Well, it was implied an abortion thread should be started and so I’ve started it.
I suppose we’ll get into the tireless debates about when a baby is considered alive, when anything is considered alive, why–even if something is alive–we can kill it.
Sounds like fun! So here we go…
[ol]
[li]It is a woman’s choice. Oh? But it isn’t the man’s child? I’ve never felt it was the exclusive right of the woman to decide, but she does have ultimate rule in the end. In other words, discuss it with the father, THEN come to your own solution.[/li]
[li]Late term abortions? Sure, why not? I find them particularly appalling, and I actually waver on this point quite a bit. What bothers me is: is it murder if the {thing} could be supported out of the uterus? If the argument against it is that the child has no choice, why are we choosing life for it? I knew a number of teenagers who wished differently many times {adding levity to topic :))[/ol][/li]
Carry on…but what I’m hoping for most is a reasonably defended position from the pro-life crowd.
You’ll get it - they’re quite a sizable crowd on this board.
FWIW on point 1 - it’s a practical matter really. If you don’t consider the feutus to be a human life, then the abortion is purely an operation on a woman’s body. Seen in these terms, the wishes of a third party (i.e. the man) are somewhat irrelevant. You can’t force her to have an operation that she doesn’t want and you can’t prevent her from having the operation that she does want. Otherwise you’d have to consider allowing similar rules for other operations (“but I don’t want to have my kidney removed!” ;))
I ain’t touching 2 with a bargepole at this moment in time. I’m still catching my breath after the incest debate
Good to see we meet again. Your point is absolutely correct, and my point was completely contradictory. {{damn}}
Having been a party to the process, and having also known another couple who was as well, I can assure you from a pro-choice standpoint that it is not considered to be just an operation even though the fetus is also not considered to be a child. This is a completely personal topic to me and, gigi, I’d like to have it out because I haven’t been in a strictly abortion debate since high school. It was suggested here.
Bargepole, eh? Don’t you mean coathanger? (trying to rally the troops ONLY even if in poor taste)
ooh 'lover - that was in poor taste. Funny though.
Thanks for recognising my point. That kind of sentiment doesn’t happen much round here and is always nice to see.
The “just an operation” thing - this is kind of the crux of the issue isn’t it? If it isn’t an operation just like any other then you’re not considering the foetus to be just a part of the woman’t body. In which case you lose the ethical right to the operation.
So, to summarise:[ul]
[li]If you are pro life then you consider the foetus to be fully human, in which case the father ought to be involved in the decision. But since you are pro life this is irrelevant since you don’t believe that abortion should take place anyway.[/li]
[li]If you are pro choice then you don’t consider the foetus to be fully human. In this case the “father’s” wishes are irrelevent, since there is no “father” because there is no baby. It’s just an operation like any other, so it’s totally up to the woman.[/li][/ul]And there you have it. It’s not the first dichotomy involving this subject and it won’t be the last.
There was a GQ discussion of so-called “partial-birth abortion” here recently.
Post-viability abortions (that is, those performed on a fetus that could survive outside the womb) are already strictly limited to instances where the mother’s health or life are at stake, and are heavily regulated. And previability abortions in the later stages of pregnancy are rare. Reasons for having a late abortion include:[ul][li]threats to the life or health of the mother;[]late discovery of a condition incompatible with life (ancephaly, severe spina bifida, etc.) that cannot be tested for earlier in pregnancy);and[]late discovery of pregnancy.[/ul][/li](By the way, you better hope OpalCat doesn’t see your list. ;))
There’s a good article by Janet Gans-Epner at 280 JAMA 724 discussing the reasons for late-term abortions, but I can’t link to it right now.
My big problem with the whole pro-choice/pro-life deal is that the opponents are arguing the opposite sides of different philosophical arguments, which can’t be solved by argument, anyway. Gross-overgeneralization here, but Pro-choice people say they have a right to do what they want with their own bodies (which they don’t, as long as suicide is still illegal); pro-life people say that abortion is murder and don’t care much about the mother.
Where is it written that we have the right to do what we want with our bodies? Where is it written that fetuses are human beings? Ehh. Everything just bogs down.
How about this for something to debate: Abortion kills something which, if left undisturbed, would, in the vast majority of cases, develop into a fully functioning, healthy human baby.
Take the fetus-as-human argument right out of the picture. It’s the potential that counts.
