my mother, my wife and my daughters are smart enough, strong enough to make decisions about their bodies...i respect them enough to accept their decisions...i love them enough to support them in their decisions...
keep the baby...i love you
adopt out the baby...i love you
abort the fetus...i love you
my part is easy...loving my family is the easiest thing i've ever done...
their part is more difficult...but, as a parent, as a husband, as a son, i will always strive to make the lives of my loved ones better, easier in any way i can
The abortion topic is one of the most emotional issues in US politics. There is so much energy on both sides, but what is the pro-life/anti-choice contingent offering as a solution to their anger?
All I have heard is their clamor to make abortion illegal.
What will happen if Roe vs. Wade is overturned in the Supreme Court. and abortion is outlawed...(which at some point in the future may happen if the court becomes even more loaded with hardline rightwing religious ideologs than it is now)? Wealthy and middle-class women will travel to Canada or Europe etc. for abortions, but those who cannot afford the travel and procedure will either have an unwanted baby (which is never a good thing), employ Coathanger Charlie at great medical risk, or get caught by the police and end up jailed for manslaughter/murder whatever.
Making abortions illegal/more unsafe will never get rid of the practise that the pro-life people so detest, just like making pot or alcohol illegal never stopped people using it. All this will do is make hundreds of thousands of women criminals, take up valuable police and court time and provide yet another avenue for Big Brother to impinge on the private lives and medical/personal affairs of citizens. Right up George Bush and company's alley
So "Pro-lifers"....if you want to stamp out the practise of abortion, try another tactic, because laws wont solve anything for you. Perhaps you can campaign for more birth control, especially the use of condoms...this will help stop the spread of AIDS as well...as well as prevent unwanted pregnancies. Maybe you could get involved in a organized appeal to men who do not want any more children to have a vasectome...which is usually reversable. Use some imagination and get involved in a campaign that helps people, rather than belting out religious epithets and baying for vengeance.
And...to those people who play on the obvious emotionally charged issue of 3rd trimester abortions: In 1997 the Alan Guttmacher Institute said that approximately four one-hundredths of one percent (.04%) are performed in the third trimester or after viability. In real numbers that would be approximately 474 abortions performed in the third trimester out of over 1 million abortions overall. Depending on the total number of abortions in a given year, where the high has been near 1.6 million, that would mean that anywhere between approximately 400-700 abortions a year out of one million plus, occurs in the 7,8,or 9th month. That hardly sounds like the "killing of healthy fetuses or babies just before birth because a woman doesn't want to be pregnant anymore."
And, no. I am not "pro abortion". It's nasty, messy, expensive, traumatic, wretched, painful, depressing, and worse. But it should not be illegal, ever, period.
why are people who are pro-life trying to dictate what pro-choice people want to do with THEIR OWN bodies?
if that's against what you believe in, you have every right to NOT have an abortion. but why try and control what other's want to do?
if it's a religiously tied issue ... then again, why force your belief on anyone? obviously there's more than one religion (or atheism) in this country. Is that fair to force your way of thinking on others?
I'm far from being religious, but I can never understand why people always have the need to force their way of living/thinking on others.
If it's a reproductive rights issue, then it will have to make space for men's rights as well. You may be carrying, but that's at least half my genetic material, and if born, half my responsibility. So where's my say?
It becomes tricky for non married couples/single women (approx 80% of abortions) but that still leaves 20% of cases (married) where a man has no legal say over his own reproductive material. If it comes to abortion in these cases, more often than not, the men involved don't care, but I'm still weary about laws that treat me basically as a sperm donor.
"Keep your rights off my reproductive materials" hahaha
The latest numbers I can dig up, from 2000, put abortion rates in the US at between 857 000 (the CDC) and 1.31 Million (Alan Guttmarcher Institute). That's a lot of abortion going on. The Guttmarcher numbers are particularly intriguing, one quote especially:
"Nearly one in four women obtaining an abortion in 2000 traveled more than 50 miles, 8 percent traveled more than 100 miles.?
1 in 4, almost, that means the rest were closer to services. How many people travel more than that for all sorts of medical services? 50 miles? Come on, less than an hour. Why should abortion be any more convenient than any other trip to a specialist. This sort of thing smacks of an agenda to turn abortion "rights" into an unfettered convenience. Regardless of how "rights" are distributed, it's something more delicate than a trip to the corner store.
