Life Begins When You Realize that Women have Rights

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
21

Even if you grant that the embryo is not yet a person at that point, if three-week abortions are common, then that’s probably indicative of poor planning skills on someone’s part. I don’t know much about the specific procedures involved, but I would expect that even a three-week abortion would be harder on the woman than proper use of a condom or birth control pills, so if nothing else, sexually active folks who don’t want children should at least be educated better about those other options.

Of course, this is not an argument that three-week abortions ought to be illegal, but it is a reason why a decrease in the rate of such abortions would be regarded as a good thing.

22

Chronos said:

Fair enough, but the use of the word “rare” conveys a much stronger meaning to me. While I wouldn’t expect the typical woman to have one every few months or once a year or anything, I also wouldn’t feel it particularly bad if it happened that most women had at least one in their lifetime. After all, birth control can fail even when used properly. No method of birth control is 100% effective.* Nor would I find it troubling if most hospitals in the country did at least one a week. That seems low to me, but might not fit the definition of “rare”.

Great Dave seems to be making a value judgment about abortion as a whole, not just any particular type of abortion procedure or timing of the procedure. Thus my extreme examples that don’t match 99.9%** of the abortions performed anywhere.

  • Not going to argue about abstinence here. Don’t bring it up. Irrelevant to the point.

** No actual data was obtained. Number pulled from my… hat.

23

A few things that seem to be forgotten/ignored:

  1. The reason abortion is illegal after 2-3 weeks (it differs depending on the country), is not related to pro/anti-life arguments, but because after that time, it becomes significantly more dangerous to the host organism.

  2. Abortion should be rare because it is traumatizing. I’ve been through one - it wrecked my life. And I’m male.

24

Illegal after two or three weeks? Where?

25

It’s roughly 2 weeks in germany, 3 in the netherlands. We had to travel from germany to netherlands to get hers done.

Someone mentioned 24 days before… presumably in america? OK, fine, I should have said 2-4. I regret that, but whatever. Google for it if you want a graph of the exponential failure/death rate in a scientific paper, I can’t be bothered. I was just talking from 1st hand experience, and pure medical industry/biological terms they gave me.

How is this relevant anyway? I would have liked to just point out that the original answer should have been ‘no one fucking knows’…

Who can tell if a couple of cells feel emotion or have rational thoughts when we can’t communicate with them? It’s like trying to decipher aquatic mammal sonar bursts. Some highly regarded scientists refuse to even consider it as a language, but they clearly have such succinct concepts as communal calls of ‘everyone go left!’ and ‘hey Frank, go up and try to get some fish now. We have them cornered!’ and ‘hot bitch over here’ etc. We still can’t understand it.
Hell, even insects communicate in some rudimentary form occasionally (bees?), so how does our dogma of science know?
We’re clearly unprepared for meeting aliens that’s for sure, we can’t even tolerate the other animals living on our own planet. It comes as no surprise that astronomers have calculated that it seems impossible we haven’t run into alien life by now, yet in reality we still haven’t. Think about it - you can roam the galaxy, and you come across us… still fighting over our sexual roles in life? Would you want to say ‘hello’ to someone like that? Oh, and theres the wars. The hundreds and hundreds of religious wars…
Thanks Christian and Muslim religions.

Ahem, sorry, got a bit carried away.

26

Actually, it may have been 12 vs 13 weeks. sorry. This was nearly 10 years ago - like I said, it ruined my life.
Now that I think about it, a human girl visibly bulging from reproduction is ridiculous in even 4 weeks.

27

If we had no forefathers we would not exist. Life began eons ago. Religions differ as to when it began because they use that instead of biology. We know there is life in a man’s sperm. Life is a passed on thing. When humans evolved our life came as human life then. Even if one believes the Adam and Eve story one would have to say human life came from the breath of God which was an infinite time ago.

Monavis

28

oogabooga, do you mean months instead of weeks?

And is it any surprise that arcane_eye hasn’t responded to any of this?

29

“feel emotion or have rational thoughts” using what? A couple of cells don’t have a brain to feel anything with.

