A “fetus” is defined as something that begins after about the 11th week from conception. 88.2% of abortions take place prior to the 12th week. So even if fetuses were people, it’s largely irrelevant.
Not 100% effective.
Not 100% possible and also, it pretty well limits my liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Soylent Green is people.
Just how far are you willing to go to control women? 
<90-95%
So you refuse to take personal responsibility? You have all the sex you want but refuse to accept the consequences?
Are you OK with a woman who is using reliable birth control getting an abortion if it fails?
I accept the consequences. I don’t accept your consequences.
For what it’s worth, this is not actually true. For example, the 1861 Constitution of Alabama provided for laws guaranteeing the “humane” treatment of slaves; provided for trials by jury for slaves accused of serious crimes (white juries, to be sure); and declared that “Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life, shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offense had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection of such slave.” As horrifying as it was that the legal codes of the Confederacy recognized the humanity of blacks, and yet also asserted that those human beings were nonetheless property (and one can also doubt how vigorously laws against inhumane treatment of slaves by white men were enforced in practice), the humanity and personhood of blacks was self-evident, even to white slave-owning secessionists. The personhood of fertilized egg cells from the moment of conception is not at all self-evident.
Creating a child is not the only reason a person has sex. Do you think it is?
As far as personal responsibility… I got my tubes tied because I do not want any more children. There’s a chance the tubal could grow back/fail. You know how I’ll know that happened? If I get pregnant. If I get pregnant, I will have an abortion.
I’ve taken my personally responsible steps by having surgery. I’m certainly not going to quit having sex, I’m only 43!
My wife just had an abortion. It was a tough decision for us, but we’re not exactly financially well off, and we already have three kids. Shit, paying for the abortion was financially painful.
So, OP, am I now a monster in your eyes? You can certainly believe that I suffer from lingering Christian programming guilt over the matter, stuff like thoughts of God exacting revenge on one of my living children for my “transgression” and all that, but ultimately…it was the right decision for us. She has just started her career and doesn’t want to have to go through raising another baby which would jeapordize that. Our youngest child just turned four. Truth be told, part of me is relieved that we don’t have to go through everything involved with having a baby in the house.
I actually didn’t want my wife to have an abortion, I wanted us to try to tough it out, but at the end of the day…she just didn’t want to go through another birth, and it’s her body.
Birth control pills make her sick, and sometimes (apparently) condoms aren’t always effective. So what have you to say to evil me?
I don’t think God will punish your children or even your wife at least in this life. Also I’m not playing God by determining who will go to Hell and who will go to Heaven. But still I must say couldn’t you have left the baby for adoption?
BurmaShave
The “right” to life is not absolute. We have capital punishment. We have the draft where we send young men to war, and military law complies them to follow orders, even when it means a almost certain death. If you are dying and need a bone marrow transplant and I’m the only match in the database, I have no obligation to donate my marrow to save your life.
No, although ironically enough, my brother and I are both adopted. There’s simply no way my wife was going to carry a baby to term and then not keep it after going through the whole process for the fourth time.
There’s also a medical side to this, as our last son was quite premature and my wife had a very difficult birth, and we were told at the time that if we got pregnant again that there’s a decent chance that her pregnancies would become increasingly difficult. My wife is in her mid-30’s now.
Also, my brother and I’s biological mothers were both teenagers (sixteen and fourteen), a case in which adoption makes a lot more sense.
Getting pregnant presents three life-altering choices.
Keep it.
Abort it.
Give it up.
In my opinion, a person has to pick which one has the most positive/least damaging outcome for themselves. The best choice is different for different people; I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all answer.
And at one point I was the dinner digesting in my mother’s stomach. That doesn’t make a steak dinner a person. They ARE mindless lumps of flesh, regardless of what they may or may not become ( most fetuses fail by the way ).
Maybe the vegan will eat the anti choicer. “Well, he sounded like a vegetable!”
Getting an abortion IS accepting responsibility. I note you use the right wing definition of “personal responsibility”; “Suffer for me!”
Of course, some of us would argue that capital punishment and drafts DO violate the rights detailed in the Declaration of Independence. The bone marrow situation is more interesting, but even the broadest reading of a right to life doesn’t entitle you to the use of someone else’s body. I think a compulsory donation of that type would violate your right to liberty.
Someone may have already said this, but the Declaration also doesn’t say anything about unborn persons being created equal. It says “all men.” Even if we rightly expand this to include all people regardless of gender and race, there’s no evidence they intended to also include fetuses that hadn’t yet been carried to term, and no compelling reason for us to read it that way.
Fair enough – embryos (zygotes, blastocysts) aren’t people either.
Yeah, but they’d be wrong. This isn’t a matter of definition. This is just what it is, man. Trees aren’t tables. Eggs aren’t omelets. Grapes aren’t wine. They might be someday. But they aren’t today.
–Cliffy
There are plenty of differing opinions floating around here, so just to be clear:
When do you think a person becomes a person? Upon taking the first breath? When brain waves become active?
My opinion is that just based on the fact that an embryo has direction and design in growth, a “person” if formed upon conception. Comparing the embryo to a newborn baby is almost like comparing a newborn baby to an adult; the latter is much further developed, more intelligent, and more closely resembles our idea of a human being in whole, but that does not redefine the former.
And what does it mean to say “A fetus is not a person”? Do you mean at the very end of prenatal development? What about after 40 weeks of gestation? Define fetus. A newborn is almost no more developed than it was a day before, in the womb. As can be seen by premature births (i.e., being born before developing to the ideal point), a fetus is a person, regardless of whether they’re floating is a sack of fluid or being slapped by hordes of nurses.
You need to read up on birth control because you are inconsistent here (and elsewhere in this thread with this).
Barrier methods (e.g. condom) prevent conception (assuming they do not break).
The pill does not prevent conception (it can inhibit the chances of it but not outright prevent it). The pill prevents implantation. Basically the woman has her period with no clue she was ever pregnant assuming conception occurred.
Of course, but abortion is by no means a unique area in which U.S. law does not support an absolute right to life. And its much more similar to a bone marrow donation than in capital punishment, in that in order to assure life, we must impact someone else’s liberty.