How to (Un)pack for a Real Conversation About Abortion
By Heather Corinna, Scarleteen.com
June 25, 2009 - 7:00am
The murder of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller on May 31st has resulted in a lot of conversation about abortion. It's a topic frequently hushed, or spoken about more around its politics than the actual procedure, the experience itself and the real women who have abortions. So this increased discussion is certainly something potentially positive happening because of something horribly tragic. More discussion around anything which is or may be treated as unspeakable is always a good thing.
However, often in these conversations and news stories, language is used that's confusing or inaccurate, and some statements are made about abortion or women who choose abortion which are false, unrepresentative or misleading. And any of this can come from either "side" of abortion debates or discussions, due to political aims or motivations, ideological ideas or agendas or just out of plain old ignorance. Just like a whole lot of people don't know the finer points of open-heart surgery, a lot of people just don't know what goes on with an abortion procedure, especially from a provider's point of view. If inaccurate, misleading or ideologically-loaded language is being used, or myths are being held as truths, our communication and understanding is always going to be limited. And that's never a good thing, unless we don't really want to understand something at all.
Let's start with a few typical language issues. When the politics of abortion are discussed, often language is used in talking about abortion that doesn't actually exist in the practice itself, that providers don't usually use or have any practical use for, and some of which is absolutely meaningless or invented only to try and misrepresent abortion or pregnancy.
"Late-term abortion"
Plenty of you have probably heard the term "late-term abortion," lately because Dr. Tiller was one of the few providers who provided abortions for women past 24 weeks. "Late-term" is a phrase that we don't use in practice because it doesn't mean anything solid, practical or medical. Even in common use it's pretty meaningless: when some people say that they mean an abortion from the 20th week through the current legal limit (which in some states is up to 28 weeks), others mean the whole second trimester, and some are talking about abortions into a period of time when legal abortions can no longer even be performed (past that 28th week or less in some states) except when the life or health of the mother is in danger, as determined by her doctor.
Whether a doctor or healthcare worker is talking about a pregnancy that ends in a birth, miscarriage or with an abortion, we talk about the timing of pregnancy either in weeks (as in, labor and delivery usually happen around the 40th week) or in trimesters. The first trimester of pregnancy is from gestation (from the date of a woman's last menstrual period) through 12 weeks, the second from weeks 13-28, and the third from week 29 until a full-term, which is generally considered to be between the 37th and 42nd week, even though some women may deliver earlier or later.
Viability is more of a legal term than one used in healthcare, and in legal use has been defined as a fetus "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid." In other words, for much of pregnancy, even with amazing care and medical technology, a fetus cannot survive outside a mother's uterus. But at a certain point, even if it has not fully developed yet, it can or may be able to.
What viability is considered to be, in terms of at what number of weeks, varies from state to state and has also changed over time. When Roe Vs. Wade was decided, viability was considered to be around 28 weeks, but since that time, it has changed in some areas or countries to be as early as 22 weeks. However, in practice, viability is generally determined more by unique development, like lung development (which will vary some from fetus to fetus) rather than by weeks.
An astute bit of commentary in the Wiki on pregnancy adds about the increasing time period of viability that, "Unfortunately, there has been a profound increase in morbidity and mortality associated with the increased survival to the extent it has led some to question the ethics and morality of resuscitating at the edge of viability."
Babies and Conception
"Baby" is another term we don't use in medical practice: it's an infant or newborn when we're talking about a live birth. Before birth, we are talking about an embryo, around two weeks after gestation, or a fetus, from the end of the tenth week of gestation onward. This language is not meaningless or just about semantics: we're talking about very different phases of development when we talk about a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus and an infant. But for those of us working in abortion, embryo or fetus are the only terms we're using: anything before an embryo is to early for a termination (and often even for a pregnancy test), and an infant at or post-birth is not something we ever see in our practice.
Conception is also not a term we use in abortion. We don't have any need to argue when conception does or doesn't start, or to use this term at all because it doesn't give us any information we need. What we need to know is if a woman is pregnant, and if so, what the size (via an ultrasound) of the fetus or embryo is, and, for legal purposes, how many weeks pregnant she is based on that size and her last menstrual period.
"Partial-birth abortion"
This this is not a medical term, and there is no such medical procedure that exists by this name. Rather, it was a term invented by Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee in 1995.
We have a legal ban -- put in place during the Bush administration, and which remains in place now -- on something by this name, even though it has no meaning in actual practice. Incidentally, the law itself also contains some pretty strange language for a law or policy. (In fact, if you also click the link to Roe V. Wade on that page, check out how different the language is. It's a pretty major difference.)
What people using this term usually mean is a termination which is done around or after the legal limit for elective (as in, chosen, and with no need for a doctor's order) abortions. The actual medical practice often being called "partial-birth" is an intact dilation and extraction (an ID&X, which is very different than a standard D&E), which is almost exclusively done for health reasons, stillbirth or profound fetal abnormalities, and/or also if the mother or parents would like the fetus to remain intact (for their own emotional process or for burial) or an autopsy is recommended. I won't go into depth here about all that procedure can involve, but now that you know the right term, you can look it up for yourself, or take a look here, here or here for some sound general information.
Abortion procedures done at this time make up less than 2% of all abortions every year: they are exceptionally rare. An ID&X is not usually the procedure used for second-trimester procedures, and never for first-trimester procedures. ID&X is a type of abortion procedure for women who, very late in the game (usually in the third trimester) discover that either their fetus has very serious problems, that their health or life will be or is in grave danger with a birth or continued pregnancy, and/or if a fetus was already was stillborn (had died in the womb). A termination done like this and at this time can spare the mother the physical risks and emotional pain of going through the rest of her pregnancy, then labor and delivery with an infant absolutely known to be born still (to be dead before birth), or which would die shortly after birth. An ID&X can also be done more quickly than an induced labor and delivery, and with life or health at stake, that's another reason why it has sometimes been done.
"Abortion doctor"
I don't know of anyone with a doctorate degree in abortion, nor of any programs where you can get a doctorate in abortion. "Abortionist" is also a problematic term for this reason. "Abortion provider" is the preferred term by most. Many doctors who provide abortions are OB/GYNs: they are obstetricians and gynecologists. Some nurses also administer medical abortions.
I agree with this article.
I'm perfectly willing to be honest about my pregnancy and abortion experiences. After my abortion, I was relieved, happy, and glad it was over. I told my boyfriend pregnancy is "legalized torture". I hated every second of it. There was no joy for me until after my abortion.
I get called strange, stupid, emotionless, and other bad things for admitting I was happy not sad after my abortion by some anti-choicers though. I also get called a liar when I give my honest opinion about how pregnancy was for me by certain anti-choicers. If they'd be nicer, I'm sure more women would be willing to share their stories. Pro-Choicers might treat women who enjoyed pregnancy and regret their abortions the way the Anti-Choicers treat me. If they do, they should be nicer, too.
When I found out I was pregnant, I told my doctor I didn't want to continue the pregnancy. Even though she was Pro-Life, she put my wishes first and told me about an abortion provider that was covered by my insurance. Like my doctor did, we should put our personal feelings and religion aside, and actually give thought to the situation at hand.
People need to stop generalizing and stereotyping. So, pregnancy was torture for me, that doesn't mean it's that way for everyone. Just because some women are excited when they find out they're pregnant doesn't mean all women are, I'm proof of that.
I think you may be missing the point as evident by the language you use.
In your mind they are anti-choice.
In their mind, they are pro-life.
In your mind, it's about your rights being in danger.
In their mind, it's about your baby's rights being in danger.
This is why it is such a difficult discussion, because not everyone agrees on the personage of that "thing" inside a woman when she is pregnant.
I told my boyfriend pregnancy is "legalized torture". I hated every second of it.
I totally understand this, as I feel the same way. And I did it twice, on purpose and planned, because I wanted kids. But I did hate every single thing about being pregnant (and breastfeeding wasn't exactly fun or wonderful either).
But if I get pregnant again, I would have an abortion as soon as I found out. Because much as I love and wanted the kids I have, I don't want any more and there is not a single thing in this world that could induce me to go through another pregnancy for any reason whatsoever.
And every time I mention to anyone how very much I hated being pregnant and my absolute certainty that I won't do it again, ever, I get looked at like I suddenly grew an extra head with fangs or something. Because a woman disliking pregnancy and not wanting more babies is unnatural or something.