30

Yes it does.

Everyone has rights, there should be no exclusions.

Everyone has choices, there should be no exceptions.

Freedom of choice begins with the first choice - the choice to have sex. Nobody has to have sex, a person can live a long and productive life without ever having sex, therefore whether to have sex or not is a choice and definately one of the first choices made in this instance.

Of course that freedom of choice can be taken away from a person. A woman can be raped. Plain and simple, rape does occur as does bank robbery, murder and cable theft. So any person who has sex without having the choice has the right to resume choices afterward (see below).

The second choice, not to bee too subversive, is what kind of sex to have. There are many ways to pleasure ourselves and pleasure our partners and, really, only one of these leads to reproduction. Not to be too blunt, but, nobody ever got pregnant from a blow job. Anal is dirty and dangerous but there are so many other ways. There are hundreds of erogenous zones on the human body, look some of them up and try stimulating some of the lesser known ones. But the money shot is always with the vaginal intercourse, just realize that having vaginal intercourse is a choice.

The third choice, once the choice has been made to have vaginal sex willingly, is the choice to use contraceptive. Sure, no contraceptive is 100% effective but not all sex acts are 100% effective at impregnation either. It’s hit and miss both ways but to choose no contraceptive significantly raises the odds of impregnation. There are hundreds of methods of contraceptives, all manner of shots and foams and IUDs and condoms for both sexes so making no attempt at contraceptive is making a choice to accept impregnation.

There’s three choices right off the bat that every body has the right to. The freedom of choice starts with the first choice, in some cases freedom carries through a whole series of choices, but eventually all things come to a conclusion based on those choices.

Now, if someone makes all of these choices that end up in an unexpected pregnancy, is the pregnancy really unexpected?

Really?

You really didn’t know that having sex would lead to pregnancy?

You really didn’t know that contraceptives could significantly reduce the risk of pregnancy?

You really didn’t know that multiple methods of contraceptives reduces the risks further?

You really didn’t know that you had all of these other choices?

Really?

Pregancy in the case of rape (and this includes incestious rape, whether willing or not, and any underage molestation) involves having choices taken from a person. Therefore it is their choice to reclaim their rights to their bodys and begin making choices for themselves.

But if a person knows what the outcome may be and passes through all the gates of choice on the way to that outcome, then any result of that outcome is premeditated and termination of that result is also premeditated.

Is it murder?

What else would we call taking a life.

Is it alive?

Brain activity implies life, being viable outside of the host implies life, being able to consume, excrete, aspirate and reproduce seems to imply life.

When does life begin?

At conception, but as Cecil said “So What?”. That conception was the result of many choices being made to get it there. You want to draw a line then where do you draw it?

2 weeks?

26 weeks?

832 weeks? (if you have a 16 year old you will understand this number)

If you want to draw a line establishing a point where we may premeditedly take a life without legal retribution then do it, but make no mistake about what we are doing. Abortion, except in the case of rape or incest, is the premeditated killing of an organism. Draw your lines, plead your court cases, shout to the moon about women’s health issues, but let’s be honest with ourselves.

Freedom to choose has to begin with the first choice.

(note - I made no mention of when having a baby risks the life of the mother. At the point where a mother has to decide to go on living or die so that her child can live then that is another choice not to be made friviously and another choice where at least some rights to choose have been forcefully taken from the mother. My arguements here are concerning voluntary abortion, not life or death situations.)

31

Drive-by

32

If it’s premeditated killing of an organism in your view, it would seem to be the same premeditated killing even in the cases of rape or incest. I’ve never understood those carve-outs, except for political palatability purposes.

33

Well, that’s certainly why incest is included, though there is no logical reason to do so; it’s thrown in just as a bogey-word.

34

Terminating life is terminating life so the killing part is the same. The only difference is in the premeditated part. A rape victim may have chosen to abstain from sex or to use whatever forms of contraceptive available in her own life, however the rapist took that right to choose away, he stole it from her.

