IMO, when it no longer needs the pregnant woman to survive. As long as it needs her co-operation and willingness to provide, it needs her continuing consent.
Its “personhood” means nothing to me. I see life as a continuum from conception to death, so brain waves or heart beats mean nothing to me.
Forgive me for coming in so late, but I wanted to address a point from the OP
I have an aquaintance whom I shall refer to as “Michelle”. At 18, she conceived to her delight and to her boyfriend’s surprise and dismay. He convinced her that they were in no position to have a child and talked her into having an abortion.
Two months later, Michelle conceived again. This time she refused to listen to his arguments, and so in time their daughter was born.
Michelle and her boyfriend decided to have another child. It took them three years, but eventually she conceived for the third time. A routine ultrasound at 18 weeks showed the baby was deformed due to a chromosone abnormality (Trisomy 13 I believe). Michelle decided not to carry the baby to term as it would not live anyway. She had the baby induced at 20 weeks, thus terminating that pregnancy.
Because it had taken them three years to conceive that baby, Michelle was surprised to find she had conceived a fourth time just three months later. This time she had a normal pregnancy and in the end gave birth to a healthy baby girl.
Now, with regards to the quoted portion of the OP… if Michelle had not aborted two of her children, the other two would never have been born as they were both conceived within 9 months of their mother’s previous conception. The descendants of the living children will only be born because of their grandmother’s decision to terminate her other pregnancies. In the case of the third pregnancy, if she had not decided that she would not terminate then she would have (unknowingly) prevented her youngest daughter’s birth and descendants in favour of a child who could not have lived outside the womb and therefore would never have had children of her own. This raises the question - how do we know that her first pregnancy would have gone to term and produced a healthy child? We don’t. That other fetus could have been naturally miscarried or suffered the same genetic disorder that the third one suffered from. Trying to predict what could and could not have happened is impossible; all that is clear from this case is that the two living children would not be here today if their mother had not terminated her other pregnancies.
Toosh!
And do you realize that since I have not gotten around to bearing any chilluns and have no intention of doing so, I could potentially, hypothetically, possibly be preventing the birth of a scientist who could cure every disease?
Oh, well.
Isn’t this just the same-old same-old? Whether a fetus is a potential human or a real live person doesn’t matter. What entity has the right to force a woman to surrender her womb to it until it’s born? That’s the main draw of abortion rights. All of your talk about “a fetus left to its natural devices” seems to neatly skirt the fact that it can’t be left to its own devices; it requires a willing host. And I bet a million that The_Broken_Column isn’t equipped to ever be able to make any personal choices about abortions.
That’s all nice and fair, but nature just wasn’t set up fairly in the reproductive field. A woman can birth a child and a man can’t, and that’s that. That means all decisions to abort naturally belong soley to women by the simple virtue that only women would ever be carrying a fetus to abort.
Katharine Hepburn once asked “If religious groups truly believe life begins at conception then why don’t they hold funerals for miscarriages?” I’ve always thought it an excellent question, since the fetus is no different than a baby and a baby would most certainly be buried with full rites.
Of course since the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriage or spontaneous abortion the churches would have little time to do anything else.
Dear all:
The silliest thing about the “future person” idea is that the future is darned uncertain. Plenty of fetuses, zygotes, gastrulas, blastulas etc. all croak long before women have any chance of exerting their “free will” (another can of worms) to extinguish them. Fetuses etc. do NOT have “an excellent chance of becoming a person”. Their chances of surviving past conception but until the first week of gestation is about 10-30%. Their chances get a bit better after the first month of gestation but they still suck until month three. Even so, plenty of room for kicking the bucket. The point is that their “potential” is pretty limited. And let’s not forget what the chances were of surviving childbirth itself were, as few as 75 to 100 years ago. Only with the advent of modern medicine could this be problematic. Women of 100 years ago were so well-acquainted with infant mortality that they would almost certainly have thought less of hurrying it along. Kids dying was a way of life which just isn’t as popular these days.
What’s more, infanticide (as in a healthy free-living kid getting its neck snapped) has been a popular method of birth control for thousands of years. It’s still quite popular in many parts of the world and nobody frowns upon it, because kids that little just aren’t people yet in the minds of the neck-snappers (for example if they haven’t been properly named, as was the case in Catholicism until not long ago - unbaptised babies weren’t quite people and different religious laws pertained to them when they died).
This is to say nothing of the killing of other adults. Westerners are awfully squeamish about killing, or even the mention of killing (at least when having cocktails with other Westerners), but it ain’t always true of the rest of the world, is isn’t true with us now (we ARE at war) and it certainly wasn’t true of anybody in the past. But killing other people is viewed very differently by many other cultures and in many cases is considered acceptable under a variety of circumstances. Your choices, if you were the object of homicidal intentions, are to either think on your feet or get dead. And let’s get serious. If you mess with anybody seriously enough, they’re going to think about killing you. Mess a little more, and they just might do it. And nobody messes with you like little kids. They’re expensive. They’re noisy. They’re dirty. They’re inconvenient. They usually end up disappointing you. It’s a massive investment without much chance of payoff.