I agree about everything...except the abortion part. I had two children. Hated the process, love the kids. And I'm also certain I never want to do it again. But because of this, I had my tubes tied. Even though I hate pregnancy/childbirth/breastfeeding, I'd never kill one of my children, and the child that would be conceived would have every much a right to live as the others I brought into this world already. I don't hate the process enough to actually kill over it. Personally, I'm proud of my tubal ligation. I want to get a t-shirt that says I had one, because I love it so much, and I'm not the least bit scared to tell even my closest family that I had one to stop the "So, when are you going to have another one?" conversation before it even begins.
It's restating the obvious and already said, but no one here is talking about killing children.
Because you choose to form definitions based on your side of the argument.
When I was pregnant, I was pregnant with my children. That's not inaccurate to say. It's not as though they sprung out of thin air one day after a doctor visit.
I HIGHLY endorse contraception. I think that numerous overlapping methods aren't endorsed as much as they should be, and if they were, abortion would be verging on a non-issue due to its rarity. Abstinence is unrealistic, and oftentimes oppressive, particularly to women.
But to ignore the life of another human in a certain stage of development is a tragic case of age-discrimination the likes of which has scarcely been equaled in history.
The whole point of the piece is to talk about using language that involves accuracy from both a medical point of view, and that of the diverse realities of women. By all means, yes, this is from my "side," which I made very clear, though when we're talking about things like the reality of a diverse array of women (including some who terminate, by the way, but identify as pro-life or antichoice), I don't think sides are so easily divisible.
I absolutely understand that your experience being pregnant -- and that of many women -- is that when you were pregnant, you were pregnant with a child in terms of your emotional experience, and I don't think there is anything invalid about that. But your experience is not everyone's experience, and it's also not in alignment with medeical procedures before labor. (I also agree with you about endorsing doubling-up methods: I do that all the time in all my work. In fact, I think Scarleteen is one of the only places, if not the only, where anyone can find the math to show effectiveness rates of combining methods.)
But IF we want to be able to talk about abortion accurately, and in a way where some real communication can happen, rather than be stonewalled -- again, this piece is about abortion -- we simply cannot talk about "killing children." That is not how the law here in the states views it (and through most of human history as we know it, from what we know of the history of abortion, that is not how it has been viewed), it is not how the medical community at large views it, including all the OB/GYN orgs, the field of practice which deals with all of pregnancy. To view abortion that way, and fetal development that way, also suggests some mighty strange and disturbing (IMO) things (whether a woman terminates or not) if you follow that kind of thinking to it's logical conclusion, and dismissing the irrefutable fact, and one we thus far cannot change, that it is inside the body of a woman and, to a certain point, is totally reliant on her life, health and well-being. In other words, based on what you're saying and where it leads, we would have to then choose whose life to "ignore" in a lot of situations: the fetuses' or the woman's. If that's the case? Then by all means, I am someone who is going to say that a person who has been born and who lives autonomously comes first. But I really don't see it that way, and I don't think framing it that way is sound.
And when you say things like that we are "ignoring a life" again, you are using ideologically-loaded language that also dismisses so many women's expreiences. Many, many women, if not most, who terminate pregnancies are NOT ignoring anything. They are making that decision very aware of the potential child -- and what their life may be like to the best of their abililty -- they may bring into the world should they continue a pregnancy to term.
This, & the original essay, are going into my "talking points" file.
You're welcome, but I hope you'll edit those from that last comment. My verb tenses were all over the place in a spot there: sorry about that, folks.
"The diverse realities of women" Reality is reality, and fiction is fiction. If it's wrong to kill a human in one stage of life, it only stands to reason it should be illegal to kill that human at a different point in its life cycle. Also, I think talking about finding "common ground" while you continue to call us "antichoicers" is just adorable. Maybe you might want to drop that if you want to be taken seriously when you talk about "common ground"...
"But your experience is not everyone's experience, and it's also not in alignment with medeical procedures before labor." Well, I'm pretty sure that regardless of how we FEEL about the human in their fetal stage we carry in our uteri in gestation pre-birth, we're all carrying the same thing most of the time. How you feel about something doesn't change the fact of what it is. If I would've been pregnant with my daughter and decided to think of her as a turnip while I was carrying her during pregnancy, it wouldn't have changed what she actually was, and what would happen as a consequence a short time later (labor and birth). And by "medeical procedures before labor" do you mean ABORTION, perhaps? (I know, it's such an ugly word even people who support it don't like to use it...I wonder why?)
"That is not how the law here in the states views it (and through most of human history as we know it, from what we know of the history of abortion, that is not how it has been viewed), it is not how the medical community at large views it, including all the OB/GYN orgs, the field of practice which deals with all of pregnancy." That is why the law must be changed. The Supreme Court declared in its statement that it could not consider the life of the fetus because medical technology had not progressed that far. Well, we've come a long way since the 70's. Routine DNA testing (which shows that the fetus has a separate genetic pattern than its mother, indicating a different organism), ultrasound technology (standard and 4D) that shows the fetus preforming actions such as crying, using its own musculature and skeletal systems to move independently of the mother in reactions to stimuli (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/media/fetalcryingvideo.html)...none of these were considered in the court case that established one of the largest human rights violations of our time, considering that a human fetus is by definition "human".
"that it is inside the body of a woman and, to a certain point, is totally reliant on her life, health and well-being." The body is being shared. A shared body implies shared bodily autonomy. The mother should be given consideration if the fetus poses an immediate and severe threat to the woman's life and should be removed. However, the woman is obligated to give the same consideration to the fetal human within her, and must not threaten his or her life. I'm not advocating protecting one human's rights over the other. There is such a thing as shared rights.
"And when you say things like that we are "ignoring a life" again, you are using ideologically-loaded language..." How so? Is a fetal human not alive? Is the fetal stage not a stage of human development and included within a human's life cycle? I'm not saying that women's experiences should be dismissed. But abortion is a permanent end to another person's life cycle in order to rectify a temporary condition on the part of a woman (pregnancy), and to me, that makes little sense when one considers BOTH the fetal human AND the woman, equally rather than one over the other.
Oh, and this bit is actually a lie:
"it is not how the medical community at large views it, including all the OB/GYN orgs"
There is such a thing as the American Association of Pro Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
My apologies: I had not ever heard of that special interest group within the ACOG before.
...and to be clear?
Maybe you might want to drop that if you want to be taken seriously when you talk about "common ground"..
I, personally, who do not represent RH Reality Check as an organization, have not ever talked about or called for "common ground." Personally, I feel that women's bodies and women-in-toto have been used as "common ground" by everyone and political aims far too much in history. I'm not interested in signing on to that and I'm not a fan of that phrase in relationship to this issue. So, I have not said I am looking for "common ground," not in this piece or anywhere else.
Which is NOT to say I am disinterested in anyone and everyone being able to discuss the issue better than it has so often been (I am), nor that, particularly as a pro-choice person, I don't respect any woman's views or choices concerning her own body and anything at all that happens to be a part of her body at any given time.
I also do not feel abortion is an ugly word, not in the slightest: when I discussed medical procedures before labor I was referencing any number of the procedures a woman may have with a pregnancy before labor, not just abortion.
We discuss abortion and call it abortion all the time on this site...its even in the title of Heather Corinna's article above....
How to (Un)pack for a Real Conversation About Abortion
I apologize for generalizing about the pro-choice side of this debate. If anything I said does not specifically apply to you or your position, please disregard.
"And when you say things like that we are "ignoring a life" again, you
are using ideologically-loaded language..." How so? Is a fetal human
not alive? Is the fetal stage not a stage of human development and
included within a human's life cycle? I'm not saying that women's
experiences should be dismissed. But abortion is a permanent end to
another person's life cycle in order to rectify a temporary condition
on the part of a woman (pregnancy), and to me, that makes little sense
when one considers BOTH the fetal human AND the woman, equally rather
than one over the other.
I think I was pretty clear in my response here that I was not denying that a fetus or embryo or even a zygote, for that matter, is living. What I disagreed with is that women who choose abortion are IGNORING fetus, embryo, zygote or the child any may become. Most -- when you talk with them, and when you listen -- express thoughts and feelings around their choices that make very clear neither is being ignored. Some women even choose to terminate setting their own wants around having children aside because they feel that terminating is what is best FOR that potential child.
