Opinions on abortion

[Boozy]

The US birth rate hit an all-time low in 2002 (the last year for which statistics are available). It has been declining steadily for 12 years.

Population growth may indeed become a problem for the US. Should the rate of growth become negative (as it has in many areas of Canada), incentives to have more than one child may become necessary. Especially given the attitude the US currently has towards immigration.

Population growth control is not necessary in most industrialized nations. Modernization and access to education naturally lowers birth rates.

[Rubystars]

Unfortunately, that gleeful day when safe, effective, inexpensive, totally reversible contraception is universally available is not here yet.

With the exception of rape, it's called keeping your legs closed.

As for rape, murder is worse.

[rahmota]

Tendo said:

While you may take good care of your multiple children, I know many families where that isn't the case and the parents are using the children to bleed more money from welfare and claim the children as tax deductions.

Well thank you I try with the help of the wife. And yes I know a few families that are not as functional as us as well.

The thing I am having trouble wrapping aroud is where you are getting the concept that people are making money on their children from welfare or tax credits.

I've done my own taxes for 10 years running and the tax code only lets you claim two children for the Earned income credit. Which if you're not working or no have taxable income you cant claim. The tax credit only allows you to reduce your tax debt, which if a person is on welfare or makes too little money doesnt exactly help. And the other credit thign (I forget the exact name of it) doent exactly give you an abundance of money for the kids.

Welfare itself I'm not as familiar with the current rules but I do know that changing the rules would as has been stated make it hard on those families who are not plush with money or employed in spectacular jobs and are trying to get by as best they can to simply survive.

With the exception of rape, it's called keeping your legs closed.

For those who believe that way. For others who want to enjoy their life and the deities gift to humanity then safe reliable contraception is a good thing. If we can put a man on the moon why cant we keep a sperm out of the womb?

[Seshat]

With the exception of rape, it's called keeping your legs closed.

So are you suggesting that my husband and I (yes, duly wedded in a church) should never consummate our marriage?

I don't believe that abstinence is the answer. Nor do I believe that non-penetrative sex where everyone keeps a close eye on where any semen goes, is the answer.

Yes, it can be successful at preventing a pregnancy - but denying one of the great pleasures and one of the great bonding experiences of life is not, in my opinion, a suitable solution.

As for rape, murder is worse.

1. Whether abortion is murder is an unproven question. As repeatedly stated in this debate, the issue of when an embryo/foetus is a separate person is unproven and probably unproveable, therefore I believe the question of whether to abort or not should be up to the parents and their ethical advisor of choice.

2. I, quite seriously, would rather be killed than made pregnant. Forcing me to carry the pregnancy would traumatise me. The child would have dreadful genetics and unless he/she lucked out amazingly, would be up for a life of pain and misery.
Forcing me to continue a pregnancy would doom two people (me and the child) to a great deal of pain and probable depression and trauma. Those who loved us would be doomed to support us through the pain and trauma, and watch us suffer. Killing me would just cause our loved ones a grief that would eventually pass.

So no, I disagree with the premise that murder is always worse than rape. I also disagree with the implied premise that abortion is murder.

[AFPheonix]

With the exception of rape, it's called keeping your legs closed.

Well, you're just no fun

[Rubystars]

For those who believe that way. For others who want to enjoy their life and the deities gift to humanity then safe reliable contraception is a good thing. If we can put a man on the moon why cant we keep a sperm out of the womb?

I agree with contraception too. The current methods are extremely effective, and if you layer them with a condom, the minute failure rate of both methods is not likely to overlap.

[rahmota]

Rubystars: Ahh ok. The way your comment was phrased made it sound like abstinence ws the only opttion you favored.

Also i would have to say that rape can be a much more horrible and horrendous crime for the victim and those aroud them than mere murder. All they can do when they murder someone is kill them. Stop their life and send them to whatever waits on the otherside.

With rape ther person can re-live it over and over for the rest of their lives, be unable to function in normal relationships, receive unpleasant diseases, be impregnanted with demon spawn, destroy their living world, etc....

