–We now return you to your abortion discussion–
The joke would probably make sense, if I placed it in its correct position: At The End Of The Post.
Not halfway down.
The only time anything related came up was this…
We had this test done on both of our kids:“Chorionic Villus Sampling, a procedure used in testing for the presence of genetic disorders. During the first trimester of pregnancy, tissue from the developing placenta can be obtained, with a needle and ultrasound guidance, through the woman’s abdominal wall or cervix. The placental cells obtained have the same genetic makeup as the developing fetus and can be tested as would fetal cells. This procedure can usually be performed earlier in pregnancy than amniocentesis.” Also gives more information, I think.
It’s only useful if you consider abortion. Or, it can help you face a big problem, if defects are found.
Anybody have experience with this? It’s quite efficient at finding problems. Eight years ago it was a bit risky(increased miscarriage)in the hands of an inexperienced doctor. I never talked to anyone who did find anything wrong with the fetus. People don’t usually blab about their abortions, either.
(I tried this in general, nobody replied so far)
Rousseau… my child’s father did split… oh he pops in for the visits that his lawyer told him to make, pays a paltry sum for child support, but when I gave birth to my son, that was my committment to ensuring that he led a happy, healthy life where he could feel he was an important part of society and that he is truly loved. My son cant speak many words, but speaks with his eyes and the bit of sign I have been teaching him. I work, so my son will never ever do without and maybe I am one of the lucky ones because I have family and friends who support me through all the ups and downs and medical crises we go through. So on the nights when im thinking… am I going to get through this… I always come up with the same answer… Damn right I am!!That smiling face, and those great hugs and cuddles in the morning confirm it. I did the right thing.
We are, each of us angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by
embracing one another
CanadianSue: I hope you understand that we are in agreement here. You are my hero. I want to get rid of these abortions because I believe in the strength of women like yourself.
You are mistaken. I have answered this question already. Please go back and review.
That said, I would like to ask you, Drain Bead, for one reason why everyone DOESN’T deserve a chance at life. Because to the best of my recollection, I haven’t seen THAT question answered yet.
The IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group.
Thanks Rousseau… I agree totally. I was reading some of these posts this morning and wondering why we are turning into a society of baby making. Wake up people, this isnt a perfect world, its what you make it!!
We are, each of us angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by
embracing one another
Easy. Because nobody deserves to be born into a world in which they are not wanted and cannot be supported until they can support themselves.
Sure, of course, not one that you have to live, so its easy to be resigned to it on someone else’s behalf, I suppose. And, let’s not forget the excitement of the poverty cycle, the difficulties of class mobility, and the correlation between crime and poverty.
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
(sigh)
Am I to understand that you people believe that a life in poverty or a life of disability is worse than no life at all?
Do you guys think that if you were impoverished or disabled (I know that some people on this list are disabled, so speak up here), you would rather be dead?
And as for being “unwanted,” let’s not forget our old friend adoption. There are plenty of nice, decent, loving people out there who can’t have children of their own who want them more than anything else in the world. Too often we forget that.
Why should a child be deprived of life, and a loving, deserving couple be deprived of a child, because someone doesn’t want to go through labor?
The IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group.
Why should someone be forced to go through labor (in many cases, especially with younger girls, dangerous labor), because some complete stranger can’t have children?
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
Yeah, and the populace forced the “young” girl to have sex, too. That is an absurd question.
Only too often, usually one (older, male) member of the populace per young girl.
It’s growing in her bod. It needs her permission to do that. If she decides she don’t want it there and she knows something she can do about it, that’s it. In our modern specialized society, we regulate who can do the procedure; we say it has to be done by a doctor (and it is certainly safer that way). The right, however, is intrinsic.
The embryo ain’t conscious. It may be human and alive, but it isn’t there for the occasion. It has no investment of years of experience and dreams and plans for the future that would make its death a horrible tragedy.
But even if that were not true, even if it were YOU and not an embryo, YOU, with your education and plans and beliefs and potential of years of life in which to fulfill them and all, would not have the right to forbid her to flush you out of her body if you had taken up residence there and were dependent on remaining there (consuming her nutrients, etc) in order to remain alive. She could abort you as an unwanted intruder at any time and you would die and it still wouldn’t be murder, just her right to have you the hell out of there.