Who are you to say what's temporary for a given woman or not? Heck, when I terminated back in the early nineties, a protestor I got into it with told me I wouldn't always be without the resources I was then. And yet, here I sit, a decade and a half later, still without them despite often working 2-3 jobs, and could have remained without them for the whole of a child's life, one reason I made that choice for myself. Pregnancy may be temporary, but everything that comes after it may not be.
Even if something IS temporary in a woman's life that makes her feel unwilling or unable -- or where it's not even about feelings at all, but literal circumstances -- to continue a pregnancy, to parent or to choose adoption, many temporary issues, conditions or sets of circumstances are not irrelevant or minor for many women. My severe hyperemesis is temporary: it only happens when I'm pregnant. But that doesn't solve the issue of the fact that it would not go away, to the point that some days I could not even keep water down. A woman's homelessness may be temporary: that doesn't change the fact that she may consider that an unsuitable time to remain pregnant or parent. An abusive relationship may be temporary: same deal. Heck, a woman not wanting to be pregnant at all, to give birth, to put another kid into the world may be temporary, but that doesn't have anything to do with how she feels at the time, and within the limited window she's got to make decisions about her whole life and what will or may become of someone else she brings into the world.
I hear that women choosing to terminate thinking both of themselves and a possible child doesn't make sense to you. However, there are a lot of women to whom it does make sense, to whom it has made sense, and what makes sense to you or doesn't does not alter their realities and their experiences.
The body is being shared. A shared body implies shared bodily autonomy.
You cannot be serious.
And she is not interested in having an accurate conversation about abortion. She is anti-choice and her goal here is to "offer readers" anti-choice opinions because she thinks that any discussion of abortion that does not emphasize "killing children" is dishonest.
You're right, I'm not interested in having an accurate conversation about abortion. But, I happen to know someone who is....Leroy Carhart!
Are there times when you don't remove the fetus intact?
Carhart: Yes, sir.
Can you tell me about that, when that occurs?
Carhart: That occurs when the tissue fragments, or frequently when you rupture the membranes, an arm will spontaneously prolapse through the os...we talk about the forehead or the skull being first. We talked about the feet being first, but I think in probably the great majority of terminations, it's what they would call a transverse lie, so really you're looking at a side profile of a curved fetus. When the patient's uterus is already starting to contract and they are starting to miscarry, when you rupture the waters, usually something prolapses through the uterine, through the cervical os, not always, but very often an extremity will.
What do you do then?
Carhart: My normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to take the fetus out either foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first.
How do you go about dismembering that extremity?
Carhart: Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get ahold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the fetus, pulling down on it through the os, using the internal os as your counter-traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can't get the other leg out.
In that situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the fetus still alive?
Carhart: Yes.
Do you consider an arm, for example, to be a substantial portion of the fetus?
Carhart: In the way I read it, I think if I lost my arm, that would be a substantial loss to me. I think I would have to interpret it that way.
And then what happens next after you remove the arm? You then try to remove the rest of the fetus?
Carhart: Then I would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the skull down, or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and then get the feet down.
At what point is the fetus...does the fetus die during that process?
Carhart: I don't really know. I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.
The Court: Counsel, for what it's worth, it still is unclear to me with regard to the intact D & X when fetal demise occurs.
Okay, I will try to clarify that. In the procedure of an intact D&E where you would start foot first, with the situation where the fetus is presented feet first, tell me how you are able to get the feet out first.
Carhart: Under ultrasound, you can see the extremities. You know what is what. You know what the foot is, you know what the arm is, you know what the skull is. By grabbing the feet and pulling down on it or by grabbing a knee and pulling down on it, usually you can get one leg out, get the other leg out and bring the fetus out. I don't know where this...all the controversy about rotating the fetus comes from. I don't attempt to do that, just attempt to bring out whatever is the proximal portion of the fetus.
At the time that you bring out the feet, in this example, is the fetus still alive?
Carhart: Yes.
Then what's the next step you do?
Carhart: I didn't mention it. I should. I usually attempt to grasp the cord first and divide the cord, if I can do that.
What is the cord?
Carhart: The cord is the structure that transports the blood, both arterial and venous, from the fetus to the back of the fetus, and it gives the fetus its only source of oxygen, so that if you can divide the cord, the fetus will eventually die, but whether this takes five minutes or fifteen minutes and when that occurs, I don't think anyone really knows.
Are there situations where you don't divide the cord?
Carhart: There are situations when I can't.
What are those?
Carhart: I just can't get to the cord. It's either high above the fetus and structures where you can't reach up that far. The instruments are only 11 inches long.
Let's take the situation where you haven't divided the cord because you couldn't, and you have begun to remove a living fetus feet first. What happens next after you have gotten the feet removed?
Carhart: We remove the feet and continue with traction on the feet until the abdomen and the thorax come through the cavity. At that point, I would try...you have to bring the shoulders down, but you can get enough of them outside, you can do this with your finger outside of the uterus, and then at that point the fetal...the base of the fetal skull is usually in the cervical canal.
What do you do next?
Carhart: And you can reach that, and that's where you would rupture the fetal skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out.
At what point in that process does fetal demise occur between initial remove...removal of the feet or legs and the crushing of the skull, or I'm sorry, the decompressing of the skull?
Carhart: Well, you know, again, this is where I'm not sure what fetal demise is. I mean, I honestly have to share your concern, your Honor. You can remove the cranial contents and the fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes, so is the fetus alive? I would have to say probably, although I don't think it has any brain function, so it's brain dead at that point.
So the brain death might occur when you begin suctioning out of the cranium?
Carhart: I think brain death would occur because the suctioning to remove contents is only two or three seconds, so somewhere in that period of time, obviously not when you penetrate the skull, because people get shot in the head and they don't die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will.
Thanks for shedding some light on the procedure, Dr. Carhart!
I get the impression there is supposed to be some sort of anticipated reaction to this, but I'm not sure what it is.
Indeed, this sounds very much like Dr. Carhart explaining -- during the hearing with Ashcroft -- how he does some of his procedures and deals with some issues that can occur during a D&E or an ID&X. Mind, this is not how everyone does those procedures. In fact, he makes clear that it is his personal preference in that transcript not to induce fetal demise beforehand with an injection.
All the same, while I personally am just as comfortable with second-tri procedures, and ID&Xs based on a doctor's evaluation, D&Es and ID&Xs are the rarest abortion procedures performed. Just to be clear, what's described here is not only not all of those procedures, or how everyone performs them, it isn't descriptive of any first-tri procedure -- the vast majority of abortions in the U.S. -- at all.
But my response to this is...umm, okay. And...?
Just trying to help you keep it factual.
"it isn't descriptive of any first-tri procedure -- the vast majority of abortions in the U.S. -- at all."
Well, imo, a dead fetal human is a dead fetal human, regardless of which stage of development it is in. Age doesn't make it any less human, or any less dead. And that is still scientifically accurate to say.
Yet, if this was only about merely being alive or being dead, I'm not sure I understand why you'd post the part of that transcript you did and in the way that you did. I mean, if it's truly just about the fact that something living is no longer living, then who would care HOW it happens or in what manner?
In other words, I suspect you're being disingenuous when you say you're "just trying to help keep it factual." (Especially since I provided links to information on that particular procedure -- I didn't explain it myself because a) how a doctor does it varies and b) I can only put so much information in one article.) Rather, my feeling is that you wanted to sensationalize.
All the same, abortion issues can't tend to be boiled down to only whether anyone is alive or dead: central to the issue of abortion, and making reproductive choices as a whole, are quality of life issues for women and children. That may not be the case for everyone. But I feel confident saying, particularly as someone who spends so much time listening to women talking about these choices, that no matter what choice a woman makes with a pregnancy -- or in choosing to do what she can to prevent pregnancy -- most women report it as being central in their decision-making.
Another area that personally irks me in discussions is the assumption that if there were no birth control, or no abortion, all women would have uneventful pregnancies with safe births - this is where the "a little inconvenience" argument is brought up, when instead there is a 15% chance of complications during the pregnancy itself and a 28% chance of delivery complications.
