In my country, abortion is pretty much illegal (t’s complicated); if you want an abortion, you have to fly to another country to procure one. Abortion pills are regularly seized and abortion is a crime.
I’m pretty ok with this, I would be more pro-life than pro-choice.
I don’t see it as that big an issue though.
That said, some people from other countries act incredibly shocked when they find out it is illegal here, and in discussions on this board pro-choice Dopers often take a very strident tone when discussing the issue - Des Trihs often contends that the only reason someone is pro-life is that they hate women.
So, leaving aside whether abortion is right or wrong - assuming it is a right, how important is it? Does it really matter that much?
It is illegal in your country yet women are desperate enough to try to illegally procure drugs to terminate their pregnancy.
So, you are inflicting the chance of grievous bodily harm on your women (as mentioned in the article if the drugs are taken wrong…a real possibility without proper medical oversight) and/or prosecuting your women and throwing them in jail for this reason alone (I do not know what the penalties are for this).
Personally I would not want to see such things happen to what are probably fine people that have done nothing wrong beyond letting a guy knock them up. Lucky for the guys they don’t have to worry about this eh?
I’m 40, three years older than Roe v. Wade. So abortion has been legal my entire reproductive life.
To have that changed now, to know that my daughters and nieces don’t get to make their own decisions because someone else has decreed that they shouldn’t, the idea is very frightening.
I kind of take it for granted, I don’t necessarily think of myself as a huge pro-choice voter or spend any time at all arguing about it. But it’s very important to me.
It depends a lot on whether you’re a woman; generally, women tend to be more rabid on the subject (in either direction) than men. It’s part of the whole package of “the right to reproductive freedom”, but a part which many people view as affecting women but not men. I would ask the OP: how do you feel about the right to decide who to have sex with, whether any given pairing produces offspring, whether to have a vasectomy and whether semen samples that you give as part of a medical procedure can be used to produce a child instead? Do you want those rights? Well, women want the right to use any conception prevention method they wish (and can medically use), up to and including hysterectomy and abortion. Fancy that.
I’ve had my tubes tied for contraception. Later, I had my uterus and ovaries removed for other reasons.
However, abortion rights are critical for me. I’ve been pregnant in a country where I couldn’t get an abortion. I don’t want to live in a country where women don’t have the right to determine their own future again. I won’t vote for a pro life candidate, no matter how much I agree with his/her other viewpoints. If women cannot choose whether or not to have a child, then their life options are severely limited.
It matters a whole lot when you’re pregnant and you don’t want to be. :dubious:
I’m afraid I have a little difficulty taking the OP seriously. There are a lot of opinions a person can have about reproductive rights, but I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and I literally can’t imagine how one arrives at the conclusion that it’s just not a big deal.
So I’d ask the OP, how did you arrive at that conclusion?
I’m kind of busy at the moment (essay due), but just quickly.
The reason that I am only sorta pro-life is that I genuinely think that both sides have good points, and I can understand what both sides are saying. On balance I lean for life, but tbh, I just can’t get that angry about it.
As to why it isn’t that big a deal, think of it like this:
Country A has no abortion, has no death penalty, has a properly functioning legal system, a great education system, a good quality of life etc.
Country B has free abortion, death penalty for numerous crimes, a corrupt legal system, a poor education system, a poor quality of life etc.
Nearly everyone would say that A is better than B, because when you start listing what is important about a country, it takes a really, really, really long time before you get all the way down to abortion.
For me it does anyway - indoor plumbing beats it by a mile for example.
Ideology and religion aside, in my mind a simple consequence analysis answers the question of “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice”. If abortion were made illegal, a certain amount of women will have abortions anyway (just the way a certain amount of teenagers will have premarital sex no matter what their parents/the church/the society tells them). If this is the case, it’s probably better to allow abortions to avoid the physical (and mental) damage of illegal abortions. Regardless of ideology.
Personally, I think having an abortion is a sad and terrible choice to make. But I believe that leaving that particular – preferably well-informed – choice to the pregnant woman is the least destructive alternative.
And, FTR: I’m male.
ETA: Still I have to admit that regarding abortion as a form of “conception prevention method” – as has been stated above – really, really pushes me towards a “pro-life” attitude. That’s just wrong in my mind.
