and a female gamete. [sperm and egg cells] The cell, referred to as the zygote, contains a new combination of genetic material, resulting in an individual different from either parent and from anyone else in the world.”
Sally B Olds, et al., Obstetric Nursing (Menlo Park, California: Addison – Wesley publishing, 1980) P 136
Quoted in Eric Pastuszek. Is the Fetus Human? (Rockford, Illinois: Tan books And Publishers Inc., 1991)
******
“The term conception refers to the union of the male and female pronuclear elements of procreation from which a new living being develops. It is synonymous with the terms fecundation, impregnation, and fertilization … The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life.”
J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Freidman. Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Publishers. 1974 Pages 17 and 23.
******
T.W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 10th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006. p. 11.
“Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the femal gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote.”
******
Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2008. p. 2.
“[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.”
******
Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Miller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8.
“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization… is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”
******
“[All] organisms, however large and complex they might be as full grown, begin life as a single cell. This is true for the human being, for instance, who begins life as a fertilized ovum.”
Dr. Morris Krieger “The Human Reproductive System” p 88 (1969) Sterling Pub. Co
******
“The first cell of a new and unique human life begins existence at the moment of conception (fertilization) when one living sperm from the father joins with one living ovum from the mother. It is in this manner that human life passes from one generation to another. Given the appropriate environment and genetic composition, the single cell subsequently gives rise to trillions of specialized and integrated cells that compose the structures and functions of each individual human body. Every human being alive today and, as far as is known scientifically, every human being that ever existed, began his or her unique existence in this manner, i.e., as one cell. If this first cell or any subsequent configuration of cells perishes, the individual dies, ceasing to exist in matter as a living being. There are no known exceptions to this rule in the field of human biology.”
James Bopp, ed., Human Life and Health Care Ethics, vol. 2 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985)
******
Rand McNally, Atlas of the Body (New York: Rand McNally, 1980) 139, 144
“In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilized single cell, the zygote, which is the start of a new individual.”
Quoted in Randy Alcorn “Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments” (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2000)
******
“Your baby starts out as a fertilized egg…For the first six weeks, the baby is called an embryo.”
Prenatal Care, US Department of Health and Human Services, Maternal and Child Health Div 1990
******
“….it is scientifically correct to say that human life begins at conception.”
Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard Medical School: Quoted by Public Affairs Council
******
Shettles, Landrum, M.D., Rorvik, David, Rites of Life: The Scientific Evidence for Life Before Birth, page 36, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1983
“… Conception confers life and makes you one of a kind. Unless you have an identical twin, there is virtually no chance, in the natural course of things, that there will be “another you” – not even if mankind were to persist for billions of years.”
******
From Newsweek November 12, 1973:
“Human life begins when the ovum is fertilized and the new combined cell mass begins to divide.”
Dr. Jasper Williams, Former President of the National Medical Association (p 74)
******
“The formation, maturation and meeting of a male and female sex cell are all preliminary to their actual union into a combined cell, or zygote, which definitely marks the beginning of a new individual. The penetration of the ovum by the spermatozoon, and the coming together and pooling of their respective nuclei, constitutes the process of fertilization.”
Leslie Brainerd Arey, “Developmental Anatomy” seventh edition space (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1974), 55
******
The Biology of Prenatal Develpment, National Geographic, 2006. (Video)
“Biologically speaking, human development begins at fertilization.”
******
In the Womb, National Geographic, 2005 (Prenatal Development Video)
“The two cells gradually and gracefully become one. This is the moment of conception, when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created, a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated.”
******
DeCoursey, R.M., The Human Organism, 4th edition McGraw Hill Inc., Toronto, 1974. page 584
“The zygote therefore contains a new arrangement of genes on the chromosomes never before duplicated in any other individual. The offspring destined to develop from the fertilized ovum will have a genetic constitution different from anyone else in the world.”
******
Thibodeau, G.A., and Anthony, C.P., Structure and Function of the Body, 8th edition, St. Louis: Times Mirror/Mosby College Publishers, St. Louis, 1988. pages 409-419
“The science of the development of the individual before birth is called embryology. It is the story of miracles, describing the means by which a single microscopic cell is transformed into a complex human being. Genetically the zygote is complete. It represents a new single celled individual.”
******
Scarr, S., Weinberg, R.A., and Levine A., Understanding Development, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1986. page 86
“The development of a new human being begins when a male’s sperm pierces the cell membrane of a female’s ovum, or egg….The villi become the placenta, which will nourish the developing infant for the next eight and a half months.”
******
Clark, J. ed., The Nervous System: Circuits of Communication in the Human Body, Torstar Books Inc., Toronto, 1985, page 99
“Each human begins life as a combination of two cells, a female ovum and a much smaller male sperm. This tiny unit, no bigger than a period on this page, contains all the information needed to enable it to grow into the complex …structure of the human body. The mother has only to provide nutrition and protection.”
******
Turner, J.S., and Helms, D.B., Lifespan Developmental, 2nd ed., CBS College Publishing (Holt, Rhinehart, Winston), 1983, page 53
“A zygote (a single fertilized egg cell) represents the onset of pregnancy and the genesis of new life.”
******
Carlson, Bruce M. Patten’s Foundations of Embryology. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p. 3
“Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.”
******
Considine, Douglas (ed.). Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia. 5th edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1976, p. 943
“Embryo: The developing individual between the union of the germ cells and the completion of the organs which characterize its body when it becomes a separate organism…. At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun…. The term embryo covers the several stages of early development from conception to the ninth or tenth week of life.”
******
Lennart Nilsson A Child is Born: Completely Revised Edition (Dell Publishing Co.: New York) 1986
“…but the whole story does not begin with delivery. The baby has existed for months before – at first signaling its presence only with small outer signs, later on as a somewhat foreign little being which has been growing and gradually affecting the lives of those close by…”
******
Kaluger, G., and Kaluger, M., Human Development: The Span of Life, page 28-29, The C.V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1974
“In that fraction of a second when the chromosomes form pairs, [at conception] the sex of the new child will be determined, hereditary characteristics received from each parent will be set, and a new life will have begun.”
******
Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3
“The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”
******
Human Embryology, 3rd ed. Bradley M. Patten, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 43.
“It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual.”
******
Essentials of Human Embryology, William J. Larsen, (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998), 1-17.
“In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual. … Fertilization takes place in the oviduct … resulting in the formation of a zygote containing a single diploid nucleus. Embryonic development is considered to begin at this point… This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development.”
******
From Human Embryology & Teratology, Ronan R. O’Rahilly, Fabiola Muller, (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996), 5-55.
“Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed… Fertilization is the procession of events that begins when a spermatozoon makes contact with a secondary oocyte or its investments… The zygote … is a unicellular embryo..”
******
The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18:
“[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm … unites with a female gamete or oocyte … to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”
******
The next time a pro-choicer says that no one knows when life begins, refer them here.
http://www.lifenews.com/2015/01/08/41-quotes-from-medical-textbooks-prove-human-life-begins-at-conception/
Cutting to the chase, it looks like the majority of abortion supporters here are against the death penalty. Everyone agree this is a fair synopsis?
The Pooka - humming along with "The KKK Took My Baby Away"
Allow me to ask you a question Leoguardian and Shepherd. What do your numerous long rambling posts have to do with the question of whether it is OK to kill babies? We all realize it is difficult for you, but try to keep your eyes on the prize ladies.
The Pooka - Exercising to "Stray Cat Strut"
Soon as all 41 of these doctors solve the problem of blue or still born births, I'll believe them. Smile.
Sorry, Pooka, you lose before you begin.
You clearly aren't reading the bits where we explain extremely clearly why abortion might in some cases be the lesser of two evils. You also fail to qualify that it cannot be the lesser of two evils. Ergo, you have decided to forego logic in favour of trolling. I gave you rope and you've hung yourself with it. Summarily ignored now until you show sense.
Chelsea, attacking Leo by calling him a leftist wacko is both uninformed and petty. You can't argue, so you try ineffectually to toss names? What is this, grade school? I thought your intellect was past that bullshit. I guess that's what you do when you realize you're hopelessly and completely outmatched.
You, too, are summarily ignored until such time that you begin to talk sense.
We have explained time and time again why choice is really the only logical way going forward. We've explained time and time again that abortion is never ever something to cheer about or be happy aboutt. We've explained time and time again, in terms that most people should have no trouble understanding, that even if life begins at conception - which as I've said, I do agree with - that does not make fetuses untouchable.
If you aren't able or aren't willing to treat these arguments logically or debate them point for point, if you're going to hurl names and attempt to twist single pieces of the puzzle out of context as a means of bastardizing a result and skewing it toward your own agendas, then I have no further respect for your platform. Let the landslide begin; I hope it buries you.
ForReal, you should be ashamed of yourself for those numerous erroneous representations you made. You ladies keep attempting to dream up an 'unwinnable scenario' involving a pregnant woman but fail every time. Where is this supposed woman with the too tiny pelvic bones which you opine, "pelvic bones are too small to have a baby naturally."
In logic, your example is known as a false dilemma. e.g. According to the implication of your fact pattern, the woman is supposedly in trouble because she can only have a baby vaginally. That same sex ed class you represented you studied, you should have learned of an operation known as a C-section. No dilemma at all, she has the surgery, the baby is born, mother and baby are healthy etc. No dilemma exists under your "unwinnable scenario." BTW, what does this have to do with the question of whether it is OK to kill babies? Are you saying it is OK to kill a baby because your mother did not want to have surgery? If she did not want to have surgery, then an abortion surgery would be out of the question.
The Pooka - Listening to "The Logical Song"
The Pooka
, you don't read well. Smile.
Yes, the operation called the C section is available, but not to all.
In some places, a woman would need to have medical insurance to cover it, or cash. If she doesn't have these, and this is not something every woman can get free, she will need to try to have her child naturally.
Because of the abortion, or abortion pill, she has a choice not to try.
When she tries she is accepting she may or may not die with her baby.
