What do you think about abortion

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Now that doesn't sound right at all. Maybe there should also be a push for "sterilisation rights".

Yeah, that's one good argument for abortion. As long as the fetus doesn't experience pain or discomfort as a result.

It's actually true.
Mostly they're worried her changing her mind afterwards and about being sued later and going to court over it.

I actually went to seriously discuss that option with a doctor on two separate occasions, with different doctors, years apart - and they refused to do it, said I am too young and that I will change my mind, and that they don't do it unless you have had at least one child before.

The fact that I have never changed my mind at all in over 10 years speaks to my personal commitment and views, but what I want is disregarded by them.

Look at the bright side: 30 years from now...maybe not even that long, it'll be a non-issue for you.

One of my university profs told me this story: When he and his wife got married, they agreed that they'd never have children. And so it was 20 years or so they didn't have kids. It was all about career, etc. And then one day his wife's biological alarm clock went off, and it was loud enough to wake up the entire neighborhood. She became obsessed with having children. There was no warning, either.

I'm not a woman, but I've fathered three kids. My wife is talking about having one more and that being the last. We don't want to go the whole sterilization route, but we (collectively) aren't looking to add more children beyond that. And I have to be honest...there's a certain finality to that, like saying a part of my life is once and for all over, and that kinda freaks me out a little. I find some comfort in knowing the door is at least open.

The point is that with some things, no amount of "personal commitment and views" can adequately gauge how you're going to feel across the entire length of your lifetime. Maybe you won't change your mind later in life. Fine. But it would also be a lot tougher living with regret as your proverbial clock winds down.

Totally wrong analogy. A fetus is there as a product of the mothers free will CHOICE (outside of rape). Hence, it is not a trespasser or unwanted guest. It may be an undesired consequence of a prior choice, but it clearly is not forced upon her in any form or fashion.

If I invite someone into my house to get out of the cold, yes I could tell them to leave, and if they die as a consequence of my tossing them out into the cold, I could be tried and convicted for murder BECAUSE I INVITED THEM IN. It is one thing to deny someone refuge in the first place...there is no duty to rescue someone. However, once you make the effort to render aid, you become liable for their well-being to some extent.

If I take a vagrant in from the cold and he puts me or my family in fear of their safety, I can kick him out into the cold...even if it means his death because the safety of my house comes before his welfare. If, however, I just change my mind and send him away after rethinking my prior offer to take him in, I can be prosecuted if harm comes to him. Likewise, I'm not obligated to let him stay with me for any period of time once the immediate danger passes, and I could always see about emergency services coming by to take him to a shelter so I no longer have to care for him.

I find that troubling. Certainly a doctor should not want to sterilize a woman who hasn't yet had kids unless he/she knows that the woman is in her right mind about never wanting kids (absent some medical issues that makes pregnancy dangerous for the woman), but if there is no ground to question the woman's sanity in making the choice, it should be performed if she asks for it.

Abortion is the only issue I have no view about.. I used to be starchly against it, then I was briefly for it.. my thinking now is, I'm a male.. this issue won't apply to me directly, it's an issue reserved for the woman.

nothing. i have never heard any aborted persons opinion on the matter to help me form a balanced idea.

I made one!

Actually I dont like the amount of abortions we have in western civilisations. If its for medical causes or rape or whatever, I wont argue with anyone. But I would like to see if there were less lifestyle abortions, so that typical "Oh, right now, I dont want a child."-abortions.

I dont see any sense in forbidding. Countries where abortion is forbidden dont have less abortions, they only have higher deathrates of woman and infertile woman, due to unprofessional abortions instead of hospitals. In third and second world countries where abortion is forbidden , death because of unprofessional abortions is one of the highest risk of woman in fertile age, so if a law cant prevent anyway that abortion is done, there is no need for something from my oppinion. We have enough experiences of countries where abortion still is forbidden (spain, ireland, ...) so there is proof that forbidding it only raises the death rate of woman, but doesnt raise the nomber of children born. (In the opposite, because of woman getting infertile at unprofessional abortion in young years, many have problems of being infertile when they want to have a family with a partner later.)

I would like that adoption would be more appreciated. Sadly the same persons that normally cry the loudest, about how they are against abortion and how much they appreciate a child lifes are normally the same that are preventing more adoption by talking bad about woman who offer their child for adoption. Instead of respecting a wise and good desicion, that is helping the mother, the child and the new parents, its normally more "Gnagnagna...she must have a heart of stone, so no normal woman would give her child away. She must be a monster not to truly love it and denie her instinctive mother-love and gnagnagna...." (Sorry, but there is no general instinctive mother love. Even with animals that sure havent been influenced by evil western medicine, it happens, that they simply dont feel anything for their kids and abandon them.) So while they push on one side, that there should be more adoptions, on the other side they blame people for doing so, and so cause them to avoid adoption. *headshaking*