In addition, the fetus itself does not always do well. I've been pregnant four times and had spontaneous miscarriages twice. I've never had an abortion but I still only had 'successful' pregnancies 50% of the time.
This is the reality of pregnancy some people forget which leads to assumptions that really irk me, such as 'every single time that Plan B is used a healthy viable infant is lost'. That just does not comport with the facts of reproduction - after accounting for mistakes of mioisis which prevent implantation, ectopic pregnancy, miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects, the potential 'loss' may be as little as 17%, and that's assuming that the woman taking Plan B was actually ovulating near that time.
Not every pro-lifer believes that Plan B/oral contraceptives are abortificent. Some pro-lifers believe that a life protectable by law only exists after implantation (since you kinda need an actual detectable pregnancy to even consider abortion in the first place). All pro-lifers aren't religious. Some are atheistic or agnostic as well.
So how is your proposed law going to handle the 15% of pregnancies that end in a spontaneous miscarriage? Investigation by the police? Grand Jury? Trial?
What sentence do you think she should get if it turns out that she should have been more careful not to fall down or shouldn't have had that much coffee?
I'm aware that not all ProLife Advocates are 'religious' in the sense that they belong to an organized church, but I don't think I've read one yet that didn't base their argument on a personal belief system like 'all human life is equally valuable' and then argue that their imposition of that personal belief system on others is justified because 'everybody agrees' that the fetus is human. Obviously, if everybody DID agree with them, not only would the laws already have been changed, but there wouldn't be any women requesting abortions.
Obviously, if everybody DID agree with them, not only would the laws already have been changed, but there wouldn't be any women requesting abortions.
There wouldn't be any access to safe, legal abortion, and women who did request abortions would end up going to a backalley butcher, obtaining an illegal abortion, and increasing her risk of sickness, permanent incapacitation, and/or death. This is not a place where we want to be, which is one of the reasons that the right to a safe, legal abortion must be kept in place.
Those are great, important additions, crowepps. Thanks so much for taking the time to add them.
You're welcome. I agree with you that in finding common ground or even just discussing this issue, it's very important that people need to keep the reality of what we're talking about in mind based on best evidence and personal testimony, not 'I heard' or 'they say'. I'm sure other people have said this before, but if they required the same kind of detailed 'informed consent' facts and information for continuing a pregnancy that some place insist on for abortion, the birthrate would drop precipitously.
Everyone shoud cherish a new life, especially for pregnant women, it's a great chance to lift the health condition of yourself if your treat the pregnancy and be in confinement correctty...
That's one of the most offensive things I've heard in a while. Are women not allowed to have lives? Are we supposed to quit our jobs, drop out of school, stop going to the gym, etc. the minute we hear we're pregnant? Even for a woman who wants a child that's a pretty harsh comment.
About the comment on pregnancy complications--I hear ya. My MIL had two miscarriages, one of which nearly killed her. My cousin's doctor has threatened her with 9 months of bedrest should she become pregnant again, because both of her previous pregnancies were riddled with complications. My SIL had a miscarriage that required surgical removal of the fetus. The physical implications of being pregnant shouldn't be swept under the rug, especially when talking about women who tried to avoid pregnancy in the first place.
And this'd be exactly the kind of fostering invisibility and mythology we're all talking about here.
No woman "should" feel any given way with a pregnancy: women feel how they feel, and there are a wide range of feelings from woman to woman and from day to day with any given woman. The idea that pregnancy is about an opportunity to improve one's health is just bizarre: plenty of pregnant women do just fine in terms of their health, to be sure, though plenty also don't, but regardless, calling it a health improvement venture is beyond misleading.
That may not be what you meant, but that's sure how it comes across. Ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and birth defects are very rarely something that's under the control of the pregnant woman. It might be comforting to believe that if she's "in confinement correctly" nothing will go wrong, but that sure wasn't my personal experience.
Kind of a weird comment. Are you being tongue-in-cheek?
I mean, to say to "cherish" a new life, but then use a term usually associated with a prison, seems...huh?
"Confinement" is an antiquated term for childbirth, mostly used in the 19th century. That the Victorians used it to avoid saying "childbirth," because "childbirth" was (I guess?) too racy, should tell you all you need to know about the term...
...if they required the same kind of detailed 'informed consent' facts and
information for continuing a pregnancy that some place insist on for
abortion, the birthrate would drop precipitously.
Boy, no kidding.
Thanks so much for this.
Great article, but some of the links therein are broken. (E.g. "the law itself")
I'll send a note to get them fixed, thanks for letting me know.
In the meantime, the links do all work where this was originally published at Scarleteen here:http://www.scarleteen.com/blog/heather/2009/06/09/how_to_un_pack_for_a_real_discussion_about_abortion
And that link for the text of the law is here: http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/abortion/2003s3.html
Hi Heather,
Thank you so much for taking a stand for the range of feelings that women can have around an abortion experience (or pregnancy). This is so important to remember when talking about abortion, especially publicly, and the more people who speak on this issue with compassion and understanding for the range of emotions, the more each of us is creating a more supportive and respectful social climate. It matters to the women who have had abortions to have their voices and experiences reflected back to them in public spaces. It can help reduce stigma and it can help promote their wellbeing.
Thank you.
Please don't promote killing the weak, innocent, and defenseless babies of America. We should not Kill.
I agree. Redirecting the enormous amount of money that is spent on the military into social welfare would make the abortion rate plummet.
How...Orwellian...
You wish to eliminate the obvious moral problems in tearing unborn children apart with vacuum hoses, cutting them to pieces with scalpels, crushing their skulls to "evacuate" the brains during partial birth abortion, and injecting them with potassium chloride, by simply claiming that all of the terms used to refer to these procedures, and to the victim, are somehow meaningless because they have no precise medical definition.
It is true of course that babies go through various stages of development. A two year old child is not yet fully developed as a human being. Neither is a nine year old. Will you be rationalizing their murder as well, someday?
What does it matter if a medical textbook doesn't have the term "late-term abortion". The term exists because the fetus is closer to viability (a real term) and it seems even more egregious that a woman would pay a butcher with an M.D. to kill a child to which she could simply give birth, even by an early induction (still morally unjustified, but less egregious because it gives the child a chance to live).
You can't win a moral debate by asserting that all of the terms used by your opponents are meaningless, because they have no precise textbook definition. You can't defeat the truth by attacking language, even if Orwell's villains thought they could.
The above essay reads more like self-rationalizing thought processes...the ones abortion clinic workers use to enable them to sleep at night. Who do you think you're fooling?
The most chilling paragraphs in the article are these:
Certainly, to some people, any surgery seems or looks bloody and brutal, especially those who get queasy around this stuff. Too, not everyone can manage emotions well around blood and other things involved in surgery and healthcare.
However, ANY surgical procedure usually involves blood. Most involve pain or discomfort, either before, during and/or in recovery from the surgery, and when a surgery is not painful, it's usually because anesthetic and/or sedation was used: some abortion providers offer both, others just one. Are abortions more bloody than most other procedures? No. More bloody or physically (or emotionally, though that, varies very widely from women to women and birth to birth) intense for a woman than childbirth? Not usually.
I wonder if Josef Mengele used such cold, clinical language when he talked about his vivisections of children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Also, if you can't tell the difference between a man who actively hated an entire race of people and viewed its born constituents - adults, children, the lot - as pieces of meat, and a woman who is faced with an unwanted or life-threatening pregnancy that she just wants to terminate to get her life back on track, then there's really no point in arguing. The law is on the side of the person whose sovereign body is affected most by the condition of pregnancy. Stop wringing your hands over the "clinical" language used here. We've heard it all before. Women are not stupid.
"What does it matter if a medical textbook doesn't have the term "late-term abortion""
It matters because having a common definition helps make discussion possible. "Late-term" can mean different things to different people--what that phrase means to me and what it means to you may be different, and that muddies the waters of communication, which are already muddy enough here.
"I wonder if Josef Mengele used such cold, clinical language when he talked about his vivisections of children."
You're missing the point. Anti-choicers often use descriptions (even pictures) of abortion procedures as part of their 'arguments'. But that's not an argument, or you could use the same reasoning to ban any surgical procedure, such as, say, a C-section. What a procedure entails has no bearing on whether or not it should be done.
