Thank you for bringing this up, Zoe. Because of all the medications I’M on-especially the anti-convulsants-I’d be worried about potential birth defects, and I might have to have an abortion if I got pregnant.* Not that I’d want to-but because of the potential health risks-to me, and the potential infant. And I wouldn’t want to inflict that on a child of mine.
*And no, I’m not saying abortion should be anyone’s first method of birth control-condoms, the pill, diaphrams, etc. Especially condoms.
Cite, please.
Well, now you know one. I was not tortured when, reasonably and thoughtfully, I chose to have an abortion. No sleepless nights, no “cry of the unborn,” no weird depressions based on calendar dates. No second thoughts whatsoever.
Here’s a cite from 1996 showing that approximately 3,700 abortions were taking place every day in the U.S at that time. It also states that 11% take place after the first trimester, which is the time frame that many consider to be the transition point between fetus and unborn child. So if we go by those figures and assume the same holds true today (This cite shows a daily abortion rate of 3,315 a day in 2005, so I’m assuming the other rates have held relatively steady or dropped slightly accordingly), 407 children who have developed sufficiently enough to be considered to have consciousness and the ability to feel sensation are aborted daily, which of course translates to 148,555 perfectly sentient little human beings that are killed (some by simply being torn apart) every year – a number I still find apalling.
Here is a cite (about a third of the way down) showing that a child at 22 weeks, even though not fully grown, is fully develped and can survive outside the womb with proper medical care. Doubtless others at an even earlier stage are capable of survival given proper medical support.
So where do we draw the line? When Roe vs. Wade first went into effect people tended not to think of unborn babies as viable until they were born – or at the most only shortly beforehand. Then as technology progressed it became the third trimester, followed by the second trimester, and so on. In other words, the more we find out about what’s really going on in terms of a babies’ development, the more we find that they develop fully, with complete muscularity and bone structure and working nervous systems very early on. In other words, they quite rapidly become complete babies who just haven’t grown large enough yet to survive outside the womb.
[QUOTE=Zoe]
I’ve never had a baby, but I know dad-gum well that a fetus is never “merely” anything inside a mother. It is not just a separate entity in there – a couch potato, sipping beer, watching SEC football and checking the clock from time to time. For starters, this baby is affecting her entire system hormonally. It will change the woman’s body forever.
[/quote]
Hi, darlin’ Zoe! 
Believe it or not, I am fully aware of this. I went through the entire process during my wife’s pregnancy and I was in the delivery room when my daughter was born, and my daughter has had two children herself. So again, I am fully aware of the changes that take place in a woman’s body when she becomes pregnant.
But why does that give her the right to subjugate her baby’s rights to her own? It It isn’t the baby’s fault she got pregnant. In my opinion, once the baby develops to the point that it has become essentially a human being, it has just as much right to live as does its mother. Even Christopher Hitchens has come around on this issue and the way he phrases it is that there is a “conflict of rights”, with, like I said above, technology proving more and more that babies develop much earlier than previously thought. So whose rights do we protect?
It’s a conundrum.
Still, the point is that many of us who object to abortion do so out of concern for the potential for suffering on the part of the baby, and because of the belief in the sanctity of human life. Claims that we want to force women to have babies in order to teach them lessons, punish them for being sluts, to keep them in their place, or tell them what to do with their own bodies, is nothing but typical inflammatory leftie rhetoric designed to demonize pro-lifers and it’s not true in the slightest.
It’s not hard to see the bogusosity (;)) in that line of reasoning when you consider that half of the babies that we so-called woman-hating pro-lifers want to save are female.
Go figure, huh?
No offense, but could you possibly have picked a more biased cite than that? :dubious:
No offense, but could you possibly have picked a more biased cite than that? :dubious:
This one’s a hoot too!
Note: Try to RESEARCH your sources rather just randomly grabbing them from google, mmmkay? The last one is homophobic jackass-ary galore! (And it has a link to FREE REPUBLIC, for godsakes!)