The same goes for young women without partner and so on. In my country we thought it was a scurile joke when in the series "Desperate Housewives", when Brees daughter became pregnant they did all that stuff with sending her away, pretending that it was not the daughter but the mother who got pregnant, her running around with a false baby-belly... We thought of it as a funny TV-joke, until we learned that in some areas it was really that big issue. O_o Around here, young woman that decide to keep an "accident"-baby normally get appreciated for being very responsible and so on, so its no shame having a child as single-mum. (Appearantly I think more then 50% of our children are already born as "bastards". ^^) Forcing someone to be ashamed of a child means favors her to abort. I mean: "Stay pregnant and I will blame you until I can see that you are pregnant." - "Get an abortion and I will never know and never be able to be a nasty b***h against you." I think people should be more aware of what their issues are causing. When I blame someone on one side for being pregnant and on the other side for aborting, its a bit hypocraty.

I think it would be also important that there was more information about contraceptiva. Mayn abortions are because of women not thinking of, that when they have because of illness digestive problems (Dont know the right term, but I think you know what I mean with Montezumas revenge. ^^) that because of the pill being "flushed" out too fast, that it cant work and so on. For people that dont want children anyway copper IUD are a good stuff and so on. I also think condom-machines in school-toilettes would be a good stuff. Yeah, they shouldnt do it as long as they are in school - but goddamn either you run after them like lunatic muslim parents and watch them every second or offer them condoms in case of emergency. ^^

In my country, before you are allowed to abort, you have to proove that you were informed about help offers and other stuff. Its only about an hour, normally its offered from (non-lunatic) church groups or priests and so on. So its not about telling someone that he is not allowed to abort, but simply about telling him, that if they have finanvial reasons or fears, what alternatives they are, what offers from different government-offices for single-mums exist, that if they are afraid of family or husband pushing them to abort that they can be given home in certain buildings and so on... Friend of a friend already did so and described them as very polite and non-lunatic, so it was absolutely ok for her.

Shortly: I would like to see that there would be more done about prevention of abortion and more acception among people for adoption or children that are born outside marriage. As long as you point with fingers on people that do so, you give them motivation to abort. The biggest thing would be to have more acception of children in general, and less seeing them as something that costs money, ruin peoples life by preventing them to hoard money, and all the other stuff related to money, money, money... But I think as long as we live in capitalism and people are measured upon the money they own, and not upon the children they have, there wont be much changes. I remember my mom in law telling us to travel as much as poosible before we plan to have family, because when there are children you wont have enough money anymore because of them to have "real" nice holidays and they will ruin your holiday anyway, because of you being forced to care for them. While my partner, her son, was sitting next to me. And I think there will be many more thinking so: "Uh...dont get children, because these evil nasty beings will prevent you having a luxury holiday and so ruin your life." O_o

Babies that are being aborted are children that are unwanted. If they are carried to term and are born then they will still be unwanted, so I think that it is prudent to get rid of a child that is unwanted at the start before they can conceptualise that they are unwanted and decide that because they are unwanted by their parents and society at large and cause problems for eveybody.

Secondly, at a Global population level of 7 billion and rising, I think that humanity, and the belief systems that buy into the the alleged commandment of "Be Fruitful, Multiply" should reassess the meaning of that because we are quickly coming to the point where we are running out of natural rescources to sustain the human race as a whole, to the point where any future generations will have nothing left, and we will die off as a result.

Also, in this day and age where anybody with a little cash can walk into an internet cafe in a third world sh**hole like say, a slum in Lagos, Nigeria and see what the more prosperous side of humanity has, and contrast that to what they will most likely never have, I think that in a few years time the less prosperous side of humanity will probably not want to sit still and starve while people in other places live lives of all modern conveniences and will try to acquire a better life through force of armed means not unlike the Somali pirates. If you think the 401 scammers are a nuisance, wait until push comes to shove by people who are trying to stay alive with the realisation that they truly have no future but the one that they can create through conquest.

Check out the movie 'Soylent Green' to see one possible result of rampant population growth because 'all life is sacred.'

I honestly can't understand at all why having a child you don't want could possibly be more moral than aborting it in the first trimester. I question the morality of even bringing a being that you do want to create into a world of suffering, anyway.

I mean, I like kids and couldn't care less about money, that's why I'd adopt when I'm older, if the state would allow me to do that. I can't in good conscience produce another human being, though - especially given all the heritable problems I have.

I don't think we should reduce the stigma on single mothers for the purpose of discouraging abortion. I think we should reduce stigma on single mothers because they're people and I don't like stigmatising people - but I don't think abortion is a bad thing or that it needs discouraging.