So in many ways a rapist is a much more vicious criminal than a cold blooded killer. And no I do not equate or relate or believe abortion to be murder. Like I said before its not a person yet at the time periods most abortions take place.

[TennesseeWhiskey]

The way I see it, it's between me, my conscience, and my doctor. After all, it'd be my body going through hell with pregnancy. We won't even go there about having it. Until someone can come up with a reason a little more valid than "my religion says it's wrong", or all this codswallop about "it's a baby" when it ain't no bigger than the end of my fingernail and can't survive without its host, they can hush and mind their own business.

If more of these "pro life" people would put their money where their mouths are, fine, they're entitled to their opinions, and y'all know what they say 'bout opinions don'tcha? Like a previous poster said, they're pro life til it's born, then it's "good luck, don't ask me for shit"

I have no more business having a kid than I would jumping into the cockpit of an airplane and trying to fly that bad boy, knowing I've never even been in an airplane for fuck's sake!

When people have asked about the "biological clock" I just say, yup, mine's been flashing 12:00 from the git-go, that sucker's broken.

Oh yeah, you can have really good sex with your legs closed, just takes a little flexibility....

[Sylvia727]

Alright, couple of things I want to address here. Firstly, I'm going back to the OP and explaining this from "the other side". But I'm not affliated with any political party so please confine labels to things I actually am. For lack of a better word, "baby" means everything between egg and infant. I will try to remove inflammatory words from my writing, but if I do include a word choice that you feel is unnecessarily judgemental, please suggest a more value-neutral option. It's difficult to remove our biases completely, and I want to engage in a civil debate instead of starting a flamewar.

And Seshat, I agree with everything you said about the ideal birth control. You lost me at abortion, but in the perfect society abortion would never need to be addressed, because no unwanted babies would ever be conceived.

Humanity has not and possibly cannot know when or how personhood is bestowed or gained by the baby. I absolutely agree with this. However, the assumption I have trouble with is that each woman can somehow know when personhood is for her baby, perhaps by consulting a priest or a relative. Hypothetically, let's say that personhood is acheived at 6 months pregnant. The woman who guesses that her 5 month baby isn't a person and the woman who guesses that her 7 month baby isn't a person used the same method. Neither had information or intuition that wasn't available to the other. But the woman who guessed right is carefree while the woman who guessed wrong has just killed an innocent person. It is because we cannot know where the line is drawn that abortions should not be performed.

Hypocritically, I support birth control. Any pill works by making the uterus a hostile home for the newly fertilized egg, so the baby gets flushed with the period. I realize fully that this policy violates my previous argument, but I honestly can't see a better policy. Without birth control, the only other method is abstinance, and while that is a valid choice it shouldn't be the only one. That being said, my personal line is implantation. Once the little egg grabs on to the womb, it's an embryo, and I don't think that it should be terminated at that stage. The devil is in the details; before implantation, I just tell the egg, "sorry, move along" but afterwards more invasive and violent steps are necessary to end the pregnancy.

"Pro-life until birth" is a fair summary of many people, but I'm not one of them. Our entire society needs to be overhauled, and the treatment of low-income mothers and children is just one of many problems we face. I support war only as a last-ditch effort to defend one's country. While the death penalty may be moral in a utopeian society, our legal system is quite frankly educated guesswork and that's simply not good enough. These opinions don't have any specific relevance to the topic of abortion, but I just wanted to point out that I am pro-life in many or all aspects.

I don't consider abortion as a medical necessity to be abortion in the traditional sense of the word. It's a tragedy that a baby/potential person died, but I don't protest cancer. Diseases aren't moral, they're arbitrary. The woman in question chose between two people dying or one person dying and she made the smart choice. That doesn't justify the women who just want birth control.

In the case of rape, or indeed in any unanticipated pregnancy, abortion shouldn't be an issue because the morning-after pill is commercially available. If you're worried about the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy, grab one and keep it at home for emergencies. The government should also provide those to the general public either free or at severe discounts. That would just be a part of the updated healthcare system. The woman who forgets to take this pill would have to carry an unwanted baby to term, but that is why adoption is here (I know that system needs overhauling, too; honestly, we should just reboot the entire USA country). That sucks for her, but it also sucks for the woman who didn't look both ways and got hit by a car. Society can't protect you from everything, and you're not entitled to kill potential people just because fate screwed you over.

