Excuse me? While there may be some individuals who feel that way, such a sentiment is most certainly not characteristic of the pro-life movement in general.
There are, for example, THOUSANDS of crisis pregnancy centers across the nation. Such centers almost invariably (if not invariably) offer material assistance to both the mother and the child, in addition to parental training, support groups, and sometimes even pre- or post-natal care, and educational programs to help the parents find better jobs. They most certainly DO care about both the mother and the child, well after the unborn’s life has been saved.
Of course, it’s common for pro-choicers to insist that pro-lifers only care about saving the unborn, and care nothing about it’s life after that. Such an accusation, while devoid of factual basis, does make it easier for them to take cheap shots at the pro-life stance.
I would like to point out that it is so “common for pro-choicers to insist that pro-lifers only care about saving the unborn, and care nothing about it’s life after that” due to they never comment about that aspect. When you see a pro-choicer state that she wants to abort due to being unable to care for the child for [place reason here] you never see a pro-lifer retort with:
You get something more along the lines of what you have seen in this thread: “Killing a (insert your term of choice for the “unborn”) is wrong and you are a murder” I mean why offer solutions when you can say something like that. For my cite look back thru this thread.
Not true. This subject has come up many times before on the SDMB alone, and the pro-lifers here have routinely pointed out that there are thousands of pro-life agencies which DO care for the mother, then unborn child, and the fully born child.
In other words, your representation of the pro-life stance is still false.
Topical article in the New York Times. (free registration required)
Of course the bias just oozes out of the monitor screen…essentially saying that the “only” or “main” reason why many teens have a different perception on the abotion issue is that they lack a historical perspective.
[list=1][li]Illegal abortions risk the health of the mother as well as kill the baby. Indisputable.[/li][li]Illegal abortions will happen if laws are passed to ban abortion. Indisputable.[/li][li]Lives are not comparable quantitatively; i.e. - saving 3 million fetuses at the cost of thousands of matured (physically) women is not the place to begin a moral analysis of the issue. Assumption.[/li][li]Ends do not justify means. Assumption.[/li][li]A person’s stance on abortion should therefore be considered with respect to other features of the debate than pragmatic ones. Conclusion.[/list=1][list=1][]The State is not a person. Definition.[/li][li]The State is not like a person; i.e. - people are relatively constant over time whereas the state’s policies and outlook can swing every four years (in principle). Observation.[/li][li]Thus the moral actions and justificaiton of actions of a State can differ from those of its individual citizens. Inference.[/li][li]Thus it is possible to have a pragmatic State containing essentialist citizens which respectfully and disrespectfully disagree. Conclusion.[/list=1][list=A][]America’s democracy, as it exists right now, cannot have any other form than pragmatic justifications as all amendments to the Constitution and the body of laws beneath them are directly or indirectly appropriate to the citizenry’s (via their elected officials in a large majority of cases) collective opinion. Observation.[/li][li]The motivation for such legislation needn’t of course be pragmatic. Reminder.[/list=A]In summary: while an individual may be completely justified in talking about how abortion is wrong, as a matter of national or local policy they cannot ignore the practical effects of such policy that their morality demands. Neither can they ignore the fact that a significantly divided (wrt opinions) population of (even 100%) moral absolutists and essentialists will create, in this nation, a net pragmatic effect.[/li]
Argue abortion is wrong all you want, but I want to echo Bryan Ekers and say: put up the legislation, bub. (Of course I do not mean that I want a bill drafted by dopers, but neither, I think, can they ignore the topic how such a law would be implimented.)
Ah, but there’s the rub. I don’t consider a fetus to be a “human being,” or at least not until it’s far enough along in its development that it becomes viable outside the womb. Since I don’t categorize a (first-trimester) fetus as a human being, I don’t feel the right to life applies.