But look at the trend in repeat abortion. In the US and Canada, repeat abortions now account for 29-45% of all abortions. And when you start reading the studies for socio-economic parameters, who has access to general medical services, forget about just abortion, you find some disturbing trends that the pro-abortion side does nothing to mitigate. They are pro choice in the sense that they put the alternative out there, and maybe that's enough, but they do little to aid in actually balancing out the "choice" for those women who do not choose abortion.
It seems the debate has gone well beyond "rights."
It exists now to prove a point, not to protect reproductive rights or the body, but divorce the consequences of the body from the self.
Anyway,
I think certain restricted abortion rights are needed, and they should end roughly at the point where an embrio/fetus/idontknowwhat has developed a CNS. At that point there are the first thin threads of consciousness, and an ability to feel pain. You don't own that, it's just parked inside you temporarily.
As for the laws and bodies nonesense, and nonesense it is. Any abortion law is not especially significant because it impinges on the body. ALL laws impinge on the body, good laws at least. Do not take your body over to the store and use it to steal, or into a bar and then a vehicle in order to drive drunk. It should be the case that laws are on bodies rather than minds, since that is supposed to be free, besides we have social pressures to control minds more effectively than laws could.
If we have to get back to it, indeed, keep your laws off our bodies, but at some point in the equation, and that point is before birth, we're dealing with two bodies (at least) and if you really want to go down the reproduction route, then it's three.
So where does it lie? The anti abortionists will not accept it, but the moment, for legal purposes at least, and perhaps even moral ones, is most likely NOT at conception. The pro abortionists will not accept it, but that same point, which is exceedingly difficult to pin down, is also most likely well before birth.
It really is as simple as making the best possible medical and scientific case, and most cautious, and drawing your law there, no matter whose body it impacts.
as i have said before matsu, in a good, caring, loving relationship, the man or husband always has a say...in a good relationship, both people come to decisions together, they share thoughts and responsibilities...
think of it, if you are in a relationship and the other person doesn't come to you about something so important, something so personal and intimate as a pregnancy; well then, something is truly ****ed and broken about that relationship
as a man, if you want to have a child, make sure you love and treat the woman you get pregnant well...then she will want to have a child with you
other than that, you can't force a woman to have "your" child...so help her "want" to have your child by being there, being loving, being supportive and being a true partner...
till men can get pregnant and carry a child inside them, we will be "beholden" on women to do it for us...that is not a "job" we can force on them, but one we as men should be thankful of and treasure them for
after all, we can't go around saying, "have my baby bitch, i'm rick james"
as for changing the termination age, i'm actually all for that...as long as we have good education for young people...i think that women should know their bodies well and understand them...so if a woman is "late", she should know what that means and know what she has to do...i would like all abortion for choice to be done in the first trimester...leaving later abortions only for health reasons, abnormal fetuses and for rape and incest cases
the key is education and support and also in helping prevent unwanted pregnancies...we can do little about the abnormal fetuses and we can do little about the thousands of miscarriages that happen (god seems to be pro-choice)
but laws will not stop abortion, just make them more dangerous to our loved ones...
there was a time when abortion was illegal for all reasons...it is too early to go into the personal story i have about that time...but i don't want to go back there
why are people who are pro-life trying to dictate what pro-choice people want to do with THEIR OWN bodies?
Scientifically speaking, it's not their "own body." The child is a parasitic organism that in no way is part of "their body". Destroy the zygote, fetus, etc. and you have killed an individual---complete DNA fingerprint and self-directed development.
There is no arguing this point--which is why no one on this thread can counter this claim; the only other avenue to logically claim is that the mother has the right to murder a child that is in her body---and that somehow the child does not deserve the right to exist.
untill we find a way to remove fetuses intact and raise them inside artifical wombs or inside of cows or something, we will have abortion
people are funny though...
i hate war but understand it some
i dislike abortion but understand it some
but some will stand behind a president as we drop bombs on cities, killing fetuses in the first, second and third trimester and the moms that "enclose" them, killing new borns and toddlers, pre-schoolers, youths, adolescents , teenagers, adults and the elderly...many of these people then march for pro-life
others protest against war, yet then march for pro-choice
If it's a reproductive rights issue, then it will have to make space for men's rights as well. You may be carrying, but that's at least half my genetic material, and if born, half my responsibility. So where's my say?
It becomes tricky for non married couples/single women (approx 80% of abortions) but that still leaves 20% of cases (married) where a man has no legal say over his own reproductive material. If it comes to abortion in these cases, more often than not, the men involved don't care, but I'm still weary about laws that treat me basically as a sperm donor.