Killing other people in general is human. It’s what we do best. We are a violent bunch. We have laws and regulations to help us all get along with each other, but that’s just shellac. If we can get away with doing something for ourselves without penalty, we’ll do it. Basically the question at issue is - are fetuses going to gang up on us at some point in the future and demand recompense for the extinguishing of their compatriots? No. Hence, humankind has NO VESTED INTEREST in saving fetuses. Slaves and other abused groups always had the potential to rise up against their oppressors, so to some extent you had to watch your step. But not clumps of undifferentiated cells. We’ve got those buggers covered.
Unlike squeamish folk who populate the Starbucks-drinking world, I think abortions are great - they’re the hallmark of an advanced society. If you want to be nice and civilized, you do your killing clean and right out in the open, just like lethal injections. Somebody’s messing with you in a very serious way? Well, welcome to humanity, where we solve problems with a violent intelligence. That fetus is messing with that woman big time, it just doesn’t know it yet. The fetus isn’t going to complain. The woman can efficiently terminate the pregnancy. So she sometimes does. She’s got 99% percent of the burden bringing this kid into the world. My boyfriend, who was married before and has grown kids, admitted that even though he lived with his wife and family during their developmental years, he only contributed perhaps 5% of the total childrearing calories. And his kids count him as a superawesome, involved dad. Women bear the brunt of kids. If they come down with a bad case of Kid, they need to take a pill.
Nobody’s saying “don’t kill”. Even people who say “don’t kill” don’t really mean it, or they mean it only provisionally (like our friend in the opening line when s/he mentions war being the only OK way to kill someone…why?). Let’s all get a little more comfortable with who we are. A mere century ago, people would have laughed at our pansy fastidiousness. The Western world needs to get tough and get real.
I think the true hallmark of an advanced society would be one that didn’t have such a heavy reliance on abortion. Aborting an unwanted fetus means that someone was unwise enough to allow herself to become pregnant, to begin with. It is an indication of a failure. Birth control is not rocket science. It’s pretty reliable and even people with low IQ’s can usually grasp the concept. Is it better to clean up a mess or not to make one to start with? I found most of your post somewhat disgusting, but you are as entitled to your opinion as I am to my disgust. Our concept of getting real is very different. The hallmark of an advanced society would be preventing it’s various problems, rather than solving them after they happen.
As you say, disgust is your right just like my opinion is mine, but as for your argument, it’s been addressed pretty thoroughly above. “Getting pregnant” is no more or less “wise” or “irresponsible” than having sex. It’s only a “failure” if you’re unable to do anything about the consequences. You’re right that birth control is not rocket science - but neither are abortions, which as I pointed out fall perfectly well under the category of “birth control”. For many people, so does infanticide. Sure, prevention is always easier than problem solving after the fact, and 99 times out of 100 the prevention works. For the other 1%, you need alternative recourse.
As for the messiness factor, as I understand it abortions are a lot more fun than they used to be. Gone are the days when women in stirrups had to endure dilation and cutterage (today this only takes place in very late-stage abortions). Nowadays, an intelligent woman who has no problem coming to a decision about the fate of her undifferentiated cells need only cope with a quick shot in the patootie if she catches her pregnancy before she’s 8 weeks or so along. A few days later, she gets her period. How totally sweet is that? How many wretched women of the past would have given their eyeteeth even for the messy kind?
It’s important to employ a little cultural relativism here and to take a long hard look at our own society. People freak at the idea of infanticide because in our culture, babies are people. Also, they’re very cute and do all manner of adorable things, and I for one couldn’t snap a baby’s neck for a billion dollars. But the fact remains that there are people in Indonesia who do it for about fifty cents, because they feel differently about “personhood”. And after all, where’s the difference, really, between abortion and infanticide? Full gestation kids still lack most of the hallmarks of humanity. They can’t use language. They can’t walk bipedally. Why draw any lines at all?
My point was that people kill one another in a hundred different ways for a hundred different reasons, and they’ve been doing so for hundreds of thousands of years. Abortion is just another way in which they do it. It’s no more or less “disgusting” than any other sort of killing. Modern Western culture is an abnormality in that we are used to things being super safe and squeaky clean. Such luxury is a recent phenomenon, and only for a few.
You may not have realized it, but I was not arguing against abortion. I simply disagreed that it is an indication of an advanced society.
Abortion is not the desired outcome of sex, so to become pregnant is a failure. If I wanted to have sex and I also wanted to have an abortion afterwards, then the resulting pregnancy and abortion would fall right in with my plans. If I do not want to get pregnant and have an abortion and this happens anyway, then I have failured to prevent the need for an abortion. I am not talking about all circumstances. When a woman values and respects herself and her lifestyle, she will normally do her best to take care of herself and protect her future. If she doesn’t, she has failed to place enough value on herself. I think sex is great, but it would be pretty much a personal disaster if I got pregnant now. That means doing all I can to see that a pregnancy doesn’t happen. Be realistic. The woman that doesn’t act responsibly usually beats herself up for her careless actions. This is not a judgment on my part, it is reality. If you screw up and it catches up with you, it is NOT a neutral occasion. It is a failure that requires another not so desireable action to correct it.
