Abortion / Pro Choice / Pro Life

[Pyroto_YT_Tiger]

I am unable to do a search on archived files, so I’m starting this thread. And, maybe (probably) its a repeat thread.

I’m quite interested in this topic as I had always been pro choice. Then I got pregnant (it was planned) and saw an ultrasound of my baby at 5 weeks, just 1 week after missing my period. After seeing that little heart beating and my babies arms and legs, the eyes, nose and mouth, and its independent movement, something happened to me. All those years that I had fought for pro choice hit me in the gut like a pound of lard.

Being pregnant, you get these books that shows actual photos (not ultrasounds) of what the baby looks like in the womb at each week. And, it is very fascinating. It went over how the fetus/embryo is developing and showed how all the functions of the body were beginning to work. It was then that I’d realized personally that ‘pro choice’ really isn’t a choice for me any longer. There are circumstances where the choice entails rape, incest or the mother’s life being in danger, and I know the answer is not to make abortion illegal. Why did I do a 180 on this? Because, this fetus, this embryo is a living being with all the functions of a human being.

My argument for pro choice centered around a woman’s right to do with her body as she pleases, because it is her body after all. And, this embryo or fetus is nothing more than a cluster of cells so the woman should be allowed the choice because it doesn’t have any rights. But, I realized how shallow my argument was only after seeing this baby growing inside of me, and realizing this was more than a mass of multiplying cells.

I’m not for making abortions illegal. It’s the wrong way to combat the issue. Instead, I believe that education is of paramount importance, as well as pre abortion ultrasounds and counseling on what effects this choice is going to have on the woman’s life pre and post abortion, and what the woman will need to be prepared to deal with. It also should explain what happens during an abortion to the baby inside. It isn’t just putting it to sleep in a humane way. People don’t realize this. Abortion is a decision that, once carried out, cannot be reversed, so knowing all the facts before making the decision should be a top priority.

Education of what the embryonic stages are and what happens at each stage of the fetus’ life should get as much coverage as birth control, STDs and other topics in the sex education classes that are a part of teenager’s ciriculum. I also think that birth control methods rates of success and failure for preventing pregnancy and STDs be of utmost importance as well. Pictures and techniques of abortions should be discussed in detail too, as well as alternatives such as adoption. Although it would be difficult for a teacher to discuss these types of things, I don’t advocate any bias being put on the education on either side by the teacher, but this education alone would allow for full knowledge of exactly what an abortion would entail and how it would affect the fetus growing inside a woman.

~YT apologizes if this is a repeat topic.

[Apos]

The idea that it’s your body is indeed a weak one. If something has rights and moral interests, it has it’s own liberty interests to counteract yours.

Then again, a fetus doesn’t have all the functions of a human being, and an embryo certainly doesn’t. Given that you likely have no compunction whatsoever in killing creatures with far more sentience and awareness of themselves and their ability to suffer for mere pleasure every day of the week, it’s hard to understand why you could use “functions” as a measure of moral worth.

[Only_Mostly_Dead]

So explain how you are not still pro-choice?

You were pro-choice before becoming pregnant. Once you found out you were, and you were given information, clinical and personal, by the doctor, you chose for yourself to bring the pregnancy to term. You made a choice. Heck, even now, you are pro-choice with certain educational caveats you’d want in place for women considering abortion.

This is what I don’t get about the pro-life argument: a woman can choose, and there are women who DO choose, as the OP demonstrates, to bring a pregnancy to term. If she does, both sides win. Pro-life gets a bouncing baby, pro-choice let the new mother decide things for herself. Choice is exactly that: CHOICE. Yes, it does mean the woman can choose abortion, and some women will. But it also means the woman can choose birth.

Trouble with the mandatory education/screenings that you suggest is that there will be women guilted into not going through an abortion, by making them see something that they really don’t want to. Seems like showing the bloody reality of an abortion might be an implied condemnation of it. I don’t need to see pictures of prisoners going into the Dachau gas chambers to know that the Holocaust happened.

I could agree to giving women voluntary access to all information about abortions, good and bad, clean and dirty, to watch if they so choose. I might even get behind a mandatory session with a hospital counselor before the procedure is done.

[cosmosdan]

@Apos

The idea that it’s your body is indeed a weak one. If something has rights and moral interests, it has it’s own liberty interests to counteract yours.