As someone who has observed procedures first-hand, I'm always
amazed by how many people who have NOT done so will tell me how things
happen, or how awful everything is, apparently forgetting that of the
two of us, I'm the only one who actually knows and has experienced how
abortions are performed.
Not to mention the comparison is ridiculously faulty. How many other commonplace life-saving surgeries or operations yeild complete sets of dead organs, multiple limbs, and once-functioning bodily systems without killing the patient? But to admit that one of the patients involved in abortion is always killed would be adding too much of a stigma to the procedure, I suppose.
Just to get this straight. You guys believe the fetus is alive and human but is allowed to be killed when the woman has serious problems and considers it for the best to kill it. Please correct me if I'm wrong on any part.
Nearly every part of our bodies are living tissue, including organs we may have removed because keeping them inside us and intact is causing us poor health or suffering. While I don't think it's apt to say a fetus is evivalent to a gallbladder, a gallbladder is also living tissue and no one ever told me I was "killing" my gallbladder when I needed to have it removed to preserve my health and well-being.
The issue is not as simple as to be merely about what is living, just like the issue of parenting is not so simple as merely keeping one's child alive.
Yes but the gallbladder is made up of your cells alone so it belongs to you. The fetus has its own DNA and therefore belongs to itself.But if the woman needs an abortion to save her life it's okay,abortions for other reasons (especially convenience) are not.
I simply don't agree with you. I don't agree that those are the only conditions that make an abortion acceptable. And I don't agree that anything living within my body, depending on my body to exist at all also does not belong to me and is somehow an independent entity, despite being completely dependent on me and no one else.
I also resent it when people use the word "convenience" when talking about women's reproductive choices and pregnancy: there is nothing convenient about any of this. Have you been pregnant before? What was that experience like for you, no matter what choice you made? How much did you think about what was "convenient" in making your decision?
Classifying things like deciding not to bring children into the world you cannot afford to care for properly, waiting to parent until it is something you very much want to do and feel ready for, opting out of bringing children into abusive or unhealthy dynamics, deciding other huge parts of your life need to come first, being unable to feel like hell for months on end and still take care of yourself -- all these situations and more are hardly mere matters of convenience.
One doesn't have to have been pregnant, or be a parent to be aware of all the points (and I'm not a parent, nor have I ever been pregnant) that you've articulated in your above-mentioned post. I agree with you all the way. Thanks for this, Heather.
"The fetus has its own DNA and therefore belongs to itself"
Isn't that special? I hadn't realized a person could own oneself. But, wouldn't self ownership quality as slavery?
"woman needs an abortion to save her life it's okay"
So nice of you to permit a woman to save her life if she needs to. I really had NO idea we needed your permission.
Your grievance shall be avenged.
Everyone owns themselves. Slavery is when someone else owns another person, outside of them self.
So nice of you to permit a woman to save her life if she needs to. I really had NO idea we needed your permission.
It's not a matter of granting permission, it's a matter of justice. If a woman's life is in jeopardy, she has the right to choose life over death. However, when such an ultimatum is not present, there's no reason for a woman to now have the ability to kill something else, if only to preserve their time and energy. Human life, I'd hope, is a little more valuable than that.
There's a difference between killing someone who's coming at you with a knife, and killing someone who's poking your arm. One isn't life threatening, if anything, a minor hindrance in comparison. Not to say that pregnancy is as little as getting poked, however it fits my point nicely.
man condescends to lecture a woman about abortion. If you truly believed in justice, you would not be arguing for fetal rights to force women to carry them. Your personal opinion is only your personal opinion and it should not carry the weight of law. What you call "no reason" is to a percentage of women a darn GOOD reason to terminate the pregnancy. Sure, human life is valuable, but enshrining fetal rights as some kind of golden calf we women should all kneel before, you actually DE-VALUE it. You have NO point and I'm really sick of pro-lifers comparing pregnancy to a "poke in the arm" or similar nonsense. You will never have to go through pregnancy, you will never have to make such a decision should something go wrong, so I feel you have no business lecturing me about this. I am my own moral agent and should I fall pregnant, I and not some third party will decide.
Your grievance shall be avenged.
It's kind of ironic that the same people who get all hysterical about how 'The Pill Kills' and how RU-486 has caused 4 deaths after hundreds of thousands of uses totally ignore that ALL pregnancies carry a risk, and nobody knows which ones are the most risky until they're completely over and the woman recovers. 500 to 600 women still die every year in this country from pregnancy related complications. Only half a dozen die each year during abortions.
How does protecting a fetal human's rights devalue it? That doesn't make any sense. By protecting those rights, it re-personalizes and returns the humanity to those unborn children. You are not your own moral agent. That's the single stupidest thing I've ever read on this forum. If you were your own moral agent, there wouldn't need to be any laws. Laws are there as an objective moral agent. A third party always decides. Why is it that if you agree, it's fine for a third party to decide(government) but if you don't agree, it's wrong. I guess you know how those robbers and thieves feel now, the ones that feel they haven't committed a crime according to their own moral compass. Oh, and if your only rebuttal is that I'm a man, and that I can't possibly know anything, then what would you say to a pro-life woman? Nothing. Because you have no argument, literally nothing to back up your beliefs.
can you? Conferring special rights on the fetuses devalues the WOMAN. She's just a vessel for the sacred zygote and you only value women for the number they can birth. Wanna talk stupid, here? You clearly see women as unable to be moral, nice of you to show your true colors.
Now, let's take your inability to distinguish between morality and laws. The latter must take ethics into account as well, so it cannot be a solely objective moral agent. Otherwise, we would still have Prohibition. Plus, I dispute your claim "a third party always decides", not in reproductive health matters they do! Any woman or girl are more qualified than the government or pro life groups to decide about child bearing.
Next stereotype: your attempt to link actual illegal AND immoral actions like robbery and murder to abortion. It's like some kind of default argument for pro-lifers. I think I did a fine job of rebutting you since you got all huffy after I pointed out your gender. Did I hurt your delicate ego? I am able to use different rebuttals to pro life women, so that little slap missed by a mile.
In closing,if you want to dismiss my arguments as mere "belief", get your ignorance on. No one is stopping you from looking silly here.
Your grievance shall be avenged.
You aren't making any sense because you haven't really said anything but that you think we are wrong. You've given no reasons. Fetal rights are human rights and human rights are objective morals. And yes there is such a thing. Saying that as your own moral agent you can do whatever you want is moral relativism, plain and simple. And we all know that moral relativism makes no sense. I have never heard anybody compare pregnancy to a poke in the arm. We understand it is a physically, socially, emotionally and financially taxing process. But that is no excuse to kill anyone, those reasons would never be used in justifying the killing of a child one month old. That means that if the fetus is accepted as human then all other arguments are moot. Therefore for you to be prochoice you must (or at least very likely) consider the fetus not human. This is what you should be arguing, not just saying "I really want it" and "You guys are wrong". We have a point and if you read it is clearly displayed. Your post responds to nothing we have ever said, leading me to believe that you are ranting about some other prolifers you know and prejudging us based on your knowledge of them.
You don't understand. Gotcha. Would comphrehension be easier if I limited myself to using more words larger than two syllables? Fetal rights are NOT human rights, this is an argument you have so far failed to prove. I'm no longer surprised you don't realize how granting the right to be born to a a newly fertilzed egg harms the woman. I'm beginning to think you don't care.
I never claimed I could do whatever I wanted, that is your your internal stereotype talking. I'll try my best to put this into words you can comphrehend, but I can't promise anything. I, personally am moral enough and smart enough to make my own reproductive health decisions, wether using birth control. asking for emergency birth control to prevent pregnancy in the case of rape, or obtaining an abortion to end an uwanted pregnancy. I do NOT need nor want the government, or a third party (such as pro-life groups or politicians) deciding on the behalf of a potential child or telling me must take a certain course to protect the so called "rights" of a potential child.
Maybe you didn't say it, but a pro lifer in one of the comment sections DID refer to abortion as merely "a poke on the arm". It's way, WAY more than that. For me personally, pregnancy and child birth will not be part of my life. It will be different for other women, but that is their lookout. While I'm at it, please, please, PLEASE try to restrain yourself in the future from comparing ending the life of a potential child with ending the life of an ACTUAL child. That argument is so old and stale, the mold colonies growing on it have established city-states.
