I have no idea where you’re getting this from. reprise stated that she is firmly pro-choice and I don’t see how her behaviour now is undermining that conviction. She is trying to help her daughter to make the right choice while upholding her own beliefs. Where is the moral quandry here?
I am willing to bet that you do not have children. i will admit that I don’t either, but by putting myself in reprise’s shoes, as best I can, I can see that this is a hard thing to go through. Something being hard doesn’t make you a bad parent, or mean you are morally weak, it just means that parenting is a hard job.
I am pro-choice, and have no problem with people who are pro-life. There are many valid and well thought out reasons to be pro-life, and I do not question another persons convictions. I do, however take offence to people telling others how to live their lives, and trying to take the moral high ground. (I assume that you are pro-life, although looking at the garbled mass you call a post, perhaps I should assume nothing).
You say yourself that “this is a forum where you seek intellectual challenge”, yet I see no intellectual backup in your posts. You haven’t even answered most of the questions leveled to you in this thread.
Who cares if it is a child or not? I’d kill a fully-aware human if the only alternative was to let him risk my life in an extremely painful and dangerous procedure, and feel no moral qualms about it. If somebodies life is wholly dependent on yours and endangers you in any way (and even a normal childbirth is riskier than skydiving or many other dangerous actions) you have no responsibility to preserve it.
The fact that a fetus is unconscious, has an undeveloped brain, and has spent it’s entire existence in a state of almost total sensory deprivation just makes the decision easier.
Which you did. And then you launched quite a personal attack on this lady. If this is a “Great Debate” it should be generally speaking. Not “you” “you” “you.”
And of course pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. I have never taken drugs and don’t think very much at all of people who choose to abuse (as I personally see it IMHO not getting into another GD here - it’s just a parallel example) their bodies and brains in this way. However I totally respect their right to do as they choose.
I also respect the fact that some people believe their god prohibits all killing, whereas others believe their god does not.
So one could easily find abortion abhorrent, but still respect the rights of others to live by their own moral code.
Do you have any specifics on how dangerous childbirth is? Are you aware that the overwhelming majority of pregnancies are not dangerous to the mother?
“In any way” you say. So if this person constitutes any danger to you whatsoever, you feel justified in permanently ending his life. Is that correct?
Also, are you aware that abortion isn’t merely “not preserving” a life? When you abort a baby, you’re not just withholding nourishment from the child. I daresay that cutting someone into tiny bits is more than just “not preserving” that person.
One thing I have noticed about this ongoing and ultimately irresolvable debate (not just in this thread, but generally speaking in the world at large) is the reliance of the pro-lifers on gory and emotive details of foetal development, dead foetuses, etc.
Whereas I haven’t seen any gory pics or any emotive tales from the pro-choice people of - for example - dead mothers, suicided teen mothers, mental breakdowns, and so forth.
Whether this says something about the strength of either argument, or the sort of tactics used by the sort of proponent of either argument - I do not know. It is just an observation.
Well I’ve heard predictions from pro-choicers about tens of thousands of women getting ‘coathanger’ abortions if the practise was ever made illegal. That qualifies as an explicit and emotive exaggeration in my book.
Define ‘danger’. Most pregnancies end in injuries which involve lengthy recovery times and may result in permanent damage to the genitalia. It’s significantly more dangerous than getting an abortion, even a late-term one. Or are you talking about lethality? The overwhelming majority of car accidents, hijackings, and assaults are not fatal, but I still do not want to be involved in one.
“In any way” you say. So if this person constitutes any danger to you whatsoever, you feel justified in permanently ending his life. Is that correct?
Also, are you aware that abortion isn’t merely “not preserving” a life? When you abort a baby, you’re not just withholding nourishment from the child. I daresay that cutting someone into tiny bits is more than just “not preserving” that person. **
[/QUOTE]
If someone is endangering my life I do feel justified in doing whatever is necessary to remove or reduce that risk. In the case of a hypothetical dangerous parasitical person who cannot continue to live without further endangering me, then yes, I will end that person’s life.
Tell me another way someone can choose not to preserve the life of the fetus which doesn’t involve abortion of some type.
