Abortion

[Rynos]

I hate my government...

 

Not that my vote would matter, but it would have gone to Kerry(Democrats)... I personally think both Kerry and Bush would be terrible Presidents and think that Clinton should run again.

 

I agree with giving marriges to gays and allowing women to abort their pregnancies. Teens who get pregnant and do not abort face a ruined future or them and their babies... Also it would force children into orphanages.

 

I dont know where Kerry stands on the Patriot act but I think it unfair to people, and for the most part racist, that Bush allowed that to be passed. For that I feel he does not represent America in ways that it should be viewed.

 

 

btw- Any bets on how much more the US economy will fall into debt?

[hundinman]

I agree with giving marriges to gays and allowing women to abort their pregnancies. Teens who get pregnant and do not abort face a ruined future or them and their babies... Also it would force children into orphanages.

 

So, you think that being dead is better than being in an orphaniage? That is strange because I would rather be in an orphanage with a chance to live a life than be killed before I was born. Aborting a baby is very dramatic for the mother no matter what the age. It is very traumatic to see a living human body being killed before it had a chance to live. I have friends who know many people that have had abortions and regret it. They would rather know that they have given life to a child somewhere in some orphange than not having a child at all. Knowing that they destroyed life can hurt them even more than not ever seeing their child alive.\

 

HM's 2 cents

[Peregrine]

*impales hijack*

 

Start a new thread for it if you want to continue this debate.

[Harver]

1) Kerry wanted to win Bush supporters and so he some-what claimed to support the USA PATRIOT act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism).

 

2) If you are a man, abortion really isn't your subject to discuss. None of us are going to have to have a baby scraped out of our uterus any time soon. If the baby is going to be yours, then its up to you to discuss that with your partner. Give your view. If you want to keep it fine, if you dont' fine. Just support her in whatever decision she makes. It can be very hard to decide to have a potential life sucked out of you.

 

A few questions even arise from a woman fearing bringing a child into this world. She could risk dying in delivery, the child could come out deformed, and would the child fare well with a mother who was unsure of how to raise that child? Also, would you really want to birth a child that's half of a persons that you might hate now?

 

Now for my own counter arguements. Is it right to kill a fetus? It may have no conciousness but it would eventually. It maybe nothing more than a parasite at that point but it would grow to be a child. Do we have the right to kill something that could, 7-9 months later be looking up at us with those little eyes and calling us "daddy" or "mommy"?

 

And with these arguements, dont you dare say we men are committing mass murder by masturbating. Sperm is simply a cell. It takes the combination of an egg and a sperm to start the life process, as I'm sure you learned in biology. So if you want to say that then you have to account for that fact that women would be serial killers. They menstruate once a month. In that process, an egg is lost. They lose it in the same fashion everytime (much like a serial killer kills in the same fashion over and over).

 

Back to the topic, if you wind up in a situation where a girl is impregnated by you, sit down and discuss what it right to you. Right is a subjective term, for the most part, so you need to determine what you two believe is right.

[Malchik]

Glad to see someone else who realises the word 'rights' is subjective.

 

So Bush pulls the USA or should it now be DSA (Divided States of America) kicking and screaming into the 19th century!

 

Wow!

 

Whatever one's feelings on abortion per se making it illegal has two unpleasant side effects. The first is that it adds another lucrative scenario to the criminal and the unethical. Secondly it will give rise to the same situations that used to happen before it became legal. Here again will be the back street abortion clinics, or do it yourself with knitting needles, coca cola bottles, throwing oneself down stairs - the time honoured ways of trying to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. (Or sometimes giving birth standing up so the baby would fall onto a hard surface and crack its skull.)

 

If a woman doesn't want to have a baby, she'll find a way of getting rid of it before birth whether legal or otherwise. And if anyone thinks making it 'otherwise' is a positive step, you'd better look at the damage that used to be done when it was illegal before.

 

If people are concerned with the number of abortions they must do other things than make it illegal. Improve sex education to reduce risk of unwanted pregancy. Increase affordable counselling to help women keep children rather than abort. Through understanding, nurture and kindness much good may come. By making it illegal it will lead to greater evil. So does the devil work through the mouths of the 'righteous'.

[jcf]

I only have one small note to make here. I think we all would agree that it is unconstitutional for the government to control what a person whether male, female, black, or white, does with his or her body. I personally feel that this goes both ways. My personal set of morals and values dictates that making abortions illegal is as wrong* as making abortions mandatory, as they are in other parts of the world now under certain circumstances. As a male i know that i would not like the government to control any aspect of my genitals, or any organs for that matter. If the government said that i must have a vasectomy performed i would not be happy about that, but on the other hand, if the government made vasectomies illegal i would be equally angered. Making abortions illegal is no more right (or wrong) than making sun screen legal in the summertime. It could be argued that both save lives and equal arguments could be made that both are intrusive. No social or political institution, government or otherwise, should place it's figurative hand in my figurative uterus.