So, if she tries, you might lose 2 lives instead of one. I sincerely don't believe is a life a conception.
You have to many natural things that can go wrong from conception to birth that doctors have no idea how to handle.
I was able to skip over the postings that presented medical evidence that life begins at conception. For purposes of this discussion they actually have no meaning because I have no argument with this point. Life does begin at conception; two dead beings cannot produce anything that lives. Call it a fetus or embryo or child, it doesn’t even matter. This life may be vastly different from an actual human being that is fully realized at birth, but it is still life, and I doubt anyone here, whether pro- or anti-choice, disputes the point. Yet I think the one thing the anti-choicers don’t have that the pro-choicers do have is that we actually recognize the validity of both sides, and the anti-choicers do not. We actually respect the fact that while some women will abort a fetus before it is born, and that they will have their own reasons for doing so, we also recognize that many will not. Some rape victims will bear their rapists’ child. Some will even keep the child and raise him or her rather than give them up for adoption. Some will abort. But we recognize that in those instances, there should be a choice. Some women and girls are not emotionally equipped to be put in this position. It’s bad enough they were raped; it can be far worse to force them even deeper into a situation they don’t want. So, too, some women and girls, despite sound medical advice to the contrary, will bear their child even if to do so might be medically unsafe and result in their deaths. I’m sorry to have to say this, but that’s their choice as well. Some women will recognize the potential emotional harm this could do to their already existing families and will abort. It should be their choice to do so. Now, given that I believe that it should be a matter of choice, I have yet to see an argument against choice that can stand. And I also haven’t seen anything on this topic that will suggest how you sustain a legal ban on abortion without it being compromised and/or eventually repealed. The anti-choicers won’t address this because they know this reality and don’t want to confront it. And while my crystal ball isn’t infallible, I will wager one thing: The far-right Republican victory of 2014 will also not stand; it will eventually be swept away in 2016. Why? Because the demographics are against them. Even Georgia is trending blue, for godsake. So is Virginia. And then when you add in all the other blue states in the north, mmidwest and far west like California, you’ve got a solid blue wall that cannot be shifted easily. Plus, the list of presidential candidates on the Republican side is little more than a roster for a ship of fools. Jeb Bush is polling in the high single- to low double-digit numbers. And after the umitigated disaster that Bush the Younger was while in office, who wants more of that? Trump, who is now at the top of the list, has no plan when you question him thoroughly. Most of the other candidates either haven’t been in office for years (George Potaki) or have no political experience whatsoever (Ben Carson, and for that matter, Trump.) Say what you will about Hilary; the fact remains that she’s experienced, has been first lady, senator and secretary of state. Maybe she is shady. But she’s the lesser of several evils. She also tends to stand for more of the things that I believe in, including choice. I’ll venture to say that she’ll get the Democratic nod, and when she does, she will most likely be the next president on January 20, 2017. She will have a solid Democratic majority behind her, as well as the bureaucracy. Also, I think that justices like Antonin Scalia are probably about ready for bed, so he’ll be out, leaving a democratic president to pick virtually whomever she wants to be the next justice. Hopefully even the odious Citizens United case might be overturned, but I dunno about that. The point is that the anti-choicers will eventually lose on this one. They have no future. Their movement cannot be sustained because people want more freedom, not less. They’re trying to mind your business for you,, and I think that when it’s all said and done, people aren’t gunna tolerate that. I know I won’t.
How do anti-lifers reconcile the polar-opposite positions of anti death penalty for murderers convicted by a jury and sentenced to death; and yet on the other hand, support death to innocent babies convicted of nothing but summarily sentenced to death by one pregnant, hormone-riddled and upset female acting as judge, jury and executioner. (We have overwhelmingly established the life within a womb is a life and not just a bunch of tissue).
The Pooka - not just whistling Dixie
Not particularly surprised to read certain prejudiced left wing radical conspiracy whackos saying they support civil rights of all races; yet on the other hand, supporting Arkansas Hill Clinton who has said she, "Will put the white back in the White House." Guess that contradiction does not bother you either?
The Pooka - Kick boxing to "Rock this Town" Brian Setzer
I digress, how do you reconcile anti-life with anti death penalty as outlined above?
LeoGuardian, if you don't like being called an LWRCW, then don't spew the venomous polution the rest of these guys spew. You seem to parrot their contradictory groupthink philosophies quite often.
Also LeoGuardian, this Frank person who wrote a blog post you have misplaced on this topic has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion at hand: whether to kill babies or whether to let them live. Bringing someone insignificant up is completely irrelevant.
Something else to throw in for the anti-lifers' consideration. Following is the dictionary definition of murder.
Definition of murder:
the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.
synonyms:
killing,
homicide,
assassination,
liquidation,
extermination,
execution,
slaughter,
butchery,
massacre.
So the anti-lifers are for killing innocent babies but against death penalty/capital punishment. Still awaiting someone to reconcile those contradictory positions.
the Pooka - Singing "Word Crimes" by Weird Al
Still waiting on how the anti-choicers intend to enforce a constitutional ban on abortion. Judging by these posts, it looks like there’s a lot of waiting going on around here, eh? Thanks for the four repetitive posts, though.
“Not particularly surprised to read certain prejudiced left wing radical conspiracy whackos saying they support civil rights of all races; yet on the other hand, supporting Arkansas Hill Clinton who has said she, “Will put the white back in the White House.” Really? Wanna prove it? Show me. I’m from Missouri. Cuz I did a google search and didn’t find anything to support your claim. What I did find were a lot of references to a Romney supporter in 2012 wearing a T-shirt with that quote on it. Oops.
I am a godless atheist who is also not a leftist by any stretch save some social
issues, who supports the death penalty. Supports it enough, in fact, that I think
we need to fix the inaccuracies with the current system, DNA evidence being the
most logical solution.
I support Pookah and Chelse's right to bear arms. I have a machete myself and
will probably buy a quarterstaff, as home defense.
Sorry Christians, I can't even say you're close on my account. You try and play
Pin the ideological tail on the atheist, and it fails on my account.
Life begins at conception. What kind of life? Probably not fully human yet.
Should we be sucking it apart and out with a vacuum cleaner? I think we need a
better method to mercifully euthanize. I don't believe it's logical to assert that a
fetus is a clump of cells, a parasite, and a rapist all in one. The three are not
mutually compatible.
I know your Sunday School teachers have taught you all atheists are tax-and-
spend liberals, communists who masturbate to Stalin and Lenin's images and
wish for a return to the Soviet Union.
You my dear fundies are as silly as the ridiculous SJW furries that have invaded
our college campuses and thrown out critical analysis of any sort.
I believe in the rights of the individual, including the rights of that individual to
maintain their own personal autonomy including the right to self-determination
and self-termination on their own terms, with their own money and resources,
and without Big Daddy Meat State to rob me to pay you, or declare what one
can and can't do. The larger and more globalist the State is, the less likely the
individual is to be anything remotely resembling autonomous.
You two are quite a pair, but I wonder if you've got the intellectual fortitude to
see what I'm saying. Or if you will just short-circuit on account of your fragile
ideology being threatened. Ideologies are in fact fragile things, especially
ideologies supported by Powers.
So in summary: Yes a life begins at conception, not only mammalian life, but all
life including plants. We eat the fruits of plants which are plant uteruses. We eat
the seeds which are the embryos.
I think a human embryo is alive, there's no contest. As it grows it becomes
more and more sentient. To say otherwise would be silly. It doesn't magically
become sentient because it takes its first breath of air, nor is it magically a fully
formed human when it is just a fertilized egg. A majority of fertilized eggs are
never implanted on the uterine wall, so a god if there were one in charge of
things, would be responsible for more abortions than actual term pregnancies.
Many more are lost along the way due to any number of biological factors, at
various stages of life development.
Only the ideological, intellectually-impaired extremists on both sides could not
see this.
SW, focus on the question at hand: is it OK to kill babies? Women's rights are not the issue; babies rights are.
Also SW, who are you referring to in your constant use of "we?" Do you have a mouse in your pocket like most others here who also use the same or similar phrasing?
Wayne, abortion costs money too and you could lose your life having one as well. What you say makes no sense.
Let’s get things straight guys: what is in a woman’s body immediately after conception is her own flesh and blood that she conceived. So to LeoGuardian and others, quit parroting the wrong information by minimizing the life inside women and labeling babies worthless pieces of disposable trash. Killing a being is still killing, no matter the time period in which it takes place.
I don't think most of us have labeled a fetus to be a piece of trash.
I agree with Chelsea that it clearly is its own life form, even if it needs to be
sustained by a womb, artificial or otherwise. Now, how sentient is this life? For
those who text more often than they read, the word "sentient" means self-
aware.
How much pain does the embryo or fetus feel? It's only fair to state we should
err on the side of caution. However, that doesn't mean the woman should
necessarily carry the fetus to term. If you force a woman to carry the fetus, and
you care about the welfare of that fetus, you are potentially placing that fetus
into an abusive situation. What if, out of spite against the fetus, she takes to
mistreating it at that point? This already happens after the babies are born,
which is why now we have Safe Baby centers.
Pro-life organizations have a lot of money. If this was invested in research into
an artificial womb, you would actually solve the problem for a fetus who can
sustain life as a premature infant, because then they would not be in the hostile
environment known as the human womb, where their host considers them a
rapist or a parasite.
Forcing the fetus to remain in that situation is technically a form of
abandonment if you consider the fetus to be sentient. Nobody loves what they
consider to be a rapist or a parasite. So the woman who considers the fetus to
be such will not treat it well.
Even in nature, most fetuses don't make it to term, the womb being a hostile
environment. Nobody makes that point more eloquently clear than your most
extremist in the pro-abortion camp. Any of us adoptees may put two and two
together also, and figure this out.
Invest in research instead of politics, let the woman have her abortion, only
instead of sucking a kitten through a vacuum hose / blades, let the fetus who
has become sentient (later term) be extracted and placed into a pre-natal "safe
baby" center.