I hope I came across as polite and reasonable, please nudge me if I didn't.

[Seshat]

I hope I came across as polite and reasonable, please nudge me if I didn't.

You did to me. I shall attempt to be equally polite in my disagreements with you, which follow.

For lack of a better word, "baby" means everything between egg and infant.

I typically use embryo/foetus, but 'baby' works fine for me too.

And Seshat, I agree with everything you said about the ideal birth control. You lost me at abortion, but in the perfect society abortion would never need to be addressed, because no unwanted babies would ever be conceived.

I would prefer abortions to never be necessary. Most so-called 'pro-abortion' people are like me, and would prefer abortions to never be necessary. It's why we prefer to call ourselves 'pro-choice' than 'pro-abortion'. We'd very, very much prefer to find perfect contraception: safe, effective, affordable, reversible. It doesn't yet exist, but it's what we'd prefer.

Anecdotal evidence for current contraception being inadequate follows:

For medical reasons I can't use hormonal birth control. This limits me to the IUD, barrier methods, and ovulation-timing methods. The medical problems that prevent hormonal methods from working for me also screw up ovulation-timing methods, so strike that one. The diaphragm and cervical cap won't work for me, because the same medical problems cause too much weight fluctuation, so that limits me to the condom, the sponge (unreliable) and the IUD.
I've never had children, so the doctor who put my IUD in said it was quite possible my cervix would be too tight. I'm fortunate not to have a retrovert or bicornate uterus, which are also contraindications for an IUD. If the doctor hadn't been able to give me the IUD, I'd be limited to condoms or the unreliable sponge.

Humanity has not and possibly cannot know when or how personhood is bestowed or gained by the baby. I absolutely agree with this. However, the assumption I have trouble with is that each woman can somehow know when personhood is for her baby, perhaps by consulting a priest or a relative.

I apologise. I never intended to convey that women can somehow know it: i meant more that women should be deemed responsible enough to make their own ethical choices in an unknowable situation.

But the woman who guessed right is carefree while the woman who guessed wrong has just killed an innocent person. It is because we cannot know where the line is drawn that abortions should not be performed.

I agree with you up until the last sentence. My version is: "It is because mankind as a whole cannot know where the line is drawn that abortion should be an ethical decision between the parents, their God, and their ethical advisors of choice."

I don't consider myself to have any right to make that sort of decision for another capable adult; and being a capable adult, I don't feel that anyone else has the right to make such a decision for me.

That being said, my personal line is implantation. Once the little egg grabs on to the womb, it's an embryo, and I don't think that it should be terminated at that stage. The devil is in the details; before implantation, I just tell the egg, "sorry, move along" but afterwards more invasive and violent steps are necessary to end the pregnancy.

And that's fine - but my opinion is that because none of us can know where the line is, I feel that your personal line shouldn't be the deciding factor for my choice. Just as my personal line shouldn't be the deciding factor for your choice.

That's all I, and most sensible pro-choice people, ask. (The fanatics? Well, I'll ignore the fanatics on your side if you ignore the fanatics on mine. Deal?)

"Pro-life until birth" is a fair summary of many people, but I'm not one of them. Our entire society needs to be overhauled, and the treatment of low-income mothers and children is just one of many problems we face.

I respect that. I don't respect the people who are anti-abortion and yet snub women with children they can't care for properly. However, I can see (based on the quote above and the stuff I snipped) that you've thought things through and are attempting to be consistent. That is worth respect, regardless of whether we agree or disagree.

I don't consider abortion as a medical necessity to be abortion in the traditional sense of the word. It's a tragedy that a baby/potential person died, but I don't protest cancer. Diseases aren't moral, they're arbitrary. The woman in question chose between two people dying or one person dying and she made the smart choice. That doesn't justify the women who just want birth control.

Ah. Good. Thank you - that's a reasonable stance to take.

