I think it would be better to develop a birth control method that is safe, 100% effective and available to everyone* and then maybe outlaw abortion except in extreme cases. I’d even say that making ‘sterile’ the default condition until you actively wish to remove it would be a good solution.
*available anonymously no questions asked.
100% effective? Not likely. Even if you achieve 99.99% effectiveness (i.e. in a given year 99.99% of the sexually-active fertile women who use this method will avoid pregnancy), in a country the size of the U.S., with perhaps 100 million women of childbearing age, that could lead to as many as 1000 unintended pregnancies a year.
Are you sure you’re pro-choice (re: post #231)? 
Could you do me a favour and explain what you think “pro-choice” means? I kinda thought it meant we’d trust women to make whatever choice they thought best - not design a system with the goal of making choice moot. Anyway, this would mean the 1000 randomly unlucky women are just screwed, aren’t they?
I don’t know how you would work this in any practical way, but as long as we’re talking pie-in-the-sky ideas; sure, why not? Require licenses before having children. Make Malthusian Belts mandatory. Let’s start building the hatcheries. I call Alpha.
au contraire, if the ability to terminate a pregnancy exists, one does indeed consent to be pregnant, even if it’s implicit consent (by not aborting).
jsc1953, others, you still haven’t answered my question.
I don’t believe it’s ever going to be possible to have those kinds of transporters, from a Physics point of view. Heisenberg won’t be denied. So I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where we can remove a living foetus without some sort of operation on the woman. Which I believe she should be able to refuse in favour of abortion, regardless of her reasons.
The whole argument (what if future tech can magically move the foetus ex utero) is orders of magnitude more hypothetical than e.g. the desert island one, and I suggest anyone who uses it in future be pilloried.
That’s why I said 100%.
In todays context it means that a women gets to decide if a pregnancy continues to ‘birth’. She can have an abortion if she wants to. She has the right to determine if she wants the responsibility of a child. A right that I believe a man should have, too. Both decided to do the deed after all.
Or how about a pill that reverses the ‘sterility’? Whatever. I don’t need to introduce breeding factories into it or some distopian society scenario. Give both sexes a veto by giving them both effective birth control and only babies will be born who are wanted by both people. No need for abortion at that point.
Well, your solution to the abortion debate is to propose a tidy utopia where abortion doesn’t occur. That’s efficient, but not very practical.
As for the male problem, tangent though it is, I suggest you start a sperm bank with the slogan “Jack off ten times, get a vasectomy, and then score all the pussy you want! Then when you’re ready to settle down, we’ll loan you a turkey baster, on the house!”
It’s far easier for a man to stockpile gametes and be sterilized than for a woman, anyway, which I guess makes up (slightly) for the inherent inequality in the whole gender system. It’s unfortunate, but if a man shoots sperm at a woman, he could be buying into a lifetime commitment. Them’s the breaks. Fortunately, we have war as a way to work off our anger.
My solution is to look at how far technology has advanced and then to extrapolate that into the future. It may not be tomorrow, or ten years from now, but maybe in 20 or 30 it could be true. I’m exploring possibilities in this thread, not lobbying for changes now.
Yet, the opposite isn’t true if the women chooses it to be so. I’m saying in the future we may have to change the way we think on that issue. Again exploring possibilities.
And look how many people lobby against our one bit of fun left to us! 
Or The Law of Diminishing Returns could continue to hold. 100% contraception is an asymptote - we’ll never get there. Even vasectomies and tied tubes fail. The only safe ways are complete abstinence and sterilization, neither of which I’d class as contraception, per se.
First I never made the choice - just said what the obvious choice was and gave reasons. Second you know that I am under NO obligation to save either, my primary duty is my own saftey. So what ever I save is a benifit.
Also now you are changing it, before we have a baby and a dish full of cells, which I am somehow supose to know are blastocyte(s). Know what they look like. Now you state the posibility that those 50,000 were already waiting implantation into 50,000 women. You know what the baby is no longer the obvious choice anymore.
Well I have no doubt that a pro life person may change their mind if she herself got pregant. BUt your reasoning about implanting someone elses fetus into myself without my consent is just silly. The woman who is pregnant gave consent when she had sex, the fetus took her up on that. I don’t know why you want to throw in a 3rd party.
