Hypothetically, if I: 1) support women having the right to have abortions up until whenever the scientific and medical community considers viability (maybe around 25 weeks currently); and 2) I want girls under the age of 17 to have parental/guardian consent before having an abortion; am I pro-choice or anti-choice? What happens if scientific advancement occurs and viability moves to 5 weeks?
What if: 1) I call myself “Pro-Life” and believe that all women that have abortions are going to hell; but 2) I am rabidly against the government outlawing abortions as I believe they have no role imposing morality? Am I anti-choice or pro-choice?
Pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion rights. I think people should also state what abortion rights they support.
Look, there are various positions and degrees that people who consider themselves “Pro-Life” have and hold. It’s not a monolithic group any more than “Pro-Choice”.
Person A
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Abortion outlawed in all cases
Would result to terrorist activities to stop abortions
Person B
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Abortion outlawed in all cases
Votes for people who they consider most likely to support anti-abortion rights causes
Person C
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Would never have an abortion but doesn’t want any laws changed
Person D
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Doesn’t really hold any strong positions just calls themselves Pro-Life because their parents did also.
Person E
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Says they are against abortions but doesn’t do anything to support that and would have an abortion if it related to their personal situation.
Person F
Doesn’t call themself Pro-Life but is actively against Pro-Choice candidates
Thinks they are all tax and spend libruls ruining 'Merica with their gays and drugs and stuff
Person G
Considers themselves Pro-Life
Donates to adoption causes and sex education to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and help give women an alternative to having to raise the baby after the pregnancy.
Person H
Considers themselves Pro-Choice
Supports over-turning Row vs. Wade as a wrongly decided case and wants a consitutional amendment added that outlines strong abortion rights for women.
Who is more dangerous to your Pro-Choice views, C or H?
This hypothetical person supports a woman having the right to choose to have an abortion for any reason at any time. They also want to force abortions on women that are unable to care for a baby in a manner they see fit. They also want to limit it to one child per woman and all subsequent pregnancies would be aborted. They also vote in all polls that they are pro-choice since they think it more closely fits their views than pro-life and those were the only two options to choose from.
But what is full reproductive rights? Is an abortion at 39 weeks part of full reproductive rights? Is it full reproductive rights to have all abortions paid for by the government? Is it full reproductive rights to mandate that all hospitals and clinics that have OB/GYN facilities perform abortions? Is it mandating that all pharmacies carry morning-after pills? Is it mandating that all insurance companies cover abortions? Is it mandating that employers provide paid time off for employees to have abortions? I’m not stating that any of these are commonly advocated; however, I am stating that there is a tremendous difference between what one “Pro-Choice” person considers full reproductive rights and what another “Pro-Choice” person does.
It is meant to be extreme and absurd not meant to draw any equivalency to the “Pro-Life” movement but instead to show that the “Pro-Choice” movement varies so much that the people really aren’t all under the same umbrella.
How about taking the marketing aspect out of it and calling them what they actually are: pro abortion rights and anti abortion rights?
No it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure it would be considered a fairly extreme view to advocate that women have the right to abort the fetus at 39 weeks for example. My guess without looking it up is that most “Pro-Choice” people want women to have the right to have an abortion for the first two trimesters and that they want abortion clinics to be readily accessible to most places in the country at minimal cost. That’s certainly not all “Pro-Choice” people, but I would guess that fits a lot of them. Now if I was in a jurisdiction that had more abortion rights than that, say no limitation on third trimester, and I voted for a bill that reduced abortion rights to just the first two trimesters; am I anti-choice? What if I then moved to a more restrictive jurisdiction and vote against a bill that seeks to require all women to have make two trips to a clinic before having an abortion; am I now pro-choice?
Please define anti-choice? Specifically, does it mean everyone that is not “pro-choice” or does it mean the people that call themselves “pro-life”? Maybe you are defining it right here and simply mean anyone that wants to remove “choice” is “anti-choice”?
Categorize this person please: Wants a consitutional amendment to allow abortion rights up until third trimester but wants Roe vs. Wade overturned. Since the Roe vs. Wade overturning part is more likely than the constitutional amendment part, it seems like they’re lobbying efforts might reduce access to abortions in reality. Therefore, while they may personally believe abortion rights should be strong, they advocate a position which runs counter to that.
What about the person that is strongly against abortions on moral grounds and calls themselves “Pro-Life” but does not want any changes to existing laws. Are they “pro-choice” or “anti-choice” in your category system?
But what if they don’t want to remove that choice but the tactics they advocate would functionally remove the choice? Also, what if they just strongly advocate the existing system and would fight against efforts to expand abortion rights? For example, they don’t want to increase tax funding for abortion access.
I don’t think they simply want that. I think they want a variety of different things.
I think these are the only truly accurate, non political terms.
Of course there are various positions and degrees that people who consider themselves pro-life or pro-choice have and hold, but are you considering how foolish it would be to watch your enemy gain ground on you in a war, while you try to determine the specific positions and degrees of individuals in the force coming at you?
And they are a force, no matter how you want to break it down, and make it seem like they are defining themselves in rainbow colored quilt pieces. They are a force against human rights, social progress, and human autonomy.