Wow, do you really believe that those 1.3 million women all protected themselves and their birth control failed or did many of them fail to protect themselves.
This is a pretty naive assessment. There are a lot of women who get abortions due to necessity, finances, etc. who have a tough time coping with the feelings they have afterwards. Piece of cake for some and not for others. Women are not all the same.
Somehow your comparisons with other cultures that don’t value human life, don’t convince me that it is normal, acceptable or a good thing. There are people everywhere that can kill with no remorse, so what? That makes it okay?
I’m not comparing abortion to killing, even though I am strongly pro-life. I’m not willing to decide for someone else what they should do and what label to put on it. I just strongly disagree that abortion is one of our great advances in civilization or anything to be taken lightly. There is a difference between preventing a life and ending one. I didn’t say that abortion was disgusting. I thought your casual disregard for human life in general was. There are a lot of different things that people do and have been doing for many thousands of years that are not beneficial or desirable for society. Seems to me like an advanced society would want to limit those things as much as possible.
Nobody is saying that abortions are gleeful experiences, but failure is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, you have your more and less desirable methods of birth control. I’d start with contraception as the most desirable, abortion as the next most desirable and with infanticide as the least desirable. I’m going to leave out abstinence entirely, since as we all know it is the LEAST effective form of birth control known to humanity. Nobody without a tumor in their hypothalamus could keep that up for very long. So sure, you do what you can to minimize the pain, expense, and perhaps moral problems associated with abortions. But when push comes to shove, it’s a societal necessity.
There are women who get carried away in the heat of the moment, there are women who think they might want children and then change their minds, there are women who don’t know how to use birth control or are discouraged from doing so by their partners. Then, some of them have a contraceptive malfunction. Some may do a bit of reasoning, like, well, maybe having sex right now may lead to pregnancy, but if so, I’ll know what to do. Some may feel bad about it the abortion, some may feel great. The point is that the option is there for those who feel it appropriate in their own given circumstances, and that is a wonderful thing.
As for other cultures, to say they don’t value human life is closed-minded. They simply define “human life” as something different than you do. Believe it or not, there are quite a few individuals who would agree that killing under circumstances Americans would call “murder” is normal, acceptable and a good thing. Americans currently believe that killing Arabs is a good thing. That there are people everywhere that can kill with no remorse is quite true. But some are remorseless because they are psychos, and some are remorseless because they believed they were in the right, whether or not you happen to agree. There is no one “morality” that all people believe in, except survival. Some of us just happen to be better at it than others.
There is no such thing as morality as divorced from human nature - at least, no achievable one.
Anyway, abortion itself isn’t a “great advance” in our society. Safe, legal abortions are. People have been having abortions for thousands of years via some reliable and some unreliable methods. Feel free to want to convince women to take the less inconvenient method of condom use or birth control pills, but if that fails, well, abortion starts to look pretty good when you consider the alternative.
True. Only those people who wish they weren’t pregnant and who wish they didn’t have to get an abortion, have to deal with their failure to prevent a pregnancy. 
Kind of cute that you want to leave out abstinence, which for some is a viable form of birth control and leave in infanticide; which is illegal in 52 states. Although I agree that abstinance is not particularly desirable, it really is the MOST effective form of birth control, when used properly. And no jail time is involved. Win-win. I would agree that it’s not very practical for most people though.
Sorry, I can’t agree that it’s a wonderful thing. After all, that too is in the eye of the beholder. Somebody else’s choices are not my business, when they’re legal, so I’ll refrain from comments about much stupidity is involved in things like letting your partner dictate contraception choices or not knowing how to use contraception. As to the latter, I wonder what that poor ignorant soul did when she first got her period, if she can’t figure out something as complicated as a condom. Sorry, I didn’t refrain very successfully. Lame excuses aside, it is their business, as long as I’m not required to fund it.
You can play with words all you want, but the term human life is pretty descriptive and there’s not near as much variation or room for justification as you would like to believe. Having personal values that aren’t cultural, but are based on humanism is not being close-minded. I don’t happen to see countries or races nearly as clearly as I just see other people, other human life.
Oh please, don’t make such huge generalizations. Many of us are appalled by killing Arabs or any other race of people who are not attacking us personally. The cost of this war in human lives is a tragedy that has nothing to do with what race the dead are. I cry for their dead, too. I’m sure I’m not alone.
Odd that you admit that survival is basically a universal desire, but don’t see that commonality as any sort of standard. If I wish to survive and I know that most other humans have that same wish, drive or desire; shouldn’t that have some influence on the human value system, above and beyond all the excuses for killing that people come up with. I guess I don’t see it as close-minded to take the one thing that almost all humans agree on and decide what is normal, acceptable and a good thing, from that universal desire.
I agree.
I’ll never see legal abortion as a “great advance” in our society, when it is so over-utilized and so often takes the place of personal responsibility. I see it as a sad event, sometimes a neutral event. When all other options fail or we fail to utilize them, that’s when abortion is utilized. Hard for me to see that as some sort of success. My opinion only, though.