I used to work at Planned Parenthood (long ago now) and they would do studies on this sort of thing.
Abortion as a birth control method was exceptionally rare. It happened on occasion (as any large group will have its outliers) but was definitely the exception and not the norm.
You aren’t a woman being forced to serve as breeding animal. That probably colors your perceptions just a bit.
As I’ve said in the past, I regard forbidding a woman abortion the moral equivalent of chaining her to a bed and raping her for nine months. Utterly evil, completely indefensible.
I personaly think that the term pro_life is a mis nomer! The phrase should be pro-birth or anti-choice. There is little thought of the woman or the already born.
I would like to see the woman informed more, and given the opportunity to have the morning after pill available to her. Then, were she not ready to concieve she could have some protection and there would be less children neglected because the woman couldn’t afford the child financialy,emotionally,or physically. A woman should not be just used as an incubator, because some person thinks a fertile egg is a human being. One need just look to Haiti and other third world countries where the population is more than can be cared for. Seeing 5 or so children starving to death is sadder than an abortion, I would like to see the need for abortion eliminated, but the choice must remain with the woman ,like cases of rape where the woman has little or no Choice.
I know of a family of 14 who suffered a lot of abuse because the mother was over burdened with children she didn’t want, because her church had her believing birth control was sinful and played on her guilt, and the fear of going to hell, so she put her children through hell instead!
Abortions should, ideally, be safe, freely available and rare. But it is not for you or me to decide… which leads to…
Pro-choice and Anti-choice* are not equivalent-but-opposite POVs; no Pro-choicer is going to force any anti-choicer to have an abortion. It’s about one person’s right to force life-changing decisions on another person, decisions which do not and cannot rise to the level of hurting the presumptuous decision-maker.
No, they are not “pro-life” :rolleyes:. Nice marketing though.
It’s a very significant issue in people’s lives when it comes up, yes. It’s also true that it’s been an enormously successful wedge issue for both political parties because people tend to disagree very sharply about abortion and feel strongly about it. I’m no different. But because it’s an emotional issue for people, it has an enormous influence. I think that’s where the OP’s question really comes in and you can argue that abortion has more influence on the political landscape than it should. The number of abortions in the U.S. has been falling for years, and many people have argued it could decrease further (as could the number of teenage births or neglected children, for example) if more attention was paid to that and less was paid just to the rights aspect of the debate.
This is a pretty silly comparison. Question: is it better to have $10 million or not? I’ll say it’s better to have it. Wait, if you get the $10 million, you have to agree to spend the rest of your life in chains in a dungeon, where you will get daily beatings and starved just short of death. You’ll never see sunlight, friends, or family again. Oh, in that case, you can keep the $10 million.
See? Having $10 million is not really better than not having it. QED.
So, what country are you in? Do you have indoor plumbing?
The following isn’t my view, but here’s a counterargument:
A pro-choicer is allowing you to force the ultimate life-changing decision on another person: the fetus. A pro-life person is protecting the life of that other person. A life is not a choice.
How this allows for those intermediate positions (abortion is OK in the case of rape or incest, for example) is beyond me. Also, I think the scenario mentioned in other threads where a person runs into a burning fertility clinic and can save a child or 20,000 frozen embryos will choose the child every time illustrates pretty well that there are lives and there are lives.
But a fetus simply isn’t a person not matter how hard they insist that it is. Their position is as irrational as someone shooting a man with a flyswatter in order to prevent the “murder” of the flies, and for the same reason; flies aren’t people either.
And on top of that, they themselves are forcing “the ultimate life-changing decision on another person: the fetus”, since the fetus didn’t choose to be born either.
Politics; they know that admitting they want to force women to give birth to their rapist’s offspring will make them look worse, so they often pretend they are willing to allow those exceptions.
It demonstrates that they don’t actually believe what they are saying.
Despite the fact that I have a hard time envisioning myself ever choosing abortion, I will fight like hell if the right to make that choice is ever threatened.
My main issue is how ludicrously hypocritical it is to push “abstinence education” down young people’s throats and avoid discussing safe sex and birth control, and then want to withhold the right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.
As do I, which is a large part of why I support abortion rights. The ability of a woman to preserve her life and health through a voluntary procedure that is far safer than a term pregnancy strikes me as an important societal priority.
