To me, the issue of fetal personhood is a gray area. A fetus isn’t a person, but it is more than a wart or mole… maybe along the lines of a cat or dog, which we do as a society allow to be euthanized both for reasons of necessity as well as convenience. It bothers me to think of someone having an abortion (or for that matter euthanizing an animal) where there is not a dire need. Hell, it bothers me even when there is a dire need. But I’m willing to tolerate the inevitability of casual abortion because I strongly believe the government shouldn’t decide what constitutes a dire personal need to end a pregnancy. That’s the main reason. I also believe that the anti-abortion movement is just a cynical effort to punish women who have sex and throw up barriers to advancement of lower-income Americans. The importance of opposing those things makes it a bit easier to accept the possibility of casual abortion.
Can I respectfully ask that you stop doing that? 
That’s part of the problem - that people equate the two because no one tells them the difference. If they don’t know what NFP is, tell them it’s a drug free sympto-thermal method of determining fertile days in a woman’s cycle. If they want to know more, they can google it or email me. The more we use FAM/NFP, the more people will know them, just like they know condoms and IUDs and diaphragms and vaginal rings and the rest - because someone’s told them about them.
You are right. I do find it a shame that people don’t know more about it, so I will try harder to educate in the future. 
I feel you on that. I do. My confusion lies with those that don’t view the fetus, (or embryo) as a person, as I don’t, but still hold the view that a woman shouldn’t have many.
What if your reasoning is the fetus is an unwanted object in a person’s body, all matters of personhood irrelevant?
Anyway, I get the impression this thread wasn’t directed at persons like myself, but rather seeking to exploit the misgivings and ambivalence of some pro-choicers, so I’ll refrain further.
Please don’t refrain. If anything, expound. It is your humor that I always notice about your posts first, but I do always notice your content too, and am interested in your opinions very much.
If a person feels that a woman should be able to have an abortion, regardless if the fetus is a person or not, then that is fine. I can understand that. This does not baffle me.
I am only baffled when a woman feels as I do…that abortion is ok because the fetus is not a person, that I feel it is illogical for her to then condemn the woman for having too many abortions.
Thanks, but there really isn’t that much to tell. I figure the entire discussion of whether or not a fetus is a person is an irrelevant distraction and I’m a bit dismayed when fellow pro-choicers let themselves get drawn into such definitional debates.
I don’t feel “too many abortions” is a moral issue, but simply a medical one. It doesn’t strike me as logical for a woman to undergo repeated surgical abortions when contraceptive methods (and medication-based abortions) that are less risky and expensive are available, but that’s between her and her doctor(s). Frankly, using the image of an irresponsible often-pregnant tramp is convenient for pro-lifers who want to sway people on moral rather than rational grounds. I remember in one thread describing a hypothetical young woman who has a promising future that will likely be derailed by an unexpected pregnancy and was told, in effect, that I was being manipulative. The entire debate on the moral character of the woman is a waste of time - either she has the right or she doesn’t. Similarly, either Larry Flynt has freedom of expression or he doesn’t. His rights don’t become abridged simply because many people don’t like him.
Whatever issues or problems* cause a woman to get one abortion are probably the same issues or problems that would cause her get more than one.
*No access to birth control or the method fails, she doesn’t use it properly, she has a negative physical reaction, her partner doesn’t cooperate, infrequent sex so she’s unprepared, she believes old wives’ tales, she’s sexually active for a long time w/o getting pregnant so thinks she doesn’t need it, she thinks she’s menopausal, she wanted to get pregnant but partner boogied, etc.
Yeah. I take your point about the free speech. I thought you expressed that point earlier very well, (made me laugh. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a board groupie of your’s. I like to laugh. A lot.)
But I think you misunderstand the point of my OP. I seriously am not trying to distract anyone regarding the anti-abortion debate. I don’t think I have ever once, in my one and a half years on this board ever even posted in an abortion thread.
I started this thread to try to understand whether or not there was a logic that I could follow in the thinking of the people that are pro-choice and anti multiple abortions. I had to restrict the conversation to those that think a fetus is not a person, as I think, because those that think it is a baby being killed would have a reason that I could clearly understand for opposing multiple abortions.
IN answer to the OP - I don’t care how many abortions a woman has. It’s her body after all. Although it might be easier on her body if she didn’t need to.