To do otherwise shows no commitment to the fetus at all, which is exactly what
your pro-choice opponents accuse you of.
Leave the fetus in the womb? That fetus is now resented and perhaps hated,
just as the boy is hated when his mother divorces his father, and he has the bad
fortune of bearing his father's likeness.
At any rate, with an artificial womb, she no longer has to deal with it for any
reason. The offspring is now no longer hers, no longer a part of her life, and she
may continue on with bella vita as she wishes.
Don't believe it's possible? I didn't believe my brother's triplets would make it
when they were born 5 months along, clearly sentient little beings, clearly in
need of help from society to self-sustain in an incubator till my brother and his
wife could take them home.
So if it's five months in 2002, what will it be in 2022? Four months along?
Three? I don't know. But it seems likely the artificial womb will be upon us
sooner rather than later, though I have no idea if the medical people have a
parallel in their field to Moore's Law in the technical sciences.
But any rational pro-life ideologue worth their salt would be campaigning and
fundraising research into this artificial womb environment, for the simple reason
that everyone knows keeping someone trapped and contained in an unwanted
situation is a recipe for disaster. And if you believe a fetus is a someone at 3
months along, that fetus is clearly trapped and dependent on someone who
resents them, if they are contained inside that person's body.
An interesting idea, these artificial wombs. I was first confronted by this idea in the July 1991 double issue of Analog in a story called Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold. In her future universe, they were called uterine replicators, and the heroine of her novel came from a society where they were used all the time. Rather than subject a woman to a pregnancy, risky or not, you cook the kid up in the replicator and allowed it to come into the world without all the fuss and muss. I wonder why we don’t hear of next to any research on artificial wombs. Actually, this would probably solve the issue in large measure.
Over 33 million (million with an M) babies were killed this year. In the minute's time it took you to read this post, 63 babies were killed by abortion. Makes one stop and draw a breath does it not?
The Pooka - Bowing head and observing a moment of silence for the millions of lost human lives over the past year
According to the CDC, there were 730,322 legal abortions in 2011. Also, abortion rates declined between 2008 and 2011, and according to a CNN article updated in February of 2014, abortion rates were at their lowest in 40 years – indeed, the lowest since the Roe v Wade decision of 1973. Where do you get your statistics from? Because if there were only 730,322 abortions performed in 2011, and yet you claim over 33 million babies were killed just this year, I have to suspect a few things. First, you’re fudging your statistics. (It means you’re lying, darling.) It could also mean these 33 million with an M means that 33 million babies might’ve been killed worldwide, not just in the United States. It could also mean that these babies were killed in wars. Or were the victims of child abuse. Or disease or neglect. You really aren’t very good at this are you? If you were, there wouldn’t be such room for questioning your statistics.
Ladies keep your eyes on the prize. No one cares or wants to hear about your rambling diatribes on everything from obsolete weapons to disbarred criminal racist left wing radical democrat conspiracy heros. Take it to a more appropriate board topic.
This topic is about whether it is right to kill an unborn baby. I have very little patience with people who are unable to focus on a discussion at hand. However, I do and will respect someone that can argue on a given point. You will have to earn my respect, at least a couple are headed in the right direction.
Do not bore us with more of the same old "don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up, kill the baby" unsupported opinion. Give us just the facts man, just the facts!
The Pooka - Humming "Born that Way"
Not much of a researcher are you. Think worldwide abortions dearie: 33,106,087 this past year, which breaks down to the following statistics:
Monthly: 2,758,841 or more specifically, 2758840.583333333
Weekly: 636,656 or exactly, 636655.5192307692
Daily: 90,701.60821917808
Hourly: 3779.233675799087
Minute: 62.98722792998478 (or essentially rounded to 63 per minute abortions per minute).
Quick enough for you? As you can see, I did my homework.
The Pooka - Yawning and shining nails on shirt
For those of you who said or implied unborn babies were not worth much if anything, Following are a few recent jury awards relating to the death of unborns:
*Jury awards $11.5 million to woman who lost unborn baby in... articles.chicagotribune.com/.../ct-met-edward-hospital-la...
Jury awards NC couple $1.7M in unborn son's death - WWAY www.wwaytv3.com/.../jury-awards-nc-couple-17m-unborn-sons-d...
Oct 4, 2012 – CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – A jury has awarded a Charlotte couple $1.7 million in a lawsuit against a local restaurant in connection with a head-on collision that killed the couple’s unborn son.
Bibb County jury awards $4.3 million to parents after baby’s death
the claim was based on the loss of life of the unborn child. The jury awarded the plaintiff father $6 million. (the subject father did not receive anything for the loss of his wife who was also killed in hospital).
Anti lifers 'dead' wrong again. (As always).
The Pooka - Whistling "Royal"
Ha. This is rich. You ask us to stick to the facts - choice vs. anti-choice being those facts - and yet you are trying to cite large numbers of fetal deaths by abortion as means of...what, exactly? Trillions of bacteria die every year, not to mention such things as insects...and I don't see you claiming they shouldn't die. You have yet to support exactly why this large number you're trying to push actually means anything. How does the statistic translate to "killing babies is wrong"? It sounds like you're actually trying to say that killing babies in big numbers is wrong, and this makes me think that if abortion were rarer, you'd be okay with it. I can't think of any other reason for your fixation upon that number of yours.
Oh wait, yes I can. You're trying to provoke the "gasp! oh my god! That's soooooooo many dead babies! How horrible! We shouldn't be killing so many innocent babies!" gut reaction. Ladies and gentlemen, this is called misdirection, and can also be labelled as emotional manipulation. Together, they're the third and second-to-last gasp of the defeated but desperate argument.
When you can't win with facts, you attempt to sway your readers and listeners with irrelevant details to the main argument. I'm seeing a lot of it in Canadian politics from harper's government of lately - albeit on not quite so blatant and ridiculous a scale as this - and I've heard of it in American politics as well. It's quite common, sadly, but it's a telltale death-rattle I've been both expecting and waiting for.
Facts are facts. A blanket statement of "abortion must not be allowed" simply cannot stand. It doesn't matter how many abortions happen. It doesn't matter how angry and incensed and disgusted it makes you. It doesn't matter how innocent the fetus is. It doesn't matter what you think God may or may not think of it. It doesn't matter, because you simply cannot account for all of the complications.
Here is the only way you can win this argument.
1. First, construct medical technology which will flawlessly be able to accept and maintain fetal/embryonic life to term;
2. Categorically eliminate rape;
3. Categorically eliminate drug use, venereal diseases, psychological problems and financial insecurity for all pregnant women, or possible pregnant women, worldwide;
4. Construct a foster system which has all of the physical, emotional and psychological resources to raise children independent of their biological mothers
Pretty tall order, isn't it? But if you fulfilled all of those criteria, then you could be quite sure that there would no longer be a good reason to abort a fetus. If the mother couldn't somehow carry her child to term, she could have it raised by the foster system. If she was okay in all ways except the financial side, she'd be looked after. If she was having serious psychological issues with the idea of pregnancy, she'd get help for that.
Now here's the problem:
1. Unfortunately, as much as it pains me, you're never going to completely get rid of rape. I wish we could, but good luck with that;
2. The very political systems which support the delegalization of abortion are the same systems which insist on capitalism to the exclusion of the individual, which means financial stability for all prospective mothers is not going to happen
3. Eliminating all psychological stress and emotional difficulty is likewise not going to happen
In other words, that tall order I set you is impossible to fulfill. And if the only way to win argument A is with tall-order B, and if tall-order B is never possible, then you cannot win argument A. This is called a logical argument. Get acquainted with them, because thus far your emotional pleas, name-calling and backward thinking are just making you look barbaric, immature and stupid.
But you know what? Because I enjoy pounding one extra nail into most coffins, here's yours:
If you're anti-choice in the matter of abortion, you should also be vegetarian, at the very least...and probably vegan, depending on your true devotion to your cause. Here's why.
1. Millions upon millions of innocent animals are killed every year to bring meat into supermarkets.
2. These animals are not only raised inhumanely in many cases, but are often killed brutally as well.
3. Not only are these animals often exposed to sub-par conditions and treated to cruel means of slaughter, but they are bred and raised solely to be killed.
So every time you put a piece of meat in your mouth, you are tacitly supporting a system which raises, mistreats and slaughters innocent life. Hell, you're paying for it! You're greasing the wheels! And why? Because you like the taste of that dead flesh? Because you've always done it? Because everyone does it? Because animals aren't godly and have no souls and don't suffer and can't think and can't speak? Because animals aren't people?
Perhaps now you can understand why the hypocrisy is so stunningly huge. You're only against death when it suits you. And the only time it suits you is in the stripping of a woman's right to choose what happens to an unborn fetus within her body.
Another interesting tie-in: did you know that a statistically significant number of women who receive abortions claim to have been using forms of contraception? Guess what this signifies, folks? It means that some of them are doing everything short of not having sex to not have a child, and something goes wrong. It means the system's not perfect.
So let's do a really brief side-by-side comparison here.
You're okay with choosing to have animals raised, mistreated and summarily slaughtered in order that you can eat them.
You're not okay with a woman terminating a fetus when there are strong mitigating factors which might make her life, that baby's life, or both far more difficult than they need to be.
You may think I'm trying for that emotional gut-punch. I'm not, not really. I'm simply eliminating your retreat of "killing is wrong", because if you're a meat-eater, then you're at least partially okay with killing. Maybe you've never held a knife, but your hands are still dirty.
So this is why it's a coffin-nail.
We've eliminated "killing is wrong" because you're probably on some level okay with killing when it suits you;
We've eliminated "big numbers of babies" as a reason, because it's a figure that is meant to do only one thing: emotionally manipulate or intimidate your audience into a moral gut-clench reaction.
So what, exactly, are we left with? Killing other species is okay, but killing humans is wrong? If so, why? And remember that admonition you keep throwing around, to stick to facts. I don't want opinions about why killing humans is wrong while killing animals isn't. I want facts. Provable, verifiable facts. If you can't give those, then all of your supposedly sweeping "x is wrong" statements are reduced to so much witless slush.