"Keep your rights off my reproductive materials" hahaha
The latest numbers I can dig up, from 2000, put abortion rates in the US at between 857 000 (the CDC) and 1.31 Million (Alan Guttmarcher Institute). That's a lot of abortion going on. The Guttmarcher numbers are particularly intriguing, one quote especially:
"Nearly one in four women obtaining an abortion in 2000 traveled more than 50 miles, 8 percent traveled more than 100 miles.?
1 in 4, almost, that means the rest were closer to services. How many people travel more than that for all sorts of medical services? 50 miles? Come on, less than an hour. Why should abortion be any more convenient than any other trip to a specialist. This sort of thing smacks of an agenda to turn abortion "rights" into an unfettered convenience. Regardless of how "rights" are distributed, it's something more delicate than a trip to the corner store.
But look at the trend in repeat abortion. In the US and Canada, repeat abortions now account for 29-45% of all abortions. And when you start reading the studies for socio-economic parameters, who has access to general medical services, forget about just abortion, you find some disturbing trends that the pro-abortion side does nothing to mitigate. They are pro choice in the sense that they put the alternative out there, and maybe that's enough, but they do little to aid in actually balancing out the "choice" for those women who do not choose abortion.
It seems the debate has gone well beyond "rights."
It exists now to prove a point, not to protect reproductive rights or the body, but divorce the consequences of the body from the self.
Anyway,
I think certain restricted abortion rights are needed, and they should end roughly at the point where an embrio/fetus/idontknowwhat has developed a CNS. At that point there are the first thin threads of consciousness, and an ability to feel pain. You don't own that, it's just parked inside you temporarily.
As for the laws and bodies nonesense, and nonesense it is. Any abortion law is not especially significant because it impinges on the body. ALL laws impinge on the body, good laws at least. Do not take your body over to the store and use it to steal, or into a bar and then a vehicle in order to drive drunk. It should be the case that laws are on bodies rather than minds, since that is supposed to be free, besides we have social pressures to control minds more effectively than laws could.
If we have to get back to it, indeed, keep your laws off our bodies, but at some point in the equation, and that point is before birth, we're dealing with two bodies (at least) and if you really want to go down the reproduction route, then it's three.
So where does it lie? The anti abortionists will not accept it, but the moment, for legal purposes at least, and perhaps even moral ones, is most likely NOT at conception. The pro abortionists will not accept it, but that same point, which is exceedingly difficult to pin down, is also most likely well before birth.
It really is as simple as making the best possible medical and scientific case, and most cautious, and drawing your law there, no matter whose body it impacts.
Matsu-- for the third time--you're wrong to call pro-abortion rights advocates "pro-abortionists" because not all necessarily support abortion-- just the right to do it. Anti-abortion means someone opposes the procedure for all women-- no choice; highly restricted or no rights. Pro-abortion means someone favors abortions for all women. All women should have abortions (if they're thinking about it or contemplating it or something. I don't know. It's your lame and inaccurate term.) It's kind of ridiculous to think pro-abortion rights advocates make that decision for all women. They don't. You're wrong.
Some favor unrestricted rights:
--"Abortion on demand and without apology," or whatever...
While others favored more restricted rights:
--Waiting periods, parental notification, banning late-term abortions, etc.
And yet others favor highly restricted rights:
--Banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest
While others (a very vocal group) favors no rights:
--Mandatory pregnancies
A couple of other points:
--Even if you accept all of the above as true (which you absolutely should in my opinion), what does reducing the number of abortions have to do with anything? The whole point of the position is that it's an individual choice, so why should the pro-abortions rights movement take a stance on it? They don't. You're wrong.
--As far as reducing abortions, guess which side paradoxically increases abortions and which side paradoxically decreases them? The side wanting to eliminate or highly restrict abortion rights actually causes more because of its largely anti-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro abstinence education only side stances. On the other hand, the side taking no stance on abortion for all women actually reduces them because of its pro-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro-full sex education side stances.
The Bushies will twist reasonable opposition to any of their policies into an accusation of giving succor to our terrorist enemies. _The latest example is Karen Hughes, who dove down and wallowed in the same gutter recently occupied by Secretary of Education Rod Paige. _(Paige, you may remember, characterized teachers unions as terrorist organizations.) _When asked about today's pro-choice rally, Hughes revealed that the administration would prefer that voters not distinguish supporting terrorists from supporting a woman's right to exercise control over her own body:
Quote:
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and terror network we fight is that we value every life."
Translation: _In terms of respect for human life, supporting pro-choice policies and politicians is the same as supporting al-Qaeda.