In the case of rape, or indeed in any unanticipated pregnancy, abortion shouldn't be an issue because the morning-after pill is commercially available.

. . . and is ineffective or dangerous for some women. Which isn't something most people know. But women who have endocrine disorders can have some extremely nasty side-effects from it.

I presume, though, that you'd be willing to consider that a 'medical necessity' exemption, now that you know about it. Am I right?

The woman who forgets to take this pill would have to carry an unwanted baby to term, but that is why adoption is here

What about women who have contraception that fails invisibly, and the first they know about the pregnancy is well beyond the 72-hour window of the morning after pill's effectiveness?

What about women who are raped, but because of social shame and stigma, or even because of the trauma of the situation, simply don't admit it to themselves or otherwise can't manage to get the pill before the 72-hour window is closed?

What about women who do take it, but for whom the morning-after pill fails?

Society can't protect you from everything, and you're not entitled to kill potential people just because fate screwed you over.

Not all abortions are because of irresponsibility. Some are, sure. But not all. I don't have any statistics on what percentage are and what percentage aren't.

I have another question for you. What about women like me, for whom pregnancy itself would be a hideous trauma? It's quite possible that I'd suicide rather than tolerating the pregnancy: I certainly wouldn't be healthy during and after it.

There's a lot of silence about that fear, but in the circles I move in, it's quite a common one. It's a phobia-level fear, and one we'd be unable to escape for nine months.

Pregnancy also has a permanent effect on a woman's body, and a not-insignificant risk of mutilation or even death. Should a woman be forced to endure permanent physical changes and potential death, just because your arbitrary line is in a different place from hers?

I and other pro-choicers think that women shouldn't be forced to endure phobic reactions, accept permanent physical changes, risk uterine prolapse or fistulas or other pregnancy-caused mutilations, or risk death, just because someone else has a different idea about when personhood begins than the woman herself does.


Over to you. Imagine I'm pregnant, and you're explaining to me - a phobic woman - why I should endure it. Have fun!

[AFPheonix]

Hypocritically, I support birth control. Any pill works by making the uterus a hostile home for the newly fertilized egg, so the baby gets flushed with the period. I realize fully that this policy violates my previous argument, but I honestly can't see a better policy.

Actually, hormonal birth control does not work in the manner you've described. Copper IUDs yes, the pill, patch, ring, and Mirena, no.
The latter work because they prevent you from releasing an egg in the first place.
This is also why Plan B is only effective for a short window after intercourse, not because it prevents implantation, but because it, as a double strength tri-cyclic, prevents you from ovulating. Once that egg is out there though, well, that's a problem for another day.

[Greenday]

And we can't forget people who do use birth control and condoms, and still somehow result in a pregnancy.

Let's say a girl who is in college uses birth control exactly as she is supposed to, and she has sex with a guy who uses a condom. She gets pregnant, despite doing everything in her power not to. Once that baby is born, college is pretty much over for her. So now, instead of finishing college, getting her degree, and getting a job in the field she desires, which could be very high paying, she's forced to have the kid(s) and she's going to be stuck going for a job she most likely won't like and most likely won't pay nearly as well as she would have if she finished college. And that's just her life. What about the guy she was with? He's a father now. It's his responsibility to help care for the kid(s). I know I couldn't afford to stay in college AND support a kid. Kids sure as hell aren't cheap. That's two lives, now completely messed up permanently, for the sake of one life. How fair is that?

[Amethyst Hunter]

In the case of rape, or indeed in any unanticipated pregnancy, abortion shouldn't be an issue because the morning-after pill is commercially available.

But not always easy to obtain - and that goes for *regular* birth control as well, thanks to the anti-choice crowd that wants to and continues to attempt to deny women ALL access to contraception in addition to abortion services. This is especially more likely to happen if one lives in a rural area where there may be only one pharmacy in all of 60 or more miles within that person's home.

Look up Pharmacists For Life. This is an anti-choice organization dedicated to denying women access to birth control (most notably, the Pill) because they wrongly equate it with abortion (which, as any legitimate doctor will tell you, is false). They make no exceptions for those women who may not be sexually active but who do take BC to regulate conditions like PCOS or irregular menstrual cycles (such as myself).