A quick question for Whynot regarding the excellent explanation given above: This sounds to me like it could well remove a lot of spontaneity from your sex life. Does this (measuring et al) need to be done every time?
Indeed. As you well know, and are just being silly in an Appeal to Ridicule. How do I use a motorcycle helmet in the knowledge that it’s not a 100% lifesaver? By conducting my road use so as not to need the helmet, as far as possible.
The latter is “I’ll use this to try to ensure that any children I do have come at a time when it’s convenient; if they don’t, I’ll take care of them anyway”, the former “I’ll fuck how and when I like, and if the dice don’t come up how I like them, I’m entitled to a mulligan”.
Enola Gay, I’m not sure I can make it clearer. The thinking would be, it is not quite as evil to destroy a foetus as a newborn baby, and it is a very great evil to force a woman into pregnancy against her will - so it may be no worse to perpetrate the former evil if it is the price of correcting the latter. And, as I suggested, the pro-lifer might be wont to say “Please, in the name of pity, spare the innocent thing inside you; the circumstances of its conception are not its fault; it has done nothing worthy of death” and yet find himself bound to silence in respect of the heaviness of the rape victim’s burden.
So how is having protected sex inherently more of a gamble than riding a motorcycle with a helmet? Why am I less entitled to an abortion than you are to a transfusion?
I believe that a woman should be allowed to have as many abortions as she chooses. However, the women I enounter who have had many abortions it’s generally because they’re being irresponsible about their reproductive health. When I see a 25 year old woman who has multiple sexual partners but isn’t on birth control and doesn’t use condoms consistently but doesn’t want to get pregnant who’s now pregnant for the 6th time but wasn’t actually sure about the pregnancy until we tested her because she hadn’t bothered to do a pregnancy test and is being seen in the ER for a complaint of foul smelling vaginal discharge it influences my assumptions about why people end up having many abortions. Of course some people are just really fertile and have bad luck. One of my classmates had a patient who had 2 failed tubal ligations. And if you’re in an area with lots of Russian immigrants you’re going to encounter women who’ve had many abortions because in the USSR it was often very hard to get contraceptives but abortions were pretty easily accesible. So I’m less likely to focus on the strictly on the number of abortions than on whether the number of abortions is a marker for risky sexual choices.
Well that was exactly my point. One cannot equate a fetus with a human life, as many in the pro-life camp do, then turn around and say it’s okay to murder that human to avoid exacerbating the rape victim/mother’s suffering.
Two choices: 1) force a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term or 2) chop a sweet innocent child into tiny bits. How can anyone say chopping a sweet innocent child into bits is the lesser of those two evils?
I personally consider forcing a rape victim to carry her rapists baby to be a horrific evil…but then again, I don’t believe that an embryo/ fetus is equivalent to a live baby. But I guess the pro-life bumper sticker “Abortion is *almost as bad as *Murder” doesn’t sound as good.
I don’t mean to be hard on you Nzinga, but I feel like there are too many threads on this board that are basically “I know people in real life who think X, and I want completely different people on the SDMB to explain why.” I can understand why you wouldn’t want to grill your acquaintances about their beliefs on abortion, but the only way to really know is to ask them. No one here knows why your acquaintances think as they do. Even Dopers who hold a similar position may do so for completely different reasons than the people you know.
As far as I know, most people who say “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” do so not because they feel a woman who has multiple abortions is morally in the wrong, but because they believe the circumstances that would cause a woman to have an unwanted pregnancy should be rare. The things that would tend to make abortion common are rape and sexual abuse, lack of education about sex and contraceptive methods, lack of access to contraception, lack of access to health care, and poverty in general.
If none of these problems existed, there’d be two main reasons why a woman would decide to have an abortion. Either they’d be because of failed birth control or because the woman or the fetus had some medical problem. Both situations are fairly rare, and the former would presumably be even more rare if there were better sex education available to all young women (and men, for that matter).
When people object to “multiple abortions” I doubt they’re thinking a number in the low single digits that could be explained by bad luck. I suspect they’re imagining more like 10 or 20. If a woman has had a LOT of abortions, this indicates that she either has some serious problem (e.g. doesn’t understand how to use contraception, is in an abusive relationship), or she’s an irresponsible idiot who doesn’t want to be pregnant but puts little or no effort into avoiding it.