Now, one thing I will allow here. I am a hypocrite on one charge, and you'll not catch me denying it.
I'm pro-choice, remember...but I do eat meat. I'm not a vegetarian, never have been and likely never will be. Frankly, I like meat. I don't like to think about what's happened to it before I see it, and I know that if I didn't buy it, someone else would. Me not eating meat won't change the world, not by itself. I dislike the inhumane treatment of animals, and every time I hear of a push forward in quality control for live animals, I'm pleased. So in this way, yes, I'm a hypocrite in the sense that I have issues with something but I'm doing it anyway.
But remember, I never said "killing is wrong", either. I said killing can be justified, depending on the reason. Whether or not eating meat is justifiable is up to the individual, I suppose, so if you want to call me a monster for enjoying meat, I can't really do much.
But I tell you what I -can do. I can call any of you supposed right-to-lifers that you're twenty times the hypocrite I am if you're eating meat. I can tell you that in doing so, you're demolishing your own platform of supposed righteousness.
I’m glad you did your homework. Evidently it’s quite a change from the way you acted on another board, and there is proof to that effect. But it still means that in 2011, there were 730,322 abortions. It still means that the abortion rate in this country has declined to a 40-year low. And it still means that the vast, vast majority of abortions actually occurred in developing countries where contraceptive options are limited and abortion laws are the most restrictive. And in those countries, there also occur the highest percentage of deaths from illegal abortions where medical conditions are unsafe. In developed countryes such as in Western Europe, and here in the United States, abortion rates are down, as I’ve already shown. There is access to contraception and reproductive education, thus lessening the need for abortions. You wanna actually do something about abortion, do something about the lack of education and contraceptive options in the less developed countries where abortion is actually more of a problem. Me, I’m frankly concerned with the United States and whether you can enforce a constitutional ban on abortion. That question hasn’t been answered yet. And by the way, you want respect, you have to earn it. You might earn that by telling us why it is your business or in your personal interest to force women and girls to bear their rapists’ children. You might earn that respect by telling us why it is in your interest to force a woman to bear a child in those instances where it might kill her. You might earn that respect if you can again tell us how a constitutional ban on abortion in the United States would succeed.
Speaking of vegetarianism, actually, even that doesn’t work. Why? Because nothing we eat wasn’t once alive or came from living tissue of some sort or other. Last night I had a spinach salad with my dinner. I love spinach salads. But that poor innocent spinach was once just minding its own business, peacefully growing and living in the ground. Wonder how many innocent grains of wheat were slaughtered to manufacture those whole wheat English muffins we bought last week. Those bags of potato chips on the supermarket shelves were once poor little innocent potatoes! (Sniff. Niles, hand me a Kleenex, please?) But I guess I’m pretty heartless because I’m not gunna shed a tear over this fact because we gotta eat.
I remind you all that throughout this discussion, the recalcitrant anti lifers have continuously attempted to fabricate unwinnable scenarios. The scenarios always involve a pregnant woman in a ficticious extreme and dire circumstance, supposedly a baby must be condemned to the ultimate punishment, death by butchery (abortion), allegedly to save the life of the 'much more valuable life' (so they claim) of a mother. the anti lifers' vain hopes to devise a single unwinnable scenario in attempts to persuade a pro lifeer to agree to kill the unfortunate baby, which they would then try to use to justify all baby killings. (I challenge the notion that the lifetime of an unborn baby could be measured, not to mention that every life is valuable, even the negligible lives of anti lifers).
Which naturally begs the question (anticipated you would try to challenge the relevance of the posted statistics), Are anti lifers claiming that all 33 million plus abortions were justified by saving lives of 33,106,087 of pregnat women that were in those types of unwinnable scenarios you have been tirelessly posing? Do you also claim that even the negligibly lesser number of all 730,322 aborted pregnancies in the United States were all to save the lives of women in extreme hopeless circumstances as well? (Understandably, anti lifers prefer to discuss the smallest numbers possible due to their obvious limitations. - The number of abortions in the U.S. was actually 1.2 million. - never trust government numbers, they are always erroneous).
The Pooka - Just warming up
Chelslicious,
It would appear that the anti lifers use we because they do not comprehend the use of proper English Grammar, or they actually meant wee with two e's, referring to their own limited mental capacity. . . as in wee tiny comprehension. I am equally persuaded that it was both. smile
The Pooka - Singing "Word Crimes"
I will add, I have been attempting to write in shorter sentences so the clearly simple-minded anti lifers might have a chance to comprehend the concepts) smile
The Pooka - Playing guitar with "Hit Me with Your Best Shot"
back to the subject at hand, when will you anti lifers provide some tangible demonstrable evidence that might tend to support your position? As someone mentioned, we have been waiting a very long time for some sign of life. (Speaking of useless lumps of tissue). . . smile
The Pooka - Watching "Wuthering Heights"
Couple questions.
1. You'd say it was good, and just if a woman brought a child in to the world, but had to die shortly after due to medical complications she was aware of? Due to the law, she couldn't abort, so her plight was death?
2. How many kids you currently have? Do you go to the child centers and help with the ones that have no parents, because you believe it was a good thing to not abort them for any reason at all?
3. If you insist on controlling lives, how much are you willing to support them? Will you take in a couple pregnant girls and care for them to term?
5. and last, how many eggs did you have for breakfast.
Just to put this anti-life bullshit to rest once and for all:
Anti, in its simplest sense, means "against". So when I say you are anti-choice on the abortion issue, it is because you are saying that the woman's right to choose is nonexistent in all cases. She ought not have that right, and such, should not have a choice. As in, against choice. Anti--choice. Pretty clear, right?
Now, an anti-life person would be against life in the same way you are against choice. In all cases, an anti-life person is against life. They would kill at all times even when killing is not warranted, not needed and not in any way indicated, because they are opposed to life itself. Not only is this kinda contraindicated for the species as a whole, but absolutely no anti-choice advocate in this board, or in my experience of thirty-two years or so, is anti-life. Being willing to accept loss of life as the lesser of two or more evils does not make you anti-life, because you're not -against life so much as you are willing to accept that sometimes, life may be taken.
If you accept that abortions should happen in the so-called unwinnable scenarios, then you are at least somewhat pro-choice.
If you accept that these rare but sometimes unwinnable scenarios do exist but are still fixated solely upon the necessity for a baby's life to come before all else, then you are anti-choice. Instead of saying something like "I really don't think abortion should be used except in the most extreme circumstances" - which is a conservative but pro-choice sentiment, you're saying "An innocent baby should never, ever, ever be killed, no matter what; end of story.". You are substituting your brand of the facts, which are bastardized and untrue and usually possessed in large part of religious bigotry and self-indulgence, in favour of the reality of thousands upon thousands of people who have very real problems. They're problems they didn't ask for, problems they didn't want in the first place, problems which may kill them in some cases and ruin their lives in others.
So am I saying that abortion should be an easy flick of a switch if you just can't be bothered being an adult? No, I'm not.
Am I saying that there are a lot of fetuses aborted which maybe didn't need to be, given a big-picture view? Yes, in fact I am.
But as long as I know that there are people out there who may find themselves in dire straits if they were pregnant, as long as I know that innocent children may be born into families and situations they aren't prepared for, situations which can hurt them and scar them for life...well, for me, it's unthinkable to be anti-choice. Too many variables, to put it bluntly. To try and account for all those variables by essentially saying they don't matter is the height of stupidity and human arrogance.
For any of you who are vehemently anti-choice, I hope that one day you are fortunate enough to know or meet someone in dire circumstances while pregnant. Maybe her life is in bad shape for emotional or psychological reasons. Maybe an early screening or a long history of substance abuse practically guarantees a baby with developmental problems to the extent that serious financial burdens will be accrued. Maybe she's been raped by someone she knew and thought she could trust. Maybe she has a serious psychological disorder or a medical problem and little to no life insurance. I hope you meet this person, because I think the response you'd get for telling her that she has no choice in what she does about her baby would be worth all of this run-around. I wonder if any of you would have the guts to walk up to a person in such a position and say something like, "Well, no matter what, you have to keep that child." Because in essence, what you're saying to them is "I don't care how tough it is for you; that unborn baby you've got inside you matters more than everything else, even if carrying it, birthing it or raising it kills you.". I wonder how much sheer inhumanity it would require to be so callous, so thoughtless, so heedless of the suffering of those people who are already part of a tough, unforgiving world. I wonder if any of you would even dare do this. And if you wouldn't, why is it so easy to spit your failed manipulative backward rhetoric here and now, yet so diffficult to put it into practice?
Something to be aware of:
There are degrees of pro-choice. Some people think it's a woman's prerogative to do what she wants with a baby no matter what, and we are in no position to judge. On the other end of the pro-choice spectrum are those who say that while choice may be permitted, it should be exercised only as a last resort. Technically choice would still exist for these more conservative pro-choice supporters, but it would be much more judiciously applied. Someone who's pro-choice can fall anywhere along this spectrum. I'm kind of in the middle, tending toward the conservative end of it. I am well aware that many abortions are of the "Oops" variety, which is to say that they're not done out of medical necessity, financial instability or circumstances of rape. They make me very uneasy.
But there is no anti-choice continuum. As soon as you say that you think a baby's life comes before all else, then that's it. Because the moment you make allowances, you're technically pro-choice, at least up to a point.
Unless, of course, you're suggesting that it should be some sort of governing body which gets to choose what a woman is allowed to do with (as Chelsea herself said) the living flesh inside of herself. Are either of you anti-life folks trying to say that the government should decide what happens to unborn children? If you are, how would you feel if that same government decided you didn't need your left kidney one fine day and prevailed upon you to donate it? How would you feel if that government decided that your sixty-eight-year-old well-loved father was less valuable than a thirty-something corporate lawyer with a bad heart, and killed said father in order to harvest the heart they needed? Because it's an awfully slippery slope. First the government decides for women whether or not they can terminate a pregnancy; tomorrow, it's your kidneys. Utilitarian bio-ethics at its finest, and I can't foresee most sane people being okay with such draconian measures.