Morally, I could become less opposed to increased limits on abortion once birth control becomes foolproof, safe, and utterly dependable. When reproduction requires a separate act of will and everyone by default is not fertile until they do something to become fertile, it could be said that any pregnant person invited the embryo to live there in the uterus, which makes it far less reasonable that she’d turn around and want to evict it at cost of its life.
However, most people who seek abortions are pregnant unintentionally.
Personally, I have no objection, if someone wants to develop the technology to support it, if a law is passed giving right-to-lifers the right to demand that extracted embryos are removed alive and transplanted into the right-to-lifer’s tissues to continue gestation there.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
quote:
Uh, no, it isn’t, expecially in light of the fact that it is asked in response to another question, namely: “Why should a child be deprived of life, and a loving, deserving couple be deprived of a
child, because someone doesn’t want to go through labor?”
Neither question is inherently absurd; and in fact, the first presupposes that pregnant women have some moral and physical responsibility to complete strangers who are
unable to have children themselves.
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
No, I’m saying that you don’t have the moral authority to insist via force of law that any child be raised that way, especially if it is not your child, you don’t have to bear it, and you don’t have to be responsible for it. That isn’t your decision to make.
That’s a diversion. Fetuses have no cognitive abilities at all prior to a certain developmental milestone, so they cannot even ponder this question. And fetuses are what we are discussing here.
And yet there are lots and lots of healthy nonwhite infants and children sitting on waiting lists. Apparently the desire to have children for many of these couples doesn’t extend to having black ones.
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
So, the value of human life is different? That’s an interesting argument for abortion.
What waiting lists? and where do you get this “information”?
What I was saying, and I believe Rousseau already stated, was that if people are having sex they better be ready for the possibility of fertilization. It’s called taking responsibility for your actions.
Uh, it’s fairly common knowledge that minority children don’t get adopted at nearly the rates white children do. Especially by white parents. But I’ll find the relevant cites later.
Fertilization does not demand that one give birth. It’s called minding your own business.
I had a vasectomy 5 years ago, specifically because we don’t want children; if my wife gets pregnant through some freak occurrence, should we have to have that child? Hell, no. Why would you imagine that we would? Just because you want us to? Sorry, you’d have to come up with a much better reason.
“I love God! He’s so deliciously evil!” - Stewie Griffin, Family Guy
AHunter3 posted
“It’s growing in her bod. It needs her permission to do that. If she decides she don’t want it there and she knows something she can do about it, that’s it. , The right, however, is intrinsic.”
In a consensual act…this is dubious, the fetus is a direct result of the act that the male and female participated in…and is composed of DNA contributed by the parents…and therefore the parents bear a certain responsiblity for said unborn child…How ironic that you view the fetus as an invader that requires her permission…I fail to see the intrinsic nature of such a right, much less a constitutional one…
For many people, (myself included), the stakes are unfortunately altered in a non-consensual/rape situation…The details of which, perhaps belong in a different thread
Obviously the c in rap
is silent
Dwyer-Land
AHunter3 wrote:
By this (il)logic, you could claim that the same holds true for a small child “taking up residence” in the home of it’s parents which no longer want it around. It is living there. It is consumming nutrients. It still needs it’s parents to live. It is not wanted. Don’t have enough Gerber to go around? No problemo - we’ll just kill junior and throw him the hell out of there!
Don’t you see where this philosophy leads? You are saying the woman has the right to kill the fetus if it is convenient for her.
What does this mean? The woman was unintentionally flirting with a man, unintentionally dropped her pants and was unintentionally screwed as a result?
pldennison: It has been pointed out in the course of this discussion that:
is a meaningless assertion. If parthenogenesis is the cultprit in the pregnancy then fine, you have a point, but pretty much every pregnancy I have heard of involves sex with a guy somewhere along line.
