I will try to explain my postition ( and I hope I will do better than I did last time) I am not at all sure about when a fetus becomes a person- I am sure that it is not at the instant of fertilization and I am sure it is before birth.However, abortion can be immoral whether a fetus is a person or not, and it can be justified even if it is a person ( there are situations where one person may morally kill another} I wouldn’t agree that a reason alone would make abortion tantamount to murder ( although a reason combined with the timing might), but certainly some reasons would be immoral at any time. I wouldn’t even disagree with restrictions on abortions based on viability, because I can’t imagine a reason that would make an abortion justified at that point. I’m pro-choice mostly because I believe there are some combinations of circumstances and timing that make abortion at least a morally neutral choice
and I think the woman involved is better situated to make that decision than the government.
Badt Maru:
I express my opinion of course a lot of people will “attack me?” because they don´t think the same way I do. But I just consider that a difference in opinion not an attack, this is a thread, debate or the way you want to call it. We should expect this souldn´t we?
Yes I know women that had abortions, and they are not the kind of women you are talking about, some of them are wealthy girls, they like to have “fun” and of course a child will be an inconvenience, actually one of them is one of my best friends, she aborted three babies when we were young and then she tried so many years when she was married to have a baby finally at forty she did, she was alredy divorced.
You say this is not a matter of love and then you quote that not everybody comes from loving families, so then is a matter of love.
You told us your story, now I will tell you mine, I was an unwanted child, my mother didn´t want me, lack of love, ignorance? not my fault, but she didn´t kill me for doing so I love her, even if I don´t know her, I was adopted by a wonderfull couple, he died when I was two years old so my adoptive mother raised me byherself, she was full with love.
I got married and had two children, I was separated for two years and I gave birth to a third one out of marriage that is why I had to take the decission for looking into an abortion, I did´t, I was afraid to loose my kids. I fought for them I have the three of them, here you may say that I was punished for my sin? No, afterwards I met a wonderfull man full of love and we´ve been together for 18 years now. We´ve raised the kids together we love them. And every time I think that I could have killed my baby I shiver. My husband is sisty two we still both work but I find that something good, don´t you?
Now, “attack me”
Can you explain consequences of childbirth?
And you still think is not a matter of love? In any case kids are not guilty for the lack of love of their parents, are they? We should help them to overcome problems and raise their kids, by we, I mean the whole society.
You are talking of abortion as a solution for poverty, that doesn´t have anything to do with life but with a way of life. And I know you know the difference, because you sound very educated to me.
I don´t see abortion as a solution for poverty, I see education as a solution. And love for other people and interest in their problems before they happen not after they do. In my country we say: You want to cover the well after the child got drawned.
And no, where I live the rate of abortion is 7% and by the way we don´t have death penalty in my country, have you guessed where I live?
And maybe because we´re a third world country, we don´t have wellfare and here we do hire people with kids.
What should divorced women do with their kids, should they kill them because no one is going to hire them or because no man will want them?
About the clinic question, wouldn´t it be better if instead of one surviving “the four of them” survive, don´t you think that adoption is a much better way than abortion?
JAB 1
No the devil, did´t invent sex, he invents disgusting things only disgusting things like sin, sin hurts you more than doing things right. do you believe sex is a sin? If you can quote that on the bible, I will appreciate it it only talks about giving birth, with pain right ? On the contrary He says:
GENESIS: 2:24
"That is why a man will leave his father and his mother and he must stick to his wife and he most become “one flesh”.
!Wow! isn´t that great!!!
In the country where I live we have a lot of sex, sex, and babies, we have american girls, lots that come here and get married here, and don´t abort their babies.
Even Pandas do. Actually this is the only country where Pandas can procreate in captivity.
And I´m so glad that Cecil answeared you. Because it made you very happy 
Needs2know
Well actually in Roman civilization they didn´t have one God
but several, egyptians did two, not only Gods but godesses,
do you want me to give you some names:
Romans: Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Vesta, Mercurio, Ceres, Diana, Venus
Egyptians: Seth, Ra, Anubis, Hathor, Isis, Thoth, Ammon, Neftis, Horus, etc.
Greeks:Zeus, Artemisa, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Efestus, Palas Atenea, etc.
Germanic cultures: Odin, Wotan, BAlder, Loki, Heimdall,
Pre Colombian Cultures like Mexican:
Huitchilopochtli, Tezcaltipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Xipe Totec,
Coahtlicue, etc.
This are consider myths.
at their time those were their religions and let me tell you that the only reason why I say GOD is because that is a very neutral name for most of religions, it only means deity, from latin, Deus: supreme being creator of all creatures, each God has it´s own name according to it´s own religion. They still do. And I don´t want to mention any religion specifically because I´m not an expert on other religions but mine, and all the rest I respect for what they represent.
In every culture there is one God. And as far as I know most of “actual religions stand up for life” understand me not religious people but “religions”.
Thou shall not kill.
In my church we call him our " Heavenly Father" and he is. Do you know which church I belong to? we don´t call him by his name in vain.
Do you know which my country is?
And we are a “pro-life country”, yes because our religious believes. In my country we have many churches and we respect all of them. It´s our right to worship whoever, wherever and whenever and we give other people the same right. Whe don´t chase people for their religious beliefs.
Someone who gets an abortion because they wish to look slim for a high school reunion; this I consider ethically troubling. However, I also find it ethically troubling that a person would refuse to give a kidney to a relative who needs one, because they want to have a “spare”. I do not think they “should” do this, but I will not force others to accord with my morals unless they are actively hurting an actual person. I would not strap a person down and forcibly remove their kidney to give it to someone else; neither will I force a woman to have a child simply because I do not find her reasons for aborting a potential person as compelling as she does.