The answer is in the question. Why aren’t pro-lifers killing abortionists? Pro-life + killing? Uh-uh! If you want them to be consistent, then they won’t kill abortion doctors. A few of them do; they’re the inconsistent ones.
My views are largely in line with this. Except I’d say 24 weeks, not 22, because of medical tests that can show serious abnormalities in the foetus that just won’t show up before 20 weeks (give or take a week - but not much more), no matter how far medical science advances (unless all embryos are screened prior to implantation). You then need a couple of weeks to allow for all such tests to be done, and a couple of weeks to allow the parents to make such a big decision.
There are other reasons behind this limit, for me, but this is a BIG derail.
So, has it finally come to pass around here that only left-wing cites are permissible?
Having said that, I had no idea what the political affilitation of the first cite was. It quoted the Guttmacher study and Planned Parenthood, neither of which to my knowledge is a bastion of right-wing politics. The second cite, a NEWSWEEK cite of all things, quotes the Guttmacher study as well, and Newsweek is hardly a rightie publication.
As for the third cite, it didn’t have the Reagan ad at the top at the time I found it and I merely used the Find command to go directly to the story about the 22-week-old baby – a story I’ve known about since it happened.
But so what? Are you claiming that the story is false and some evil rightie made the whole thing up? If it’s factual what do you care where it comes from?
Then in that case you might want to look at my link above which shows a fully formed living baby, born at 22 weeks with the full compliment of fingers and toes and eyes watching the person caring for it. In fact, since Guin apparently didn’t click the link to the story I’ll post it here to save you the trouble of navigating to it.
I didn’t say only “left-wing” cites are acceptable-just that the ones you linked to had an obvious agenda. The first one was a specific anti-abortion site-they’re obviously going to be suspect! No, the Newsweek one did not. (And that story, btw, is wonderful! I’m extremely happy for them!)
However, by MY understanding, again, this is a procedure only done in emergencies, when there is something wrong with the pregnancy-the mother, the fetus, or both. I do not, personally, agree that this is something that should be done as a birth control measure.
IF an infant is viable and able to survive at a certain period-then that’s wonderful. HOWEVER, that still will not change MY mind about being pro-choice. If only because making abortion illegal isn’t going to stop it. All you’ll end up doing is making it far more dangerous, to those desparate enough to seek one. And again, as I said, SOME women cannot afford to get pregnant, due to certain circumstances-not just monetary, but in some cases, medical and such. And birth control can fail.
As the phrase goes, “Safe, legal, and rare.” Keeping it legal keeps it safe. And in order to make abortion rare, we need far better sex ed in schools than we’re getting right now-enough of this “abstinence only” bullshit.
Then in that case you’d want to read my entire post. Also possibly start a new thread (not your derail, I know).
And yet first cite contained information from Planned Parenthood and it quoted figures from the same bipartisan study organization as the Newsweed article, with the only difference being that the Newsweek-cited study was more recent. You obviously just took a look at the source of the cites and discounted them out of hand, and then twisted off on me without knowing what you were talking about.
This is all true. Which is why I personally do not object to early term abortions. I do think there should be a strict limit though, probably no more than 12 weeks, and for the reasons I outlined above.
I thought you were a participant in the recent thread that showed virtually no difference between the effectiveness of current sex ed programs and abstinence-only programs, with abstinence-only programs having a very slight edge in terms of STD awareness and condom use. By your reasoning, we should abandon liberal sex ed and stress better abstinence-only programs.
The fact is that kids that age are going to have unprotected sex no matter how much you drill into their heads that they could get pregnant. They don’t have the maturity or discipline or foresight to act responsibly when it comes to sex and nothing short of government-mandated birth control is going to prevent it. Blaming current pregnancy rates on abstinence-only is a political assessment, not a factual one.
Of course I read your entire post, up to and including your response to bill henry. From what I gathered, you said you’d be fine with abortions up to 24 weeks’ pregnancy. I posted a link showing what a child’s development is at 22 weeks with the thought that perhaps you’d adjust your view downward if you knew just how fully developed 22-week-old babies really are.