Come now, abstinence is almost entirely ineffective. How many people end up dying virgins at 90 in this day and age? How many supposedly celibate individuals weren’t really? How many people teenagers swear they’re going to wait for marriage, and then swoon one day for somebody cute and forget their vow? Abstinence as a lifeway is a joke, and a sad state of affairs if that’s the only way you can prevent pregnancy. It cuts off one of the greatest joys of being human, and for what? To safely scrub away ANY chance of something bad MAYBE happening? The only real motive I can see for abstaining is because it can make sex more fun in the end, if you haven’t had it in awhile.
“Allowing” your partner to make contraceptive choices or ignorance of how to use contraception is not inherently “stupid”. There are millions of women in Africa, Asia, and right next door who would be beaten for suggesting the use of a condom. Who have never seen one before in their lives.
It is also quite narrow to claim that everyone everywhere values human life like we do, or even just about everyone. That isn’t true. Your “personal values”, as you call them, are culturally motivated whether you know it or not, and the term “human life” alone carries no inherent meaning other than to indicate a member of our species who is still kicking. You were born and raised in a culture that believes that ALL human life is equally important. But there are cultures that do not agree, and many of them endorse infanticide. Actually, we as Americans don’t precisely agree entirely, either. We kill murderers. We kill Arabs (well, some of us anyway - and my previous statement wasn’t meant to be categorical). We kill people who break into our houses and try to kill us. We can even legally kill people who we witness committing a felony. And yes, we kill fetuses, zygotes, blastulas, etc. etc.
Among humans, selection can definitely operate socioculturally. The fundamental point of these ideas, upon which countless “values” and “personal belief systems” are based, is: this individual is inhibiting our ability to gain/keep access to resources. And we have to stop him to protect ourselves. What is burdensome, inconvenient or dangerous is culturally contextual, which is why who we kill varies from culture to culture.
But we aren’t really talking about people in other cultures or people in the past. That was just a bit of perspective. We’re talking about women who have sex because they feel like it, without protection of any kind, thinking, “I’ll just have an abortion later if things don’t go as planned.” In this sense they aren’t failing at all, they’re just taking advantage of plan B. It’s being quite responsible to take care of matters at any point before it becomes a problem for you. The beauty of abortion law is that a woman who engages in sex, usually considered the most pleasurable and intimate act two people can share, doesn’t have to necessarily raise a child as a consequence. THAT would be the real failure. How often in any individual’s life to they have sex in order to cause a pregnancy?
The civilized nature of abortion is that the woman remains free to pursue her own life aims instead of being forced into a life of maternal servitude which she does not desire. She is like an individual who kills an intruder breaking into her house. Both the fetus and the intruder are uninvited. Both can destroy the woman’s life, take everything she has, and leave her with nothing. The woman has a right to defend herself. That society agrees with her is a major step forward. It acknowledges how hard it is to raise children, and how burdensome and expensive it can be. It recognizes our population problem and our problem with bad parenting and child abuse. Nobody should have to live that way.
Try and keep up now. You didn’t get my point. Abstinence is 100% effective, but I did say it’s not practical for most people. I abstained for two years once, because there just wasn’t anyone I cared enough about to do it with. I guess I saw that as a good motive. I did not go crazy or start attacking school boys either. I’m not suggesting it. It is a better plan than going to jail for infanticide, although I’m sure you’d get plenty of sex there.
I mistakenly thought we were talking about the U.S. or similar type countries. How many women in Africa have the option of getting a safe abortion? I was talking about the woman here who’s boyfriend “doesn’t like the way it feels”. He should have to have something scraped out of his body, just to get perspective on what’s important. It’s a hollow victory if women are allowed the freedom to decide whether or not to carry a baby to term, but allow themselves to be denied the freedom to prevent themselves from having to go through a surgical procedure.
I didn’t claim that. You aren’t paying much attention, are you?
I never denied that.
I’m not sure what your point is here. You are just stating the obvious again. Cultural mores are not always consistent with secular humanism. It’s a shame, but it’s just a fact.
That mindset is their right, but I honestly think that most of those women that you’re talking about are that truly make this choice are lacking in self-esteem and even logic. Still their right though. An abortion does have some risk and even the morning after pill carries a small amount of risk.
Abortion: Risks: The risks for any anesthesia are: Reactions to medications, Problems breathing, The risks for any surgery are: Bleeding, Infection, Additional risks of surgical abortion include:
Excessive bleeding, Infection of the uterus, Infection of the fallopian tubes (which can cause scarring and interfere with fertility (infertility), Puncture (perforation) of the uterus, or damage to the cervix (rare), Emotional or psychological distress, The risks of abortion using medication include: Prolonged bleeding, Incomplete abortion necessitating a surgical abortion, Nausea, Vomiting, Diarrhea, Pain .
So explain to me again why a woman who is intelligent and logical would shrug her shoulders and choose Plan B?
Abortion law should be for women who have tried to prevent pregnancy and failed. It should not be backup birth control for idiots. Just my opinion though.
