I started wondering this after googling “mother’s life abortion” and finding some sites that think abortion should never be permitted, even to safe the mother’s life if if means killing the fetus. Cite.
So all you anti-abortion, pro-life people, do you support abortion to save the mother’s life? In cases of rape and incest? Or never?
Okay, I’m fairly uncompromisingly pro-life, I’ll play.
Define “Support.” The only instance I find abortion to be favorable is if the couple find out that their child is going to be born with a disease that will give him or her a short, extremely painful life. In those few cases, abortion is often a mercy.
Understandable, on the other hand, is a bit broader. In some cases abortion, while not a good thing, is literally the less of two evils. I personally cannot imagine aborting a baby because I was raped (which is almost always included in what we mean by “incest” anyway) or even if it would endanger my life to continue a pregnancy, but I can see how it would be the better choice for others, in some circumstances. A woman with other children, for example, might feel morally obligated to continue to live in order to raise them.
As for legality, I’m not very militant in wanting to outlaw abortions. If I honestly thought that making abortions illegal would result in the end that I want - which is fewer unwanted pregnancies through either improved birth control methods or an increase in abstinence amongst those not prepared for the possibility of pregnancy - I’d be for it. But I’m not much of an idealist, so I realize that there would probably just be an increase in maternal death instead. More maternal deaths just mean more deaths given the babies will die either way. Being a pragmatist, I mourn that those infants aren’t given a chance to live, but the mothers’ lives must count too.
The only type of abortion I’d like to see severely restricted, to the point of near elimination, is abortion performed after viability. There needs to be a damn good reason to abort a viable baby rather than deliver it, and the only good reason I can think of is that delivering the baby vaginally or through c-section is going to cost the mother her life. I doubt that that’s true of the majority of the nearly 12,000 abortions preformed yearly after the 20th week of pregnancy.
The 20th week of pregnancy is not viable, not even in the best of hospitals with all the money and care in the world. There are two reports, neither of them substantiated by data, that I’ve found for a baby saved at 22 weeks - the general rate given for survival at that age is 2%, but I can’t find figures for the rate of disabilities. 23 weeks has a 30% chance of survival in the very best subspecialty NICUs with the most current equipment and training. In most cases, 27 weeks is considered “viable” without having to do a lot of investigation into the development of that specific pregnancy, and even there you’re looking at significant delays or disabilities for 30% of those that survive to go home.
But, nitpicking the date aside, this very pro-choice person would agree that post-viable abortions should be severly restricted, if not eliminated completely. Each pregnancy should be evaluated by doctors to determine whether or not it’s fetus is viable, not some spreadsheet of data. At viability, a c-section and intensive care followed by adoption is the only ethical decision I can support, short of a gross physical malformation of the fetus that is incompatible with life.
WhyNot,
Mom to a 23 6/7 weeker Doper micropreemie.
I support a woman’s right to an abortion if the pregnancy is a threat to her life, or a serious threat to her physical health. I also support the right to an abortion if the pregnancy is the result of a sexual assault. Incest as a separate category? No. Show me a case of incest that is not also a case of sexual assault.
True. However, if you can find a cite that breaks things down better than “before 20 weeks” and “after 20 weeks” your google-fu is better than mine.
Threat to the life of or serious healh risk to the mother. The trouble with legislating that, of course, is that “health risk” can be interpreted very broadly.
Threat to the mother’s life or physical health (“emotional health” is such a slippery slope that it amounts to a blank check; if that would be an exception, then it should be carefully defined); rape (ideally, post-rape treatment would prevent
pregnancy, but just in case- and then, it should be kept within the first trimester to cut down on false reports); sexual abuse of a minor and severe deformity to the child.
I think all told, those account for 5% of U.S. abortions.
Someone made a good point when it came to partial birth abortions…if it’s so dangerous for the woman to continue to pregnancy, then why not deliver the baby alive?
I am mostly pro-choice, but I’m not in favor of it as a form of birth control. However, I would not tell a woman she can’t have one.
All of the circumstances you point out are in “slippery slope” territory. What defines “threat to health”? Was it rape, or did she change her mind? What is “severe” deformity? And my favorite of all, the “first trimester” argument. What is so magical about three months? or 20 weeks? If 140 days os “OK”, then what about 139? 138?
I decided some time ago that there were only two possible stances on abortion that I could take witout feeling that I was making an arbitrary decision: Either no abortions, ever, for any reason, or abortions at will, for any reason, with no restrictions.
Frankly, both options terrify me. So I came up with a compromise. I think that women should not have an abortion, ever, for any reason, but I think that they should have the right to have an abortion, whenever they want, for whatever reason. A simple issue of my personal morality vs. my opinion on governmental policy. I may disagree vehemently with your position, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to hold it.
I think this makes me both “pro-life” **and **“pro-choice”, and enemy number-one for both groups at the same time.
Why is a baby concieved by rape less deserving of life than one concieved otherwise? Does the suffering of raped mother really justify the moral equivalent of infanticide (as many pro-lifers would have it)? I mean, I understand the exceptions for health and life, if the mother wouldn’t survive the pregnancy, it becomes something of a moot point.
