Most women who choose to abort did not choose to get pregnant! Many children who are born to women who did not want them suffered a lot during their whole life. I know several who were abused,unloved, and were let it known by the women who were their mothers!
The same should be for the people who force a woman to have children they can’t afford,can’t care for,can’t educate etc. that would be a drain on society. Many with out the money for medical expences would die, or live a miserible life for perhaps many years…then that would okay since they were forced to be born?
I consider myself pro-life. However, if I were in charge, my approach would not be to criminalize getting or providing abortions. Instead I would do things like:
- make sure comprehensive sex education (including but not limited to common methods of contraception) are taught in schools;
- provide affordable or free health care to women, including family planning and contraception services;
- establish a national network of adoption services to match couples who want to adopt with mothers who don’t want to keep their baby;
- provide job training and subsidized child care for working mothers
Basically, I would enact as many programs as I could to 1) reduce unwanted pregnancies and 2) remove barriers to bringing unwanted babies to term.
The net result, I believe, would be a very sharp drop in the number of abortions, while respecting the rights of mothers and doctors and not throwing people into jail.
I’m extremely pro-choice…and I think that Skammer’s ideas would indeed result in a very sharp drop in the number of abortions. And I’d be delighted with reducing the need for abortions. Reducing the need for abortions would reduce the amount of misery in the world. If both sides can agree that part of the solution is to reduce the need for abortions in the first place…why aren’t we doing these things already? Instead, we have abstinence only sex ed, and in some places it’s hard to get family planning or birth control at an affordable cost.
Unfortunately Lynn, while you and I could agree on these types of actions, I’m an anomaly on the pro-life side. Public sex education? Government subsidies? Federal beauracracy? Sounds damn near liberal!
That’s reason #16 why I Could Never Be Elected.
Um no, actually it’s not a religious matter. The Bible never specifically says abortion is wrong. I am perfectly willing to concede that some things Christians believe - such as matters of sexual morality - are motivated by religious laws, but abortion is not one of them. I oppose abortion for exactly the same reason that (most of) the world opposes murder.
Of course women can practice self-defense - but they should defend themselves against the men who try to impregnate them, not the innocent child. And once again, it has nothing to do with religion.
Sperm isn’t human life any more than a lost hair is a human life, because they have the same genes as the person they came from. And neither one will ever become a baby, on its own. But the moment the genes of the mother and father are united, you have a brand-new combination of genetic materiel which never existed before - a new human being. And this being WILL become a baby, unless something specific is done to prevent it.
Oh dear. If we hate sex so much, why do we do it so often?
Suffering is irrelevant - unless you think it’s fine to kill someone painlessly in his sleep. And anything that has two X chromosomes and isn’t an animal is a woman.
I’m very confused, because this paragraph doesn’t seem to relate to my statement at all. I was talking about mothers who already have given birth, and now need our help. But anyhow, the medical consequences for the aborted fetus are much more permanent and severe than those for the mother.
I agree that no one should ever be forced to have children, so I don’t see what your point is.
If abortion is murder, then any woman who even thinks about it should be considered an unfit mother, and be forced to give birth and have the child taken away and adopted by a real family.
One of the goddam stupidest anti-abortion arguments I’ve heard is how it deprives “loving couples” (read: male and female couples) from creating a “new family.”
It is a religious matter, Biologically we are animals, a few cells will become a person if left to grow, just as a fertile chicken’s egg is not a chicken! If you ordered 3 dozen chickens and paid $4.00 dollars apiece, for a party you were giving, I doubt you would be pleased with 3 dozen fertile eggs! We share DNA with other living things. Chimps have over 90% of our DNA. I wonder if you understand my point. If carrying a child to term would place the Mother’s health in danger, she has the right to her life(that is important too)!and in a situation where she already has a child or other children who are starving she has the right to protect the already born.
To answer your other statement,their are many times a woman has no control over her body or if her birth control failed. If a woman has been taught (or brain washed as in some cases) to believe Birth control is a sin then she loses control of her rights(in a way) to use her body as she wishes! I know such a woan very well, and she was pregnant almost all her childbearing years, and her children were abused and suffered for it all their lives.
If a man’s sperm doesn’t contain life there would be no conception!
One can be both Pro-life and Pro-choice, they just want the life of the already born to be as important (or more so) than a few cells that “will become” a person if the mother chooses to permit it to be.