Gotta say I’m starting to see this discussion as pointless. I know pretty much where I stand. And where I stand is that the decision to abort or not to abort is a very individual one regardless of what you or I or the man in the moon might think about it. I have no right to mind someone else’s business for them on this subject. I don’t believe government has that right either. I don’t believe my next-door neighbor has that right. And I think more Americans, and indeed, probably more people around the world, think as I do. I recognize, though, that there is a vocal minority who thinks differently. That’s pretty much okay. Because limiting my beliefs strictly to this country since I think I know it best, I’ll say again what I believe will happen in the next ten years. I believe a Democrat will be in the White House on January 20, 2017, simply because the demographics are against the Republicans. Just on this very topic alone, there are more pro-choice women than there are anti-choice ones. And I believe they will be among the demographics who will determine the 2016 presidential elections, not to mention those of the senate. And that body is particularly important when it comes to determining how the Supreme Court will look in future years. By continuing to be so rabidly anti-choice, the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot with these women, not to mention other demographic groups in this country including most millennials, Hispanics and African-Americans. Increasingly the GOP will probably continue to marginalize itself to an older, whiter and yes,, more Southern demographic, and even that demographic has to shrink in time. Hell, this current crop of Republicans cannot even decide on a new speaker of the house. And I think the abortion issue will help to marginalize the Republicans still further. There are problems greater than abortion, I’m sorry to say. I think in time the Republicans will realize this, but too late in the game. It mmay not happen for another 20 to 25 years. And by that time, it may take years for people to pay attention to them as a viable alternative, which is too bad because I think we need a viable alternative when the pendulum swings too far the other way. But that’s what you get for being irresponsible and obdurate. Regardless, I’m pretty content that choice will win out in the long run.
As for me, I’m largely abandoning this discussion because I really don’t see an end to it. Both sides have made up their minds. Neither side will budge. Both camps are convinced they’re right. I may or may not lurk for a while, and I may or may not comment from time to time, but right now the only thing that will probably interest me about this discussion is seeing how many posts it’ll take and pages it’ll fill before people decide to hang it up. So, for now, happy birthday, merry Christmas and happy new year.
what a lot of people don't realise also, is that sometimes birth control actually fails. condoms break, women can even get pregnant on the pill. some women, like myself, can't actually handle most fforms of birth control due to sideeffects.
so yes, I am pro choice,because it's noone's body but mine.
When most of us put off even getting a flu shot, I have serious doubts at all that
any abortion is of the "oops" variety, since it takes a lot more balls to go to a
doctor for something invasive like that. I just don't see it, but maybe the pro-
abortion and anti-abortion women both are right, I wouldn't know because I'm
not a man. But I just find it extremely unlikely someone is going to have an
abortion of the "oops" variety.
Women take the morning after pill even when they aren't sure if they are or are not.
This is after sex, so the oops variety if they were.
I'm with johndy
. I have no right to say.
If I am for abortion, I am for it completely.
I'm not in the middle, because I have no idea why a women decided to not have a child.
Maybe after the man learned she was pregnant, he dropped her and she doesn't want to continue with his child for the rest of her life, not his.
Men don't have this problem, and as a man, I strongly feel I have no right to decide.
It's hard to consider the morning after pill an abortion, since in all likelihood the egg's not even been fertilized, let alone attached to the wall yet.
Those things are so expensive, poor and middle class women can probably hardly afford to go buy one.
Ah, but if you are an against abortion, wouldn't the morning after pill be lumped in to the oops section?
The serm could have found the egg starting life, couldn't it?
Planned parenting provides them as well now.
The smart women keeps it around just in case she has a unprotected night were the passion gets to hot to bother with the condoms and such.
She just wants her sex natural.
That, happens often believe it or not.
So, we could say that isn't even an oops, that was calculated.
I think there's a major difference between that and a fetus five months along who can clearly feel pain being considered a rapist because it is forcing the mother out of consent, being sucked apart alive by a vacuum cleaner.
What's this vacuum cleaner crap, anyway? Most abortions these days are accomplished early on and medically, with a couple of injections.
I don't think abortions at five months along are at all common, and those are most likely done out of concern for the woman's health, or a severe problem with the baby.
I don't even think you can get one just because you want to at 5 months along anymore.
You have to have serious reasons.
Violet Blue perhaps then I'm misinformed, when I was younger it was the vacuum so I heard from girls who went through those.
Now as to later term? Yes it is often the health of the mother. But it is also due to anti-abortion regulators who make it more and more difficult in some regions for women to get one, so it takes longer to go through red tape and waiting periods until they get one. That's it, it's your alleged pro-lifers who are technically now causing later and later term abortions, due to excessive regulation and red tape, usually people who otherwise claim to support smaller government. Pro-lifers ensuring that a fetus will feel something if an older method were used to extract.
Cue the irony on that one, and I think it says more about the anti-abortion campaigns than anything else does.
They're not terribly concerned about the health and well-being of the fetus.
Methods have changed. If early enough, it is much like taking a pill in the morning, then going back for a follow up, and you're finished.
Some people say the morning after pill is abortion because for some women it works up to 120 hours later. I forgot to say that.
If is most effective directly after sex, but you can wait.
I think you're correct, Forereel, that you can't just get an abortion after 12 weeks, without good reason, and it seems to have been this way for a very long time, now. Maybe I'll Google it, but the answer probably differs, in different locations.
On second thought, let someone else Google it. I'm not interested enough; this isn't a relevant issue in my life, at this stage.
Even in the liberal haven that is Sweden it's not legal to have an abortion that late in term, unless there is something seriously wrong with the baby, or the mother is at risk etc.
I am absolutely for 12 week abortions, if you haven't figured out you're pregnant by then you have issues, unless you are very young or are pregnant in case of abuse and may not have had the opportunity to tell anyone, then I support later term.
Dr. Carson’s career highlights include the first successful separation of craniopagus (Siamese) twins joined at the back of the head in 1987, the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins in 1997 in South Africa, and the first successful placement of an intrauterine shunt for a hydrocephalic twin.
Taken from www.bencarson.com
Above are a few real life examples of situations where doctors represented mothers and/or their babies would die or be horribly disabled. Yet each one of these examples demonstrates that current medical science has become advanced enough to save the lives of mothers and babies alike. You can’t get any better than that!
BTW, where is you all’s research showing that today’s mothers lives are actually endangered by pregnancy? Because first you said that Harvard doctors were wrong about life starting at conception; then when someone posted a long list of medical textbooks saying same, you backpedaled and agreed with us all of a sudden. So come on, now is your chance to prove that what Ben Carson says is inaccurate. If this issue is truly important to you guys, don’t back down. Do your homework like others have for once or shut up.
I personally never agreed that life started at conception.
The doctors that have done all this work, and believe it to be so can't figure out why some babies still die and are born dead.
What gets better than the medical stuff is they learn to creat life under any condition.
You want to force women to have babies, but at no time on this discussion have you said you were also going to go to the centers and start helping to bring them up, feed them, and give them emotional support for the women you feel should have them.
You wish to force a woman to choose death if need be and take a chance to bring her child in to the world, when in fact they both might die, or she might die and leave that child.
You never say, well, for the women that can't afford good medical care, we have a system set up so they never have to worry about paying for a C section, we'll pay for any and all women that require them no matter what.
When a body of people start to decide on another body of peoples bodies, and what they can and can not do, they must care for them.
I never disagreed that life starts at conception, so no backpedalling here.
Also, congratulations to Ben Carson. I'm very glad to hear he did those things. But guess what they are? They're two cases that do not prove the rule. Unless, of course, you're trying the argument which goes something like "If you can save conjoined twins, then absolutely every other possible medical risk to mother or child can also be gotten around". Which is stupid, because it lacks both sense and proof.
Try again. Because no one is saying that all complications are beyond us. We're saying -some complications are beyond us. And some are. And as long as that remains true, as long as there are some cases where there is significant risk to mother or baby while trying to carry baby to term, then pro-choice is the only logical answer.
Next time, don't put all your eggs in one basket, as it were. They tend to all smash at the same time that way.
To tantram brat who lives with his mother. Applying your brand of logic, your own definition requires that anti choice would necessarily mean "against all choices." You should refrain from taking things so out-of-context that you lose all credibility. Go ask your mum, she will confirm what the Pooka said.
BTW, where are the learned scientific and medical studies to bolster your argument? Never mind, everyone reading your baseless petulant tirades understand you have nothing but an unkind and rebellious disposition. (Isn't it past your bedtime)?
The Pooka - Softly humming "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
OK anti lifers, bottom line, how do you reconcile your 2-stated diametrically opposed positions of, 'wrong to kill a murderer' yet 'OK to kill an innocent child?'
The Pooka - Whistling 'Bad to the Bone'
Actually, no. I was invalidating your definition of anti-life.
You're anti-choice in the matter of abortion, which means you think baby should be born no matter what. No choice.
In order for me to be anti-life in the matter of abortion, I would have to say that in all cases, abortion is justifiable. I do not say so. I am saying that there are some choices, not all, where abortion is justifiable. This means that I am not against life (not anti-life) in the matter of abortion. If this isn't logically clear to you by now, then there's nothing I can do to cure your ingrown case of willful stupidity.
So long as mothers die in childbirth, so long as mothers do crystal meth or live in low-income housing or get raped or carry fetuses with life-threatening disabilities, I need no studies. The facts are self-evident. These things do happen, and so long as they're happening, they're providing potential justification for abortion in some cases.
And, regarding the convicted murder argument that's already been dismantled, I'll only say this: learn to read. It'll really help you when you're attempting to understand things. I, for one, have already explained at great length what makes these two cases different and essentially not comparable in the context you're trying to force them into. You're trying to put a round peg in a square hole so you have something else to pound on, and it's not working for you.