I have NO sympathy whatsoever for ANY medical 'professional' who goes into medicine knowing full well they intend to deny patients access to critical information and medications/services based on their own personal (and unproven) beliefs. If they have such a problem with those things, they don't belong in that particular field. Period. Those who refuse to do their jobs knowing what those jobs require of them should be fired on the spot, no sympathy.

The woman who forgets to take this pill would have to carry an unwanted baby to term, but that is why adoption is here

And that sentence just reduces a woman to nothing more than an incubator against her will.

The adoption system is broken in part because of all the BS red tape involved; hence why so many prospective adopting people head overseas. The foster homes and orphanages in this country (USA) are filled to the brim with some pretty sad and horrifying stories - I'm sure that those who work in childcare services and related fields could attest to that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for adoption and if I was talking to a woman who found herself with an unwanted pregnancy that expressed hesitancy in making any decision regarding what to do about it, I'd ask that woman how she felt about adoption and help her find the related services she needed if she chose that route. But going back to the first half of the sentence, it still boils down to claiming a woman's body as property and overriding her choice as a free human being. That I do not and will never agree with. If a woman is going to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term in order to give it up for adoption, it has to be *her* decision, no one else's. Otherwise it means jack squat, because that woman will have been reduced to the role of subservient property. One is free to criticize another's choices all they want; they do not have the right to force or coerce another into acting as the first person believes they should.

This is, incidentally, also one of the reasons why there is such a strong anti-sterilization mentality and why it's so hard (mostly for women) to get sterilized: it's automatically assumed that all women want children and any female who goes against this grain is perceived to be somehow 'deficient'. A man who knows his own mind and who makes his own decisions is viewed as confident, smart and independent; a woman who behaves in the same way is judged as "a bitch" or "inconsiderate" or "a fool who doesn't know her own mind" who needs "to be taught a lesson/her place."

There is, after all, a reason why there's a joke about abortions being sacrament and abortion clinics as frequent as McDonald's if men had the ability to become pregnant.

you're not entitled to kill potential people just because fate screwed you over.

By that logic, then every single sperm and egg is by default a POTENTIAL PERSON - even though they aren't yet united. It's biologically impossible to fertilize and carry every single resulting one of those DNA bits to term, and humans simply weren't meant to do that.

Frankly, given the state of the world, I'm FAR more concerned with the people who are ALREADY HERE and existing, as opposed to a hypothetical or microscopic embryo that may or may not make it to term (miscarriage = abortion by nature's proxy). And I deeply resent anybody who would tell me that 1) my life is theologically worth less than a "potential person" that doesn't even exist or has been born yet, and 2) in the event of rape, hey, tough shit, the hell a victim went through and will have to endure *for the rest of her life* means nothing compared to making sure that a clump of cells gets a chance to grow into a fully developed baby that in all likelihood may permit the rapist to further wreak hell on the victim's life should that scumbag decide to turn around and claim father's rights (or worse, in some countries, *marry* the victim) just for sheer spite (and make no mistake, there ARE scum who would do exactly that).

I am not, nor do I have plans to be, sexually active. But I guarandamntee you that in the event of rape, I would be off to the nearest clinic in the blink of an eye, and failing that, I WOULD risk my life to get rid of any resulting pregnancy.

That's why many, many pro-choice people, including me, get so angry whenever these arguments are brought up. Why should OUR right to life be trumped by what is technically a parasite that cannot yet survive on its own outside the womb? (The whole partial-birth abortion is a misnomer and misleading: those types of abortions are very rarely performed and when they are, it's almost always because something went horribly wrong in the pregnancy and the fetus would not survive - this is a favorite red herring of the anti-choice groups)

One more thing. I don't remember the site I found it on a few years ago, but there was an interesting discussion regarding biblical doctrine and abortion. It was theorized that personhood (as is typically agreed upon by the current longstanding standard) is not conferred *until someone is physically born* (there was a verse about life being breathed into a body or a body taking its first worldly breath quoted). And though I'm the first to admit that I'm no biblical scholar by a long shot, I do believe I remember hearing that Jesus Christ Himself never said a *single* word specifically regarding abortion (or other certain hot topics) in the entire New Testament (and if you're using Christianity as your goalpost, then logically it follows that Christ's word is the final say on any matter of importance).