Matsu-- for the third time--you're wrong to call pro-abortion rights advocates "pro-abortionists" because not all necessarily support abortion-- just the right to do it. Anti-abortion means someone opposes the procedure for all women-- no choice; highly restricted or no rights. Pro-abortion means someone favors abortions for all women. All women should have abortions (if they're thinking about it or contemplating it or something. I don't know. It's your lame and inaccurate term.) It's kind of ridiculous to think pro-abortion rights advocates make that decision for all women. They don't. You're wrong.
Some favor unrestricted rights:
--"Abortion on demand and without apology," or whatever...
While others favored more restricted rights:
--Waiting periods, parental notification, banning late-term abortions, etc.
And yet others favor highly restricted rights:
--Banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest
While others (a very vocal group) favors no rights:
--Mandatory pregnancies
A couple of other points:
--Even if you accept all of the above as true (which you absolutely should in my opinion), what does reducing the number of abortions have to do with anything? The whole point of the position is that it's an individual choice, so why should the pro-abortions rights movement take a stance on it? They don't. You're wrong.
--As far as reducing abortions, guess which side paradoxically increases abortions and which side paradoxically decreases them? The side wanting to eliminate or highly restrict abortion rights actually causes more because of its largely anti-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro abstinence education only side stances. On the other hand, the side taking no stance on abortion for all women actually reduces them because of its pro-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro-full sex education side stances.
Doubtful. Abortion rises in response to both extremes -- both abortion on demand and the strict anti-abortionists.
Prior to the tightening of abortion laws, the abortion rate had hit 1.6 million in the US, it has fallen in recent years. Repeat abortions tend to represent a worst case scenario, availability meets demand without education, and those numbers, 29-45% are high. There's no way around that. Numbers tend to suggest that both abortion on demand and the, typically anti-abortion, anti contraception sides lead to increases in unwanted pregnancy, and therefore in abortions.
Both sides will have to confront certain uncomfortable truths. The abortionists will have to accept, that the body is not sacrosanct insofar as laws are concerned, neither womanhood, nor reproduction changes any of that. There is an ethical concern, not religious, not moral, but a best balance, a best spirit of the law that does allow convenience unfettered progress over life. The law protects life, and we live by laws. A line must be drawn somewhere, and past that line women's rights take a back seat to a broader "right to life"
The anti-abortionist must also confront some truths. For many it will be that their republics and democracies do not owe them any specific promotion of religious values. For others, more philosophical in nature, they will have revisit conception and life in careful terms. Is conception the start? Is it the start of something legally protectable? I find it difficult to fathom that some undifferentiated cells could have consciousness, feel pain, have awareness? Law, where it seeks to be compassionate seems concerned with these quantities, not tissues.
We have to be careful around life, and we have the right to demand that our societies require and enforce that care, but we have come to some legally acceptable frame of reference for life. For me, from what I see in the spirit of the law, that begins where the possibility for suffering exists, for where it exists, the law tries to protect.
Where women suffer for a collection of tissues, then it should be obvious where the protection of the law must fall. Where those tissues become an entity capable of suffering, I think it equally obvious where the protections of the law must fall.
It is cold and unsatisfying to both sides, but society makes neither specific libertine nor moralistic guarantees with good reason.
You've yet to adequately defend the term "abortionists"-- specifically against my criticism of it. But other than that, I think your conceptual awareness here is outstanding, doing a great job of evaluating the complexity of the issue. I think we should all enter the debate with that kind of open mindset and willingness to examine the arguments from both sides. Anyway- bravo. And Please post in here more often. The more discussions we have with this tone and level of debate, the more we can drive out the trolls who ruin things with their pissy, mind-blowingly petty, and vicious remarks with no aim at understanding anyone. I guess I have nothing further to add at this point-- except a conscious willingness to understand something in a new way.
A line must be drawn somewhere, and past that line women's rights take a back seat to a broader "right to life"
Not necessarily. If a lady cuts the umbilical, a fetus of almost any age is gone. No legitimate law can force a woman to keep that tie. If one is created, it creates a worse situation than abortion.
Personally that's a fair cut-off in my mind. If it can't live without the cord, no one can force a woman to keep it.
Personally that's a fair cut-off in my mind. If it can't live without the cord, no one can force a woman to keep it.
Humans can't "live without the cord" until they're old enough to hunt/gather for food on their own. In everyone I've met, this didn't occur until well after birth.
Humans can't "live without the cord" until they're old enough to hunt/gather for food on their own. In everyone I've met, this didn't occur until well after birth.
Absolutely not true. They can survive for a long time if they're biologically advanced enough. Until then, they're not ready.