Suggestion: Deadbolts and reliable, consciensious birth control. Don’t wait til the intruder gets in. Still not rocket science.
Actually, I’m not sure that “society” really does agree. At least not the majority. And there is a very high number of those that do agree that think 12 weeks should be the cut off for legal abortion. We did not vote on this issue and if we had in 1972, it would not have been made law at that time. I’m not disagreeing with the way it was decided, though. I don’t think basic human rights should be a majority vote issue. I’m still not arguing with you that abortion should not be legal. I never was. I wish the necessity for it didn’t exist, but since that will never happen; I can only wish that it’s utilization could be on more of an emergency basis. It is not that hard in the U.S. to prevent unwanted pregnancy before abortion becomes a necessity. We need to raise our daughters with more self-esteem and power, so they will be pro-active in their lives, rather than reactive. Open-heart surgery is a great and wonderful thing, too, but still not as desirable as avoiding the necessity of it.
I think the point here is that we fundamentally disagree about what is more important: human sexuality or prudence. For those with a low to moderate sex drive (abstaining for 2 years is pretty good evidence that you fall into this category) perhaps what is to some an extremely pleasurable expression of sincere emotion is just a way to spend a dull 10 minutes to you. I could go into arguing with you about the little criticisms you mention (like the fact that abstinence is ineffective if it is so impractical that most people cannot keep it up) but it seems it comes down to this.
To me, sexuality is the greatest gift afforded to human beings. I’ve experienced the pleasure of intellectual triumph in my scientific endeavors, the pleasure of doing the right thing and being rewarded for it, the pleasure of self-denial and the pleasure of long-term friendships, but nothing comes anywhere close to the pleasure of sex.
Women are designed to be the most proceptive when they’re ovulating. Since it is clear that you are a woman, pay attention during your cycle and see if you notice a difference in how often you look at men, feel sexually motivated, talk to men “out of the blue” or actually engage in sexual behavior midcycle as opposed to other times. The hormones that are kicking during the periovulatory and ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle (days 6-14) encourage feelings of sexual interest. By day 11 or 12, these feelings can be quite strong. It is no surprise, evolutionary forces being what they are, that these same hormones help release the egg from the ovary, making this the period at which women are also most likely to become pregnant.
So we have women who are designed to want sex the most at the time when they are most likely to become pregnant. But women don’t necessarily want to have the children that evolutionary forces are trying to make them have. They want the pleasure, which is intense and the yearning is great. Also, sexuality serves a function between a man and a woman beyond reproduction; it releases a hormone into the bloodstream that reduces stress and cements the bonds between them. This hormone is called oxytocin.
So what is a poor human to do? We come up with birth control methods to help. There are millions of people who don’t even believe it’s OK to use birth control, because they believe that sex should only be for reproduction, not for joy. The arguments against abortion are just an extension of this. There is very little fundamental difference between an egg and a sperm as separate gametes, and and the fertilized egg that results as they unite. There is little difference between this fertilized egg and a blastula. There is little difference between the blastula and the embryo. There is little difference between an embryo and a fetus, and little difference between a fetus and a newborn. It’s all just steps along a continuum. An egg, technically, is half a life. You kill half of a potential person every time your egg dies on day 16 or so. Men kill millions of half-lives whenever they ejaculate, be it into a reproductive tract or elsewhere. The point is that we are “killing” anyway. An abortion is an expensive, slightly messy, slightly uncomfortable method of birth control. It is not morally distinct from condom use.
The important thing is that women can decide whether they want to be burdened with offspring or not. It is liberating and beautiful that we can now have the act of sex without fearing being saddled with an infant we do not want. Actually, what you are suggesting is that we PUNISH women for caring more about sexuality than they do about the possibility that they might have to have abortions if they don’t really watch their step. You are suggesting that we deny abortions, i.e., force parenthood, onto to women who merely had reproductive accidents due to putting aside their prudence for a moment and being human, following their natural inclinations. This seems cruel.
You say that you are a secular humanist, but it seems you have forgotten one of the most important things about being a human being - and that is our ability to appreciate physical love between the sexes. It seems you reject this as relevant, but in the end, to most of us anyway, it is the most relevant thing on Earth. It is certainly part of the visceral, raw experience of life, and distinct from the carefully considered planning that comprises other aspects of existence. We cannot plan everything, and some things are best unplanned.
By the above logic:
coma = no suffering = no victim
So, if someone is in a coma, I can just go and kill them with no problem?
Or, if someone is under general anaesthesia, I can kill them, since they will not suffer?
Come on, the “rape victim” thing has been used so many times, just to get sympathy, but in fact over 1 million abortions are performed every year in the US. Are all those rape cases? If the law said “no abortions except for rape cases and risk to the mother’s life” would you agree to that?
I assume not, so don’t hide behind the rape issue.
