Since you’re pro choice…you’re allowed to express your solidarity with the cause. Just don’t speak more than the Wymen.
(pro life men are allowed to have an opinion…however misanthropic it may be. Speaking that opinion is another matter.)
You’ll find that the majority of pro-lifers give an exemption for one or more of those 3 categories of pregnancy, depending on their particular theory about what makes abortion immoral. A rape/incest exemption is not consistent with my reasoning (based on the protection of a life against the use of force to end it), whereas a mother’s survival exemption would be (as self-defense.) For those pro-lifers whose opposition is based solely on a personal responsibility argument a rape exemption would be consistent.
Of course, we all hope that someday we can eliminate the problem by making it technologically feasible to remove the baby and allow it to survive outside the uterus, at any point during the pregnancy. With a little tweaking of adoption law to totally eliminate the biological parents obligations/rights, and prevent the child from ever finding out who his bio parents are, this would mirror the abortion procedure in all ways that are important to the woman and yet not kill the baby.
As for Guin’s point, each gender already has a 100% effective birth control method available, it’s called “not having sex.” I really don’t see why people think that’s so hard to do. Aside from that, there’s also vasectomies for men, and tubal ligations for women, both of which are AFAIK ~100% effective.
Embryos and fetuses, not babies.
There’s a problem with that: Many, if not most doctors won’t perform sterilizations on people who don’t already have kids.
For example, one of our board members, Catsix, is adamant that she doesn’t want kids. She has looked everywhere for a doctor that will tie her tubes, but none will.
If I remember right, she also claimed that in her family women don’t hit menopause until their mid to late fifties.
Do you honestly expect people like her to wait 30 or 40 years not having sex to satisfy your personal morals?
Huh.
Hmmm.
<continuing on for another gazillion similar links…none of 'em “pro life”>
Damn Blalron…ya got yer work cut out for you. Better get cracking on setting the record straight with these supposed “medical professionals”. I’m sure they’ll appreciate your “correction”.
<Giggle>
Not to mention that not everyone wants permanent sterilization.
They are close to 100% effective, yes.
But just because someone doesn’t want to have a baby now doesn’t mean they never want children ever. Vast damn difference.
I don’t know how my opinion would change if a fetus could be removed from it’s mother’s womb and brought to term. I really don’t know what I would say to that, whether I would still be in favor of abortion.
*Quote somewhat altered to be more hilarious. Some restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Professional driver on closed course. Cape does not enable user to fly. Your mileage may vary.
snickers
Yeah, I’ve made that pun before. It’s a bad, bad, bad, bad pun.
Incidentally, for a pun like that you could be punished.
You could, in point of fact, be sent to a punitentiary.
I know! I know! It’s a disease really, I can’t help myself!
No, I expect the doctors to do their jobs and perform a perfectly safe procedure upon people willing to undergo that procedure, when the patient pays them for the service. If they’re afraid of being sued later on, although I have no idea what reasonable cause of action could possibly arise from this, then have the patient sign a waiver, and pass legislation to make those waivers unchallengable in court.
And what do you mean, my “personal” morals? Hey you can argue as many facts as you want, that’s what the abortion debate usually becomes, because everybody pretty much agrees on the underlying moral premise, that you don’t kill a human life except in self-defense. Then it comes down to using scientific observation and your powers of reason to determine what is a human life. Even those who support the death penalty try to pretend that the execution is a killing in self-defense, by arguing that they save the lives of potential future victims.
You can argue all day long that morals are not objective, that they’re entirely subjective, and considering the sorts of things that many people consider “moral issues”, you may be right about alot of it. People trumpet all sorts of things as morals that really amount to nothing more than personal preferences. But if you don’t at least accept as an objective moral rule the principle that one should not initiate force against another to deprive him of life, liberty, or property, then if I come to rob and kill you and you shoot me to prevent it, we’re both equally wrong and both equally right. Do you really mean to suggest that such basic principles are merely “personal morals”?