The paranoid lunatics in the White House are as bad as those fundamentalist crazy headcases in the Taliban. Just what the hell is going on in this country today? It's one thing after another...every day it seems, something outrageous happens.
Comments
Originally posted by BR
It's pro-choice. One can be against abortion personally and still be for the choice of others to make that ethical decision on their own.
Matsu, doesn't this change your opinion?
keep the baby...i love you
adopt out the baby...i love you
abort the fetus...i love you
my part is easy...loving my family is the easiest thing i've ever done...
their part is more difficult...but, as a parent, as a husband, as a son, i will always strive to make the lives of my loved ones better, easier in any way i can
g
All I have heard is their clamor to make abortion illegal.
What will happen if Roe vs. Wade is overturned in the Supreme Court. and abortion is outlawed...(which at some point in the future may happen if the court becomes even more loaded with hardline rightwing religious ideologs than it is now)? Wealthy and middle-class women will travel to Canada or Europe etc. for abortions, but those who cannot afford the travel and procedure will either have an unwanted baby (which is never a good thing), employ Coathanger Charlie at great medical risk, or get caught by the police and end up jailed for manslaughter/murder whatever.
Making abortions illegal/more unsafe will never get rid of the practise that the pro-life people so detest, just like making pot or alcohol illegal never stopped people using it. All this will do is make hundreds of thousands of women criminals, take up valuable police and court time and provide yet another avenue for Big Brother to impinge on the private lives and medical/personal affairs of citizens. Right up George Bush and company's alley
So "Pro-lifers"....if you want to stamp out the practise of abortion, try another tactic, because laws wont solve anything for you. Perhaps you can campaign for more birth control, especially the use of condoms...this will help stop the spread of AIDS as well...as well as prevent unwanted pregnancies. Maybe you could get involved in a organized appeal to men who do not want any more children to have a vasectome...which is usually reversable. Use some imagination and get involved in a campaign that helps people, rather than belting out religious epithets and baying for vengeance.
And...to those people who play on the obvious emotionally charged issue of 3rd trimester abortions: In 1997 the Alan Guttmacher Institute said that approximately four one-hundredths of one percent (.04%) are performed in the third trimester or after viability. In real numbers that would be approximately 474 abortions performed in the third trimester out of over 1 million abortions overall. Depending on the total number of abortions in a given year, where the high has been near 1.6 million, that would mean that anywhere between approximately 400-700 abortions a year out of one million plus, occurs in the 7,8,or 9th month. That hardly sounds like the "killing of healthy fetuses or babies just before birth because a woman doesn't want to be pregnant anymore."
And, no. I am not "pro abortion". It's nasty, messy, expensive, traumatic, wretched, painful, depressing, and worse. But it should not be illegal, ever, period.
why are people who are pro-life trying to dictate what pro-choice people want to do with THEIR OWN bodies?
if that's against what you believe in, you have every right to NOT have an abortion. but why try and control what other's want to do?
if it's a religiously tied issue ... then again, why force your belief on anyone? obviously there's more than one religion (or atheism) in this country. Is that fair to force your way of thinking on others?
I'm far from being religious, but I can never understand why people always have the need to force their way of living/thinking on others.
How f*cked up does that make you?
It becomes tricky for non married couples/single women (approx 80% of abortions) but that still leaves 20% of cases (married) where a man has no legal say over his own reproductive material. If it comes to abortion in these cases, more often than not, the men involved don't care, but I'm still weary about laws that treat me basically as a sperm donor.
"Keep your rights off my reproductive materials" hahaha
The latest numbers I can dig up, from 2000, put abortion rates in the US at between 857 000 (the CDC) and 1.31 Million (Alan Guttmarcher Institute). That's a lot of abortion going on. The Guttmarcher numbers are particularly intriguing, one quote especially:
"Nearly one in four women obtaining an abortion in 2000 traveled more than 50 miles, 8 percent traveled more than 100 miles.?
1 in 4, almost, that means the rest were closer to services. How many people travel more than that for all sorts of medical services? 50 miles? Come on, less than an hour. Why should abortion be any more convenient than any other trip to a specialist. This sort of thing smacks of an agenda to turn abortion "rights" into an unfettered convenience. Regardless of how "rights" are distributed, it's something more delicate than a trip to the corner store.
But look at the trend in repeat abortion. In the US and Canada, repeat abortions now account for 29-45% of all abortions. And when you start reading the studies for socio-economic parameters, who has access to general medical services, forget about just abortion, you find some disturbing trends that the pro-abortion side does nothing to mitigate. They are pro choice in the sense that they put the alternative out there, and maybe that's enough, but they do little to aid in actually balancing out the "choice" for those women who do not choose abortion.