How is that an exaggeration? Are you aware of how many ‘coathanger abortions’ take place today even when abortion is legally available? Today millions of abortions take place every year. Even if 99% of those women decided to go ahead and have the baby if abortion was legally prohibited there would still be tens of thousands of illegal abortions each year, almost all of them significantly more dangerous than if the woman had access to medical care.
Most abortions take place in the first trimester. A woman who does not want to carry the child to term has a lot of options available to her, even if she can’t go to a doctor about it. If abortion was illegal you would see a huge black market for drugs that could induce abortion. For those who could not get them, there are many herbal ‘remedies’ to pregnancy that are common knowledge (women have been inducing miscarriages for thousands of years). There are even ways to get rid of the embryo that don’t involve any form of drugs or folk remedies, like starving yourself, overexertion, blunt trauma to the abdomen, etc. Make abortion illegal and you can bet the number of ‘accidental’ miscarriages will skyrocket, are you going to investigate each and every one?
My apologies for that last post, those statistics are for Thailand. In North America the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 3700. Quite a bit safer, still not safe enough to force someone into it. Would you go into a stadium full of 37,000 people if you knew that 10 of them would be chosen randomly to die painfully?
But I think we need to distinguish between those statistics where maternal death is due to an unforeseen, tragic accident (eg massive blood loss during labour) and those where death was predicted (eg the expectant mother was previously known to have a medical condition which would result in her death if she went through with the pregnancy).
Okay, who sprayed this thread with loony attractant?
reprise, I’m glad you’re supporting your daughter (and future grandchild) with an open heart. 15 is awfully young to be a mom. She couldn’t do it without your help. Which is not a thing to be taken lightly when you’re talking about a baby, as you are well aware. It will be a huge adjustment for everyone and a tremendous sacrifice for you. (Ahhhh, but the rewards.
Of course, there is always the adoption (foster?) route. Here in the U.S. we have open adoptions where the mother can screen, meet, and approve potential adoptive parents. They can also agree to a visitation schedule, where mom can still be a small part of the child’s life, should she wish it. Were one of my daughters to become pregnant at such an early age, I hope I would be mature enough to consider this alternative. Although I’ve seen people do crazy things when their grandchildren are involved.
Best of luck to both (well, all THREE) of you. And congratulations on becoming a grandmum.
In your last post you said you were waiting for a quote/evidence or a retraction.
Frankly, I don’t know on exactly what issue you’d like a quote or evidence. I am going to take a guess at the cost of getting everyone else on this thread bored to death.
1- Did you mean the “in sin” part?
The OP’s quote was: I want to hear from those people because time has taught me that they represent the very best of Christian values..
Excuse me Goo, I do not believe in God or any religion, but I have read enough about Christian values to know that having a baby “out of wedlock” is supposed to be a sin. And I assure you, Reprise’s daughter did not become pregnant through “marriage” at the age of 15.
2- Pro-choice vs. Pro-life
It appears that your definition of pro-choice includes pro-life. Well, Goo darling, to most people you are either on one camp or the other. You can’t expect me to debate whether one side can include the other. You are either being pedantic, or your idea of participation in a debate is to find spelling mistakes or asking for sites (without bothering to do a Google search yourself).
Beyond the above two issues, I am at a loss on what point you’d like to have a quote, evidence or a web site?
Now, let’s get real. If you and Reprise want to have your own little chubby chummy club, why don’t you get together outside this forum? This is not a chat room for snoochers.
As someone who had a pregnancy that involved a risk (I had toxemia, and my blood toxins were watched carefully), I have to say that the 1 in 3700 risk is quite different when you could be the 1.
Also, I have several friends whose gestational diabetes never left them following their pregnancy - there pregnancy didn’t kill them, but most likely has shortened their lives.
And I have a girlfriend who spent six hours in surgery having her vagina reconstructed after birth.
And a friend whose lost a fallopian tube to an etopic pregnancy (that burst and almost killed her).
Mortality stats do not tell the whole story. They are also only useful when talking about the population, not the individual.
Oh and Reprise, congrats on the grandchild. May things work out for the best under the circumstances. Every child should be loved and wanted, even if they weren’t quite expected.