Cliff-notes version: abortion is at best the lesser of two evils. It is never the morally right thing to do. A convicted murderer might be erroneously found guilty and put to death, thus completely invalidating his reason for being killed. An aborted fetus, on the other hand, is being aborted for specific reasons which exist at the time. You're not going to be able to go back the same way you might for a criminal and say "Uh wait. Those reasons we had were wrong. Sorry about that", because in many cases the complications that justified abortion in the first place go on existing after the fetus has been killed (financial problems, drug use, the fact that mother was raped, etc).
If that's not clear enough for you, then there's nothing else I can do for you.
Anyone disagree with the following statement? Just because something is posted on a topic does not make it true.
The Pooka - Whistling "When I'm Sixty-Four"
100% Smile.
I agree with Wayne: if you legislate it, you must pay for it.
So, regarding the unkind and rebellious among us. I suppose a kind and non-rebellious disposition would not be averse to forcing ten-year-olds to bear their rapists’ children? Because I found several news reports on Youtube alone in which ten-year-old girls have gotten pregnant through rape, or were denied the right to have abortions after having gotten pregnant through rape, or bore the offspring of their rapists at the age of ten or eleven. If granting the choice to these girls and/or their families to abort under those conditions is unkind and rebellious, then I call forcing them to give birth to their rapists’ children at that age with no other recourse is in no uncertain terms barbaric. That caps it for me.
what about that little girl from south america who was forced to carry the stepfather's child from sexual abuse to term being forced to undergo a csection because if she had carried the baby to term her life would have been in serious danger? if she had gone into early labour and been unable to get medical attention she would almost certainly have died, and this is a risk that no 10 year old child should be expected to take.
Yes -- that's the kind of thing I'm talking about. To permit that sort of thing anywhere in the world is barbaric, but since I can only vote in this country, I'll do what I can to stop it, which means voting for pro-choice candidates.
I can only pragmatically agree with Johndy on this one. Speaking for humane treatment of the life during its termination in no way minimizes ensuring the woman's autonomy rights.
And I'm one of those odd ducks being an adoptee who would have been a great candidate for termination had the mother had the opportunity in 1970. Like putting down a pet or anything else, there's no real good way to go about this. It just seems extremes on both ends are particularly dull-witted to the complexities of life decisions.
The bitter irony being the Right continuing to increase big, tax-and-spend, government regulation regulation to create more red tape for women in charge of making these decisions, thereby assuring that a fetus in that situation is more likely to be more developed, and cognizant of pain.
I think it's pretty likely most people on either side have themselves never extinguished a life / killed another animal by their own hand, willingly. Save swatting a fly. I have, as I said, euthanized an aging and injured bird using a Tupperware container and helium gas. A very non-messy, nonaggressive way to do it. Basically the animal gets a bit euphoric and high for a few seconds, and poops out. Even with that? It's still a difficult act to perform, and that wasn't even my own bird. It was a birder friend's, and he thought it'd be easier if someone who didn't know the bird did it.
That is unfortunately not a luxury the woman has, at least the ability to be separated from it, unles the medical people do the right / merciful thing and give her smething to knock off with first.
There's a human angle to this that I think any of us who have had to deliberately take another life can understand.
I'm not a bird killer, and a woman's not a baby killer if she has to terminate at some point.And the fetus is not a rapist or a parasite, just as my friend's bird was not a burdensome mooch.
I am pretty sure this a weird way to express myself here but it's the best way I have for understanding things at this point. And yes, I'm aware it will never settle with the politically-inclined on either side.
for the poster who asked about the vacuum procedure, it is medically known as a manual vacuum aspiration which means the doctor inserts a syringe into the uterine wall and sucks out uterine contents and the procedure takes 5-15 minutes.
damn that soundds horrible.
yeah I'd have to agree. have any of yall seen the film the silent scream? They describe the whole abortion procedure which I'm too tender-hearted to go into all the gory details. I will say though the procedure they describe in the film is inhumane and one of the worst ways to conduct an abortion. If an abortion must be had, why not do it in a less gory fashion such as the pill or something? I am personally against abortion but to each his own.
People still asking "what about this case? What about that one?" There, is, never, a, valid, reason, to, kill, a, baby. Again, no ifs, ands or buts.
We already won this argument logically, Chelsea.
But I do agree on one thing from a couple of posts back. If you're going to abort, do it as early as possible and with as little pain as possible to both mother and child.
And the scientific claim is that during fetal development, it's not a "baby" -- not in the early stages. I know I won't satisfy the Left either, but I think it's logical to assert this is a gradually developing process.
And my answer, as sci fi as it sounds, would be the artificial womb. That deals most humanely with both life forms.
It only sounds bad because you are thinking about how it feels to a baby.
It doesn't.
I don't even think this method is being used any longer.
We have far better methods.
Well, just from its title alone, it's obvious that "The Silent Scream" is nothing but anti-abortion propaganda! Its Wikipedia page says it is from 1984.
You can't always trust Wikipedia though, people are always changing the information on that stuff.
Not as much as you'd think, actually. And you can verify the details on this, elsewhere on the web.
Nope the Silent Scream was a film as Violet Blue says, designed to scare people out of abortions. This was a common propaganda piece shown to people in Sunday Schools in the 70s and 80s.
Well must have been a different flick in the late 70s but at least in the 80s Silent Scream was a thing.
Again, this issue is enormously complex I think. Which is why the government should stay out of it. The hard sciences could figure out when the life form became sentient. I mean, if I stuck a seringe in your fish tank and sucked your goldfish apart in some states I could be charged with animal cruelty. Again, I don't think government is the solution, but then again, I rarely think government is the solution.
Ideally the individual making the choice with the best information available would be the best solution.
And I'm still convinced that if we took all the political money from the extremist powerhouses on this issue, and put it towards funding research on an artificial womb for the fetus, we'd have the equivalent of safe baby centers for fetuses who have become viable.
For those states that don't have this: A Safe Bavy center is a place where a woman can drop off her baby up until a certain age, no questions asked. We acknowledge that failure to do so means that life is at stake; babies ending up in garbage cans and the like.
So any actual so-called pro-lifer would be totally on board with this research instead of activism.
The other side, I'm still unconvinced, since they don't want to acknowledge the personhood until the mother decides to do so, and even then she can revoke its personhood.
I'm convinced we could figure out when a fetus has the brain functions of a baby. Surely it must be well before 9 months. My nephews were born five months along I believe. Really early. I had no idea they'd even survive, but they're here and now teenagers.
Under different circumstances, it's not as simple to say they would not have been. They would not be now, but if terminated at five months along, unless cate was taken on their behalf, they most assuredly would have known extreme pain.
Have you ever seen someone be careless with a fish? I have, and when that fish is flopping, it's struggling. It's in severe pain. It's kind of awful, and I'm a guy who's killed fish for food.
We show more mercy when aborting kitten fetuses, since the mother cat is put to sleep first, and the drugs make it through the placenta to the fetal kittens.
The real problem is the politics that surrounds this issue, on both sides.
I'm convinced most pro-life activists are totally ignorant of the circumstances women find themselves in, beyond what they've read. That position allows many of them to be incredibly glib about the situation. So glib, in fact, that were they not in political power you'd be hard pressed to take them at all seriously.
And I'm equally confident that
And I'm equally convinced many of the activists on the other side, those who are so glib about fetal ability to feel pain, really should be taken in to observe an animal put down. These are so glib because they themselves have never been tasked to extinguish life, so they can call it all kinds of words. I'm not talking the early term stuff where there's clearly no brain, let alone brain function. But for those that make no distinction, many of them are also vegans and opposed to animal cruelty by the way, have never themselves taken a life. They have no perspective at all. They'd also be extremely upset if you killed a kitten or a fish without being humane about it. And I agree with them on that. Having actually killed something out of mercy, and killed mollusks and fish for food.
You know what? When you have a crab which can move around, and you're going to kill it for food? Some of us, at least, are humane enough to take steps to make it as clean as possible.
Taking an actual life changes your perspective on a lot of things, or at least it should. And having been por yourself, or seeing someone agonize about making a decision like this changes your perspective on what it's like for the mother. Or, again, at least it should.
This is why I hate ideology so much, to be honest. Things are never so black and white as the moneyed ideologues would have you believe, and the real humans and other creatures, like the mother and the fetus in this instace, are just casualties for both sides of the debate to increase financial and power gains.
Were I to have actually won the big Powerball, which I didn’t on this last try, I probably would’ve done something to fund this whole artificial womb thing. I really, really like that idea having first heard about it in science fiction myself. That would basically put an end to this whole argument because a woman who got pregnant under whatever circumstances you could imagine, who did not want to bear the child, could simply have the fetus removed and put into a uterine replicator. Nine months later the kid would be born, no fuss,, no mmuss, and be adopted. No arguments about pro-life versus anti-life versus anti-choice versus whatever. But scientists, not politicians, have to take the wheel on this one. One of the things I never would do as a new mmulti-millionaire or billionaire is to donate to politics. Nobody in that field would ever get a dime from li’l ol’ me. I don’t care if you’re the next equivalent of FDR or Lincoln; find somebody else. Because I don’t think politics or government will solve this issue as Leo pointed out. A constitutional ban on abortion would only lead to more potential problems than it would solve.
The word "baby" seems to trump common sense, logic, reason, measured thought, all of it for some people. Bring a child into any subject and the fur flies, the unreasoned arguments abound, the passionate arguments with little actual merit are tossed about, mostly with impunity. The sanctity of motherhood, and babies in general, is used as a weapon against abortion, even when abortion makes logical sense and would prevent a child from a tough existence.
Chelsea, if there is no reason to kill a baby, under any circumstances, who do
you pick in a situation of mirror syndrome? The mother's body thinks the baby
is a parasite, begins attacking it, baby's defenses kicks in, either mother dies or
baby dies. Who do you pick? Is it better to kill a mother, or kill a baby?
In Catholic hospitals, at least, they will actually save the baby, which goes against most people's medical ethics.