Well, Roe v. Wade was written in 1973. Prior to that decision, women who really really wanted abortions had to decide if it was worth seeking an illegal procedure that, frankly, carried a significant risk of death or injury. The wealthiest women could fly to Zurich (or anywhere else) where the procedure was legal and safe, but the poor and middle-class faced this quandry:
[ul][li]Abortion is illegal, so no reputable doctor will perform one, for fear of facing severe penalty.[/li][li]Therefore, if I want an abortion, I have to go to a person who is not a reputable doctor.[/li][li]People who are not reputable doctors don’t have access to proper equipment or training, making the procedure risky.[/li][li]Now I have to decide if I want to take that risk.[/li][/ul]
The chain of logic isn’t “It’s illegal, so I’d better not.” Rather, the chain is “It’s physically dangerous (because it is illegal), so I’d better not.” Even then, some women were willing to take the risks because they really ddn’t want a child. The timing of Roe v. Wade is such that it comes along when D&C abortion procedure was pretty well established and, when done by a competent gynecologist, extremely safe. There wasn’t any further justification to ban the procedure because it was dangerous (sidebar: it’s only in recent decades that “modern medicine” became safe enough that a person could undergo any invasive procedure and have a good chance of surviving it) and strictly moral arguments are always open to legal challenge.
If you advocate banning any activity simply because you feel it is immoral, you inevitably run into others who don’t share your particular view of morality and resent having your view imposed on them. Fortunately, the American legal system is not based on a biblical moral code, but on a framework that serves the needs of its citizens.
That said, if you dislike abortion, you still have legal recourse. If you want Roe v. Wade to be overturned (allowing individual states to set their own laws), you can vote for Presidents that will appoint certain Supreme Court justices. If you want a Federal ban, you can campaign for Federal laws and/or a Constitutional amendment. And, of course, you can freely express your opinions at any time, though doing so too close to an abortion clinic might get you charged with harassment or trespassing.
All told, though, nothing I’ve seen in this thread convinces me that your cause is just and as a result, I’ll be working to oppose your efforts (or I would be if I was American, but you get the point).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by erislover * [list=1][li]Illegal abortions risk the health of the mother as well as kill the baby. Indisputable.[/li][li]Illegal abortions will happen if laws are passed to ban abortion. Indisputable.[/li][/QUOTE]
Legal abortions also risk the health of the mother and the baby. Besides, do you really want beagledave, Bob Cos and me to trot out our old cites, showing that Planned Parenthood attested that the vast majority of illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians? Or that PP’s own Mary Calderone applauded their safety?
At the time of Roe v. Wade, abortion on demand was legal in several U.S. states: Colorado (1967), New York (1970), Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington.
If Roe v. Wade were reversed today, 16 states would allow pre-viability abortions on demand, and 10 additional states would allow abortions on demand past viability.
I want you to respond substantially to my post. If that includes dragging out cites to point out that abortions are not risk-free procedures, I know I won’t sleep any better at night. Of course, just because a person is a trained physician doesn’t mean I would (were I pregnant and female) want them performing an abortion on me. But perhaps that is a different matter. The more imporant one is that illegal activities that happen anyway are not subject to legislation designed to protect patients. Now, unless you care to put forth cites or make sweeping arguments that demonstrate that patient rights protected by law do not amount to satisfactory, partial, or any redress on behalf of the victim, the point pretty much goes by without sticking in anything.
So doctors performed abortions when abortions were illegal. And this is supposed to either promote your argument about banning them or take down my argument that we must address practical issues? In what way, exactly?
ANY surgery entails a degree of risk, especially when it involves waving a sharp implement inside somebody’s innards. That should be obvious. In addition, here is a list of some of the risks entailed in abortion procedures, both legal and illegal.
I see. So on the one hand, you are content to believe that illegal abortions are performed by back-alley butchers. Yet when the contrary is shown to be true – namely, that they are performed by trained, licensed physicians – you feel that the burden of proof rests on those who claim these physicians are not just unskilled hacks wielding scalpels and curretage tools. Good grief.
Look, if you’re going to claim that illegal abortions were terribly unsafe back then, then I think you should substantiate that claim. For our part, it is sufficient to show that (a) the vast majority of illegal abortions were performed by trained physicians, and (b) that even these legal abortions entail significant medical risks.
Besides, even if it were, this would not justify abortion in general. The vast majority of pregnancies are decidedly safe and incident-free. There are indeed some that are problematic, but even if abortion were justified in those cases, that would not justify abortion for pregnancies in general.