OK this shows such a difference in morality between us that there is no point on discussing abortion. If you really believe that if the law allows killing a person (adult) for your convienence, I’m not about to convince you that one should not kill a fetus for the same reason.
Yes keep that locked up please, not under the bar stool, you said to go for killing the other driver - I suggest handing over the keys to the barkeep also.
Again I am arguing from the human life begins at conception viewpoint, which I can accept, but also can accept other points.
I don’t understand this (about chance outcome) we always operate with chance outcomes. Even when we go to the vending machine and press coke and get a sprite. The part I don’t accept is the killing of another person to correct for the actions you made that created that very life. Other options like adoption I fully support - how is that not a reaction to a chance circumstance.
How am I dictating. I don’t have the power. A consenting adult is responsible enough for her to decide to engage in activities that may lead to pregancy. Why do most ‘pro choice’ people want to pass the responsibility buck? And when they do it’s always to people who have no part in the original activity that the woman chose that lead to the pregnancy and creation of life?
Well because I didn’t see it. But at this time no I wonldn’t be against that. The major difference is that the twins didn’t consent to the activity that created that situation, there is no responsible party here.
Again with the woman/fetus issue. A woman is fully responsible for her actions, her actions lead to the creation of life, that woman knew that was a possibility, therfore she is directly responsible for that life.
We don’t. We just want you to stay the hell out of our lives. If you insist on interfering in our lives, then *you’ve * made a choice that forces *you * to take some responsibility.
We agree, but we can’t afford the procedure or insurance (my husband has been temping for the last year or so). I get the condoms free from Planned Parenthood.
I guess that could be the obvious reaction, but could it not also be that they are concerned about the death of, what they consider, a human being? Unfortunately, that involves discussing the role and responsibilities of the potential mother because she is the one who decides this life or death question.
She might change her mind if you were willing to take it off her hands. Consider adopting the philosophy that if you save a life, you’re responsible for it.
So preventing you from commiting murder is outweighed by interfering with your lives.
Again what did I have to do with you engaging in the activities that created that other person? Where is your responsibility to that person that you created? Why do you want to pass the buck?
Lets look at it another way. Instead of pregnancy, lets say 9 months after sex, on occation you wake up and a baby is next to you. that baby again is a direct result of your consentual sex. You do not want that baby - AND there is no adoption allowed - should you be allowed to kill it?
Hypotheticals are fun! Here’s one: If you agree to raise my baby, I will carry it to term. If you don’t, I will abort. Pick one.
Look, you either care whether or it lives, **or ** you care whether I take “responsibility” for it. If it’s the first, I can respect that. If it’s the second, then I’ll take responsibility by making what I consider to be the best choice, and *you * can stay the hell out of it.
The responsibility is being met by aborting the pregnancy. The fact that you consider it to be a human doesn’t make it a human. Pro-choice folks have as much right to interpret what constitutes human life as you do, and are allowed to exercise responsibility within the boundaries created by current law (or against the law, should that change). According to your position as stated, we’re talking about responsibility here; not about when human life occurs. Abortion = responsibility. You are free to conduct your reproductive life as you see fit. Though I must say, with the rigid standards you put on yourself, nothing short of sterilization would make you “safe” enough to ever have sex. It takes two to tango. The only way to absolve yourself of responsibility, based on your rule book, is to ensure that neither party is taking the chance of creating the pregnancy. The fact that the woman carries the embryo has nothing to do with it.
Wait a minute…the parents are the responsible parties here. They chose to have sex and that act created the problem. They’re the ones making the decision to kill one child in order to save the other. This is a parasite situation. The children are in the same position the embryo is in. The parents need to make a decision to either let nature take it’s course and possibly lose both kids, continue to allow one child to make the other child’s life miserable or unhealthy, or choose to end the life of one to make the other child’s life better. What’s the responsible course of action?
Do you think there are not people who would be willing to raise your baby?
A quick survey of the foster home situation in this country would indicate that there aren’t nearly as many willing participants as you might think.
I would be open to considering that. Is it a compromise measure to which rank and file right-to-life folks would agree?