The potential to be a child is exaclty what, I think, pro-life people are all about. I don’t believe they would want to take a 2 month old fetus out of the womb and yell, “Behold, it is human,” but instead recognize that it is even at that stage very far along to becoming one; since they would rather not draw a line once development has begun, they are pro-life. I don’t know if I represent the other side well, but that’s the kind of stuff I’ve heard before.
To me, tho, I find that potential for anything, including life, is not a hold on anything else. Potential is not actual, realized, nor anything else but a sort of concept about something. An undeveloped fetus is sort of like a thought of a baby.
That isn’t to say that post-abortion we weren’t a little shaken up emotionally about the affair. But it is to say that it doesn’t feel like murder…it feels like failing a test. You could have done better.
I am not making my case well at all here… I should head back to the incest post…
So, we must first decide, when is this organism a person and therefore can be “killed”. Is it still a fetus after delivery, but before the cord is cut? Is it still a fetus when all but the head have been delivered? Is it when brain waves are detected? A heart beat is monitored? Is it when the organism could live without the mother ? (because that changes with technology and therefore should not be relevant to when this fetus is a life).
Why take a chance? So if our decision is that at Stage X a fetus becomes a life… Then abortion after this stage is wrong. If we are to draw a line as to what moment life begins, then we should appreciate the possibility that we might be wrong.
Now the question becomes, if we have to make a decision…do we choose cautiously so that if stage X is wrong we err on the side of not killing a person. Or do we take a chance. I don’t want to take a chance on killing a person.
BTW, I think both sides are crazy with semantics. Pro-Life is not accurate because many “pro-lifers” are pro-death penalty.
Pro-Choice is inaccurate, because that is one choice in a million of choices (that affect women), and many “pro-choice”… are anti-school vouchers etc.
Using the term Pro-Life or Pro-Choice is like the winner of the SuperBowl claiming to be the World Champion of Football (angering a lot of Soccer fans) or using the term “Miss Universe” instead of simply “Miss Earth”
Why does potential count? And a small colection of cells would NOT do very well if left undisturbed. The problem is that mothers are not usually able to leave it undisturbed without some help from a doctor. Every egg, every sperm, indeed, with modern cloning technology, every human cell is a potential human being.
Ethirist, I think you have a several things wrong. I think that pro-lifers generally DO care about the mother. I think that, while we don’t have the right to do ANYTHING to our bodies, we do have a a lot of rights in that way. Many pro-life documents have written that foetuses are humans. This is a large part of the debate. Pro-lifers also often argue against abortion of fetuses that would not be fully functioning, healthy babies. I appreciate that you are trying to simplify things, but it’s not a simple issue.
Ok, now for my opinions.
I am pro-choice.
I am for the death penalty (assuming that it can be shown to be a real deterrent). I do think that this is relevant to the abortion debate even though I don’t think that fetuses are human.
Actually, I have less respect for human life than most people I talk to. I have repect, even love, for most people I meet and I give the ones I haven’t met the benefit of the doubt. However, I don’t think that just because someone qualifies biologically as a human that they have the right to life. I think that Robert Heinlein’s lunar society has some valid points (tanstaafl and all that). Heinlein was a kook, but I think he’s worth reading for more than just entertainment. Essentially, I would be pro-choice even if I believed the fetus to be human. I suspect that I am in the minority but, happily, many agree that the fetus is not human and therefore agree that abortions should be an option. (ugh. Awful sentence, but I don’t feel like fixing it.)
I think that the mother should not have to carry the child regardless of the desires of the father. If the father can find a willing woman who can carry the child AND he has the finances to pay for it AND the means to effect a transfer are available and reasonably safe, then the mother should cooperate with that process, especially if the father has had difficulty with fertility in the past. Because of this, I think the father should be informed. However, I don’t think that this should be enforced by law because I don’t think the kinds of tests necessary to prove fatherhood should be required in every case. I’d rather just leave that up to the ethics of the mother. I wouldn’t mind requiring a counselor to suggest to the mother that she consult with the father before going through with the procedure.
We have people, including children, sleeping on the streets, with no food and no home to go to. Until we are able to take care of them, why should we add to the population?
Or, to put it another way:
If you are so adamant that the fetus has a right to live, are you willing to take care of all the unwanted children who would be born if abortion was outlawed?
Me, I’m pro-adoption. Open adoption, if necessary, where the birth mother may have visitation rights but no parental rights. But I don’t feel it’s my place to impose MY beliefs on someone else simply because we may disagree.