It seems the debate has gone well beyond "rights."
It exists now to prove a point, not to protect reproductive rights or the body, but divorce the consequences of the body from the self.
Anyway,
I think certain restricted abortion rights are needed, and they should end roughly at the point where an embrio/fetus/idontknowwhat has developed a CNS. At that point there are the first thin threads of consciousness, and an ability to feel pain. You don't own that, it's just parked inside you temporarily.
As for the laws and bodies nonesense, and nonesense it is. Any abortion law is not especially significant because it impinges on the body. ALL laws impinge on the body, good laws at least. Do not take your body over to the store and use it to steal, or into a bar and then a vehicle in order to drive drunk. It should be the case that laws are on bodies rather than minds, since that is supposed to be free, besides we have social pressures to control minds more effectively than laws could.
If we have to get back to it, indeed, keep your laws off our bodies, but at some point in the equation, and that point is before birth, we're dealing with two bodies (at least) and if you really want to go down the reproduction route, then it's three.
So where does it lie? The anti abortionists will not accept it, but the moment, for legal purposes at least, and perhaps even moral ones, is most likely NOT at conception. The pro abortionists will not accept it, but that same point, which is exceedingly difficult to pin down, is also most likely well before birth.
It really is as simple as making the best possible medical and scientific case, and most cautious, and drawing your law there, no matter whose body it impacts.
think of it, if you are in a relationship and the other person doesn't come to you about something so important, something so personal and intimate as a pregnancy; well then, something is truly ****ed and broken about that relationship
as a man, if you want to have a child, make sure you love and treat the woman you get pregnant well...then she will want to have a child with you
other than that, you can't force a woman to have "your" child...so help her "want" to have your child by being there, being loving, being supportive and being a true partner...
till men can get pregnant and carry a child inside them, we will be "beholden" on women to do it for us...that is not a "job" we can force on them, but one we as men should be thankful of and treasure them for
after all, we can't go around saying, "have my baby bitch, i'm rick james"
as for changing the termination age, i'm actually all for that...as long as we have good education for young people...i think that women should know their bodies well and understand them...so if a woman is "late", she should know what that means and know what she has to do...i would like all abortion for choice to be done in the first trimester...leaving later abortions only for health reasons, abnormal fetuses and for rape and incest cases
the key is education and support and also in helping prevent unwanted pregnancies...we can do little about the abnormal fetuses and we can do little about the thousands of miscarriages that happen (god seems to be pro-choice)
but laws will not stop abortion, just make them more dangerous to our loved ones...
there was a time when abortion was illegal for all reasons...it is too early to go into the personal story i have about that time...but i don't want to go back there
g
Originally posted by badtz
curiosity ....
why are people who are pro-life trying to dictate what pro-choice people want to do with THEIR OWN bodies?
Scientifically speaking, it's not their "own body." The child is a parasitic organism that in no way is part of "their body". Destroy the zygote, fetus, etc. and you have killed an individual---complete DNA fingerprint and self-directed development.
There is no arguing this point--which is why no one on this thread can counter this claim; the only other avenue to logically claim is that the mother has the right to murder a child that is in her body---and that somehow the child does not deserve the right to exist.
untill we find a way to remove fetuses intact and raise them inside artifical wombs or inside of cows or something, we will have abortion
people are funny though...
i hate war but understand it some
i dislike abortion but understand it some
but some will stand behind a president as we drop bombs on cities, killing fetuses in the first, second and third trimester and the moms that "enclose" them, killing new borns and toddlers, pre-schoolers, youths, adolescents , teenagers, adults and the elderly...many of these people then march for pro-life
others protest against war, yet then march for pro-choice
we are a funny race
g
Originally posted by dmz
Destroy the zygote, fetus, etc. and you have killed an individual-
There is no arguing this point--which is why no one on this thread can counter this claim;
Legally, morally, and scientifically__, a fertalized egg cannot be considered an "individual"
Regardless, the silent majority seem to have spoken - quite a rally.
Originally posted by Matsu
If it's a reproductive rights issue, then it will have to make space for men's rights as well. You may be carrying, but that's at least half my genetic material, and if born, half my responsibility. So where's my say?
It becomes tricky for non married couples/single women (approx 80% of abortions) but that still leaves 20% of cases (married) where a man has no legal say over his own reproductive material. If it comes to abortion in these cases, more often than not, the men involved don't care, but I'm still weary about laws that treat me basically as a sperm donor.
