The abortion debate

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Hence what I meant by you not caring about quality of life.



The basic point of the question was that seeing that you do not want women to have a choice in having kids, then you should not have any choices either.... if you told a raped woman to have her baby because it is what 'you' want, then there is no reason for her not to bring the baby to your house and leave it on your lap and say 'see ya'. It is eye-for-a-eye. If you are not willing to adopt, then you have no room to tell people to have babies.



Nope, I am not talking from a bleeding-heart, liberial, or popular point of view, or anything like that. The argument that a embryo and 3-month old fetus has no brain activity is grounded scientific fact. I trust doctors more then priests.



Ok then, seeing that you know so much as to how it feels to have a unexpected unwanted pregnancy, tell us what the main reason for having a abortion is.

One in three women in the United States will have an abortion in her lifetime. The most common killer of girls ages 12 to 20s is pregnancy. The most common reason women cite for having abortions is for the welfare of their already born children, so they aren't forced into destitution from having to raise another one.
Those facts alone are enough reasons for me to want to keep abortion 100% safe and legal. I don't want my country to end up like Romania, where women were prosecuted if they had miscarriages, and with those infamous orphanages abound.

I did some research on the statistics Canada website, and in Canada teen abortion is pretty low... the most occur between ages 20-25. I will correct myself that rape is not the number one reason why abortions are requested, but it is a good chunk. I would not be surprised if some women lied and made up another reason due to shame. I also found that over 88% of abortions are done before the 3rd month, anytime after that the abortion mostly occurs if the mother's life is at stake or if there is a major issue with the fetus.

And this is why I have an issue with the pro-life movement. The overwhelming majority of abortions are very early on in pregnancy, certainly far removed from the nearly-fully-developed infant that the pro-lifers want us to imagine the fetus is. And of abortions that occur later on in pregnancy, most are likely due to legitimate medical reasons. No woman is ever obligated to put her health or life in jeopardy for a fetus. Even conceding that a fetus, in the later trimesters, should be considered human, I could never support a law putting a woman's life on the line for the unborn child.

I also have a problem with the pro life movement using lies to advance their cause. The pictures of mutilated fetuses I often see on their protest signs are in fact not byproducts of abortions, but stillborn infants. I would be more sympathetic to their cause if they didn't use lies and dishonesty to advance it.

The pro-choice movement isn't blameless either. Why the constant trumpeting on about rape victims? Rape is not a reason for a significant number of abortions. I remember reading somewhere that only about 1% of abortions were from pregnancies resulting from rape, so I don't even see that as a significant part of the debate overall. And in any case, many pro-lifers are willing to make an exception in the case of rape or medical threat to the mother. To me, it seems the middle ground will always allow abortion for rape victims and for mothers who face medical danger in pregnancy, so the question is about abortion-on-demand. Should it be allowed? Should there be any restrictions on it? Now, most people would feel rather queasy about a woman 8.5 months pregnant getting an abortion- at that point, it is a nearly fully-developed infant, and would be viable if delivered right then. For an embryo only a couple weeks old, most people do not recognize it as human and would feel more comfortable with it being terminated. (Indeed, about half of all pregnancies are spontaneously aborted by the mother's body, a fact which pro-lifers typically ignore) So where do we draw a line in the sand? A convenient place might be at the first trimester, or basically the rights guaranteed in Roe v Wade but no more than that.

Considering that late-term abortions are done only in the case of an emergency to the mother's health or the infant being a danger to her or unable to survive on its own owing to an inevitable condition (Or in a case I read about recently, in which a woman tried to give birth to twins, and both couldn't survive, so they had to choose to abort one of them) I think it would be ridiculous to place restrictions according to trimester. The doctor and mother's decisions and wisdom should triumph in all situations.
And I don't think any restrictions should be put on the procedure, period, no matter what her reason or situation. Three women in my family have had abortions, several friends of mine have had them, and I will meet many more who have had or will have abortions, I'm sure.
The pro choice movement often uses the rape victim because the larger mainstream still seems to have a gut reaction to think of abortions as something that promiscuous or careless women get without consequence. It's not true, and a citation of a rape victim is usually the best way to shock people out of that indoctrinated kind of thinking, aside from gruesome pictures of women dying in their apartments from coathanger operations gone wrong. And I know which one is more polite to present as an example in a public sphere.

A good deal of the talk in this thread dances around the morality of abortions and how legal procedures should (or would) control the actions. But I lived through the era when abortions in general were illegal and the horrors of amateur abortions and illegal medical procedures with some doctors charging outrageous prices for a simple procedure because it was unlawful created terrible situations for the individuals involved and the general social appreciation of law. Be assured, making abortions illegal may stop a few but women who are determined not to have their lives destroyed by an unwanted birth will have the abortions anyway and many will die from infection or frightful medical procedures. Like prohibition, like the current drug problem, when procedures are determined by the individual to be unavoidable under any circumstances they will be carried out.

We haven't even discussed quality of life. The subject hasn't come up. Every single time you try to describe my "real motives" you're wrong. Stop it.