Then again, a fetus doesn’t have all the functions of a human being, and an embryo certainly doesn’t. Given that you likely have no compunction whatsoever in killing creatures with far more sentience and awareness of themselves and their ability to suffer for mere pleasure every day of the week, it’s hard to understand why you could use “functions” as a measure of moral worth.

Could you explain what the hell you’re talking about and how you came to this insulting conclusion about the original poster?

[Taber]

@cosmosdan

Could you explain what the hell you’re talking about and how you came to this insulting conclusion about the original poster?

I’m sure the original poster eats, and steps on insects. At some stages of pregnancy, that would be enough, especially if the OP wasn’t vegetarian.

On topic: what Only Mostly Dead said

[rwjefferson]

@Apos

The idea that it’s your body is indeed a weak one. If something has rights and moral interests, it has it’s own liberty interests to counteract yours.

I could probably find someone that thinks they have rights or moral or liberty interest to your body. If you do not understand why your argument does not hold, please post your name, address, blood type, and tissue type. I guarantee that people will be dying to share your body (in fairness, we will limit it to a maximum of 9 months for per person). Remember, it is your moral obligation to do this.

Please try to understand that even if I somehow find I do indeed have the right or moral or liberty interest to your body, I will respect your choice, and not insist. I only ask that you also give others that exact same choice.

Again, if you do not agree, please post the requested information. I could change my mind.
Peace
Only through Liberty
rwjefferson

[Zoe]

Drawing of human embryo at five weeks

I too am pro-choice, pro-education and anti-abortion. I think that it’s better to make young people aware of the realities of abortion before conception rather than waiting until the choice has to be made.

Either way, responsible and careful decision-making should be stressed – not guilt

Good OP, Pyroto YT Tiger. Welcome to SDMB!

[Bear_Nenno]

Personally, I’m Pro Abortion. All you ProChoice and ProLife people are all just a bunch of bleeding heart wussies.

[JThunder]

@Pyroto YT Tiger

I’m quite interested in this topic as I had always been pro choice. Then I got pregnant (it was planned) and saw an ultrasound of my baby at 5 weeks, just 1 week after missing my period. After seeing that little heart beating and my babies arms and legs, the eyes, nose and mouth, and its independent movement, something happened to me. All those years that I had fought for pro choice hit me in the gut like a pound of lard.

You’re not alone. Ultrasonographer Shari Richard reports that many other women have the same experience upon viewing the unborn.

[OliverTwistofLime]

Education is always a good idea when abortion is concerned…but no female should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

Look at the ultrasounds of baby cattle, sheep, pigs, pheasants…you can also see little movements of living things…I still don’t see how you can justify the destruction of animals but tell someone else they cannot do the same thing with their fetus.

Abortion should not be used for birth control, however, in my opinion.

[Pyroto_YT_Tiger]

@Apos

The idea that it’s your body is indeed a weak one. If something has rights and moral interests, it has it’s own liberty interests to counteract yours.

I’ve got time tonight to squeeze in one reply, and then I’ve got to get some zzz’s. I don’t agree that a woman’s right to her body is a weak argument at all, actually. There have been several court cases to emphasize that because a woman carries this baby inside of her, it affects her body, therefore, she should choose what to do with it. However, abortion, the way it stands today, the woman hardly gets fair exposure to what exactly is going to happen or how it will affect her her psyche and psychological welfare in the future. SO many women have abortions and find that living with their decision to abort taunts them for the rest of their life, and psychologically screws up their life.

Then again, a fetus doesn’t have all the functions of a human being, and an embryo certainly doesn’t. Given that you likely have no compunction whatsoever in killing creatures with far more sentience and awareness of themselves and their ability to suffer for mere pleasure every day of the week, it’s hard to understand why you could use “functions” as a measure of moral worth.

Now, as far as the assumptions you make about me (which has no place in a debate, IMHO), I wrangle this thought to you. What other creature has all the chromosomes, all the genes, all the correct cells, all the exact make up to become a human being? No matter how you argue it, you could never convince me that a bug or a cow is going to become human. All the things required to become human are found only in the makeup of a human embryo the second it is conceived by two human beings. Functions form. They start somewhere and grow into what they become when they are mature. Even as a newborn, a baby still does not have all the functions, abilities, nervous developement, mental developement, etc. as a full grown human being. Their awareness and sentience developes over the next 18-21 years, and begins in the womb. The functions, the growth, begins as an embryo. I never mentioned moral worth, I was steering towards human rights and human life. Morally, killiing something that is forming into a human being

Also, I’ll tell you something. I will not kill anything for mere pleasure. I’m sorry, but you have me pegged wrong. I don’t know where I gave that impression, but please, spare me the assumptions about what I supposedly do and don’t do for pleasure (or anything for that matter). You don’t even know me. Maybe you are inadvertantly revealing things about yourself? :dubious:

You don’t think an embryo or fetus has any awareness or sentience? Watch this: http://www.abortiontv.com/Video/silentscreampart6.ram There is more about the awareness and sentience on this link, which is a continuation of the prior link: http://www.abortiontv.com/Video/silentscreampart7.ram The person performing this abortion performed over 10,000 abortions. After seeing this ultrasound during this abortion he performed, he never performed another abortion again.