But if the method of conception is considered, then the cruxof the argument shifts from the rights of the fetus (a defensible position, IMHO), to legislating the sexual morality of the would-be mother. The “pro-life” movement then becomes better described as the “pro-responsibility” movement, arguing that all consensual sex must assume the possibility of pregnancy and birth. It is arguing for the enforcement of a certain sexual viewpoint, to the exclusion of all others.
Only to save the mother’s life, and even then, every effort should be made to save both mother and child. When the fetus is past the stage of viability, this will typically involve a premature delivery. Of course, if the fetus is not yet viable, then it would have no hope of survival anyone, so one should naturally save the mother’s life.
While I am sympathetic to a woman’s fear of mortality, I would also find it difficult to countenance the actions of someone who says, “My life is more important! Kill this thing so that I may live!”
I find it interesting that those with the strongest religious beliefs are the people who feel abortion is wrong.
If god is real surely these “babies” would get to go to “heaven”? They are so tiny, so without sin, so pure etc. Isn’t that a good thing?
Isn’t that the aim of Christianity? to be as good as possible and end up in heaven?
Those aborted fetuses obviously come from wicked, sluttish, evil types so what happens if they were born not aborted? If the wicked, sluttish types had taught them how to be? OMG the world would have an overload of wicked evil types!
WHEW I am glad that all those evil types were aborted.
It must be nice to be from a world where everything is so clear…you, your fellow “pro-Lifers”, Christians, Islams, Scientologists. All of you who are CERTAIN about the way others should lead their lives.
Some of us like to muddle along without the help of a book or anyone who wrote a holy book. Some of us feel we can make/have made decisions that were based on sound decisions.
When I cark it I will let you know if I was wrong…if that god/devil bloke lets me email.
I think you are right about all of this, actually. I do not believe abortion is justified n the case of rape or incest, because the point of my opposition to abortion is that babies have the right to live. I do not think that the circumstances of conception are relevant to this basic idea.
If a mother’s life is in grave danger, then I think it is justified, but that’s pretty much it.
And most of the time, from what I gather, the danger is before the period of viability-such as in a tubal, or ectopic pregnancy-which will NEVER come to term.
That’s exactly right. As I said, I have no problem with “abortion” under such extreme and unusual circumstances – nor do the overwhelming majority of pro-lifers. After all, it’s better for one person to survive than for both of them to die.
In other circumstances, a physician should attempt to save both lives, if at all possible.
No, because using that logic, a husband should feel perfectly free to end the life of his spouse if he knows that she has gone through all the requirements to attain salvation. Life is not ours to take indiscriminately.
Besides, actions seldom have one consequence alone. Would this child enter heaven? According to some belief systems, certainly… but what about other consequences, such as inuring people to violence and a culture of death? What about the possible good that this infant might have had if he or she had been allowed to live? For all you know, this infant might have become a great preacher or evangelist, or perhaps a great scientist who would someday cure AIDS. For reasons like these, religious folks say that humans have no authority decide to send someone to heaven before his or her time. (This is barring extreme circumstances, mind you, such as stopping a mass murderer or a terrorist.)
I’m stating these things to clarify the viewpoints of pro-lifers who also espouse religious viewpoints. Further discussion of this issue should go in Great Debates, for obvious reasons.
I am just curious, this is a poll in the proper forum. If every pro-lifer who is nice enough (brave enough) to respond is going to get questioned on sharing their belief, we will not be able to learn the different opinions of the different pro-life.
So fellow dopers at the risk of being labels a junior mod, **please only post here if you are pro-life ** and are willing to share your belief. Some of us pro-choicers would like to hear from the other side in a setting not filled with challenge and debate.
Jim
Thank you, Jim! I was thinking about posting something along these lines, but as a pro-lifer, I was afraid it would sound whiny. I think if anything needs clarification or a more detailed response, it is fine to ask questions, but if there are going to be direct challenges about beliefs, then someone should open a similar thread in GD…otherwise, I, for one, would not be too interested in posting my opinions here. (Too tired to get into a debate about it.) 
Well, then perhaps the OP should have put it in IMHO, not Great Debates. 
I have forced myself to be vaguely pro-choice because I am a libertarian. However, I tend towards the pro-life stance in emotion and my own personal logic.
That said, we lost our daughter Sophie a little over a year ago to an incredibly rare genetic disease called Sulfite Oxidase Deficiency. She was only the 51st case every reported worldwide. Babies with it are born normal but then suddenly have seizures days or weeks after birth, go into a coma, and eventually die weeks or months later. There is no cure nor even any good treatment beside neonatal ICU stabilization. Sophie went into her seizures on day 6 of life and died 5 weeks later. The total bill for treatment was over $200,000.
The geneticists at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston told us that my wife and I are both very rare carriers for the disease and any child of our will have a 25% chance of getting it and dying weeks after birth. Even though there was no existing test, we decided to try again. In the meantime, researchers from around the world invented a test for us and we found out on pregnancy month 5 that the baby didn’t have it. Our daughter Olivia is two months old now.
This case presents an interesting dilemma. The baby will be born healthy yet develop sudden and massive problems sometime after birth. There is nothing anyone can do to stop it or change the outcome at all. The baby will suck up massive financial and emotion resources and then die and that is all there is to it. In addition, it isn’t even like they can live long enough to interact or experience pleasure that even a one year old can. We were perfectly ready to abort based on the results of the test and I think any reasonable person could see why.