Interesting Discussion. One thing I have never been able to understand about those who are die hard supporters of pro-life is why most of them still choose to eat eggs despite their stance on killing an innocent life. It is pretty much the same thing.
I think pro-choice should be about a woman making her own choice regarding her own individual circumstances, and to have this choice supported by others in the community regardless of what choice she chooses to make. Every woman should be given the opportunity to make her own choice rather than be controlled by a choice that is made by someone else.
I think decisions regarding childbirth are rather complex, and I do not believe there is one solution that fits all situations. If a woman only has the means to support one child, but has two children, what is the best thing for her to do? In some cases, the life of the older child is sacrificed to support the life of the younger child. How is this any better than aborting the younger child? In either case, the life of an innocent child is sacrificed.
Ah, but humans are the only lives that matter, doncha know. God made humans in his image, and appointed them stewards of the Earth, so they can do whatever they want (besides bestiality) to any other creatures and only their lives are of significance...because reasons.
What reasons?
CrazyCat the real answer to your question about pro-lifers is that we, and I include me in that description, use the wrong term. Pro-lifers are not pro-life. They are anti-abortion.
Also, to follow up on Cody's question: What about an ectopic pregnancy? Where the zygote or embryo is stuck in the fallopian tubes or outside the uterus entirely?
I agree that the woman should be the one to decide if she gets it done. But, we are left to do one of two things: Either find the most humane method to extinguish the life of the fetus, or we do away with all animal cruelty lwaws. Especially as it pertains to fish and similar life forms.
The so-called pro-lifers can't cut it both way, yes. But neither can pro-choice. The fetus may not yet be fully viable, although surely it must be at some point along the way.
But partway along, it must become viable. Surely this is not a light switch. More likely it's a graduated process.
Let's be clear though, it's not the mother who is being inhumane to the fetus if the act is done without consideration of fetal pain. If I apply salt to a snail or alcohol to a fish so it's gills burn, it spasms and dies, I'm the one responsible.
But a woman may go in innocently enough to get the situation taken care of. If the fetus cdan feel pain, then unless you drug it first you're responsible for a form of cruelty. Unless you plan to kill it like a fish.
Fish feel. You think they don't? People thought dogs couldn't feel back in the 1800s. Now that doesn't mean fish are human. But anything with as much development as a fish, say, swimming around in amneotic fluid and having, yes, a pair of gills, should be ghranted the same humane treatment we would a fish.
Of course, thjere's a lot of difference between fish and humans, and it's fair to say the fetus must graduate in ability to feel and even emote. Hell, the birthing place used to tell us all about fetal emotions from startlingly early on.
Then again, animals have emotions. No doubt that poor bird I euthanized as a college guy felt a lot of emotions. I didn't call that bird a parasite or a rapist or anything else, I took the time and care to dispatch it as humanely as possible. That was my responsibility, not the responsibility of the "mother," if you will. The guy whose bird it actually was. My friend trusted me to do it. So it's important not to conflate discussion of humane dispatching of the fetus with blaming the mother. Presumably, the mother's trusting the other party to be treating both her and the fetus as best as possible under the circumstances.
But many on the pro-choice side have yet to take another life, thinking it through and figuring out the best way to dispatch it as humanely as possible.
Another thing I don't understand: Why in the blue diggety fuck would a anti-abortion person oppose the use of the morning after pill? Most times that gets used before even conception has happened. If conception had happened, it hasn't attached. A majority of conceptions end in spontaneous abortions anyhow, for any number of reasons. The womb is a far more hostile environment for a zygote or an embryo than, say, a bird's egg or an artificial womb would be.
And, interestingly, we in an odd way already know what an artificial womb might be like. If you've ever kept birds, in particular finch species like canaries, you know the father is just as good, or better, at taking care of eggs and offspring as the mother is. In fact, since birds basically can't smell, there's no smelling the baby to make sure it's his.
So, and I've done this, you can have a particularly liberated female who ignores the eggs, or even tries to get rid of them.
Give the eggs to just the father, or even a totally unrelated male, they're fine. happens in flocks in the wild too. Parrots not so much, but finch species will do it.
So booyah! egg-layers at least avians, have placental species beat hands down! At least until we make fertilization in an artificial womb the de facto and a better male birth control option, something like the vas blicker they keep saying they're going to bring to market. No hormonal side effects as many of the women's options have.
If science can produce some better options, that'll kick the monied ideologues on both sides to the poor house and you'll see them sitting outside with a tin cup.
I still say the avian egg-layers have us beat, even if it is merely a product of natural selection. Beat is beat, and you'd be more likely to make it to term in an egg than a womb. And with an egg, the bearer of the egg doesn't ever have to deal with it for the same kind of duration.
You know why they're against it, Leo: they don't want women having sex for fun outside of marriage. This isn't so much about "no babies" as it is "no immoral behaviour" which includes premarital or extramarital sex. Ever notice that, in a lot of novels written by Christians, a woman has sex and then is "punished" with an unwanted pregnancy? Yeah, that. Of course, this does not represent all or even most anti-choice people, but the ones who oppose the morning after pill tend to think this way. Same reason they are trying to eliminate birth control altogether, even though evidence shows it will cause even more unwanted pregnancy.
Yes.
They never talk about the married women that face this.
And yet married women seek abortions.
Here's a weird one for you guys to cogitate. And CrazyCat this is why I welcome
you challenging the term pro-life, I accept it wholly and won't use it anymore.
These turds actually charge women for child endangerment if a zygote is
endangered by her being exposed to chemicals. So let me guess: Is the chick
who doesn't yet know she's preggers supposed to cary around a GIGER counter
to verify how much radiation and chemicals are in the atmosphere?
It's a crapshoot, people. That whole movement on the anti-abortion side.
Because in order for a woman to avoid prosecution in that case, even if she
wanted that particular pregnancy, her best bet is to get an abortion.
Way to go, Numbnuts!!!
But on the pro-choice side, they either have to ensure the humane treatment of
the lower life form or be not a hypocrite and oppose animal cruelty laws. Sorry
can't cut that shit both ways. And I dare a real pro-choice advocate to respond,
because I think you can. I haven't dared the pro-life advocate to respond
because I simply think they can't, they're not capable, but you are. We give
place to waterheads for won't of ability and that is how I see much of the "pro
life" or anti-abortion people. We just need to keep them out of grubbernment
and keep the grubbernmnent out of the whole process.
And I'm not talking about people who havee their own opinion on this issue, my
wife and daughter feel how they feel about it, but aren't interested in making
the government comply and enforce how they feel against a woman who need
to make a decision.
Ok as a person against abortion excuse me for asking a dumb question, but do you ever here of animals killing off their offspring as a type of animal abortion? Just wondering.
Animals sometimes do it to live young, yes. I don't specifically know why, but sometimes, for instance, a mother hamster will have several babies and will actually eat one or two of the smallest. Sometimes mother cats or dogs will bury a runt and try to kill it too.
Greg's referring to infanticide. Humans will perform infanticide also if given the
right environment. A "mother's love" is largely a work of fiction. We have safe
baby centers precisely to obfuscate that issue.
Now it's thought animals will in fact do certain things to cause an abortion. If a
placental female really does see the fetus as a parasite, a rapist, or any other
things human females ascribe to a fetus, then it makes sense she will try and
get rid of it.
In short, the egg layers won't "abort" beyond the first few days of the egg's
incubation. And then rarely at all. But a placental mammal might run hard, or
eat plants that cause the fetus to die, or any number of other things. Everything
goes through the placenta. And all vegetation carries a certain amount of toxins.
Note how human women don't crave lettuce or other leaves during pregnancy. I
read an article recently that explained this; leaves and stems carry toxins, and
those toxins make it through the placenta to the infant. So animals in the wild
who are pregnant and then seen eating foreign material are in fact doing it to
terminate the pregnancy.
Animals in the wild eat their young not only for infanticide but for nourishment.
Safe baby centers are how w we prevent infanticide in human mothers.
There is no exclusive mother-child bond. You take a woman, for instance, who
gave birth early, and can't see her child because they're in the hospital. She
then later might feel unjustifiably guilty because she has no bond or desire to
bond with the child. But since there's no maternal instinct, and the only bond
we have with the child has to do with proximal relationship and caregiving, this
makes sense.
Hence, I, an average human male, felt many things that people ascribe to a
"maternal" bond when my daughter was very small because I did a lot of
caregiving and spending close time with her.
There's nothing magical about a human maternal bond, in fact it's rather
absent. And there are plants that native peoples have used for millennia to
extinguish the pregnancy very early on.
Tricia I think you do bring up a valid point though. And it's a mixed bag: I've
seen women torn up, grief-stricken and really crying over a miscarriage. I've
seen it as early as my childhood. This can't be answered by huge tax-and-spend
government regulation of a woman's body by the anti-abortion crowd. But
surely, the pro-choice advocates would do well to answer for this, because it's
as very real as the woman who is in the situation of having to make a decision
to terminate the pregnancy. Again, both ideological powerhouses on either side
seem to be oblivious to human experience outside their narrative.
But yes, Tricia, animals abort, spontaneously and otherwise, and they perform a
lot of infanticide, something human mothers have done for millennia also and
would no doubt do today without some sort of protective measure against it. I
see no reason why they wouldn't.
Also, Meglet, your emotional response re: the morning after pill doesn't take
into account the price on said pill, and that most of its consumers in the U.S.
are middle to upper class people, presumably married or in some other long
term relationship where the resources required to pay for that pill can be
acquired from the male in question.
It's not cheap.
Largely a product of big pharma, but nonetheless while nice rhetoric, your
answer to my question doesn't bear with reality.
The answer to Trisha's question is yes. Monkeys, to give but one example, will
abort the baby they're carrying when a stronger, better male comes along. Its
called the bruce effect I believe.
I didn't know that about monkeys. I'd heard out here that ruminants like bison
and perhaps elk, will eat toxic plants to jettison a fetus when the mother is
particularly stressed.