There are valid reasons for me. Since the fetus is not yet a person, I do not belive I have the right to force my reasons for choosing not to have an abortion upon another.
I at no time have said that abortion is never wrong - I personally find it wrong in many circumstances. I dislike the needless waste of life whether fully human or not - I still get sad when seeing a dead dog on the side of the road, and when people boast of being cruel to animals I have to resist the urge to be cruel to them. So of course I place some value on pre-natal life. I believe that in an ideal world nobody should have to get pregnant if they didn’t want to, that childbirth was easy, painless, and safe, and that every child brought into this world would get the love it needed to grow up happy and healthy. Then nobody would ever have abortions.
But I don’t live in that world. I live in a world where there are countless reasons why a woman might want to terminate a pregnancy, some altruistic and perfectly ethical, some shallow and self-serving. Women have done so throughout history, ever since stone age women discovered which herbs they could eat to cause a miscarriage, perhaps even before then. Even through the thousands of years that abortion could be as dangerous as childbirth and being involved in one would lead to your execution, women still did it, and in many of the cases I feel it is a just decision.
I do not, can not consider a fetus as equal in value to a born human. For one thing, the part of us that separates us from most animals is incomplete until after birth - in the first several hours after a child is born the brain truly awakes, forming millions of new connections, bringing previously unused portions on-line. What makes us who we are is mostly the sum of our experiences, and an incomplete unconscious brain that has always been in sensory deprivation is NOT human in my opinion. And as I stated before, even if somehow fetuses were conscious, sentient beings I still wouldn’t believe that their right to continued existence should be allowed to override the safety, health, and freedom of a separate being.
What I am wanting to understand is not the reasons why someone would be for the woman’s right to choose or against a woman’s right to choose, there are many for each and I am capable of understanding other people’s point of view quite well, through my life I have held different views on abortion, the death penalty, socialism, eugenics, and many other controversial subjects before I reached my current way of thinking. I am wanting to understand is how those who are anti-choice think our legal system would take away this choice. I want to know if they too have forseen the consequences of getting what they want, whether they think the ends justify the means, if they truly believe human rights should be infringed upon to that point. What I WANT to believe is that they do not understand what they are asking for, or what they are shooting for is NOT a society where abortion is treated as murder, but some kind of strange in-between crime, because the alternative is frightening.
In the past, when abortion was illegal, enforcement of the laws was very spotty - they were pretty much limited to arresting people who performed abortion for others. This encouraged women to find a way of doing it themselves - I think we’ve all heard of women using coathangers, or jumping from a chair repeatedly, or men who strike their wives in the stomach after hearing they are pregnant. This still happens when there is a legal and safe alternative. If we make abortion illegal, punish it as a serious crime, the abortion statistics will drop drastically because nobody will be reporting abortions. You will instead see the number of miscarrages go up, a thriving black market for abortion pills, the poor dying from infections and hemorhaging and those with money travelling to other countries to get it done.
At this point three things could happen. People could realize that things are much worse for all involved than before and legalize abortion, they can turn a blind eye and every now and then arrest some dealer with a bag of RU-486 or the occasional back-alley abortionist, or they can turn up the heat. Since the first would require admitting you were wrong and the second would be pretty hypocritical, the last choice seems likely. Most or all miscarriages would have to be investigated. A police investigation of your miscarriage would be extremely traumatic even if you were found innocent, and there would of course be innocents wrongfully convicted, as always. For example, if some woman has an unwanted pregnancy and talks to some of her friends about how she wishes she wasn’t pregnant and later has a miscarriage, how is she going to defend herself? Now consider that in some cases the friends might believe she did it on purpose and fabricate evidence to make it seem more obvious. It may not happen often, but with thousands of miscarriages a day it will happen.
I just can’t see how any of these scenarios would be seen as an improvement, except maybe for those who feel that people should be punished for lack of sexual responsibility.
I’m not an idiot, Gloria, but I don’t know of ANY country where everyone has the same belief system.
Perhaps your problem is related to the fact that you think everyone in your country has the same belief system. Even if 99% of people claim to be the same religion, they do not all feel the same way on all topics.
I’m sorry Gloria I have a very hard time understanding you. I do understand that you are pro-life, but for the most part I can’t seem to understand much of anything you are saying.
As for religion in your country…that’s fine…although I must say that I’m glad I don’t live in a country where a “national religion” takes precedence. (Of course many Christians would argue that this is “their” country. Just as you have somehow with the “in God we Trust” statement.)
If you really want to get into what God wants we can start another thread where we look at some of the “hard passages” of the Bible. There are many passages in the Bible that advocate practices modern man finds “immoral”, even Christians. Genocide is one of them. This trend to return to an “Old Testament” morality is not going to work. It’s already polarized one large and popular denomination in this country, the Baptists.
And I do not need a definition of what a deity is…I do after all hang around the SDMB. Religion is often a big topic around here.
Needs2know
Bob Cos:
Aborting a pre-sentient fetus, to me, is like throwing away food. There are cases where you can do it with no hesitation - when the bread starts to grow mold, you don’t say “Hmm, wonder if I should keep that.”
If you’re throwing stuff out because you just bought a cake or a side of beef and you need space in the freezer, maybe you should be taking it to the food bank instead.
If you’re throwing it out because you just buy whatever’s on the shelf with no regard to what you will actually eat, you’re irresponsible… but not in a way that needs to be criminalized, just frowned upon.