I’m sure that was a difficult story to share but I do give you respect for being able to be open about it. I definitely do believe that abortion can cause pain and regret for men too, even in cases where the father is the one who initially pushes for abortion, but I think it is something we don’t hear much about because men tend to be less open about their feelings (or maybe find it too painful to talk about openly).
While I am pro-life, I can understand how someone can end up in the circumstances that you did. There a lot of young men out there who push their girlfriends to get abortions because they’re just too young and scared to really know what they’re doing. I do feel for anyone who ends up in that kind of situation. I’m sure we can all relate to situations where we would have done things differently if we’d known then what we now know.
Let me get this straight…I helped someone choose NOT to abort, and you’re slamming me and my cause?
As it happens, the pro-choice group that I worked with did have resources to help women who wanted to keep their pregnancies. I just wanted those protesters to put their money where their mouth was.
One of my husband’s step sisters is a junkie. From the time her daughter was about 6 until she was about 16, my MIL and step FIL raised that girl, and I helped them do it, too. Not just with money, but I took that girl on outings with my own daughter, places like the zoo and museums and movies and various cultural things around town. I did NOT, however, give the SIL any money, as I knew that she’d drink or smoke or snort or shoot it. But I did help raise the girl.
Thanks. It was hard to share it. I’ve never really talked to anyone about it. Of course each individual woman knows about her own individual experience, but not en toto like me.
I suppose the most galling thing about it all is that I myself and my brother are both adopted as my Mom and Dad couldn’t conceive, and that both our biological mothers were teenagers. There’s quite a bit of guilt (and sad irony) wrapped around the abortions I’ve been a party to because of that. That and the fact that I have three children of my own that I love very much.
There’s just enough Christian programming left in my brain to give me terrifying nightmares about my children dying horrible deaths, from which I awaken to feelings of dread and that somehow something bad will happen to them because God would demand retribution for what I have done. Sins of the Father and all that.
I suppose I just saw this thread and felt the guilt well up inside of me enough yet again that I thought I’d stick my neck out there. In the Pit, no less.
It did feel good to get it off my chest.
Curlcoat I still think the language gets in the way. I don’t think it serves anyone to get caught up in whether it is or isn’t murder or whether it’s alive or not or a baby yet or not. I think allowing those distinctions to become the focus actually empowers the creepy protesters because it creates a platform for a debate that doesn’t really matter and distracts from what does.
What matters is whether getting an abortion is safe and legal…or not.
So ok, let’s call it murder, let’s call it a baby and say it’s alive. It’s currently legal whatever you call it.
I do understand that the tricky part is that actual murder of an actual live human is NOT legal, and there’s a slippery slope for sure. But our society does that anyway when it serves us - war, death penalty, what have you. And some of us are hoping that the clump of live cells that you’re now calling not alive will someday be available for stem cell research, and we’ll have to admit it’s alive then, won’t we?
Women who want to give birth and raise their chldren are also pushed into giving them up for adoption “so you can go on with your life like nothing happened.” Which is totally impossible.
I don’t see any reason that the use of embryonic stem cells in research is dependent on those cells being defined as “alive.”
I do think the definition of when a bunch of cells actually becomes a living organism is germane and frankly fascinating. An egg or a sperm cell are not alive by most people’s definitions, but the second they meet, they’re considered a living organism by some people (and I can see where they’re coming from). Other people don’t consider a fetus a living organism until it is viable outside of the mother’s body, and I can see their point, too. Maybe my take on it is that a fetus is alive by proxy; without maternal support, a fetus is not actually a living organism. You could go from there to say that is it completely up to the mother what she does with what is for all intents and purposes a parasite in her body.
What if they already have (i.e. have two children and don’t want another) or plan to in the future (i.e. being pregnant during high school or college is a nuisance, so will wait a few years before starting a family)?
So… kill any any existing kids or demand sterilization, for the good of the gene pool? Or were you just being rhetorical?
Basically what Bryan said. Why is this such a horrible thing to do? If you already have kids and know you just don’t want another one, or if you just know that now is not the time but maybe in a few years, I could see someone just picking up the phone, calmly making the call, and having the abortion done the same way they’d schedule a root canal or wisdom teeth removal. And I’ve read accounts of women who have felt bad about it after but also I’ve heard of women who were fine with it–no guilt, no “MY BABY!” Just a simple procedure. Is that so wrong if that’s just how they felt?
