Compromising on abortion.

Okay. I’m not comfortable with people not being responsible either, but I’m even less comfortable with essentially saying, “Okay, you can kill four babies, but that’s it!!!”

Thing is, abortion is either okay or it’s not. If it’s okay, why is it only okay four times? What’s special about that fifth pregnancy? And if it’s *not *okay, why would you be okay with four of them?

While I agree with your final statement there, I think your point that “they do NOT oppose the use of birth control” is incorrect. They do oppose the use of birth control; certainly not in some cases, but in the considerable majority of cases they do. Like you say, it’s incorrect to say all abstinence programs teach that birth control should never be used, but it’s not incorrect to say that they oppose its use in more cases than they accept it.

  1. Make abortion illegal under all circumstances.
  2. Make the penalty for facilitating or acquiring an abortion a five-cent fine.
  3. Make enforcement of abortion laws fall under the strict and exclusive jurisdiction of the FBI.
  4. Fix the budget of the FBI Abortion Investigation Division at one dollar per year.

Done. Pro-lifers get the satisfaction of their morals written into law. Pro-choicers can carry on as before without concern for governmental interference.

This is an excellent and very interesting thread.

My two cents:

I have to say, as a campaigning pro-choicer, I’m really not comfortable with third trimester abortions. But as I’m unlikely ever to have one, I don’t think they should be banned. Rather, as several others have said, make first trimester abortion very easy to get. And free. You should be able to go into your pharmacy and get RU486 for a nominal admin cost.

Free contraception and advice in schools. More centres like the Brook Clinic in the UK, set up to give free impartial advice to young people about sex and contraceptives. Make these clinics anonymous so people can give a false name if they want, and also offer RU486 at them.

Free and confidential abortions at whatever age, without the need for parental consent/information. (Counselling to check for abuse/incest.)

A controversial one: give girls aged 13 a 5 year contraceptive jab, the same as the one against HPV recently introduced in the UK. I know there’s no way that would ever happen, but hell, I’d make it ten years from aged 11 if possible. :frowning:

I support a BAN on any laws or any person/s that attempt to interfere with any decision/s any woman makes with regards to a fetus growing inside her.

I support all laws giving women absolute control of their wombs, just like I have absolute control of my sperm.

When we make laws that allow individuals or governments any form of interference or control of a man’s reproductive system, then we can at that time regulate the womb.

Various possible compromises I could stomach:

Public funding for abortions to preserve mothers’ life or physical health, and maybe rape/incest, severe fetal deformity. None for 95% elective abortions.
(I support that already.)

Elective abortions open, not until the third trimester, but into the 2nd month.
The level of development in that third month makes it too close to 2nd trimester for me.

One elective abortion allowed with no penalty. The second one is followed by mandatory sterilization.

Exception for parental notification for minors granted upon counseling, and full legal & financial responsibility for medical complications being assumed by any & all adults involved in getting the girl the abortion.

Third-trimester elective abortions- sorry, that’s too close to just plain infanticide.
And it’s only a matter of time before that’ll be the next movement.

Wow. I knew this was an incredibly polarized issue, but I have to say I’m kind of astonished at how few people seem to be willing to make any meaningful concessions to the other side. Are that many people really for the all or nothing position, or has the issue become so poisoned that there’s no possibility of trust and good faith?

You also support mandatory sterilization of people who don’t donate, blood, a kidney, or tissues?

There is the possibility that there are some things where there really is no such thing as compromise. You can’t compromise to being halfway in a state, to sort of being a citizen, to something being kind of murder. If these are the terms of the debate, whether a fetus is a person or not, it is not obvious to me that there must, a priori, exist some kind of middle ground.

You find it astonishing that I’m not willing to make concessions regarding sovereignty over my own body? Really?

Do you not understand what most people, on either side, believe is at stake?

We agree on this. Pro-life and pro-choice come together in harmony. :slight_smile:

But I always did wonder why Clinton said he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare”. Now, if there isn’t anything wrong with it, and the fetus is not really a human life, then why the need for rare abortions? Have one a week if needed; what’s the “rare” part for?

I have 5 sisters and 4 brothers, and at a very early stage in my teens, my parents allowed us all to debate stuff like this out loud and in the open at home, in the living-room, bedroom, dinner table - wherever.

It became quite clear to me that it was a no compromise issue between those who believe rightly or wrongly that a woman or man has to have ultimate control over whatever resides in their body - whether it is a fetus or a human being.

Avoiding unwanted pregnancies. The fewer of those, the fewer abortions will be performed for non-medical reasons. I don’t think anyone wants to see more abortions–it’s a reaction to a preventable situation. Avoid pregnancies, and you avoid abortions. I think that’s the best-case scenario for both sides of this debate.

I honestly couldn’t concede on parental notification (having the capacity to consent means an automatic right to confidentiality).

FriarTed Mandatory sterilisation is cruel and unusual punishment and a human rights issue, and since it would only be applied to the woman, a seriously misogynistic piece of legislation.

I could compromise on a 24 week limit for purely elective terminations and some sort of mandatory nonjudgemental counselling, without any undue delay or further restrictions imposed.

You see, you make way too much sense for folks who believe that if it is not in the Bible, or referenced somewhere or somehow in the Bible, it has to be WRONG!!

T

I didn’t say “require all doctors to perform abortions when requested”. I said “require all hospitals to have doctors on their staff who WILL perform them”. They can have doctors on staff who are not wiling to perform abortions as long as they have other doctors who will step up to fill the gap.

The “plenty out there (non-objecting doctor)” is apparently not true in all areas of all states. This way we make sure that wherever there is a hospital, you can get an abortion.

That’s nice.

Because it’s an invasive procedure, with all the attendant risks? I’d bet we agree that there’s nothing wrong with having a D&C if you’re *not *pregnant, but would you recommend one a week?

I forsee some problems. We’d need to keep track of the parentage of all fetuses - in order that, for example, we don’t punish women who have two abortions but not punish a guy who’s responsible for dozens. That’s a lot of paternity tests and a lot of red tape.

And, speaking as a pro-choicer, I believe you’d end up with a lot of mothers finding themselves punished into having kids that they don’t want. One of the big difficulties of trying to think of suitable disincentive is that they run the risk of harming an innocent in the affair, too.

You’re accepting of abortion in cases of rape or incest; i’m assuming you’d not be including abortions due to those as either of the two on behalf of the raped party, but would it be included as either on the raper’s list?

You’re against medical insurance for abortions? Why?

Because prevention is almost always better than surgery. Even if we could always clear out our arteries, isn’t it better to eat healthily to make this unnecessary?

I’d want to set targets for the reduction of the number of abortions in this country, and work towards this in two ways. First, comprehensive sex education (abstinence, but not abstinence only) and easy to get birth control, perhaps federally subsidized. Second, I’d want to collect comprehensive information on what failed to cause the need for an abortion. Was it carelessness? Rape? Did birth control fail, and if so how? The information from this can be fed back to create more effective programs.

Because there is something wrong with it. It’s an invasive procedure, an unnecessary invasive procedure at that, it could cost you a wodge of cash and at the least time, and that they occur suggests a failure to use contraceptives which help with other things beyond reproduction. I don’t think there are many pro-choicers who see an actual abortion as a pleasant, happy thing, or even a neutral one.

Think of it like an appendectomy. There is nothing deemed morally wrong with removing and killing an appendix. Yet most people aren’t out getting theirs whipped out, despite that it would stop them getting appendicitis. Why? Because it’s an unpleasant procedure with quite a bit of recovery time. It’s still nothing good.