 

Thats all (dunno if this is a dead topic or not... just got to this forum so had to stick my nose in the political arguments. Apologies if this was concidered dead)

 

*subjective, just like right

[Luxar]

Abortions, in my opinion, should be special case scenarios. Abortions should only be allowed in cases of rape or other abuses of sexuality. Teen pregnancies...sorry, but you should have known better than to have unsafe sex in the first place. Congrats Polly Pregnant, your punishment is motherhood.

[MDRud216]

Yes, women do have the right to choose, but it isn't whether to abort or not...

[NinjaSalad]

I totaly agree with the right of abortion, I myself have grown up in a family striken with poverty, because of my parents being unprpaired for child birth I was given wat I would call a deprived childhood.

 

I could have been a child which was aborted, but my parents did their best, If your a teen living on your own working full time to pay the bills, how on earth could you possible raise a heathly child? When your working 7 days a week and barely paying bills you cannot raise a child, do you have any idea how much it costs for day care? Way to much for a single parent working at Mc Donalds to afford I'll tell you that much! I was lucky that I grew up with no werid disorders or deep resentments towards anything. But most children will end up being F%*#ed up because they had a totaly messed up childhood. That being said if a young parent cannot take care or handle a child, they should have the choise to "Get rid of it" Thanks.

[ThetaOrionis01]

Abortion is an incredibly complex subject, and sadly, a debate which has been hijacked to such a degree by religion and politics that it is hardly possible to discuss it calmly.

 

First of all, the comment 'congratulations, your punishment is motherhood' is just so ill-judged and immature that I can only hope it comes from a child who knows no better. I would certainly assume that it comes from someone who has no experience whatsoever of pregnancy, childbirth or motherhood.

 

Off-hand, I can think of several reasons why a woman would consider abortion - physiological, psychological, economic spring to mind.

 

I don't think it is a choice a woman would make lightly.

 

The mothering instinct, the urge to protect a child, is one of the strongest instincts known - so strong that it can override instincts of self-preservation. Pregnancy induces huge physiological and psychological changes, all designed to protect the unborn. From personal experience, having given birth twice, I can testify to that. Morning sickness, and a loathing of foods and drinks which might harm the unborn - I did not drink coffee or tea for months, for example. An incredibly strong feeling of protectiveness towards the unborn, bringing with a tendency towards risk avoidance. The feeling, when you feel the foetus move within you for the first time, a hardly perceptible, delicate flutter, is just indescribable - and the urge to protect this growing life gets very strong.

 

Of course, other women may experience this differently, but nature itself seems to have taken steps to protect the unborn. To overcome these instincts - I doubt that a woman would find this easy, doubt that abortion could be an easy choice for anyone.

 

But the choice must be given, and must be protected, and the woman must be allowed to make these choices without pressures, and harassment.

 

That some women may be forced into abortion for economic reasons, when having a child would impose financial hardships onto them and their families says more about our society then about the women forced into this choice, IMO. To all those opposed to abortion - would you be willing to pay double the amount of tax to ensure that no woman would ever be forced to make such a harrowing choice again?

 

Teenage pregnancies - I wonder what overlap there is between people opposed to abortion and people opposed to handing out free contraceptives and providing contraceptive advice to teenagers, in schools? Again, it says more about how screwed up our society is than about the girls who see abortion as the only way out. Instead of preventing them from having an abortion, perhaps better education might an answer so that fewer teenage girls experience unwanted pregnancies?

 

Some people might suggest that in such cases adoption would be a better solution. Perhaps in some cases. Probably not in all.

 

Psychological reasons - you cannot force an expectant mother to love the unborn child she is carrying. If carrying a child to term causes a women psychological suffering, who are you to tell her to put up with it?

 

 

What it boils down to, really, is a woman's right to control her own body. And a foetus is part of the mother's body. Until a child is born, it is a possibility of life, which is by no means assured. Many complications can happen in pregnancy, even at a late stage - until a child is born alive and healthy nothing is certain, really.

 

If you deprive a woman of the choice to abort a foetus she does not wish to or cannot safely carry within her body, you reduce women to the status of birthing machines. Tell me how taking away something as fundamental as the right to control your own body differs from slavery.

 

That is the fundamental issue, in my mind. Yes, the potential life of the unborn is to be set against that. As I said, it's a complex issue, and anything but an easy choice, and mixing religion up in it certainly does not help.

 

But IMO, the right of a woman to control her own body takes precedence over all other considerations.

 

 

There are also some things about the pro-life, pro-choice debate which jar very much.

 

Is it not so that some of the people most rabidly devoted to saving unborn lives would accept the murder of medical staff at abortion clinics as perfectly acceptable?

 

Is it not so that teenage mothers are stigmatised by society... for which a previous post in this thread serves as an example?

 

How come the life of an unborn child is sacred, yet a dead child in Iraq is 'collateral damage', and a starving, dying child in Africa is somebody else's problem?

 

How come the life of an unborn child is sacred, yet the quality of the child's life - from a point of view of decent housing, healthcare, education, adequate social benefits - seems to matter far less?