Now, about my ‘no compuctions to kill things for pleasure on a daily basis’. There was this gigantic bug in my front yard. We’re talking HUGE. It was 4 inches long (NO exaggeration) + its huge antenae. The scariest looking bug I’ve ever seen. I’m in the western US, so we have these bugs, so I found out after researching and taking pictures, called jerusalem crickets, or giant sand treaders, aka pototoe bugs. They’re SCARY, CREEPY looking things. But I would not even think to kill it, as disgusting as it looked, it must serve some purpose. And sure enough, these huge bugs have a good purpose. They eat all the dead and dying roots and tubers as well as the bad bugs in my soil. I’d attach the picture here, but I don’t know how to add pictures to my posts yet.

[Slithy_Tove]

I usually stay out of these abortion threads, but…

Sure, encourage the mother to respect the fetus as a human being, but kick the counseling up a few notches beyond “this baby has the right to life” to “this baby has the right to a decent life,” Beyond pro-choice, how about pro-fully-informed-choice? Show all the detailed uteroscopics you want, but hand out some adoption agency brochures, too. Tell them that the statistics are really, really against them, and that if they don’t give the baby up for adoption, generations from now people are still going to be paying for this.

I’ve been told by more than one woman that the reason she aborted was that if she gave birth to the baby, she wouldn’t have been able to give it up for adoption. When I think back, I’ve heard this reason to abort more than “I wouldn’t have been able to finish school,” (sometimes heard that) or “It would really have ruined swimsuit season for me.” (never, ever heard that one in real life). Yep, “I had to kill it or I would have loved it too much.” Sounds weird, but that’s how people can be. I never doubted these women were telling anything but the truth by that.

And I never doubted the women who said “I loved my baby enough to give her up for adoption.” You don’t go through one certain day of the year, year after year, differently than any other day because it’s the birthday of someone you ony knew for a few hours and then mouth lines like that as pure platitudes. However: every woman I’ve met in this group had lots of support and love to help her make this decision. Again, there’s the statistics for you.

I’m sure a clear photo of a fetus is beautiful, but what about all the fetuses, five years forward, who are destined to be photographed for evidence by the police at the morgue? Show moms those photos too. “Oh no! I’d never do that to a child!” Probably not, but what are the statistics on the mothers of those 5-year-olds who would have said the same thing?

[Arwin]

@Zoe

Drawing of human embryo at five weeks

I too am pro-choice, pro-education and anti-abortion. I think that it’s better to make young people aware of the realities of abortion before conception rather than waiting until the choice has to be made.

Either way, responsible and careful decision-making should be stressed – not guilt

Good OP, Pyroto YT Tiger. Welcome to SDMB!

That link, ending up in weird theological arguments, has nevertheless a decent overview and respresentations of some of the more important views:

By definition, a human being is not a person until it becomes aware of itself so that it can relate to its surroundings. The fetus becomes conscious as early as ten weeks after conception or as late as thirty-two weeks, according to Peter Singer, but the fetus does not become “rational or self-aware, let alone capable of seeing itself as existing in different times and places.” By using this concept of “personhood” an abortion advocate can convince people that abortion is no worse than killing an animal. It’s not a good thing, but it seems to be something we can live with.

Contrast that with what you say in your OP, Pyroto:

@Pyroto

Because, this fetus, this embryo is a living being with all the functions of a human being.

It really, really isn’t. But you were surprised with that it does have more human features than you expected, and you want to have this baby. There is a very big difference:

My argument for pro choice centered around a woman’s right to do with her body as she pleases, because it is her body after all. And, this embryo or fetus is nothing more than a cluster of cells so the woman should be allowed the choice because it doesn’t have any rights. But, I realized how shallow my argument was only after seeing this baby growing inside of me, and realizing this was more than a mass of multiplying cells.