Ergo, if you're going by religion, one might logically infer that such sensitive decisions were best left to the people involved to sort it out with their God. Many pro-choice people (including myself) do believe in God. However, there are those of us who also believe that God, being God, knows each person as no one else can, and would understand each person's circumstances and why they chose to act however they did - and that includes abortion.

[tendomentis]

Well, this thread has been going on a while, and I am intrigued by points raised on both sides of the debate, but somewhere along the line this little bit of trivia gets either completely forgotton or subtlely occluded:

Intercourse, while utterly pleasurable, exists to continue the species by way of pregnancy. Like braces, eye-glasses, hearing-aids, prosthetic limbs, and the like, medical technology has afforded humanity an ability to "cheat" nature wherein we can siphon off the natural chemical reactions that accompany sexual intercourse that produce that natural euphoria (widely believed to have evolved in our ancestors to encourage the continuation of the species) without the "consequences". But, it is in all essence, a "hack".

And like any good modder will tell you, when you tweak or hack your machine you lose all rights to complain if it fails to work in the manner you want it to. You forfeit that right when you operate "outside the original system specs".

Obviously, one can't compare apples to pears (or kiwi's for that matter), but the same underlying principle holds true regardless of the context. While cheaters never prosper, neither can they complain when their cheating fails.

And, all "ethics" and "morality" aside, when approached from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, contraception is for all intents and purposes, cheating the system.

Now people will go back and forth on this issue to no end, but I just thought it was worth highlighting this little bit of often overlooked knowledge.

[Amethyst Hunter]

And, all "ethics" and "morality" aside, when approached from a strictly evolutionary standpoint, contraception is for all intents and purposes, cheating the system.

BC may 'tinker' with the internal system, but I would argue that this is, in general, overwhelmingly for the better rather than the worse for most females. Yes, there are some women who can't take things like the Pill, because every patient is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with certain health situations. For those of us who do use the Pill (and not always just for the intention of preventing unwanted pregnancy), it's a godsend.

Tinkering is not in itself a bad thing - if we didn't have such, we'd never have all the advances made in areas like mental illness, or physical limitations, or other topics. It's the intent behind the tinkering that can make the difference as to whether or not something turns out to be a 'good' or 'bad' thing.

For instance, I would support cloning of human organs, so that patients who need organ transplants could get one that much faster and stand a better chance of survival. (Currently it can take a while to get specific organs; patients have died waiting for necessary transplants) I would NOT, however, support cloning an entire human being, because it would not be the exact same person. Only the physical would be replicated; it would not be the same personality inhabiting the body, no matter how much tinkering was done to get as close a match as possible. (This includes animals as well; with the possible exception of cloning extinct or endangered species, the animal's personality wouldn't be the same as the original's.)

Ergo, I see nothing wrong with tinkering with one's reproductive system when the aim is twofold: 1) to prevent more unwanted children from being born (many of which are likely to land in an abusive environment, which I would argue is a far worse fate than that of never being conceived at all), and 2) to regulate an often problematic inconvenience that we now know isn't strictly necessary (i.e., having a period every single month for the entirety of one's life until menopause - which is a whole 'nother can of worms - sets in and dries the sucker up; constant periods can actually *increase* the risk of certain cancers, and the only reason women pre-Pill had fewer periods in their lifetimes was because they had little choice but to spend a good deal of those lives being stuck pregnant).

Incidentally, the 'tinkering' bit is used in the circular logic anti-choice crowds employ in attempting to deny women access to contraception: "It's against God's natural law to use contraception because you're messing with His creation!" If you go by the religion route, it's important to note that when God told Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply", He was talking to what were literally the only two human beings on the entire planet at that specific time. It was not meant to be a command for every single person on this planet. (There is also the possibility that being 'fruitful' can also refer to other instances like using one's talents in a constructive way)