I got such a good laugh out of your assessment of me and my own personal sexuality. I am not being sarcastic either. It was great fun. I can’t stop giggling. I’m not going to go into what any of your statements tell me about you, because there’s no point and they are after-all based only on a few internet statements. I will address my low sexuality, but it’s hard to answer it seriously while I’m still cracking up. Okay, for me, sharing my body with a partner is more involved than just “getting off”. I am one of those people that needs an emotional connection, mutual respect and well, we’ll just call it a relationship. During those two years, I met no one that fit these requirements and since I had other priorities that I considered more important at the time, I wasn’t trying to. Lest you think my human sexuality is or was in danger of becoming extinct, I will assure you that if I need to express that side of myself badly enough, I have been fairly proficient at taking care of that myself for many years now. Yep sweetie, rather than trying to convince myself to have what you consider extremely pleasurable expressions of sincere emotion, with various men who I had no desire to have a real relationship with, I masturbated. Not the ideal situation for life, but perfectly satisfactory for that period of my life. You seem slightly naive for a biologist.
To me, sexuality combined with love is the greatest gift afforded to human beings. I am only speaking for myself, but I was raised with a lot of love and lucky enough to grow up with great self-esteem. My self-respect is part of the strength and power I feel as a woman. I never felt inclined to give it away for a sexual encounter. Putting my health and well-being at risk for sex was never my style. After several decades of wonderful loving sexual expression behind me, I still don’t feel like I missed anything by abstaining when the right level of emotions weren’t there. That was my own personal choice and prudence is an indication of good self-esteem, not low sexuality.
Now you’re making me laugh again. You’re going to teach me about my body and it’s responses. Newsflash, I know women who never feel sexual desire, women who feel it sometimes and women who have high sex drives. We are driven to some extent by our internal biology, but even more so by our upbringing. How your own mother felt about sex has a huge influence on your sexuality. It is not set in stone, but it is a pretty big factor. My mother was a wonderful example and my husband keeps me on day 12 for most of the month. :eek:
I’ll pass on this part of the biology lesson. I don’t think my stomach muscles can take much more uncontrollable laughter.
I never suggested that we deny abortions. I’m suggesting that women care more about themselves and their bodies. I’m not sure I understand why you think it’s a bad thing for a woman to do a better job at protecting herself? Why is that offensive? Read back and you’ll see I never suggested that anyone be forced to bear a child. We are not animals though. We have been gifted with an advanced cognitive process and you are trying to make it seem like women don’t have the ability to access this, depending on where they are in their cycle. Kind of insulting, don’t you think?
I have at no time said that physical love was not important. Your comprehension skills could use a bit of work though. One of those raw, visceral experiences of life lasts for a few hours and can leave you with a lot more than some steamy memories. Yes, by your standards, a baby is easily disposed of. Too bad herpes and aids aren’t as accomodating. The only thing I have every really suggested is that women care more about themselves, protect themselves better. Birth control and abortion have given women more options and also given them the freedom to be more careless. I just don’t agree that careless is a more desirable trait than it ever was. I’m getting older and that probably affects my perspective a lot, but it also means that I’ve seen the results carelessness brings and the solutions are not all as neat and tidy as you would like to believe they are.
Thanks for the laugh. It was great. Almost a raw, visceral experience. 
I am glad that your own sexuality is so delightful to you. Indeed we are animals, contra your statement below. We act, react, and conclude on the basis of both biology and social stimuli. No argument there, in fact it’s what I’ve been trying to convey all along. But then there is no need for either of us to be flippant, the facts speak for themselves.
It is misguided to deny that the female human sexual response is (in part) biological in nature. When tested for endogenous urinary hormones like estrogen and lutenizing hormone (a rise in which signified ovulation), most women preferred to copulate around the time of ovulation, i.e., they initiated sexual encounters rather than merely submitting to those of the men in their lives at that time. When trying to avoid pregnancy, however, they preferred Sunday mornings, oddly enough. When asked why, they said they were too busy during the week. So naturally, people are affected by social stimuli too. This is no less a part of human nature than endogenous hormones - we are social animals. But to neglect the overwhelming evidence that the sexual interest of human women responds to hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle is not scientifically responsible.
Be honest with yourself, even if you do not care to be honest with me. If during the course of your life there had been a hidden camera monitoring you at all times that had a feed into a scientific laboratory wherein specialists were recording your sexual behavior with your husband and whoever else - who initiated, whether you were on birth control pills or what other methods you were using, whether climax was reached by one or both parties, throughout the passing years of your life under a variety of circumstances - do you honestly think they would fail to find a pattern in your conduct? And if not, if you happen to be exceptional in some way, well, that is interesting - but it doesn’t mean we should toss the whole idea that proceptivity in higher primates is linked to certain hormonal conditions. It probably means we need to study you and others like you to understand why a little bit better.
I do not find any careful analysis of human behavior to be “insulting”, but that may be because I do careful analyses of human behavior all the time as part of my work. I am detached from things due to habituation that others may still find odd. But if they did it every day it wouldn’t seem so very odd to them either. As for my cross-cultural perspective, there are so many good anthropological accounts of the moral beliefs of people in other cultures that there’s no excuse for claiming that numerous very real alternatives to our own belief system don’t exist.