I didn’t dodge it at all–I answered it directly. Because I hate stupidity, which is why I loathe you, you vapid twat. And the way I was originally reading the post was that FGIE got three women pregnant when they didn’t want to raise a kid, when anyone who wasn’t a retard would have gotten more careful with their birth control after the first one, because abortions are, for many women, a reasonably traumatic experience, mentally if not physically (and even now that they’re legal, women still can be injured or die when undergoing them).
Yes, but that still implies that if you *did *know their circumstances you *could *pass judgement on them. So, in a hypothetical world where you were omnipotent, do you think you would have the right to dictate which women could get abortions and which couldn’t?
Jesus fuck, does *anybody *actually read the thread, anymore, or do they just skim until they hit two words that piss them off and then rant about it?
1.) I already agreed that pro-abortion-legality and anti-abortion-legality would be better terms.
2.) I’ve repeatedly explained that p-a-l and a-a-l are respectively *subsets *of the pro-choice and pro-life groups.
3.) Anti-choice *would *be a good description of pro-life and a-a-l people, since they don’t want women to be able to choose abortions.
4.) I *am *pro-abortion-legality, you stupid fuck. So I’m not calling you p-a or p-a-l, I’m calling *us *that.
5.) Fucking read the thread next time and save my fingers the trouble of explaining to you what I’ve already said fifty times.
Fetuses are totally alive. I’m sure you’ll agree that a woman with a live fetus in her uterus is in a very different situation from a woman with a dead fetus in her uterus. The question is whether or not they’re people. You can’t murder something that isn’t a person. A fetus is *alive *from the moment of conception; what’s under debate is its personhood.
Meh. “Pro-life” and “pro-choice” are adequate labels, inasmuch as we need to apply labels at all. How making the labeling system more complicated improves things escapes me.
The guy made a few mistakes. I don’t see why name calling him is all that necessary. Could he maybe have done things differently–I don’t know, maybe, I’m not him. Three abortions–okay, whatever, with a couple of different women…I’m not really seeing a huge pattern here. And hey, some people just are unlucky.
Most people I know who are actively pro-choice (i.e. not simply pro-choice by default because they think people should be able to do what they want with their bodies) are very active in helping women prevent pregnancy when they don’t want kids and have healthy pregnancies and children when they do. Fighting for or offering free or subsidized birth control and abortion, pregnancy tests, fighting for legally-mandated parental leave and benefits, supporting universal healthcare, demanding on-site daycare and subsidized early education, offering subsidized or free healthy start programs for parents with info on breastfeeding, pregnancy nutrition, etc.
I suppose there’s the occasional parade or protest, but for the most part their work doesn’t involve standing outside clinics and screaming at the people they’re trying to reach.
I don’t believe in this ‘If you don’t like abortion, why don’t you adopt all the unwanted kids?’ malarkey. (For one, I’m not thrilled with the idea of these people raising kids who will grow up to be sexually active.) But this is a country where many pregnant women cannot be guaranteed a single day off from work, paid or not, let alone a trip to the hospital that won’t send them into debt. Telling them whether or not they can have a child seems very shortsighted.
I never did say it improved things. In fact, I don’t think anyone made that claim. I was simply responding to someone who *asked *what issues people *might *have with the label “pro-choice.”
Of course it’s not necessary–but it’s the fucking Pit, i’n’it, and I was angry. And, as has been pointed out repeatedly, I’ve even retracted and apologized.
Seriously, y’all need to grow some thicker fucking skins or stay in MPSIMS if you’re going to get all weepy the first time anyone gets called a mean name.
Well, individual sperm and egg cells are alive before conception, too.
Just after conception, the zygote is hardly more of a potential person than the separate sperm and egg were. Even uterine implantation isn’t guaranteed at that point. Then there’s several weeks of embryonic (pre-fetal) development.
And after that there’s still a ways to go toward building a cerebral cortex. That’s when it starts to make sense to look for personhood, IMO.
But you still went out of your way to make a remark about how anyone who wasn’t a retard wouldn’t need to have an abortion more than once. I’m not getting weepy–I just don’t see the point.
You mean like Planned Parenthood, the topic of this thread?
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-center/pregnancy-testing-pregnancy-services-26174.htm
How much more tangible do you want?
Ah, missed this line at first…
A dead egg cell definitely won’t become a fetus, or a person, no matter what happens.
I suppose what you’re getting at is the notion of “a (human) life,” which I understand to be what is meant by “personhood.”
Because it takes two people to get a woman pregnant, but she’s the only one who has to deal with the physical repurcussions, as well as getting the brunt of the emotional ones, because ultimately it’s *her *choice. So I was indulging in some RO at a man whom I saw as being involved in putting not one, not two, but three women in that unenviable position.
After reading this thread, I am now pro-life.
I think.