And they have changed from the way they were when I was in battle against them. Now they are all about the love, while they work for the long haul, action by action, law by law, whittling away our rights and funding, and pushing their cause to state legislators.
The aggressive interventionist strategies of the Randall Terry era are a thing of the past now, and it does not appear that their aim is to outlaw abortion in one fatal blow, by overturning Roe vs Wade; but they have a strategy, like wolves in sheeps clothing, and they are working it against us, while we debate semantics and various positions and degrees of being pro-choice or anti-choice.
Well that is part of the problem. If a woman goes through pregnancy, labor and childbirth she is exposing herself to all sorts of potential complications that no on can possibly predict.
Under no other circumstances would she be expected to make medical decisions based on how they affect someone else. Why is this different? A lot of people seem to think choosing to have sex means she’s obligated to take that risk. People who don’t believe that really resent having their medical care dictated by strangers based on their religion or their “feelings” about medicine.
OK, as long as you realize you’re being logically inconsistent in that you think it’s OK to essentially (in your mind) murder the product of rape. How many months into the pregnancy can the woman wait to make that decision? Is a police report required to be filed in order to show an allegation of rape? Given that you think it’s OK to murder a child conceived by rape, I don’t know why the 15-year-old hypothetical is absurd hyperbole. It’s murdering a child or it’s not, right? A 15-year-old and a 3-month fetus are both children, right?
Regarding life and health, depending on where you set the acceptable risk, every pregnancy may have a reasonable probability of causing severe health risk and death for the woman pregnant.
Regarding mental disability, would it be OK for a woman who has attempted to kill her previous children or attempted suicide due to post-natal depression to have an abortion?
IMO, there is no perfect ideological consistency in pro-choice efforts, any more than there is in many movements consisting of individuals who band together to accomplish a goal, and from my experience, internal diversity is the norm. For example, here have been posters who only see the need to improve on Roe vs Wade, and those who like myself cling to Roe vs Wade albeit from fear; but we still may share the same goal.
I have high hopes that the goal of full reproductive rights for women can be envisioned and made possible, despite factions within pro-choice who seem to be working to undermine each other. These internal disputes must be to the great delight of people who would ban abortions, in a divide and conquer sort of way, because anti-choice are probably way better at being good little soldiers.
IMO the part of the first amendment that states “congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is against fetal rights, which are mainly being shoved down our throats by Christian opinion. My personal belief is that the fetus is not a person nor does it have rights, just in case you have not figured that out already.
IMO full reproductive rights would be as much opposed to coerced abortion, as to the coerced carrying of an unwanted pregnancy. It would strive to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies by offering sex education and access to a full range of birth control and women’s health services. And of course there will be disagreement as to how to fund these services, but IMO insurances should cover all reproductive health services.
Personally I would like to see more of a focus on reproductive issues affecting low income women, immigrants, and the undocumented who face more barriers to accessing reproductive health care as well as basic health care.
Personally I would be fine with no elective third trimester abortions (though it would be available where the viability of the fetus or the pregnant woman was in question) provided all of the below was agreed upon:
[ul]
[li]Abortion services were mandated in all health insurance policies for women.[/li][li]Comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education is in all schools.[/li][li]Contraception is available for anyone who wants it, through insurance or based on needs through tax payer money.[/li][li]Comprehensive prenatal care for all pregnant women through insurance or based on needs thgouth tax payer money.[/li][li]Abortions can be paid for with public funds, if needed, like any other healthcare.[/li][/ul]There are probably some more stipulations I am forgetting about, but the key here is that I would be willing to compromise on late-term abortions without cause (which hardly ever happen anyway) if it meant that women would be guaranteed choice and the system was set in place to limit unwanted pregnancies to begin with, and have all of that fall under what it should be: basic healthcare.
We mandate health insurance cover a lot of things and we use tax dollars for all kinds of healthcare and other forms of contraception.
However, this would never happen because the same people who want choice removed from women also hate contraception and sex education.
Not necessarily in every case. But in Yates’s, she was told that that having another child would be dangerous to her mental health, and got pregnant anyway. At least, that’s how I remember it. I could be mistaken.
How about a stipulation about not putting up barriers to abortion before the third trimester? I’m specifically thinking of those states that have laws that require a woman see an ultrasound, or have to have a cooling off period, or the infamous invasive ultrasound.
Only 41% of AMerica supports Roe V Wade.
Mainstream AMerica sees the Democrats as being hypocrits because they are generally against the destruction of human life - against war and against the death penalty - yet they say it is fine for women (and doctors) to destroy human life that is still in the womb…
If I can jump in here, my dad. He’s anti-abortion (except in cases of fetal deformity or danger to the mother–in the former case, if the fetus can’t eventually survive as a person then it’s no different than a tumor, in the latter case it’s the same as any other decision between the lives of two people and you can’t make a decent moral calculus), anti-war, anti-death-penalty, anti-terror-attacks-on-abortion-clinics, pro-contraceptive. I can disagree with that, but it’s pretty unambiguously pro-life.
Does dad believe that two persons with equal rights can occupy the same body?
Because making a decent moral calculus might involve respecting the choice made by the entity with the main claim to that body.