I think irresponsible idiots are the last people who should be having children, so it’s probably best for all involved if such a woman did continue to have abortions. But I’d have the same low opinion of her as I have of other people who repeatedly make stupid choices that get them into the same bad situations again and again.
In my observation people who are pro-choice are also in favor of improving sex education and often increasing availability of contraceptives. A basic overall encouragement of a culture of personal responsibility epitomized in the idea that the person in the best position to choose if abortion is the right path is a person who would have deal with the consequences of the choice (Note: men need not apply).
Multiple abortions is not okay because it seems likely that there’s a lot of unsafe sex or other irresponsible behaviour to be associated with it.
It would also be relevant to attempts to get abortion covered by insurance. I have no desire to pay for someone to use abortion as a primary means of birth control when there are cheaper and easier alternatives… OTOH, I have even less desire for someone to irresponsibly bring a child into the world that they do not want or cannot support.
No, go right ahead and be hard on me. I’m a big girl, and I can be a bit ‘hard’ myself is the situation calls for it.
I joined this message board for the express reason of exchanging ideas with other people. Why on earth would I not want to ask the people on this board, many of whom I have come to respect in their ability to express themselves well in their posts, to explain a position that they may have that I am curious about
If they don’t want to respond, they are free not to. Those that do want to respond, can. What has my aquaintences to do with anything? My friends, and most women I know that are pro-choice have no problem with multiple abortions. I posted that exact point on the first page. In my OP, I said “I keep hearing women say…” Those women, who are saying that they are pro-choice, but doesn’t believe in multiple are usually blogging, or posting on message boards, or making Youtube videos, or whatever. I thought I was quite clear that my friends, my ‘ghetto aquaintances’ (I know that term makes people cringe, but I can’t think of another word that really fits) and some radicals I know have no problem with multiples. I am sure if you read the thread carefully, you will see I even said, “I must know a different set of women” when the idea of abortion being a traumatic experience was raised. So please don’t tell me about asking my friends or aquaintances, because it makes me think you didn’t read my posts before commenting.
The idea that multiple abortions is common due to rape and abuse clashes with my experience, very much so. But I don’t have a cite so I could be dead wrong about that.
I know for me, it is not an issue because birth control is no problem. No sickness, completely affordable, extremely convenient, (Dr right around the corner). But if it were a problem for me to take it, for any reason at all, if I decided to gamble, so what? Really. I know what most people’s problem would be with it, but I must ask ‘so what’ to the pro choice women that I know, that support abortion because they don’t consider the fetus a person (this part is important to me, not least because it is why I myself support abortion)…I must ask those women, "What is your logic for condemning a woman for having multiple abortions?
Also, I take objection to your statement that people are thinking 10 or 20 when they say multiples. No. They mean 4, 5 or 6. According to the numbers I mostly hear.
If it turned out that I did have multiple abortions, I would think an idiot, anyone that decided that “an idiot like me probably should be having kids anyways”. Because I do have one, and she is a testament to my freakin’ awesome mothering skills. Ditto for lots of women I know that actually have had multiple abortions, but also has children.
Finally, my abortion didn’t feel like a ‘bad situation’ so much as an inconvenience.
Why would we assume that the woman sleeps around? I find this an odd assumption. And what other irresponsible behavior are we meaning, here?
(Former Fertility Awareness Method user popping in: ) No, but it removes a lot of spontaneity from waking up in the morning.
The routine procedures you use for FAM are kind of a chore till you get used to them, but the upside is that none of them need to be done during, or before, actually having sex. You do the basal-temperature thing every day when you wake up, and you do the cervical mucus and cervical position monitoring thing at some convenient time during the day.
The only non-spontaneous thing about the sex is remembering where you are in your cycle, so you know whether it’s safe to have unprotected sex. (And if it isn’t, then you have to use your backup contraception method, with whatever loss of spontaneity appertains to that.)
Legal up to the moment of birth as many times as the person finds it necessary and appropriate to have an abortion.
I might find this or that specific abortion to be kinda morally reprehensible. depending on the circumstances, but that’s her call to make, not mine, and no I don’t have any across-the-board attitude about “everyone’s third or fourth abortion”, etc.