What do you think about abortion

Post Reply New Topic

I don't think women deliberately set out to use abortifacients rather than contraception because at the moment, all abortifacients have side effects that are more unpleasant than contraceptive side effects. If there was an abortifacient that had no side-effects, I would only consider using it if the cultural distaste for abortion didn't exist. Basically, there are no contraceptives that are reliable that are without drawbacks - so something that actually had no side effects whatsoever is appealing. In this current society though, I would still use contraceptives instead of abortion drugs because people will think I'm totally depraved and inhuman if I rely on the abortion drugs. I would feel guilty as well, but I think that is cultural.

Maybe there is a natural respect for the zef as a living thing (although I wouldn't class it as a person) but I don't think I'd feel as guilty about it as I 'should'.

A moment of levity on the topic of abortion.

I believe in the sanctity of all human life from conception until natural death. I respect all of your opinions. I'd also like to say that I'm a lover, not a fighter so I ask that you tread lightly with me.

Abortion? I think its funny! But seriously i am indifferent to it, women should have the right to choose whether or not they want to raise a child. Yeah i might have been aborted, so what? It wouldnt make a difference in the world anyway. I think it would be more inhumane to force rape victims to give birth to a child and be reminded everyday that child is the result of its mother being raped and the child having to grow up realizing that with the possibility of its mother hating it for life.

Believe it or not, I can sympathize with that position, but here's the heart of the problem.

Maybe that thing inside of you will have a good life. Maybe it will have a bad life. Maybe it will change the world for the better. Maybe it will change the world for the worse. Maybe it will live a life of utter meaningless.

WHO ARE YOU TO MAKE THAT CALL?

The problem is that humanity more and more wants to embrace a world where choices have no consequences. If you really don't want to bring a life into the world, maybe you shouldn't reproduce, or get yourself sterilized. If you're not ready for kids, abstain until you are prepared.

WHAT DOES IT SAY ABOUT US AS A PEOPLE WHEN WE JUSTIFY TERMINATING A POTENTIAL LIFE BECAUSE WE THINK IT ISN'T WORTH PRESERVING?

There are so many options to avoid the issue of "unwanted pregnancy" BEFORE you get to abortion. Still, people seem to think abortion is a good idea. Why not advocate personal responsibility? Why not advocate thinking of the consequences before choosing to be sexually active? Why not consider that giving that child life could be the best choice you could make as compared to seeing it as an inconvenience?

As another pointed out, it's easy to justify something when you dehumanize the subject.

If you see the fetus as a collection of cells or even a parasite, it's easy to justify disposing of it.

What if indeed it's a life (even if still dependent on the mother to live)? What does it say about us as a people for devaluing its worth?

LET'S PERSONALIZE THIS.

People with autism struggle to have opportunity in this life. Some of us aren't that bad off. Some of us will NEVER have a good life. We want to be seen as people who have value, not objects of pity and never some problem to be eliminated. Why not just say people with autism are disposable because they are a burden on society? Every rationale to defend abortion could just as easily be applied to us. Why should it really matter that we no longer need to be maintained in a womb?

I'm sure some of us would have preferred to have never been born. I know I have days like that, so I can relate. Would I want society to so coldly decide I'm of no worth and allow my life to be ended because I'm not an "asset" that deserves to live?

I consider the "what if YOU had been aborted" argument a strong one, but back then when I first found it I was able to find a counter argument that satisfied me.
I was dead at the time of the Big Bang. I was dead at the time of the dinosaurs. I was dead at the time of the Egyptians, and I only came to life about 20 years ago. And I'll probably die within a hundred years until medicine really manages to surprise me, but that's not where I want to go right now. If I'd been aborted before I had developed a functional brain, under the scientifically current monist theory that consciousness comes from brain activity or IS brain activity, then I'd just have kept on not existing, perhaps forever, perhaps for a couple milliseconds and then I'd be conscious as a different person, or perhaps in tens, thousands, billions of millions of years. And although I now, being alive, like it that way and intend to keep on going until I die or stop liking it, which I won't for the foreseeable future, if I had been aborted I wouldn't have either liked it or disliked it, I just... wouldn't be. I would have been just one more of the infinite amount of people who don't exist at the moment. It's dark, but makes as much sense to me as it is possible when dealing with such things.

The differences between a person with autism and a zef should be immediately obvious to anyone who gives the matter a moment's consideration.

Really? The only difference is that you and I are already out of the womb. The same rationale that disposing of an unwanted zef is okay can just as easily be applied to us. It's all a mater of overcoming the "comfort level" of society that might find it abhorrent.

If society/my mother/the man in the moon decided I was too burdensome to live before I was born, then I wouldn't care because I wouldn't be alive to care. I can't get my head around the 'what if you had been aborted' argument because it makes no sense in my head.

If society wanted to kill me off whilst alive because of my condition, then I would fight back - but that would be because I'm a sentient being, a zef isn't.

Chickens have abortions all the time and we enjoy them scrambled!

Not all forms of killing are murder or illegal. In wartime, for instance, one is allowed to kill for your country and it's not considered murder. A policeman can kill someone under certain circumstances. I think it's fine to kill something growing inside of you, since anything within you is yours. I feel this more strongly in the case of a fetus with genetic disorders (more serious than autism). It's your biological process that started it, and you should have the freedom to end it. It's not only better for the child, since abortions happen because the mother is unwilling or unable to raise it, it's also better for society. It allows us to concentrate our resources on wanted and loved children. Unwanted children are tragic, an abortion is so much less so. To outlaw abortions also increases incidents of women dying from amateur abortions. And finally, women need to have control over their own bodies and reproductive systems, it's feminist and humanist and the right thing to do. If you don't like abortion don't have one.

Standard chicken eggs sold in stores are not fertilized. So they are not abortions.

What planet are you from?

Well for starters, in/out of the womb is a fairly large difference.

But there are other differences, including, but not limited to:
1) Thought
2) Language
3) Feelings
4) Friendships
5) Memory
6) Hopes and wishes

Some of those things are relevant, some of them are irrelevant, but they're all significant, major differences.

Ask people why it is wrong to kill, and most people who don't appeal to authority will appeal to some factor that distinguishes between humans and zefs.

Well the article is tragic, but I don't know if that speaks for every case of abortion. It's sad not because "the wrong baby died" but because a)she was probably reluctant to terminate the ill twin in the first place, b) trusted that the doctors would do their job correctly and c) has to live with the trauma of losing two potential children.

As for my stance on abortion, it's more about bodily autonomy. Lets assume that, indeed, a foetus in any stage of development is a person; that wouldn't change the fact that if the host body (i.e, the mother) does not consent to have it growing in her, then she has a right to remove it.

Even when I was anti-abortion, I didn't want it to be illegal because I knew that it was dangerous to not have the option. In countries where abortion and contraception is not available/illegal, women will try to perform the procedure on themselves which causes more deaths. I don't think making abortion illegal reduces the demand for it. What we really need is to better educate people on reproductive health and provide people with sexual health services/contraception. We also need to stop demonizing sexuality and treating it like a moral issue (but I may be going a bit off topic here).

If I were suddenly to come down with an illness that required me to link up my blood stream with my mother's for 9 months, with her kidneys and liver filtering my blood, her eating for me, etc, and without that support I would die - it would not only be her right to refuse to be hooked up to me, but it would be her right to change her mind at any point if she initially agreed to by my host. Even though that would mean my death, she could at any time say, 'I've changed my mind, I can't take this any more,' and cut me off.