Well, there’s the rub, isn’t it? What about those women who didn’t get to choose?
ETA: I’m strongly pro-choice in the WhyNot mold.
All the way until delivery? Nope, not me. Strap 'em to a prison birthing chair.
If you truly believe that intentionally killing innocent people is wrong, then why wouldn’t you be arguing to let nature take its course and deny the abortion of non-viable fetuses or those in a pregnancy threatening the health of the mother? Are those fetuses not innocent people like all of the other fetuses you spared?
You can say this firmly. You can say this with fervor, you can shout this standing hand in hand with a chorus of others…but * none* of these turns your personal opinion into a statement of fact.
i have struggled for along time on this. i’ve been a part of two abortions in my life; once as the father and once as a caring friend. in neither of these was the decision taken lightly. indeed just the opposite; its was almost too hard to make.
so the anti argument that it just gives women permission to be promiscuous without real consequences just doesnt wash with me.
even tho, i guess i fall into that camp that wishes there were no abortions. but i dont think the way to accomplish this is to tell women that they cant do it. we should be working to make abortion obsolete; by funding education, and resources and alternatives, etc
i’m sure there are others, wiser than me, that can explain things better. . .there is no easy answer.
mc
The ‘consequences’ only exist as consequences in a wilfully-constrained context that the pro-life camp wishes to create.
What’s the difference between a kidney and a fetus?
Well, a kidney is a thing that keeps you alive. A fetus is a thing that parasitises your body’s resources, and grows to a size that will eventually injure you before it leaves and (in thankfully nowadays comparatively rare cases) may in fact kill you.
I mean, childbirth and parenthood is a miracle of nature, but it takes a definite toll on the body of the mother.
The moral/ethical question boils down to pragmatism: some women will always want abortions, for whatever reasons. To outlaw abortion is to drive it into the dark realm. We tried this sort of thing with booze, and it was a disaster. We tried it with “drugs”, and it is still a disaster. Same thing with abortion. It is neither your place nor mine to decide who should or should not have sex, and the same holds for abortion.
And, though late-term abortions, rare as they may be, can be troubling to consider, bear in mind what mikecurtis said above: for many women, it can be a difficult decision, and her circumstances may change, so putting a deadline on when it can be done is a major burden.
Really, all your (or my) moral feelings are of no consequence. If we are directly involved, we will choose appropriately; if not, it is none of our business.
I realise I might not have explained myself adequately here, so let’s try a (flawed, but hopefully still illustrative) analogy.
In a parallel universe, there are two groups of people who call themselves:
Pro-dental - This group advocates the application of medical technology to fix problems caused by dental caries, abscesses, receding gums, etc. In some cases, they will resort to destroying teeth if the health of the patient requires it.
Pro-Tooth - this group advocates the protection of individual teeth; they are generally opposed to interference with what they perceive to be nature’s normal course of events. They recommend careful flossing and brushing, as well as reduction of sugars and other foods that are known to promote dental decay. They wish to restrict the availability of the medical solutions fostered by the Pro-Dental group (who they call ‘anti-tooth’)
Now, leaving aside the distracting difference that, obviously, teeth are different from fetuses, is it reasonable for the Pro-Tooth camp to say something like this:
“That personal choice was to be made, for or better or worse, before the candy was ever eaten. If you want pleasure than fine, but pay the consequences as we all do.”
The ‘consequence’ here being an entirely artificial situation where people have to suffer toothache, root canal infection and further health problems, just because of a wilful restriction in the availability of dental care.
Exactly. Sometimes, the “consequence” of having sex is that a person chooses to have an abortion. That *is *“taking responsibility” for a contraceptive failure. The only way its not is if we’ve already accepted the antiabortion premise.
You are killing something that’s a potential human, and doesn’t yet have rights. The mother is an actual human, with rights.
Whether or not that thing inside her is a zygote or a human is irrelevant. A woman’s uterus is a sovereign state. She, and ONLY she reigns supreme. So if it’s a zygote, a “human”, or a litter of cute puppies, if she wants it out of there, it goes.
You’re welcome to judge her however you please. But what you CAN"T do is compel her to do anything against her wishes with regards to her body.
Anti-abortion in that I think it would be best if one was never needed, pro-life in that my own choice if I’d had an unwanted pregnancy without a father in the picture would have been adoption, pro-choice in that I consider that other people should be able to make their own choices. Pro-access to multiple means of pregnancy prevention, definitely.
This whole thread is nothing but personal opinions.
Any question of right and wrong is personal opinion.
Pro choice. The only answer for such a divisive issue, I feel.
My body, my life forever changed, my gut wrenching choice to make. If you disagree with abortion don’t have one.
Forcing your believes onto others would be like me removing meat from your diet because I feel meat is murder! No matter how certain I am in my morality concerning the consumption of meat, it’s not my place to force that on others.
(It’s especially rich to have the immorality of abortion preached by the same people who feel the population of the earth is out of control, the crime rate is way too high, and child abuse/exploitation must end!)
Why don’t anti abortionists insist on a medical procedure that ends the woman’s pregnancy but keeps the fertilized eggs viable, like frozen embryos? Then they can pay for them all to be retrieved and frozen, plus the ongoing storage costs, until they’ve found them homes and families. I’m certain they won’t object to the costs involved!
Is that right? Is it a fact?
I find this a very odd way of phrasing a personal opinion.
“But make no mistake, you are killing a person. If you can live with that, it’s on you if you have one.”
A fetus doesn’t reach a state of full consciousness until they’re around 24-25 years old.
I think the point is that whilst we’d like human existence to be some special thing, the universe doesn’t give a shit. So an abortion is cutting short a process that is heading toward the eventual emergence of a human being, but so is wearing a condom, and so is abstinence.
Unless supernatural souls are invoked, it’s simply the case that different stages of human development are unequal - that’s why we don’t have babies driving forklifts, and that’s why it could be OK to terminate a thing that is notionally on its way to being a human, but isn’t anywhere near there yet.
When something ends before its natural span, it should only really be sad or tragic if that thing (or those in charge of it) had reasonable expectations of more.
It’s a strong opinion. A lot of people hold this opinion. If you don’t, that’s on you.