OK, at least now you are admitting to some nuance. And while I agree that anyone who equates a miscarriage (or abortion) to the loss of a child who had been born may not have a sense of proportion, who are we tell another person how or when to grieve? Not to mention that there are plenty of miscarriages that happen after 6 weeks. Most do happen in the first trimester, but many of the ones you’re talking about happen without the woman even knowing she was pregnant in the first place.
Really, though, framing this as if we’re all talking about miscarriage in the first 6 weeks of pregnancy is just ridiculous. It smacks of trying to frame the debate around a peculiar set of facts or circumstances specifically in order to avoid the nuance that does exist.
I’m not trying to dictate how or when other people should grieve, I’m just reserving the right to roll my eyes at people who (as you put it) lack a sense of proportion.
Missed a whole page of posts while I was away from my computer; reply is made irrelevant by some of Dio’s subsequent posts; nothing to see here, carry on.
When you say things like “the man lost nothing”, you are doing more than rolling your eyes. You’re trying to make stake out a position, and that position doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny.
I think it does. I think I’m right. I see it as being roughly equivalent to a man mourning the death of his World of Warcraft character. I don’t feel inclined to humor the conceit that anybody actually died.
You know, the concept of a FTM transsexual who was made pregnant without having given uncoerced adult consent to intercourse does not seem completely improbable.
As for the OP, I don’t see these women given as examples as people who “backslide long enough to have an abortion”. That would be someone who was actively pro-life, got pregnant, had an abortion, then went right back to being pro-life. Frankly, I think there is a strong enough case to be made for keeping abortion legal that one needn’t distort reality to bolster that position.
It’s very easy to say ‘if I could go back I’d never make that choice again’ from a position where you’re not actually facing the same choice and all that goes along with it. It’s also very easy to come to regret any choice in life and convince yourself that things would have been better with a different choice (if only I had proposed to my girlfriend of 4 years instead of breaking up with her I wouldn’t be 40 years old and single, and life would be wonderful).
Regretting a choice after the fact often has nothing to do with whether or not the choice was wrong.
And Diogenes, I think the biggest issue I have with your argument is this:
Who gives a fuck how the man feels? That might be a reasonable question when it comes to public policy, but good grief, if my neighbor is upset about something, even if it’s stupid, even if it’s only a ‘lost potential,’ then I’m going to care that he’s upset. It will matter. And he won’t be a loser. And, I imagine you actually feel the same way, and fell into hyperbole because it feels good to show how purely you feel that a [fill in appropriate non-person-meaning term for fetus] is not a living person in any way.
What sort of things are legitimate things to lament? Anything that isn’t a tangible, actual loss of life brands one as a douchebag and looser?
ETA: I get your point about equating an abortion with loosing a living child, but most everything you’ve posted so far has been about how any kind of grief or sense of loss is somehow wrong in this situation.
Absolute Convictions: My Father, a City, and the Conflict That Divided America by Eyal Press is a book by the son of an Ob/Gyn who performs abortions. It takes a larger view, looking at the city of Buffalo and the motivations behind both sides of the debate.
Abortion should be safe, legal and a private matter between a woman and her doctor. You don’t agree, well don’t have an abortion, you don’t get to decide what is best for anyone else.
A woman in the USA is 11 times more likely to die during childbirth than during a legal 1st trimester termination. Continuing a pregnancy to term is not risk free, even when you take away the emotional, physical and financial implications of raising a child. It is morally wrong to force 10,000 people into a stadium if you know 1 of them will die and several hundred will be seriously injured, and yet that is equivalent to what pro-life total abortion ban people are suggesting. No-one should have the right to put a woman’s life at more risk than the woman herself is willing to accept.
Don’t be absurd. The fetus is real, even if it isn’t technically a baby, and comparing it to a virtual character is silly. That virtual character isn’t even like the blueprints of a house-- it can never become a reality. The fetus is a living organism that carries your genetic material inside it. You, the man, can feel it kick. You can see the ultrasound image of a beating heart. It has nothing in common with a character created as part of a video game. I’ve seen some bad analogies bandied about on this message board, but that’s one of the worst.
That’s a really bad analogy. A WoW character is never going to be any more than a WoW character. A pregnancy has the potential to be someone’s child. If that child is wanted, then it is a dream, an expectation of something that will happen if nothing goes wrong. And before you dismiss this as being just a fantasy, think how much expectations matter in the world, and how in some cases they even have legal ramifications. For example take a contract to buy a home… there are very real consequences to breaking such a contract because people make important decisions based on it. There is a difference between expectation and reality, but you’re carrying this to an absurd extreme.
DtC is so wrapped up in the woman’s right to choose that he’s blocking out the entire idea that a valued living organism could be on THAT side of the cervix. Once it passes through that magic barrier, it changes from a worthless clump of cells into a child, and he’d suddenly go from unconcerned about the clump’s disposition, and transform into a caring father. Not only does he have this odd idea for himself, but he expects the rest of us men to go right along with it.
Like DtC, my wife is pregnant, and I’m having a very hard time understanding how he can be completely unconcerned about how the fetus is developing. I’ve gone with my wife to the checkups and heard the heartbeat, watched him kicking around the ultrasound, etc. and I just do get that level of detachment.
I wonder what the hardcore pro-lifers’ stance is on abortions in cases of severe fetal abnormalities (trisomy 13, microcephaly, caudal regression, etc.). They never seem to mention this… Do they?
Depends on your point of view, I guess. To me? Yes. But I admit I’m a bit biased in this particular area, and I don’t really have the luxury of agreeing or disagreeing.
I think that there is certainly a potential to over react, but that’s usually the case when someone feels unheard, or when they think their feelings are being marginalized. I try to make sure it doesn’t get to that point. Whether I agree with that person’s feelings or not does not negate those feelings. What’s important is that they are given the opportunity to express those feelings safely and move on.
Sorry. Probably too touchy feely, but the scenario presented is a lot different in person than it is discussing it in black and white on a message board.
But as long as it exists, even in the imagination, it’s real to that person.
And inexpensive legal clinics would be reachable by most middle class women in the Carribean or Canada.
Really, the only pregnant women making abortion illegal affects is those that don’t have the resources to find or afford either an illegal abortion or an overseas abortion. There will be plenty of those - and there will be coat hangers (belladonna, fenugeek, and a bunch of other methods - some relatively safe - some frightening).
This is my third time around and I do all the same stuff with my wife. I care how the fetus is developing. I want it to be healthy. I just don’t mistake it for being equivalent to my born children yet.