What you said previously was that legal abortions should be for women who tried to prevent pregnancy and failed, by which I gather you mean those women who had a mishap with their birth control method. The logical conclusion of this is that women who became pregnant due to carelessness alone should be denied abortion.
I too think that women should try to avoid having abortions, if they can. Sure, they should all try to protect themselves from both pregnancy and disease, and no one would argue that throwing caution to the winds entirely is a good idea. If a woman had six abortions in two years, I’d think she was being pretty careless. I think, as I have said before, that it is expensive and potentially scary to have an abortion. As you say, there can be complications. Walking into an abortion clinic through a picket line of pro lifers doesn’t sound like much fun either. But a woman who has high self-esteem and cares about her body and future knows when it’s time to do it anyway. I am sure that plenty of smart, independent women have abortions. Were they “careless”? Perhaps. But accidents do happen - and if it happened to you, based on your first email in which you stated that a pregnancy would be a personal disaster for you right now, you could close your eyes and thank your lucky stars that we live in a country where you could take care of that unpleasantry safely and legally - even if you decided against it.
The only alternative to abortion is forced birth, which is a serious can of ethical worms. You cannot deny a woman an abortion - for whatever reason she happened to become pregnant (and how would you ever know for sure?) - without forcing her to have a child she does not want, whether she raises it or gives it away to some other family in an adoption process. What I find offensive is the idea that a woman should be given less consideration for her future than a fetus. It concerns me that your view of women as strong, independent individuals who should have high self-esteem may not be compatible with your stance that they should be forced into maternity clothes before they are ready, for any reason, at great detriment to their careers, their love lives, their emotional futures, and their other interests. But again, if you were thinking of some third way of handling it - by this I mean an alternative to a pregnant woman either aborting or giving birth - I would be very interested to hear what that is.
Let’s put aside practical problems with your desire to make abortions legal only in the event of “emergency” contraception failing (such as what would legally constitute “responsible” use of a contraceptive or what contraceptive devices would be considered acceptably responsible, and how we would test to see if they were used correctly or not, if at all). Let’s envision a world in which you have what you want - an America in which somehow we were able to tell the difference between women who got pregnant due to imprudence/carelessness/stupidity and those who just had a condom break. Let’s say we were able to draw up a legal document allowing abortions for the latter but not the former.
What do you think members of the former group would do? Do you think that they would nurse and curse simultaneously, despising the sex drive that brought them to such a state? Do you think they would develop a callous around their feelings to protect themselves from self-hatred, slowly growing to despise and condemn their own nature? Do you think they would be disillusioned and regretful, having lost some hopes and dreams for a moment of very human passion? Do you think they would settle down into complacency, accepting their lots and forgetting all their prior ambitions for a selfless life of motherhood, adopting an idealogy based on “bad things happen to me” rather than “I can do good things?” I DO. I think they would. And I find THAT abominable, when a woman is intelligent and has the potential to do so much more. That is why the outlet of abortion is so instrumental to a civilized society that respects women and their ability to have a future of their OWN - not just a future dedicated to a child they never wanted to have in the first place.
I know you are saying that you are not “against” abortion. But you have also referred to yourself as “strongly pro-life”. You have called some of the women who have had abortions stupid, idiots, and suggested that they had low self-esteem. You have said that my disregard for human life was disgusting. But a woman is an adult, a real person, who has a good chance of surviving well into her seventies in this nation. Having things “your way” would destroy whatever ambitions she might have had in order to punish her for being a human being. I have enough respect for human life to consider this an act of violence against women.
I know your position now is that you just wish people would be more careful. OK, that’s fine, let’s all be a little bit more careful, let’s not just have bland afternoon sex with strangers on 128th street and then say whoops at the abortion clinic. But let’s not shackle women for being women, with feelings like lust and passion to account for that may influence their behavior to a great extent. Let’s not shrug off how important sexuality is to most people and what a good thing it is for women that they have the option to abort a fetus if they do not want to endure a pregnancy. Let’s not regret it when it’s a necessity, but breathe a sigh of relief that the one necessity there didn’t blossom and branch into a million more down the road. Let’s count ourselves ahead in the sense that we still have one intelligent woman with enough self-esteem to devote her life to the pursuit of her own happiness - which is the meaning of feminism.
You know what I meant by we’re not animals. We do have a more advanced sense of consequences than our family pet does. Hard not to be flippant when you’re giving me biology lessons. Sorry. 
And now, you’re teaching biology 101. If you want me to take you seriously, you’re going to have to quit the lessons. I didn’t deny that we have biological responses and I would hate to be considered scientifically irresponsible.
I don’t know if they would find a pattern or not unless it was in whether I had one orgasm or four and maybe it is cycle related, who knows. For me it usually seems to be more tied into when my husband walks in the door after work. He’s pretty cute. I won’t be available for study though. I’m kind of shy about doing that in front of more than one person. :eek: Proceptivity does not turn off cognitive function, does it?