No, I do NOT have to accept the fetus as not human, who are you to tell me what to think? Pro choicers know it is human. But, it is not a person, it is not sentient, it can't think or feel what goes on around it. (Caveat: I'm talking about early term fetuses here, when the majority of abortions take place). It has no opinion on anything, in short, the fetus does not care. On the other hand, the woman carrying IS a person, she is sentient, she thinks and feels. What do you think is her opinon of pro lifers like you, who care for her only until she is pregnant?
I never argued "I really want it" or "You guys are wrong". But look at what you are saying to me: "You are stupid", "You are morally incompetent", "You don't know what you are doing". That is what screams loud and clear to me from your posts. Talk about pre0judging!
Your grievance shall be avenged.
The fetus does depend on its mother for everything but that doesn't mean it belongs to her. fully grown adults who are severely handicapped are often dependent on a particular individual for all aspects of care, and could not survive without them. But that doesn't give this caregiver power over the handicapped. Even babies shortly after birth will certainly not survive without parents, but these parents don't have power over the life of the child.
I didn't mean to offend by using the word convenience. I understand that there are real and grave reasons why women chose abortion. I will admit that I should probably have used a better word.
Yet all the same there are other better ways to prevent such problems. If you are not ready to concieve then abstain from sex or use some of the many contraceptives available. As a last resort there is the possibility of adoption. I understand that this still requires the pain of continued pregnancy,but it is preferable to killing the fetus.
Even though those reasons are very tragic, none of them would be allowed in justifying the killing of say... a 2 year old boy. That means that this second part of your argument relies on the first. In other words your claim that there are reasons that make abortion a good choice rests on the argument that the fetus does not count as a human being.
Due to a whole lot of things you're saying, the way you're saying them, and the fact that you're speaking from a perspective that is NOT about your own pregnancy, I'm just not going to engage with you myself any further.
This particular paragraph is a good sumup of why:
Yet all the same there are other better ways to prevent such problems.
If you are not ready to concieve then abstain from sex or use some of
the many contraceptives available. As a last resort there is the
possibility of adoption. I understand that this still requires the pain
of continued pregnancy,but it is preferable to killing the fetus.
Beyond you clearly not understanding that the things you present as simple or pat are anything but, I am not going to talk about what is better or preferable for women I am not. None of us, in my book, has the right to say what is best or most preferable for a woman we are not. Even if you personally feel you do, it's simply not somewhere I am going to go or an approach I'm going to enable.
I understand that there are real and grave reasons why women chose abortion. I will admit that I should probably have used a better word. Yet all the same there are other better ways to prevent such problems.
Ectopic pregnancy is usually an extremely unwelcome surprise to the pregnant woman as well as a threat to her life. What way is there to 'prevent' that problem?
Downs syndrome with physical abnormalities, conjoined twins, spinal bifida, anencephaly, other gross physical defects like missing kidneys are also usually an extremely unwelcome surprise resulting in a nonviable fetus that can't survive birth. What way is there to 'prevent' those problems?
The thing you don't seem to grasp is that these are statistically small but inevitable complications which occur during pregnancies. The woman, her partner and the doctor have no good choices in these situations. To insist that they must solve their problem as though they were actually dealing with the healthy baby that they wanted and hoped they would get is pretty cruel. Their options are limited to how much of the woman's physical health should be dedicated to a disastrous pregnancy and what kind of funeral.
The only way that I can think of to prevent ALL of these from ever happening again is for no one to ever get pregnant. If women continue to get pregnant, abortions in these cases will continue to be necessary.
Your objection to abortions in situations that you label as being about 'convenience' is also kind of intrusive, since the INconvenience isn't and can never be yours, but instead something you assert should be inflicted on someone else against their will. The difference between that situation and one with the severely handicapped or with live born infants is that those caregivers can resign their position at any time and walk away. The fact that they can either provide care or choose to transfer the burden of that care elsewhere is the reason why there are penalties if they neglectfully or deliberately don't provide the care. Nobody is ever required by law to four or six or nine months of being a caregiver in those situations.
You say that those possible occurrences during pregnancy are statistically small yet you would completely legalize abortion for the vast minority on that basis? No one is arguing that a woman who's life is in danger should be forced to go to term, however to use that as justification for all abortion is far-fetched. To completely ban abortion is wrong, however to have it the way it is now, where it can be used as a method of birth control(extreme cases) is even more wrong.
Well, certainly YOU aren't arguing that a woman whose life is in danger should be forced to go to term, but were you aware that from 10 to 15% of those polled, in one poll even up to 20%, believe there should be absolutely no abortion for any reason whatsoever, including the life of the mother?
What I think is wrong is butting into someone else's personal business and imposing my morality on them, 'for their own good', as though they don't have morals themself or as though my moral stance is better than theirs. I certainly would never force anyone to have an abortion, not even to save their life, but I think the present balance between the woman's rights and fetal viability is just about right.
Using the radical parts of the Pro-Life movement as justification for abortion is ludicrous. The pro-choice side has its share of commentators who use it merely to flaunt their own pseudo feminism. There will always be fanatics, the only way to deal with them is to ignore them and hope that education removes any future fanaticism.
It's not a matter of imposing morality. It's about the legality of murder. More importantly, the value and dignity of human life. To say that it's not my business or the laws business as to how you eat your food is one thing. However when what you do directly affects other individuals in a negative manner, in this case the human person within the womb, it is completely within my right to say that it is wrong and to speak out against it.
Using the radical parts of the Pro-Life movement as justification for abortion is ludicrous.
Excuse me, but aren't those groups a little large to be considered 'part'? If half of people polled are ProChoice and half are ProLife, then a return of 15% of the TOTAL polled saying "no abortion even when the mother's life is at risk" is ONE-THIRD of the ProLife side or more.
In order for you to have any realistic hope of getting things changed, considering their insistence that the ProChoice side isn't going to be able to ignore them, and their insistence that sensible measures like reducing unwanted pregnancy are off the table, YOUR side has better start the education to remove that fanaticism, because I've got to tell you that their constant clamor about how women deserve to die for having sex does a real disservice to your cause.
Feel free to say abortion is wrong, you have an absolute right to speak out against it. What neither you nor anyone else has is the right to legislate your opinions about the 'value of human life' into the civil laws because many people don't agree with your position that the nonviable fetus has more of a right to life than the already viable woman in whom it is residing.
My argument can't be devalued on the basis that other people who agree with me might happen to be idiots. People have different reasons for being either pro-life or pro-choice. I can assure you that there are members in the pro-choice movement who don't really care about the issue either. They merely use it for their own ends.
Merely because people disagree with me, is not justification for a lack of legislation. There are very few things that everyone agrees on. Whether or not anti-abortion laws come or not should be based on their own merit. The value of human life isn't merely something I concocted on my own. There are laws and documents outlining the its value. On the basis that human life is valuable then, abortion as it is now is not right. It is not merely my opinion but everyone's opinion that human life is valuable. Half of the argument for abortion is to protect the life of the woman. Now, I'm not saying that abortion shouldn't be used to protect a woman's life at their discretion. What I am saying is that in every other situation, the vast majority of pregnancies, a woman's ability to kill the human within her is removed just on the basis that all human life is equal. To justify abortion the only feasible means to do that would be to prove that said human in the womb is not a human. Which can't be done.
I didn't say that your ARGUMENT was devalued by the fanatics. I said that your CHANGES OF SUCCESS were undermined by them.
On the basis that human life is valuable then, abortion as it is now is not right. It is not merely my opinion but everyone's opinion that human life is valuable.
Yes, it may be everyone's opinion that human life is valuable (so long as that human life is similiar to their own - right color, nationality and has its own money). So what? You seem to consistently miss the point that we are not talking about ONE human life, we are talking about TWO human lives, one of which is threatening the other. The earlier in the pregnancy it is, the less certain is the knowledge of the degree of that threat, but statistically abortion is ALWAYS safer than continuing the pregnancy.
Merely because people disagree with me, is not justification for a lack of legislation.
No, the fact that the MAJORITY of our citizens disagree with you is. The majority want Roe v Wade to remain in force. The majority does NOT want to ban all abortion, the majority does NOT want to ban contraceptives, and the majority do NOT want the government involved in these issues.