Not something we'll ever have to worry about. Think about it. Say you combine overpopulation is irresponsibility. The main reason why vaccines are so effective is because when so many people take them, you reduce the amount of the disease that can spread. Say you have 30 kids in a daycare and just one of them doesn't receive any vaccines. Because the disease is unable to proliferate within that population, it reduces the chance that the one unvaccinated kid will ever get the disease--at least from daycare.

But vaccines cost money. So if an overpopulated society develops a culture of economic irresponsibility, thus leading to economic collapse, fewer people will be able to afford vaccines and pharmaceutical companies will have less resources for developing preventative drugs. Supplies dwindle to the point almost no one gets access to them. You'll have an almost entire generation of kids who will die off because they aren't naturally resistant to diseases normally prevented by vaccination. Sure, there will be a number of survivors, just not nearly as many. Even though the older generation will survive the pandemic, they'll find that life is more difficult and will partially die off from the fallout of the pandemic. They certainly won't have access to drugs they do need. And whoever is left will have a couple of decades left before they're gone, anyway.

Even if, say, the population falls by 90% in 50 years, depending on how big the population was to start with, 10% can still mean a lot of people left.

My opinion is that birth control, sterilization, and abortion (and homosexuality if you wish to include that) really only delay the inevitable. Sooner or later humanity will be faced with something it isn't prepared for. Slowing population growth will only make certain that it happens later rather than sooner. And if populations are shrinking because humanity is imploding rather than being killed off by disease, then when the apocalypse starts you'll have a small population not even remotely prepared for it with even more catastrophic consequences than you'd have with a "be fruitful and multiply" mentality.

And that's why birth control/sterilization/abortion/homosexuality ultimately won't solve the problem of overpopulation. There are certain insects whose best defense against predators is a high population. There are so many of the insects when they emerge that predators already have their fill of them before the population can be significantly affected. If you have an overpopulation of humans, you have an increased population of those of us naturally resistant to certain diseases. So when bird flu finally mutates and kills us all, there will be a few of us who will either never get sick from it or not even recognize it for what it is if they did get sick from it (because the symptoms will be so mild. I've never had flu shots, been around plenty of people with flu, and all I've ever gotten in my life are severe colds. Could I have gotten flu and just not known it?). There are some people who are HIV resistant without drugs--I mean, we have no idea how long HIV has been around, only that it is a relatively recent discovery. Is it possible that we just now have a population in which large enough numbers of people not resistant to the virus are big enough to notice? Overpopulation is the solution, not the problem. The problems are the choices we make while we're alive. Live responsibly, take care of the planet, and we'll have all the space in the world to enjoy it. Be irresponsible, mess up the planet, and the planet will eventually kill you.

There is, of course, space colonization, but in my opinion that's like couples who divorce or people who take out loans to pay off credit cards, or people who fight addiction by taking different drugs. It doesn't solve the intrinsic problem that get them there in the first place. If you can't take care of yourself, fellow human beings, and your planet, what makes you think moving to Mars is going to solve anything? Just another place to overpopulate, more people to treat less than dirt, and another world to destroy. Things like sterilization and birth control--and even chemical castration--do solve certain kinds of problems. I like the idea of my daughter going on birth control in her mid-teens. Not because I don't trust her or because I'm giving her blanket permission to start having sex, but because I don't trust other boys. My goal is to keep my kids close enough to me throughout their young lives that these things never become an issue. But I can't be everywhere all the time, and I can't prevent, say, someone breaking in the house at night and raping her. The more I can cut risks, the better care I can take of her so things like "abortion" and "Plan B" never even have to enter the conversation. And I can teach my boys to respect women as more than sex objects so that they aren't irresponsible in their relationships. And I can model the behavior I expect by treating my wife the way all men should treat women in healthy relationships. When everyone treats everyone else right, you don't have the kinds of problems you have when you think about overpopulation.

Inevitably people screw up. When they do, people die. So I wouldn't be too worried about overpopulation. It'll even itself out in the end.

On some level, I can sympathize with this as I believe humans are no different from rats when it comes to breeding habits and available resources, but is advocating the destruction of a growing life the best way to deal with population issues? I know Catholics might have more of an issue, but I find it much easier to deal with people using contraception to not get pregnant than choosing to use abortion....especially if the person chose not to use any contraception when they had sex.

We are nowhere near that point. If we deployed our best technology the Earth could support several times the current population. Many people live in squalor and misery primarily due to cultural, religious and political causes. The earth is still capable of producing enough food and energy to support several times the current population.

Having said that, I think we should not be in such a hurry to find the absolute limit of life support for the world's population. It would do us no harm and probably some good to throttle back on the production of babies.

ruveyn

Pretty much everyone I knew who had an abortion was using contraception, it just failed them.

So if you guys care so much about foetuses being 'killed', please invent better contraceptives (maybe even ones that aren't the woman's responsibility?) with your great scientific minds. It would have more effect than calling women irresponsible (when the majority were just unlucky) or worse.