Damn right. However, there’s also women who have aborted numerous pregnancies just because they can, I’ve heard as many as 30 for one woman. Abortion should not be an excuse to fuck without worrying about the consequences.
Well, the concept of a zef (zygote/embryo/fetus) having fully human rights is one. A woman not having the right to, e.g. jump up and down a lot is another. Look Rex, you can’t get from first principles to ‘abortion is murder’. You can’t. You either run out of principles, or end up claiming that masturbation and menstruation are acts of mass murder and serial killing.
Also, ignoring the personhood issue for the moment, isn’t requiring a woman to nurture a zef and not, say, drink a lot a violation of her rights to liberty and property (to wit, herself)? Yes, my right to swing my fist and all that, but you must first adequately prove the existence of the other person’s face.
But this was precisely the point I was making. Moral principles alone don’t get you anywhere because they only mean anything when applied to situations, you need the facts of the situation in order to correctly apply the principle. The principle is “do not initiate force against another to deprive them of their life”, and frankly I think that’s a pretty much universal principle. Then we have the factual question of whether that is indeed a person. That is where the crux of the debate resides, not in the validity of the underlying principle but in determining whether it applies. This is not a disagreement about morality, because everyone agrees on the moral principle at hand, this is a disagreement about facts.
As for the issue of the woman’s liberty, as a pro-life Libertarian I understand that’s important. But the baby didn’t attach itself by initiating force against the woman, the woman essentially attached it to herself by her actions. It’s like the case of a man stranded in a pit. If you had nothing to do with the man being down there, you’re under no obligation to take an affirmative act to save that person. If the person is in the Pit because you pushed him there, or because you promised to haul him back out if he went down, then you do incur a positive obligation.
I’ve stayed away from abortion arguments for years, but I found myself reading this thread and it’s really been fascinating to me.
Robertligouri’s argument re: masturbation & menstruation is where I always felt the anti-abortion argument goes. Once you’ve argued that potential (zygote) is the same as existence (baby), then the same argument applies to sperm & egg. And then we’re all slaves to our biology.
Yet I also have real respect for the passion of the pro-lifers. I feel a kinship with your anger and emotion - I despise environmental destruction with the same fury. I believe you are being honest and it makes me pause.
In the past I was much closer to Lola’s view that men should just stay out of it. Because when a girl is dating it’s a monthly battle to keep pregnancy at bay. There have been times when it has felt to me that men were the enemy - they want sex, they push for sex, yet if a girl gets pregnant she’s often on her own to deal with it. Given those parameters I think it makes sense that a woman would want to decide her fate without more male interference. Otherwise she’s just their servant.
Yet as the role of men has changed dramatically, just in my lifetime, I hear a voice from fathers that deserves to be heard. I believe that many of you are really invested and would care for the child yourselves if the woman chose not to. I have no answer for that dilemma.
On the other hand, the whole “abstinance if you don’t want a baby” stance seems dumb to me - there is NO perfect birth control for married people. Temporary sterilization isn’t an option - permanent sterilization isn’t an option, either; doctors won’t discuss it if you haven’t already had kids. And condoms are a joke - we broke many of them.
As I write this I’m delighted to be pregnant with my first child. I always thought abortion was as simple as scooping out a cantelope. The truth is this baby has taken over my body already. Just five days after I became pregnant the changes began. I had no idea it would be this way. If I needed to abort it would not be an easy choice, it is not something I could take casually. I think that’s true for most women. I remain pro-choice, but I don’t see it as a simple issue.
“Extremely rare” depends on your definition of the term. It happens a couple thousand times a year. So in comparison to the total number of abortions in the US, it is pretty rare. In comparison with, say, the total number of innocents executed in the US, it is huge.
And it is not "almost always performed because of " health issues. Fairly often it is the abortion of the healthy fetus of a healthy mother.
Cites available on request.
Regards,
Shodan
Request cites, then, Shodan.