I really don’t agree. I really don’t think that, when describing something, one must always give a completely unabiguous and unique description of it. For instance, you referred to “the Super Bowl”. Which one? You also said “both sides”. Both sides of what? In the context, I can guess that you mean “both sides of the abortion issue”, just as, if I ask someone what their position on abortion is and the person says “pro-life” or “pro-choice”, I can guess that they mean “pro-life” or “pro-choice” with respect to abortion.
Only in a sense. For such purposes, the word “health” is defined so broadly as to encompass emotional distress. In practice, that makes it easy to justify an abortion on the grounds that having a child would cause distress to a woman.
Do you adamantly oppose child abuse? If so, are you prepared to adopt all those children who are being abused by their parents? If not, should you keep silent while those children are being abused?
Do you oppose spousal abuse? If so, are you willing to take all those abused women into your home, lest they suffer at their husbands’ hands? If not, should you keep your peace while those women suffer in fear?
Do you oppose infantide? If so, are you ready to adopt all those children who would otherwise be killed by their parents? Otherwise, must you not remain quiet while those children are put to death?
Pro-lifers (indeed, all human beings) SHOULD be prepared to help the helpless. However, their failure or inability to personally adopt all these “unwanted” children does not mean that they should not take a stand on this issue.
I find that to be a terrific counter for the “take in the kids that would be aborted” argument. One I’ve never heard before, but like I said, I don’t get into this argument much.
However, The points you raise cause other issues to arise. In the thread about whether abortion was good for the economy the point was raised that the decline of crime was connected to abortions. Perhaps these other problems you take stands on are connected, as well, in that children who would otherwise be aborted would instead be raised under poor conditions.
Not to mention, is is much cheaper to have an abortion than to have a child, and an unwanted child is more expensive than a wanted one (either on the family, or on society)
And if it is society, you are, in fact, paying for these children one way or the other. So, in essence, pro-lifers, you are volunteering pro-choicers’ tax dollars for raising unwanted children.
Well, there’s the question of whether economic benefit sufficient justification to commit abortion. If abortion is a form of murder, then I don’t think any amount of money would justify this act.
By the same token though, it is cheaper to kill a six-year-old child than to raise it and pay for its education. Does that make the act justified?
Absolutely… just as I “volunteer” society’s dollars to combat theft, murder and other heinous acts. Some people don’t think that animal abuse is wrong, but I still support the laws which prohibit animal cruelty – and I support the enforcement of these laws.
Besides, don’t pro-choice advocates frequently demand federal subsidization for abortions? Also, please remember that Planned Parenthood receives millions of dollars in federal funding each year. That funding may not go directly toward paying for abortions, but it does help fund their operating expenses and various programs which help promote abortion as a viable option.
I am pro-choice (which I do not equate with being “pro-abortion”- I don’t think anyone is “pro abortion”)and I have noticed something among “pro-life” (can’t we come up with better terms to define the two opinions on this subject?)people that I’d like someone to explain to me.
I have heard numerous (in fact, most) “pro-lifers” state that they think abortion is OK in cases of rape or incest. Huh? The fetus had absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances of its conception. Seems to me that the folks who feel this way are looking to punish the woman for having consensual sex.
You may wish to explore some of the other threads related to this notion…several pro life folks have already weighed in with their perspective on your question…There is one in particular about Abortion “compassion” vs “punishment” …don’t have the urls at hand…perhaps someone else could provide links?
I just want to weigh in on the terms pro choice/life - I think they are horrible esp. the 1st one.
Someone suggest adding ‘with respect to abortion’ which in lenghtly but better. I usally use the term pro/anti abortion but as someone pointed out that’s stating someone’s for abortion.
Ok I will venture further, I use the term pro abortion because I think it is less of an inaccuracy then pro choice. I typically find so called pro choice people are against school vouchers and against the 2nd amendment and against cap. pusishment (which again takes away society’s choices).
-vileorb
After we execute a criminal he will never commit a crime again - real deterrent, I think so.
Here’s 2 questions for both sides to ponder:
** Is abortion needed to allow women (as a group) to compete with men (as a group)? **
Absolutely right. If they believe that the fetus is a living human being, then it would be inconsistent to make an exception for rape or incest.
If that were the case, wouldn’t they advocate abortion in ALL circumstances? Only a small fraction of abortions are performed due to rape or incest.
I think that a more reasonable explanation would be that they are simply overwhelmed with empathy for the mother. After all, human beings aren’t always consistent in their convictions.
Good to see we meet again. Your point is absolutely correct, and my point was completely contradictory. {{damn}}
I should head back to the incest post…