So I don’t know what you’re on about there.
I don’t believe I was, and in any case, I don’t remember said thread, so could you link to it?
Is there a moral difference? I’m not sure why that’s the more reasonable assumption. I’d be inclined to think that the reasons someone would hesitate in B are more practical than moral.
Say you kill the bad guy in A. He is now dead, and the threat to the child is over with. Self-defense laws extend to protecting the helpless, so you’d probably get away without much, or perhaps not any, jail time.
Say you kill the bad guy in B. Since the fetus is not considered a person legally speaking, you cannot escape jail time by saying you were defending a child. Odds are probably close to 100% that you will go to jail. And did it keep the fetus safe? Probably not - the pregnant woman is free to just go to doctor you haven’t gunned down. Frankly, unless you kill the doctor, kidnap the woman, and hold her captive for another five months, there’s a decent chance that you’ve committed a murder that doesn’t even save the fetus.
But you said morally. Okay, if person B goes to jail as I said above, they will be locked up for a long time. Since they are clearly really committed to the pro-life point of view, this means they’ve accepted it as their duty to try and prevent abortions from happening. Given we don’t see many (any?) serial abortion doctor murderers, person B must use other means to prevent abortions from occurring. Probably he pickets abortion clinics and hands out fliers to change minds, right?
Which is more moral, if you’ve accepted the role of abortion obstructionist?:
a. you murder the doctor then stay in jail for years, and possibly save that fetus. (I would include future fetuses he’d abort, but who can predict how many that could be? Maybe 10000, maybe the good doctor is hit by a car leaving work the next day. Who know?) You will not be able to influence anyone, other than the occasional convict’s girlfriend, to become pro-life for a damn long time.
b. you do not kill the doctor, but attempt to reason with him so that he sees the enormity of what he’s doing wrong. Maybe he’ll see your point of view. Maybe he’ll decide that he’s sick of being harrassed by wackjobs and quit, deciding to go back to school for another specialty. And more than that, even if you fail to convince the doctor or the woman, you can reason with the hundreds of women (well, okay, “bully women into changing their minds” might be more apt) you could encounter if you weren’t in prison? Even if you have as low as a 1% success rate, over the course of years that would be your jail term you’ll save more fetuses than in scenario A.
To me, it seems as though knowingly putting yourself in a position where you will not be able to save as many babies is much less moral.
Yes, starts here. (Click link for study.)
Turns out I was slightly off in the differences though. Condom use among abstinence-only kids wasn’t slightly better like I said, but it was no worse plus they had a better awareness of STDs.
How can you decide what is “moral” without considering the effect of the act? In scenario B, I believe that woman will ultimately get an abortion somewhere else. I also believe it will set back the pro-life effort to some extent. So if I kill the doctor, I have achieved…what? I killed a guy to produce zero good effect. The scenarios are not equivalent. If killing the doctor would somehow ensure that child was born, it’s still not equivalent, in that the doctor likely believes he’s doing nothing wrong. That said, in that fantasy hypothetical, shooting the doctor might be as justified as the use of deadly force in scenario A.
::shrug:: This thread is just loaded with people who know what pro-lifers really believe.
If you go on line and read the support for Paul Hill, who was executed for killing an OB/GYN, you really see the dark underbelly of the anti-abortion movement.
I gave detailed reasons for my 24-week limit. It seemed like you didn’t notice them, and thought I’d chosen that number at random or something. I’m fully aware of the developmental stages of foetuses, thanks.
Ehh, I don’t know. Teenagers have a pretty good point when they wail, ‘I never asked to be born!’
Killing one doctor may not save a thousand fetuses, but it sure does help create a certain atmosphere
Certainly there are other factors, but I can’t help but think that knowing you could get killed for doing your job – or, at the very least, that you’ll have your life threatened and probably won’t be able to discuss your day during dinner parties lest you offend anyone – is a factor when med students choose their specialty. Hell, you don’t even need to perform abortions to get threatened every day (as many Planned Parenthood volunteers can attest).