Your personal philosophy may be compelling to you, but you see the problem is that you're not volunteering to sacrifice your own time, convenience and future because you can never be in the situation of being pregnant; you're instead asserting that the time, convenience and future of OTHER people should be commandeered by force and that they be forced to conform to your philosophy/moral values even if they believe something else.
Statistically speaking, if I kill a large amount of children in problem areas, crime will go down in those areas. Right now, in Toronto crime rates have gone down which certain analysts are attributing to abortion. That outcome doesn't justify the killing of those children. You can't just start killing people to lower crime rates. There are other solutions. Much like there are other solutions in terms of helping people with problems with pregnancy.
Okay, so you've acknowledged that we are talking about two human lives. That's good. The human in the womb, and the woman caring for it. The problem with what you're saying however, is that not all pregnancies result in the mother dying, to put it bluntly. I haven't said that I would like to see a ban on abortion, nay, I would like to see a great number of restrictions placed on it to reduce casual abortion and in all honesty, unnecessary abortion. The only time at which an abortion is necessary when the mothers life is at risk. I don't mean, the mother thinks she's going to die. I mean, based on medical advice. If a doctor says that a person is going to die because of the baby in them. It's effectively a 1- for 1 deal. One person is going to die, the mother merely gets the choice of who.
People are effectively sheep. This analogy is used all the time but it's true. The majority believing anything doesn't give any more credence to the believed idea. By saying that everyone disagrees with me, doesn't really bother me. Whole populations have been fine with persecution, racism, segregation, the whole nine yards. Nothing is right solely on basis that everyone else believes it or everyone else is doing it. Once again, you're painting the entire pro-life movement with one brush. I am not anti-contraceptives. I am anti-abortion. Or at least,I'm against the way abortion is now.
My personal philosophy, is substantiated by the facts that were used to build it up. If you don't find it compelling, that doesn't make it wrong. It merely means it conflicts with your desire to allow mothers to kill their babies. Every aspect of human interaction is regulated by government involvement to a certain extent. Business, relationships, parenting, all of these things face scrutiny from the government. A law that would make the majority of abortions illegal would not be doing anything more than any other law. You may feel that your rights are being commandeered, but that's how everyone feels when something they used to be able to do is removed as an option.
A law that would make the majority of abortions illegal would not be doing anything more than any other law. You may feel that your rights are being commandeered, but that's how everyone feels when something they used to be able to do is removed as an option.
The one big difference is that you are advocating for a law that will not apply to you. You will never be in a situation where you want an abortion and cannot have one. Your personal philosophy may be compelling to you, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether it other people should be compelled to live by it. Fetuses die during pregnancies often. Why that happens and what the reasons for it are is purely and simply none of your business unless they're YOUR fetus.
People advocate for laws all the time that will never affect them, it is based on the mere principle of the situation. I don't believe that people should be allowed to kill their children based on nothing but desire. If abortion is legal, people should be allowed to murder their children before those children are of age. It's effectively the same thing. If you can't afford a child even though you have one, no, don't put him in a 'terrible' foster home, just kill him. It'll be better to have never lived, than to have lived in terrible conditions; well, according to the pro-choice movement.
So, basically, what you're saying is; if my wife gets an abortion without my consent, in a situation where her life is not at risk, she is allowed to kill my child and it will not affect me? That's what you're saying. That child shares half of my genetic information, and is 'my' child as well as hers. Yet its death will not affect me. Geez, I didn't know how cold hearted I was. The problem with your philosophy, that it doesn't concern me, is that it does. In a situation involving human rights, it may not be my human rights being violated, but that does not mean that I can be any less involved. Especially so in a case where those who are being persecuted lack the ability to speak for themselves.
You may feel that your rights are being commandeered, but that's how everyone feels when something they used to be able to do is removed as an option.
You mean...removed as a legal option, don't you, David? What you fail to grasp is that many women will not permit their rights to be commandeered, as you put it. A girlfriend of mine bluntly states; "my daughters are not livestock, and I will do whatever I must do to protect them, legally or illegally." Your blithe assumption that the only people potentially involved in circumventing the laws you envision are the woman and her "dealer." You are wildly mistaken. Mothers and fathers will protect their daughters. Husbands and lovers will help their women. Brothers and sisters will act on behalf of the siblings they love. Friends will help however they can. In all cases? Of course not...but in your zeal to reduce women to their reproductive apparatus, you forget that today, women do not necessarily stand alone. We're not going back...and while you may be prepared for a social backlash unlike any seen in history...prepared to prosecute and incarcerate parents, husbands, lovers, siblings and friends for conspiracy...sane people are not.
Yes you are correct in saying that such fanaticism clearly has to be eliminated. But the fact that fanatics have an insane view of the issue shouldn't change the logic of the moderate arguments. reasonable prochoicers and reasonable prolifers should debate eachother leaving out the lunatic fringe no matter how large they may be.
But you are incorrect in saying that nobody has the right to legislate their opinion of human life into civil laws. It is always change in opinion that changes our definition of human life. Changes in opinion granted legal personhood to blacks, natives and women even though people opposed it.
If nobody has the right to translate opinion into law then there is no point being pro or anti anything since nobody can influence law.
Therefore opinion can influence law so long as facts and logic support it, which is what we are trying to prove to you.
Yes you are correct in saying that such fanaticism clearly has to be eliminated. But the fact that fanatics have an insane view of the issue shouldn't change the logic of the moderate arguments.
The problem is that the fanatics have made it clear that agreeing with and legislating "the moderate" position isn't going to be the end of the issue, is it? They insist that it all has to be their way 100%. That's why I said that the fanatics are YOUR problem. As long as they're shooting doctors and lying to teenagers about Plan B being the same as RU-486, you don't have a hope of getting any moderate proposals through.
But you are incorrect in saying that nobody has the right to legislate their opinion of human life into civil laws. It is always change in opinion that changes our definition of human life. Changes in opinion granted legal personhood to blacks, natives and women even though people opposed it.
This is true, however I would challenge you to go to the CDC and look at the comparitive mortality statistics and then say with a straight face that "legal personhood" is the same thing as "equality". Talk about your lives that are 'ignored' and 'extinguished'. Take a look at the suicide rate among young Native American men in Alaska - the highest in the country.
If nobody has the right to translate opinion into law then there is no point being pro or anti anything since nobody can influence law. Therefore opinion can influence law so long as facts and logic support it, which is what we are trying to prove to you.
The problem is, I haven't seen a lot of facts and logic, but instead a lot of philosophy on an elevated plain that tends to ignore both. I'll give you some specific facts to chew over:
Human who are considered of marginal value to society as consumers and producers tend to be marginalized and allocated the bare minimum necessary.
No person is REQUIRED to unwillingly risk his/her own life for the sake of another.
The number of children neglected and abused in this country is huge.
The number of children malnourished, homeless and without medical or mental health care in this country is even worse.
My contention is that if we really, REALLY 'Value Human Life' most of these statements wouldn't be true. Arguing about the value of human life when you're talking about a 'life' smaller than a quarter and totally supported by someone else is a lot different than talking about a 'life' that's flunking out of sixth grade because he/she is hungry and sleeping in a car.
Yes in our society people are treated unequaly in many ways. But this shouldn't prevent us from striving for equality. Lives like this are usually allocated the "bare minimum" but would you not agree that the most basic right and therefore the barest minimum is right to life?
Size shouldn't matter when considering a human life. Fetal growth is just an early stage of human development. As for being supported by someone else. What about comatose patients who are fully supported by a hospital? The hospital does not have the option to turn them away and in some countries like Canada they recieve no financial compensation for caring for them. Is the patient allowed to be killed if they are unwanted? After all they are unwanted, totally dependant on someone else and cost a lot of money and energy to mantain.
One more time, Alaric, please explain to us how you would go about ensuring equality under the law for the blastocyst/zygote/fetus without simultaneously stripping women of that same equality. How can it be done? I've been asking this question for years, and not once, has a pro-lifer provided a rational answer.
Sorry for not answering this earlier I just noticed this now.
Here's your Rational Answer: If a woman's life is in danger abortion is justified. Abortion could even be allowed until the development of the brain. I've been searching for exactly when that is but I've been getting a lot of conflicting information from different sources. Here's one good one: http://brainmind.com/FetalBrainDevelopment.html
The part of the brain which is unique to humans, the cerebral cortex, develops at just about the time when abortions are restricted to medically necessary ones - 22 weeks.