Which is part of the issue, no? We all, or at least many of us, have voted for
safe baby centers so that human mothers need not do as other mammalian
mothers and kill (if not eat) their young when under stress. Well, one of the
problems with being placental, the stress on the mother impacts the fetus. Even
birthing places will tell you this. Abortion is just one response to that stress, and
humans have done it for millennia. Other animals do it too, accidentally or
otherwise.
Again, I say, the egg-laying creatures have us placental creatures beat hands
down. Because while a parent might ditch one egg from the nest early on, the
more time they spend sitting on that egg, the less likely the ditching will occur.
The egg is largely a self-contained ecosystem by then and all the supplies
passed through a placenta just don't happen in that environment.
So instead of blaming the mother, blame the entire evolutionary construct of a
womb to begin with, natural selection in particular. If you wish to blame at all.
Or you could go out and convict female mice of "baby killing" when they run
hard to induce a spontaneous abortion, out of stress.
Leo: I am merely telling you what I've heard, from the mouths of anti-choice people themselves. It's a very very common assertion, though it comes from a very few loud-and-proud people...so which reality are we living in, I guess? lol BTW, if you know the answer to a question, why ask?
Here, Leo, have some links which all allude to the reaon reason: promiscuity and premarital sex.
http://consumer.healthday.com/women-s-health-information-34/birth-
control-news-62/morning-after-pill-approval-prompts-mixed-reactions-534598.html
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-morning-after-pill-for-teens-a-good-idea
http://wwwmigrate.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/love-and-sexuality/
*real*
Leo, I was not trying to challenge the term pro-life. I was simply stating that I think it is a bit ironic and hypocritical for someone who is anti-abortion to eat eggs. When people eat eggs, they are essentially participating in the act of aborting an unborn chicken, or whatever animal the egg may come from. This seems to go against most of the arguments people who are against abortion use to defend their position on this issue.
And yes, I understand that most people do not consider the lives of other animals to be the same of the lives of human beings. But where exactly does this notion come from? It seems to me that all of this is nothing more than religious dogma used to control how people are able to live their lives.
The bottom line is that women will find a way to perform an abortion regardless of whether or not it is considered acceptable by society. Therefore, I believe it is important to provide the safest environment possible for abortions to take place for those who believe this is the best option for their situation.
I strongly agree with that. Provide the best solutions and allow women to be free to
deside.
Here is an interesting take on the religious side.
If you believe a women is sinning, who has to stand before God and atone for her sins?
She does.
If God is forgiving, it will be between her and God no matter what you think, right?
Why are you trying to come between God and the woman?
There are a ton of articles about whether human lives are more important than animal ones, and only a few assert that the reasons we use to make that claim are flimsy at best. If we base this on intelligence or evolutionary progress, or a god, well, you can poke a lot of holes in that. It's just interesting to see this debate being directed and decided by humans! I mean, we're a bit biased, no?
I agree with the last few posters: medically safe, humane abortions make more sense than leaving women to use crochet hooks or whatever other sharp implement they can find. It's going to happen whether we want it to or not, so we may as well provide a safe solution. And, yes, Wayne, it ought to be between the sinner and God.
CrazyCat, I wasn't saying you were challenging the term pro-life. I was saying
that *I* challenge that term. You only made some very good arguments, IMHO,
for challenging that term.
My post was no accusation of you. But yes, *I* do challenge the term pro-life.
Meglet Ok I see those links. I did not presume to know the answer. In fact, I
honestly left the question open.
I'm merely not playing into one camp or the other, so it's interesting how both
sides really do act like each other sometimes.
Wayne's right, IMHO, give the best opportunities and information and let her
make her informed choice.
I was also told recently by a woman that she, in order to have an abortion,
could not use the doctor she knew and trusted. Now, why is that? It seems
wrong to me, that she couldn't use the person she knew and trusted already.
And no, a Youtube preacher will hardly be an answer to that one lol these
decisions are made in the real world not on the Internet. But I honestly felt very
sorry for her in that situation.
Now if you really do believe that human life is no more significant than animal
life, you believe it's no less significant either, no? So start charging animals with
cruelty to animals when they themselves are inhumane in their slaughter of one
another. You won't because you actually believe humans are of greater
intelligence. Otherwise, you would. . So you would charge the young lion who
takes two hours to kill its prey, just as you would charge the young boy who
tortures an animal for hours.
Not all young lions take hours and hours to kill an animal, even if they're not yet
competent hunters. Some do, just as some humans express these
characteristics.
But you would never charge the young lion with any crimes, because you
believe that a young human is far more capable of understanding what they're
doing.
Anyone who believes we should exclusively charge humans with crimes of
cruelty by definition believes in the superiority of human life.
Guess my problem is I'm old enough to have been raised with the notion that
with rights comes responsibilities.
But yes CrazyCat, I was not making any claim against you. Only stating that *I*
do challenge *their* term pro-life, as it clearly isn't a pro-life position. That's
not you, that's just them. You just happened to bring up some really good
arguments was all.
Leo, I took no offence to your comment. I just was not sure how I was challanging the term pro-life when this was not the intent behind my post. However, it is nice to know that my post helped you to challange your own views on this subject. I wish more people were willing to have such an open mind about things.
I'm still out on this topic, to be honest. It seems both sides have a lot of
problems. Except, of course, I don't think the government should be involved in
it. And if we're going to be pro-choice, we should not have double homocide
laws, where if someone shoots a pregnant woman they are guilty of murdering
the fetus. I just hate it when systems and people want it both ways, no matter
what the issue is.
Something to point out:
Apparently they do anesthetize the late-term fetus. Why the advocates are not more above-board about this? I don't know.
This gives mass amounts of credibility to the pro-choice side of this equation.
The other thing we should be mindful of, is just because it's not born yet doesn't mean it's a fetus. Long before it's a fetus, it's a zygote, then an embryo.
Development is clearly a graduated process. Makes sense. Viability seems like it, too, would be a graduated process.
There's no binary point of viability where it is at conception like the modern Christians state, or at birth, like the old testament god and some pro-choice activists state.
well I've tried writing this previously several times. somehow I've deleted it. Let's see what happens this time.
getting through all the entries was difficult. most of what haws been said was heart attack inducing. eventually I gave up. if what I say is redundant skip it. I don't care.
all of you to one degree or another are right and most of you are also wrong. this issue has been made far too complicated by politicians, pundits, and people. when the rubber meets the road, it's the woman and the man's choice as to what parental path they choose to journey. only they know their hearts and their circumstances.
as with so many other things in this life, the government needs to stay out of yours and my business. it's not our congress critter who will be raising our child.
as an old gal who's been around the block many times, I can assure you that unless you have walked the walk you can't wear the tennis shoes. as with many life situations theories are only that unless they are challenged by reality.
too many of us feel we must do god's job. he not we judge people and situations. believe me, the deity in whom I believe is a lot more tolerant, loving, and open minded than the one many of you espouse.
for the record I am pro life. I ams also pro abortion. personally it is not a choice I could make in good conscience. in some instances aborting is the best for all concerned. however, there are other options and I would hope that all these are thoroughly explored and discussed.
age doesn't a good parent make. neither does income, education, or a lot of other intangible criteria guarantee that someone should have kids. raising children is the most challenging rewarding and fun experience we can undertake. it lasts a long long time and should be undertaken seriously.
if someone feels that raising a child is a heavy burden and they choose not to carry it, it is incumbent on us as parents, siblings and friends to support and love them.
both my kids were engaged. my son's now wife got pregnant before the wedding. ironically the sae happened with our daughter. keeping my mouth shut on this issue was one of the hardest things I've done as a parent. both decided to continue the pregnancy and the relationships. all are fine. our family is truly blessed. others in their pier group have made different decisions with varying results. the ones where mom and dad stayed out of the advice giving milieu have done far better. our kids were in their late teens. if they'd been a lot younger it would have been different.
I hope I'm making some sense. this is the first time I've ever discussed all this outside the family.
Oh my, what a very heartfelt post, Turricane. I'm more than willing to admit I'm
probably wrong on some respects, and not just because I'm an atheist and thus
don't have a claim in the religious arguments. However, yours is a testament to
what I hope I'll do should I ever face such a situation. My daughter's now 21
and in college, but here is sympathy from one parent to another.
Thanks for posting this and any future posts you may make on this topic.
Leo
Sorry to bump this back up; I haven't been here in a bit. Leo, the only reason I thought you were presuming is you said my answer had "no bearing on reality". How would you know that, really? None of us has experience with *all* reality, everywhere, so unless I'm living in a twilight zone, I think we live in the same reality, no? Also, agreed that it's far too complicated and both sides act like each other all the time. As others have said, in the end it's up to the individuals in that situation. It's nobody's business but theirs.
I personally don't see it complicated at all for just that reason.
It is a personal thing. I could more agree with the side that says you should never do this if they also took responsibility for the baby once it was born, but they don't.
Hmm, you make a good point actually. I gotta chew on this.
Well, iit be easier to accept. It is still personal, but if someone came and said, okay, we'll cover your expenses and take care of you until your baby is born, then after take full responsibility for it if you don't abort, you'd have an option as to why you might continue.
it's great that this topic has come up once again. as usual all of you make interesting points.
to clarify, there are programs to help moms should they decide to keep the baby. the problem is that they don't get the funding and the publicity that they should. here in my town, there is a pregnancy clinic. the mom gets free prenatal care. she and her husband can take parenting classes. they get all kinds of resources and assistance. if the decide to adopt there are resources for that as well.
the whole argument about reality is something I disagree with. what forms our reality. our experiences, our history, our character, and a lot of other stuff. no one person's reality is the same as another's thisis why communication can be so dicey and difficult.
Oh, sure, we have resources, but they don't babysit. They don't raise the child.
You understand. A woman still must deal with her child on some level.
If that child is the product of say a rape, she must deal with 9 months of being pregnant as a reminder of the abuse, plus she must deal with the birthing.
That is just one area.
If she doesn't bring it to term, no.