You said that illegal abortions risk the health of the mother and the baby. I concede that they do, in the sense that any abortion - legal or otherwise – entails risk. Contrary to popular belief, the overwhelming majority of these illegal abortions were not performed by back-alley butchers using coat hangers and rusty knives.
I further clarified my remark, JThunder, in my second post, indicating that the patients’ rights to obtain redress from malpractice do not exist for illegal activities. That a dnagerous procedure is not being done under public scrutiny does not exactly make it safer. And yes, I consider the existence of an economic safety net in response to failed procedures an increase in safety. And yes, I consider public scrutiny to be a factor in promoting and rewarding safe practices. In no way do I want to say that doctors who perform abortions legally or not are butchers.
Thanks for your response, Bob. I guess we are looking at this from two different perspectives. I’m leaving the morality up to each individual person and am only concerned that people aren’t legally forced to provide for other people. Call it ‘donate’, call it ‘give’, or call it a moral obligation (in regards to both the use of the room for children or the womb for fetuses) I still don’t think it should be a forced and legal requirement. In a way, the guardian does donate ‘room’ and ‘board’ to the child, since when it grows up and leaves home, the home returns to the guardian, but I think I may be missing your point.
The way it makes someone unequal, IMO, is it is forcing them to do something to help another. I agree that most people do want to help others, most mothers would donate their bone marrow to save their child, etc, and that helping others is an admirable and worthy thing, but making it a requirement to do so is another kettle of fish.
I guess my priority is on giving people as much autonomy as possible, in regards to their own body, while yours seems to be making sure people get ‘helped’ and no one suffers. Neither is better than the other, but they can be incompatible.
Flight, I’m sorry, I’m not sure exactly what your asking. If you could rephrase, I’ll do my best to answer.
If you really had compassion you would admit that you have no concept of what damage, distress and suffering would be caused to me by an unwanted pregnancy and you’d stop trying to make that decision for me.
It’s an insult, Bob, for you to even hint that you could possibly know what my level of distress would be. You don’t know me, you don’t know the first thing about my life or my health, and you certainly don’t have enough vested in it to be making decisions about what that justifies.
Then why can’t you accept that there could be things you don’t know about that make me more qualified to decide this than you are? You say you have compassion, but your desire to choose for someone else despite the fact that you don’t know what she’d have to go through in order to live out your choice contradicts that. You don’t even know what another person might have to suffer to live or die by your morals, but you’re still willing to inflict them on her?
How is that ‘compassion’?
Not good enough. I’d rather risk my life and use a coathanger than that.
Oh boy, a self-righteous one line lecture.
You do know that even surgical sterlization can fail, don’t you?
By the way, it’s pretty awful that you think that giving birth ought to be a punishment.
Oh but the thing is, JThunder, because it’s my body and my health I’m taking care of, I don’t have to justify the decisions to you or anyone else. The point where you go wrong is in thinking that any woman has to justify any part of the care of her health, physical mental or emotional to you or to anyone else.
The underlined conclusion would hold true if the number of abortions stayed the same. Since they claim ignorance on whether the total number of abortions increased or not after legalization, the conclusion is baseless. If the number of abortions actually increased as Bob Cos explained to us earlier then the number of deaths staying the same indicates either standard statistical variance or safer practices.
Thankfully,
This relies on the notion that abortion doctors were fly-by-nighters, which may or may not be true, but let us assume that it is. So what are we now to conclude? I am torn between “nothing”, “abortion is actually more dangerous now that it is legal”, “abortion may be safer but we don’t have confidence in the data”, and “abortion is safer legal than illegal”. I still lean toward the latter for reasons already explained.
Of course, the reason I even brought it up was to indicate that whether or not abortion was safer before it was legal in no way impacts those of us who do not utilize pragmatic considerations in making personal moral judgments.
Where does it say on that page? I found a lot of information on deaths from illegal abortions, and the numbers of pregnancy related deaths, but I didn’t find any information regarding recent deaths due to legal abortions.
Badtz, I provided two links. The first one pointed out that the statistics for maternal deaths include those for abortions. The second link refutes the oft-stated claim that childbirth is more dangerous than pregnancy, in addition to providing other rebuttals.