Don’t get me wrong; I believe that an unborn baby is (not “will become”) a person. But I also recognize the practical realities that 1) a sizeable portion of the population will never agree with this and 2) outlawing abortion is both unfeasible politically, and ineffective while the circumstances that drive decisions to abort remain in place. So if you want to eliminate as many abortions as possible (which I do), the smart strategy is not to try to eliminate the choice by legislation but address the reasons that women choose to abort and to give them viable alternative options. And, of course, help them avoid getting pregnant in the first place.
Yes, it is mostly a religious matter. You don’t find much secular opposition to abortion.
Nonsense. A fertilized egg is not a person, and doesn’t fit the criteria normally used to define killing something as “murder”.
More nonsense. A large percentage of fertilized eggs die on their own. And a few cells are not a person.
Suffering isn’t irrelevant, it’s the point of the anti-abortion movement. And a fertilized cell or a six year old girl is not a woman. Nor is a female-to-male transsexual, and there’s probably some other variations out there I can’t recall at the moment. It’s not as a simple as XX = woman, XY = man.
Irrelvant. A fetus is thing, a woman is a person no matter how hard you try to reduce her to something subhuman.
You just want to punish women who have abortions; somehow that doesn’t count as an attempt to “force” them to have children in your eyes.
Cut back on the personal commentary, please.
Having had 2 miscarriages many years ago and asking the doctor to show me, there was nothing that looked like a baby(or person) just a little clot. I have also saw pictures of embryo’s and they do not yet have the form of a human being. it was difficult to tell the difference between a human and embyro’s of other animals.
I agree we should do all we can to heip a woman who doesn’t feel she is ready to be a mother, to prevent pregnancy to begin with. Many do not want a woman to use the Morning after pill in the case that she “MIGHT” be pregnant. Now they call it taking a life, even if it is not a conception. to me that is wrong.
I’m so annoyed every time I hear someone say they’re against the morning after pill for that reason, just because it makes no sense. The morning after pill doesn’t do anything that other hormonal birth control can’t do.
Like those stupid pharmacists who will dispense the pill but not the morning after pill. They either need to have their certification revoked immediately for having no idea how extremely common drugs function, or they’re being disingenuous.
I think it is awesome that you love life so much that you are willing to execute 30 million people. God must be very proud of you.
Get rid of legalised abortion and you’ll open the doors to illegal abortions, and desperate women trying to self abort.
With the deaths involved .
Though to at least some so called “Pro Lifers” (What an oxymoron) the victims would deserve it as a punishment.
Most pro-lifers seem to be religious, yes, but correlation does not imply causation.
My cover has been blown! Now all the world knows I am a sadist. cackles maniacally and uncoils my whip
Oh very well, I’ll say “women and girls” if you prefer. (I entirely disagree about the “transsexual”, but that would be another thread.)
That’s pretty ironic, given that while I have never said that women lack anything at all compared to men, here you are quite literally claiming that the fetus is indeed subhuman.
The argument of “If we ban it people will do it anyway” can equally apply to any crime - be it arson, burglary, or abortion. No one expects that a law will eliminate the undesired behavior - the point is that we are deterring it, and sending a clear message that civilized society does not approve of those acts.
Abortion is in no way comparable to arson or burglary, and civilized society does not send a clear message that it doesn’t approve of it, nor should it.
However civilized society HAS sent a clear message that some of the actions of so called “Pro Lifers”, is completely abhorrent to it by enacting laws against murder,assault, harassment and vandalsim.
Why in the 21st c should we be bullied by people whos beliefs pervert religion in a medieval way, to ascribe sentience to biological clockwork, that has the same sentience as a sperm, an ova or a lettuce ?
In fact considering that most people in the US are religious most pro-abortion folks in America are probably also religious.
Actually in the Middle Ages abortion was tolerated up to quickening, it was during the 19th Century in the general growth of political and economic freedoms and rights that abortion became a crime from conception.
The fact that they do so because their religion tells them to does, however.
It’s rather irritating how “correlation does not imply causation” has turned into a rhetorical tool used to evade responsibility.
Because it is. It’s not a person, it isn’t even close to a person. It is less of a person than a dog or a cat, or even a mouse.
And you just want to treat women as subhuman without admitting you’re doing so.