I did not claim that alternative belief systems don’t exist. I just don’t see them as any sort of justification for our own behaviour. I don’t think analysis of human behaviour is insulting. What seems insulting is the premise that we cannot control that behaviour when necessary. I don’t lack compassion, but I guess I am able to step back and analyze actions and consequences, even at mid-cycle. And that is not a lack of passion or lust either. It is simply being able to decide if short term pleasure is worth whatever consequences could arise from it.
That’s not what I meant. I was only talking about what should be taking place. Abortion should be a lot more rare and should be utilized when all else fails.
A woman with high self-esteem will seldom find herself in that position, but if she does, then her choices are up to her. As for myself, even though a pregnancy would be a personal disaster, I would have the baby and love it with all my heart. I would cope with the “personal disaster” part of it and be fine. I am too old, but my mother was 72 when she went through menopause, so odds are I could have at least twenty-five more fertile years. The real disastrous part would be the displeasure my husband would feel. Particularly since he’s had a vasectomy.
I think you lost focus again. I never suggested a woman be forced to give birth. The alternatives are there long before a pregnancy happens. I only suggested that whenever possible they avoid being in that position. You may argue that it’s their right to be careless and have as many abortions as they would like. I’m arguing that this is not good for a woman and her strength and self-esteem should make it unnecessary, except in the most drastic circumstances.
I don’t even need to go here since I have not made this argument. I did not recommend a change in abortion law.
I am personally completely pro-life. But I also have no right to determine someone elses human rights, with my own beliefs. I referred to careless behaviour as stupid and idotic and I do think it indicates low self-esteem. If I actually called anyone a name, I apologize. I still maintain that someone who cares about herself as she should will probably never find herself in the position of needing an abortion, except in the rarest of circumstances. Again, “my way” would only be to encourage women to consider themselves first, before they have a problem they need to solve. Keeping track of your cycle, insisting on condoms even if “he doesn’t like them”, being aware of your body, taking care of yourself is not unreasonable.
I realize I am just being used for your soap box and since I did the same thing to you, I can’t really complain. We really don’t disagree on much of anything here. I am not particularly what I would consider a strong feminist, but under these types of circumstances I am almost inflexible in my belief that a woman needs to put herself first, when she is really the one that still has all of the consequences to handle. I’d just like to see that happen a little earlier in the reproductive cycle. Too many abortions are performed each year. Seeing that number go down, without seeing the birth rate go up, would be in your words “a true hallmark of an advanced society”.
This is a message board on which people post opinions and back them up with evidence. That is the point of the “biology lesson”. You seem convinced that “free will” outweighs our biological side, that our cognition either can or should overrule our physical/sexual needs. But the fact remains that women behave predictably when it comes to sexual behavior (men too).
It is nice to believe that we can control ourselves and make choices. It is an extremely comfortable belief; it puts us at the helm of our lives, master of our fates, captains of our souls, Matrix Revolutions style. But this depends on whether or not you believe that we have free will. A new Nobel laureate in physics seems to disagree.
But back to abortions. What you said was that abortions should be “limited” under specific circumstances, and you used the word “legal” in your sentence. The consequence of that legal limitation would necessarily be that some would not have access to the abortions they desired. Hence, forced birth. Is it a good idea to use birth control? Sure. But plenty of things can happen to undermine a birth control method. Or they may not be used at all in the heat of the moment. When asked what a woman should do in case they accidentally become pregnant - when the pregnancy has actually take place - you fumble and call such women idiots. But do these women fundamentally differ from other sexually active women? You seem to be saying she should be “held accountable” for her foolishness (you would hold yourself accountable, anyway, even though it would be “disastrous”). Then we are back to sex as sin, as a punishable offense. And THAT is anti-woman. Anti-human, actually.
Care and personal protection may be a hallmark of high self esteem, but human nature needn’t be incompatable with it either. Very bright people forget to use birth control sometimes, or find they do not care about it in the heat of the moment. This does not make them fools, it makes them human beings. But I don’t see what this has to do with their self-esteem. The fact that abortions are fairly common and take place in women from all backgrounds and IQ brackets indicates that having one isn’t necessarily evidence of idiocy or a low self-opinion.
We do agree that a woman needs to put herself first. I for one do not believe her rights should take second saddle to the rights of someone else, even if it is a cute little baby of the sort that we worship as innocent and wide-eyed in our sometimes jaded society, although there is no objective reason why we should care about babies more than other people. I mean, these kids turn out to be adults just like the rest of us, they just haven’t yet had the chance to make all those mistakes and reveal their character flaws YET. But they will if they live. It’s pretty standard abortion debate. You say her rights end when pregnancy begins. So do lots of pro-lifers. I say women themselves are more important than a zygote. THAT is putting women first.
I am still not sure how you can reduce the number of abortions performed if you do not wish women to be forced to carry unwanted children. How will we reduce the number of abortions otherwise? Pregnancy HAPPENS. We are not going to change human nature through self-esteem training, if that is what you had in mind. We are not going to steer people away from having sex. That is a constant, a given. People are drawn to one another - dumb people, smart people, redheads, people with ingrown toenails, etc. etc. It’s a basic drive.
You say you want the number of abortions to go down without the birth rate going up. I am very interested to hear how you plan to implement this strategy.