It is a mass of multiplying cells on the long path towards becoming a human being, a person. But remember that the people affected, the people choosing to have or not to have a child, are the real persons at stake here. Compared to them, your five-week old fetus is really just only a cluster of cells. Since you are pregnant, you will experience a lot in the next year about how having a child affects you, physically and emotionally. And that is just you.

[WhyNot]

@Pyroto YT Tiger

I am unable to do a search on archived files, so I’m starting this thread. And, maybe (probably) its a repeat thread.

I’m quite interested in this topic as I had always been pro choice. Then I got pregnant (it was planned) and saw an ultrasound of my baby at 5 weeks, just 1 week after missing my period. After seeing that little heart beating and my babies arms and legs, the eyes, nose and mouth, and its independent movement, something happened to me. All those years that I had fought for pro choice hit me in the gut like a pound of lard.

All right, I’ll call it, since no one else will.

Bullshit.

You did NOT see all this on an ultrasound at 5 weeks. There are no arms, legs or eyes, there is most definitely NOT a mouth or nose. You are using emotional arguments witha beautiful touching tale of mother-love to try and “win” a debate.

This is a photograph of what was inside you. Not a fuzzy picture made of sound waves, but a crystal clear photograph of a 38 day human fetus.

THIS is a pretty average ultrasound at 5 weeks.

This one is astoundingly clear at 6 weeks .

Where’s its cute little nose again?

The fact that you lied about that in order to emotionally manipulate the rest of us makes me ill, and not likely to engage you on any rational debate about this or any other topic.

[Cat_Jones]

Good call Whynot I was kinda confused about that myself, on the other hand maybe she wa

[Cat_Jones]

oops !

Where was I ? I also like only mostly dead 's searing use of logic.

At the risk of a hijack could anyone give me a quick explanation as to why abortion is / has become such a politicized issue in the States ? (The only time I remember it making news in the UK was when an underage Irish rape victim was trying to get permission to travel to the UK for an abortion.)

[catsix]

Pyroto YT Tiger said:
I never mentioned moral worth, I was steering towards human rights and human life.

It has never been a human right for anyone to leech off another person’s body in order to maintain survival.

SO many women have abortions and find that living with their decision to abort taunts them for the rest of their life, and psychologically screws up their life.

And many others do not regret it, do not feel sorry, and go on living normal lives knowing that they made what was, for them, the right choice.

Slithy Tove said:
Show all the detailed uteroscopics you want, but hand out some adoption agency brochures, too.

Show them what it costs, per year, to feed and clothe and house and supply a kid with all the things a kid needs too.

After all, that’s the reality of one of the options they can choose.

WhyNot said:
You did NOT see all this on an ultrasound at 5 weeks. There are no arms, legs or eyes, there is most definitely NOT a mouth or nose. You are using emotional arguments witha beautiful touching tale of mother-love to try and “win” a debate.

Thanks for those links. I had recalled from my prior-to-engineering school path of ‘I wanna be a doctor’ that an embryo at 5 weeks gestation looked like a deformed seahorse, but I didn’t want to post it without links. Glad you pre-empted me. If what the OP said about her ‘5 week’ ultrasound was true, it would be impossible that women who had early miscarriages around the time of their expected period would just think they had an unsually heavy period, or not even notice anything awry at all, wouldn’t it?

[EvilHamsterOnCrack]

The revelations put forth here, as well as teh fact that the poster is but a guest… Who want’s to take a bet this is a ploy?

[Apos]

@rwjefferson

I could probably find someone that thinks they have rights or moral or liberty interest to your body. If you do not understand why your argument does not hold, please post your name, address, blood type, and tissue type. I guarantee that people will be dying to share your body (in fairness, we will limit it to a maximum of 9 months for per person). Remember, it is your moral obligation to do this.

Is it really your position that there is no difference between actively killing something and just not helping someone?

[Kalhoun]

@MadSam

Education is always a good idea when abortion is concerned…but no female should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

Look at the ultrasounds of baby cattle, sheep, pigs, pheasants…you can also see little movements of living things…I still don’t see how you can justify the destruction of animals but tell someone else they cannot do the same thing with their fetus.

Abortion should not be used for birth control, however, in my opinion.

Why, if you believe what you posted, do you not agree with abortion as birth control. It is another way of interrupting a pregnancy. Riskier in most cases than the pill or the Morning After pill, but an interruption nonetheless. I’m just interested in why you feel it is morally different than any other form of birth control. Not picking a fight here…just curious.