"Keep your rights off my reproductive materials" hahaha
The latest numbers I can dig up, from 2000, put abortion rates in the US at between 857 000 (the CDC) and 1.31 Million (Alan Guttmarcher Institute). That's a lot of abortion going on. The Guttmarcher numbers are particularly intriguing, one quote especially:
"Nearly one in four women obtaining an abortion in 2000 traveled more than 50 miles, 8 percent traveled more than 100 miles.?
1 in 4, almost, that means the rest were closer to services. How many people travel more than that for all sorts of medical services? 50 miles? Come on, less than an hour. Why should abortion be any more convenient than any other trip to a specialist. This sort of thing smacks of an agenda to turn abortion "rights" into an unfettered convenience. Regardless of how "rights" are distributed, it's something more delicate than a trip to the corner store.
But look at the trend in repeat abortion. In the US and Canada, repeat abortions now account for 29-45% of all abortions. And when you start reading the studies for socio-economic parameters, who has access to general medical services, forget about just abortion, you find some disturbing trends that the pro-abortion side does nothing to mitigate. They are pro choice in the sense that they put the alternative out there, and maybe that's enough, but they do little to aid in actually balancing out the "choice" for those women who do not choose abortion.
It seems the debate has gone well beyond "rights."
It exists now to prove a point, not to protect reproductive rights or the body, but divorce the consequences of the body from the self.
Anyway,
I think certain restricted abortion rights are needed, and they should end roughly at the point where an embrio/fetus/idontknowwhat has developed a CNS. At that point there are the first thin threads of consciousness, and an ability to feel pain. You don't own that, it's just parked inside you temporarily.
As for the laws and bodies nonesense, and nonesense it is. Any abortion law is not especially significant because it impinges on the body. ALL laws impinge on the body, good laws at least. Do not take your body over to the store and use it to steal, or into a bar and then a vehicle in order to drive drunk. It should be the case that laws are on bodies rather than minds, since that is supposed to be free, besides we have social pressures to control minds more effectively than laws could.
If we have to get back to it, indeed, keep your laws off our bodies, but at some point in the equation, and that point is before birth, we're dealing with two bodies (at least) and if you really want to go down the reproduction route, then it's three.
So where does it lie? The anti abortionists will not accept it, but the moment, for legal purposes at least, and perhaps even moral ones, is most likely NOT at conception. The pro abortionists will not accept it, but that same point, which is exceedingly difficult to pin down, is also most likely well before birth.
It really is as simple as making the best possible medical and scientific case, and most cautious, and drawing your law there, no matter whose body it impacts.
Matsu-- for the third time--you're wrong to call pro-abortion rights advocates "pro-abortionists" because not all necessarily support abortion-- just the right to do it. Anti-abortion means someone opposes the procedure for all women-- no choice; highly restricted or no rights. Pro-abortion means someone favors abortions for all women. All women should have abortions (if they're thinking about it or contemplating it or something. I don't know. It's your lame and inaccurate term.) It's kind of ridiculous to think pro-abortion rights advocates make that decision for all women. They don't. You're wrong.
Some favor unrestricted rights:
--"Abortion on demand and without apology," or whatever...
While others favored more restricted rights:
--Waiting periods, parental notification, banning late-term abortions, etc.
And yet others favor highly restricted rights:
--Banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest
While others (a very vocal group) favors no rights:
--Mandatory pregnancies
A couple of other points:
--Even if you accept all of the above as true (which you absolutely should in my opinion), what does reducing the number of abortions have to do with anything? The whole point of the position is that it's an individual choice, so why should the pro-abortions rights movement take a stance on it? They don't. You're wrong.
--As far as reducing abortions, guess which side paradoxically increases abortions and which side paradoxically decreases them? The side wanting to eliminate or highly restrict abortion rights actually causes more because of its largely anti-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro abstinence education only side stances. On the other hand, the side taking no stance on abortion for all women actually reduces them because of its pro-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro-full sex education side stances.
Originally posted by the cool gut
Legally, morally, and scientifically__, a fertalized egg cannot be considered an "individual"
Regardless, the silent majority seem to have spoken - quite a rally.
Why not?
Scientifically it's a different organism. Different genitic. Why can't that be considered a different individual?
Legally we can do what ever we want.
Morally? I'll stay away from that.
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and terror network we fight is that we value every life."
Translation: _In terms of respect for human life, supporting pro-choice policies and politicians is the same as supporting al-Qaeda.