I have known women who have viewed abortion as a back-up plan to contraception. “Yeah, I think abortion is wrong and all, but just in case I ‘accidentally’ get caught up in the moment I don’t want to have to pay for it for the rest of my life.” Well, if you don’t want to “accidentally” get caught up in the moment you might want to consider what choices you are making to place you in harms way in the first place.

Exceptions for rape victims goes beyond political and offers reparations to the victim, although the rape victims still have to live with the choice to terminate.

35

I think you’re confusing the premeditated (though possibly accidental) creation of life (consensual sex vs. rape) with the premeditated termination of life. Once the life is created, through whatever means, the abortion would appear to be premeditated killing, according to your apparent view.

In your apparent world view, abortion for rape victims is reparations to the victim through the killing of an innocent bystander. I suppose you could take that one step further – a child who was conceived through a rape could be killed at any time – if he is acting up in high school, the mother could elect to take him out then, using the reparations clause/exception to murder.

These aren’t my views. I’m just trying to work through the logic of your statement. As I mention above, those exceptions would seem to be there just to make any anti-abortion laws more palatable.

(And, yeah, what is that incest exception for, anyway? Because it’s ewww? Because there could be higher risk of deformities? Would there also be an exception for Down’s syndrome fetuses?)

36

Where I am failing is to draw a difference between rape and concentual sex as far as rights are concerned. In consentual sex the choice was made by both parties, in rape the choice was only made by one party. That, plus the victim of rape had her options taken from her. The fetus is innocent and termination of life is termination of life but only when the mother to be makes the first choice is it premeditated.

As for incest, state laws vary but they all present a certain age of consent. Even if both parties are willing, in Indiana any sexual contact below the age of 14 is considered rape. That age varies from 12 - 16 across different state lines. 17 year old brother impregnates his 16 year old sister? Both parties were consenting? Parents don’t mind (a requirement to consent in some states)? Then the abortion is premeditated, otherwise it is just abortion and, in my opinion, if it was a result of choices made by those able to make those choices then it’s wrong. By the state’s age of consent a person should know better.

37

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there probably aren’t a lot of people who are pro-abortion. I certainly am not. The logical conclusion is to make it as rare as possible. And there are practical reasons- birth control is a lot safer and cheaper than abortion, and doesn’t lead to emotional scars. I have two good friends that had abortions, and both were haunted by the memories.

38

Are you saying that if I sold you a bushel of fertilized apple blossoms or a dozen fertilized eggs and told you I was selling you a bushel of apples or a dozen chickens would you be happy with the sale?

Biology is the same for all creatures, Humans included.

Monavis

39

It seems like you’re failing to be consistent in calling a fetus or blastocyte (sp?) a person – it’s a person if it’s consensual sex, it’s not a person if it’s the result of rape or incest. As I mention above, the pre-meditation happens at fertilization in once case, not the other (except incest), whereas all abortions would seem to be pre-meditated terminations, and I don’t understand those exceptions, other than for political purposes.

Regarding incest, it occurs to me that perhaps incest is included because maybe most incest is really rape, although difficult to prosecute with no willing witnesses (father-daughter, uncle-niece, stepfather-daughter (is this really incest? not biologically, I guess)). To be honest, I have no idea what incest statistics show, but if most incest resulting in pregnancy is like this, then what you really have is rape with no witnesses (unwillingness to testify against husband, father, etc., and break up the family). I could be totally wrong, though.

Anyway, it seems like we’ve strayed pretty far from the original article, and into Great Debates territory (Great Repeating Debates, with this subject), so that is all I really have to say.

40

Annie, I lean pro-choice, but I still think that’s a weak argument. First, because a fetus doesn’t have the capacity to ask permission. Second, because in the case of consensual sex it’s a choice of the woman that results in the fetus’s presence in her reproductive organs, not a choice of the fetus. And third, because comparing a man “using a woman’s reproductive organs” for sexual gratification and a fetus using said organs for its survival is comparing apples and oranges.

I do think there’s a case to be made that before it reaches a certain stage of development the value of a fetus’s continued existence is less than the value of a woman being able to control what’s growing in her body. But of course assigning value to these things is a tricky business, and anyway that’s a different argument.