It has been said on this board, “what about the man’s rights?” In today’s society the man has a legal obligation to compensate a woman he impregnates and then leaves. But yet, you are saying the woman can abort his child at a whim? I think that if we hold the man responsible, we must hold the woman responsible as well. If a man wishes to have and support the child and the woman aborts it anyway, she should have to pay. It must go both ways.
I would rather not have the courts and law in this at all. No alimony. No child-support. No abortion-blood money. But if the law must be brought in - it must be fair.
Hell is Other People.
I think back in Philosophy 101, when we were learning about logical fallacies, they called the atrocity that you just committed “appealing to consequences.” I’m sure it had some big long Latin name, too, but it’s all the same. Try not to talk about someone else’s (il)logic until you get a decent grasp on your own.
We have convergence!
BeagleBoy wrote:
and Sake Samurai chimed in:
Gimme a hallelujah, we agree that a key factor, perhaps the key factor in this whole damn debate (at least for some of us) is whether or not consent to sex constitutes volitional acquiescence to being fertile, and therefore being answerable to the embryo for its presence in the uterus.
I say it does not. Nature provided us with a powerful sex drive. I will not say that it is irresistible, but it is damned powerful. In many species (ours included), individuals will forego food and safety if lured to do so by their sexuality. More to the point, having a sexuality is not a voluntary act.
In short, flirting with a man and dropping her pants cannot be construed as voluntary on the part of the female in the same sense that taking a resume-fertility pill or switching off her microchip-controlled implant would be voluntary. It is voluntary in the sense that it is not rape, i.e., women as well as men must take responsibility for the sexual and emotional consequences of being sexual. And in a sense, the woman must deal with the reproductive consequences as well: dealing with the difficult personal decision of abortion versus other options when one is pregnant is dealing with them, and it’s heavy stuff.
However, to say in essence, “If she’s slutty enough to have sex, she should have to maintain and give birth to any pregnancies that result from sex” is mean-spirited and unfair.
As I said, though, I anticipate that my position on this could change as fertility becomes more fully an item under a woman’s control, in which the default position (i.e., what happens if she simply gets turned on and has sex without thinking about reproduction one way or the other) is nonfertile. If my niece (currently too young for sex or reproduction) were to deliberately make herself fertile and get pregnant someday and then decide later that she wanted an abortion, I would not be supportive of her in the way that I would be if she became pregnant unintentionally as a by-product of exploring her sexuality. In the latter case, anyone who said she was a slut who deserved to get pregnant and should be allowed to get an abortion would be out of line.
I tend to think folks who think in those terms would like to see women cease to have the freedom to be sexual; that they wish women were kept in line by the fear of becoming pregnant and then being unable to do anything about it if they did. I think furthermore that such people would vastly prefer that society think poorly of them when it happens, so that it is a fate that young women fear and will go to great lengths to avoid having happen to them.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
So much illogic to respond to, so little time…
First thing’s first. AHunter: the flaw in your argument about the woman’s right to do with the embryo as she wishes, because it is essentaily a parasite (I know that "parasite wasn’t your exact term, but I am paraphrasing), is that it got there by a consentual act by the woman. As for this brilliant statement:
What will it take for you to understand that this is an issue of taking responsibility for your actions???
And as for your argument that because the human sex drive is so strong, people who are sexually active are somehow stripped of responsibility, RIDDLE ME THIS:
What about rapists? They are simply responding to their overly-strong libidos. Should they not take responsibility for their actions?
For my money, this is by far the weakest argument for abortion that I have seen yet.
Although I would have to say your argument that embryos have no hopes or plans for the future is a close second. RIDDLE ME THIS:
If I meet a mentally handicapped person who has no hopes or plans for the future, can I kill him?
While you’re at it, RIDDLE ME THIS:
When does the child begin to have hopes or plans for the future? At birth? Methinks not. Have you ever asked a newborn in a nursery about his/her plans? So when, praytell, do children reach this age of enlightenment?
And hey, why not one more, in the same vein:
Do you support late-term abortions? Because I daresay that a six-month old fetus has no more hopes and dreams than a three-week old fetus.
The IQ of a group is equal to the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group.