TheDailyKOS
Originally posted by ShawnJ
Matsu-- for the third time--you're wrong to call pro-abortion rights advocates "pro-abortionists" because not all necessarily support abortion-- just the right to do it. Anti-abortion means someone opposes the procedure for all women-- no choice; highly restricted or no rights. Pro-abortion means someone favors abortions for all women. All women should have abortions (if they're thinking about it or contemplating it or something. I don't know. It's your lame and inaccurate term.) It's kind of ridiculous to think pro-abortion rights advocates make that decision for all women. They don't. You're wrong.
Some favor unrestricted rights:
--"Abortion on demand and without apology," or whatever...
While others favored more restricted rights:
--Waiting periods, parental notification, banning late-term abortions, etc.
And yet others favor highly restricted rights:
--Banning abortion except in cases of rape and incest
While others (a very vocal group) favors no rights:
--Mandatory pregnancies
A couple of other points:
--Even if you accept all of the above as true (which you absolutely should in my opinion), what does reducing the number of abortions have to do with anything? The whole point of the position is that it's an individual choice, so why should the pro-abortions rights movement take a stance on it? They don't. You're wrong.
--As far as reducing abortions, guess which side paradoxically increases abortions and which side paradoxically decreases them? The side wanting to eliminate or highly restrict abortion rights actually causes more because of its largely anti-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro abstinence education only side stances. On the other hand, the side taking no stance on abortion for all women actually reduces them because of its pro-birth control/contraceptives/availability-- pro-full sex education side stances.
Doubtful. Abortion rises in response to both extremes -- both abortion on demand and the strict anti-abortionists.
Prior to the tightening of abortion laws, the abortion rate had hit 1.6 million in the US, it has fallen in recent years. Repeat abortions tend to represent a worst case scenario, availability meets demand without education, and those numbers, 29-45% are high. There's no way around that. Numbers tend to suggest that both abortion on demand and the, typically anti-abortion, anti contraception sides lead to increases in unwanted pregnancy, and therefore in abortions.
Both sides will have to confront certain uncomfortable truths. The abortionists will have to accept, that the body is not sacrosanct insofar as laws are concerned, neither womanhood, nor reproduction changes any of that. There is an ethical concern, not religious, not moral, but a best balance, a best spirit of the law that does allow convenience unfettered progress over life. The law protects life, and we live by laws. A line must be drawn somewhere, and past that line women's rights take a back seat to a broader "right to life"
The anti-abortionist must also confront some truths. For many it will be that their republics and democracies do not owe them any specific promotion of religious values. For others, more philosophical in nature, they will have revisit conception and life in careful terms. Is conception the start? Is it the start of something legally protectable? I find it difficult to fathom that some undifferentiated cells could have consciousness, feel pain, have awareness? Law, where it seeks to be compassionate seems concerned with these quantities, not tissues.
We have to be careful around life, and we have the right to demand that our societies require and enforce that care, but we have come to some legally acceptable frame of reference for life. For me, from what I see in the spirit of the law, that begins where the possibility for suffering exists, for where it exists, the law tries to protect.
Where women suffer for a collection of tissues, then it should be obvious where the protection of the law must fall. Where those tissues become an entity capable of suffering, I think it equally obvious where the protections of the law must fall.
It is cold and unsatisfying to both sides, but society makes neither specific libertine nor moralistic guarantees with good reason.
Originally posted by Matsu
A line must be drawn somewhere, and past that line women's rights take a back seat to a broader "right to life"
Not necessarily. If a lady cuts the umbilical, a fetus of almost any age is gone. No legitimate law can force a woman to keep that tie. If one is created, it creates a worse situation than abortion.
Personally that's a fair cut-off in my mind. If it can't live without the cord, no one can force a woman to keep it.
Originally posted by bunge
Personally that's a fair cut-off in my mind. If it can't live without the cord, no one can force a woman to keep it.
Humans can't "live without the cord" until they're old enough to hunt/gather for food on their own. In everyone I've met, this didn't occur until well after birth.
Originally posted by Whisper
Humans can't "live without the cord" until they're old enough to hunt/gather for food on their own. In everyone I've met, this didn't occur until well after birth.
Absolutely not true. They can survive for a long time if they're biologically advanced enough. Until then, they're not ready.
Look at this story...this is fzcking unbelievable...
http://news.reuters.com/newsArticle....toryID=4977467
The paranoid lunatics in the White House are as bad as those fundamentalist crazy headcases in the Taliban. Just what the hell is going on in this country today? It's one thing after another...every day it seems, something outrageous happens.