That isn't exactly what your question asked. It asked about a rather unrealistic line of mothers spontaneously dropping off their babies...

A more appropriate question would have been: If you were a woman, and were raped, and got pregnant, would you keep it? That's a hard one. Until fairly recently, when I came to the conclusion that souls aren't a seperable metaphysical entity but rather a mental patternlike thing, I'd have drawn the line at conception. Now it would have to be drawn later -- although I haven't yet figured out exactly where. So "emergency contraception", at least, would be an option. But I almost certainly wouldn't take it. Partly because I would almost certainly have a nagging lingering doubt about it being acceptable, partly because immediately after the rape, there would probably be other things on my mind. After giving birth, would I keep it, or give it up for adoption? Impossible to tell, even as a guess. Too many variables.

To sum up: emergency contraception -- maybe, but probably not; regular abortion -- definitely not; adoption -- no idea what I'd do.

BTW -- I don't buy your argument that you can't discuss something or have an opinion on it without personal, direct experience of it. What would you tell me if I were a woman and had posted the exact same things? Don't talk about rape until you've been raped? Don't talk about pregnancy until you've been pregnant?


Sorry, I missed your point.

Wikipedia quotes the first observed brainwaves at 12 weeks. 12 weeks = 3 months. As near as I can tell, all the main brain structures are in place by 87.5 days (the last being the corpus callosum, which is the bit that interconnects the left and right brain), which is also about 3 months.



abortion statistics

If "child indoctrination" is someone whose parents raised them that way, then yes. Are you a "child indoctrination" atheist/agnostic/humanist/whatever?


What makes you say they're sexist? I don't know everything about catholicism, by a long shot, nor do I agree with everything they say (again, by a long shot), but I don't remember them supporting anything sexist.


Nope. Protestant.


Yes.


?????

Don't have to, pro-life only care about the baby being born, after that the mom and baby are on their own.



It was EXACTLY what the question was asking. 'You' want them to have the babies, 'they' did not want to have the babies. Don't expect them to do something in your favor unless you are willing to fess up and do the same. Having a baby plopped on your lap without your notice and your wanting it is exactly what you want to happen to women who are in a unwanted pregnancy.



Ok, now I KNOW you are hurting for information when you go to wikipedia looking for facts
but even so, wikipedia said 3 months, the abortions are done before that.



That is a website which is biased for it's own purposes, you will find similar, but opposite data if you went to a pro-choice site, so instead I did some research on the Canadian Statistics website to see the abortions rates in my country, more then 88% of abortions are done before the 3rd month... so no one is getting killed. The later terms are only aborted due to mother endangerment or serious issues with the fetus, such abortions like that are not common.
Apparently teen abortions are not as common as some people believe, for example there are only about 200 a year in my province, but for women 20-25, it can range over 1000.

As I mentioned in a earlier post, I corrected myself that rape is not the number one reason why abortions are requested, I would not be surprised if some women lied and made up another reason due to shame. Overall denying women rights over their bodies and lives just so that you can sit there and say 'their problem, not mine' is just all-round sad.

*whew* Anyway I think I will end my posts with this one when it comes to this thread, while I do love debate, and abortion is my favorite debate topic (that and religion) I think I have said what needed to be said

Last edited by Chibi_Neko on 04 Apr 2009, 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

*phew* After all that debating, I'm in the mood for a cookie.

Unsupported, false, and insulting.


Given the utter lack of either citations or a display of technical knowledge on your part, I'm not sure why I should be embarassed about using wikipedia. If you'd impressed me with facts, I'd have taken steps to be sure of mine.



The only point of the data was to show that. I wasn't asking you to believe it without checking it, assuming that you would. I doubt very much that the statistics on a pro-choice website would be substantially different, although the spin would be.

Sadly not Ancalagon, my parents didn't teach me anything, I went to a christian school, made friends, whatever, the difference is the fact that instead of my worldview being taught I developed it, I don't see any fairies at the bottom of the garden, so to speak, I looked at the world with science and it all made sense, no need for a god or his logical fallacies

Well generally catholics think that unless they have balls they can't be a priest, so I guess you arn't one of them, however you do have extremely strong views on a subject that concerns women, not men, I mean yes you could say that you are trying to protect unborn foetuses, but they don't need protecting, if you don't abort an unwanted child what then? Put it up for adoption?
That won't solve anything, all it will do is bring the problems of a mentally damage child, a problem that creates murderers and rapists, sure not all children become like that, but an unloved child suffers more than anything, how it must feel to realise that you should't exist? To sum it up, this is a pointless arguement, you are quite obviously not going to back down, and neither are the ones who support the freedom to choose what a women grows within her womb, so I leave you with this

Do you agree with the death penalty? If so, you are a hypocrit, like a great deal of fundies, otherwise, I underestimated you

When you can't tell the difference between a roast chicken and an omelet you are in trouble.

Please don't use things like that, thats NT language and I don't get the meaning