Rinse, repeat. IF the blastocyst/zygote/embryo/ fetus is a person entitled to equal protection under the law, then there is virtually no realm of human endeavor that women of childbearing age cannot be excluded from, no activity that women may not be restricted from, no aspect of a woman's life that may not be circumscribed by law. IF the b/z/e/f is a person entitled to equal rights under the law, then equality under the law applies to men, postmenopausal/infertile women, and blastocysts, embryos, zygotes and fetuses but NOT TO FERTILE WOMEN of childbearing age.
And those that oppose it for all reasons do have their own consistency regarding their anti-abortion beliefs in wanting to give equal value to all fetuses even if the womans life is endangered by not wanting an action taken to kill one person to stop another from dying from a natural condition. We may disagree with them not making an abortion exception for the womans life, but there is a reason why this percentage exists.
We may disagree with them not making an abortion exception for the womans life, but there is a reason why this percentage exists.
We quite understand that there are reasons they exist. It's sort of pathetic to watch you try to justify those reasons and try to make them appear reasonable or even worthy of respect. You folks need to do some serious self examination.
I'm not trying to make them worthy of respect. I don't share the view as I stated with 'We may disagree with them....' that includes myself. I'm only pointing out that they can't be dismissed so easily as radical elements per the conversation thread above - as offensive as their views may sound they are quite active in the pro-life movement. crowepps figures above seem consistent of polling of all adults (both pro-life and pro-choice). colleen calculated it out on a different thread of % of pro-lifers alone and it was 40% of pro-lifers who ended up opposing abortion for all reasons - thats a large chunk.
If you are not ready to conceive then abstain from sex or use some of the many contraceptives available.
Um...lives vary. The Better Half spent nearly 6 months of the year on the road during the first 15 years of our wedded bliss. Please take my word that abstinence by necessity is not conducive to abstinence by choice, and diligent birth control practices can fail. #3 son arrived 11.5 months after #2.
Alaric, you seem to labor under the delusion that intimate family life is a "one size fits all" proposition. Such is not the case and whenever I hear/read flip responses like yours, I can't help but think how out of touch people like you can be...with the everyday realities of average Americans.
Also...please note that you put the responsibility and consequences of mutual sexual conduct solely on women...if you are not ready to conceive... Permit me to point that personal authority usually accompanies personal responsibility in matters of personal impact.
There's also the fact that contraceptives fail occasionally-- I know at least two women who got pregnant because their pharmacist didn't tell them that the antibiotic they were on compromised their birth control pill, and condoms do break or slip.
It really is intrusive to have someone deciding whether or not you 'deserve' to have what you feel is necessary medical care based on the circumstances of with whom and when you had sex. Too bad some of this focus can't be shifted over to the boys and men who are the other half of the 'unintended'.
Some activitists ought to get together and start protesting to change the law so that vasectomies are required as part of the sentence on rapists, wife beaters, perpetrators of incest and child molestors -- heck, maybe even guys who visit prostitutes. I mean, if women's uteruses and what they do with them are an appropriate topic of conversation so far as restricting their freedom, certainly preventing men's promiscuous sperm scattering during criminal acts ought to be part of the 'common ground' solution.
crowepps:
I already said that abortion is justified when the woman's life is threatened. I also said it's justified when the fetus is dead before birth. I will now extend it to if the fetus will die from the birthing process. But in the cases of diseases that will handicap the child but not neccesarily kill them abortion is not a legitimate solution. Yes the woman is commited to the pregnancy from its beginnng and therefore can't walk away. But that still can't prove that killing the fetus is a legitimate form of escape. I dislike going into hypothetical arguments but if for example someone was entered into a nine month binding contract to care for a severely handicapped person, would it be okay to kill their charge? It wouldn't be because what measures a lifes worth ísn't how independent one is. As for the fact that I can never experience the pain of pregnancy, there is really nothing I can do about that. But my own feeling is that death of one is always worse than pain of another. So the great pain of the mother however hard can't be said to trump the life of a human being. This is true and the only part that can be contested is wether the fetus is a human or not which is what we should be arguing about. Bottom line: none of your reasons however good would apply if you replaced the fetus with a born human at any stage of life. Therefore I would presume that you do not think fetus = human. I'd like to hear why since this is really the central feauture of the abortion debate.
ahunt:
But in the cases of diseases that will handicap the child but not necessarily kill them abortion is not a legitimate solution.
What about if the child will be deaf, blind, profoundly retarded and has a 95% chance of not surviving birth? A 90% chance? A 75% chance? Do we play the numbers game? More likely than not? Is the government going to appoint bureaucrats to write a rule book about how big a handicap is too much and what "not necessarily" means? Isn't that a lot more offensive than those most closely related, those who are actually going to be there, consulting with their doctor to get the best possible information and making their own choices? If everyone aborted imperfect fetuses there wouldn't be any handicapped kids around, and yet lots of parents do choose to go ahead. Why should the sacrifices and commitment of those who choose to go ahead and love whoever they get be bundled together with the reluctance of others who are FORCED to complete but then abandon?
Therefore I would presume that you do not think fetus = human.
That's quite a presumption and it's false. I've been pregnant at least four times and only had two live births. Considering the number of miscarriages there are certainly 'fertilized egg' is never equivalent to 'baby' any more than 'apple seed' is 'apple tree'. My position is based on the fact that biologically pregnancy is a chancy matter and there's no guarantee that ANY fetus, no matter how healthy it seems to be, is going to graduate to 'baby' until it's actually been born, successfully taken a breath and survived the first few days.
If that seems cold hearted and practical, maybe that's because women have to be practical -- it's our bodies with which we build the fetus, we are one who compromise our health by the pregnancy, it's the children we already have who will be impacted if we are unlucky, we are the ones who risk death with each pregnancy and delivery, and if we're not going to be stark raving nuts we have to just learn to accept that sometimes reproduction works and sometimes it doesn't.
It doesn't have anything at all to do with 'whether the fetus is human' - it has to do with 'whether this fetus is wanted enough to endure the metabolic load of this pregnancy at this time' and sometimes the answer is 'no, as the woman I would be better off investing this biological effort at a time when it's more likely I'll survive the process and successfully nurture a baby after he/she is born'.
Having had my own griefs and disappointments over the years, and my own brushes with the 'your uterus belongs to GOD' nuts who wanted to cross examine on me on why I didn't have children yet, the number of children I did have, what caused my miscarriages, etc., I have come to the conclusion that each couple has to make their own private decisions and nobody else has the right to gratuitously rake over their pain and comment on what they do so long as it's within the law.
Who deserved to have an abortion would not be based on with whom you had sex or when. It would be on what danger you face from the birthing process.
I don't claim that men have no responsibility. They do. Men are required to provide child support for 18 years aren't they? The same rule applies to them: If they are not ready to support a child in this way, don't have sex. In fact I fully endorse your plan for imposed visectomies on such sex criminals. Except i don't believe it is a complete mirror image of the abortion debate. Men who scatter sperm promiscuously do not store the resulting life inside them and for this reason there is no male version of abortion and so no male version of the abortion debate. It's not a sexism thing its just the problem only applies to one sex in this situation.
That being said though there are many benefits to your visectomy plan. Less unplanned pregnancies would result reducing the very need for abortion even if it were legal. It also helps the common ground as you said. It would mean less developmentally challenged children from incest and less underprivileged youth. It would even reduce the population a little.
I don't even know where to begin, Alaric.
Who deserved to have an abortion would not be based on with whom you had sex or when. What the hell?!
If my presumption is wrong then you do see the fetus as human? Then by this you are saying that you could essentially replace the word fetus with human wherever it appears in your argument.
This would mean that wasting metabollic load on an unwanted pregnancy is worse than killing a human being. This would be the same as saying that a woman's energy and resources are greater than a human life. No human life should be ignored or extinguished because of how much it's wanted. If we are to use such logic then human beings are not all equal, but instead their lives should be stratified by how "wanted" they are, and wether the effort to mantain their existence balances this.
To conclude, you said that a fetus is human but that because its an unwanted human killing it is justified. I simply demonstrated that this statement goes against the moral law of human equality.
Oh and for ahunt please clarify your statement, I'm not sure what you mean.
ahunt - Alric was quoting my inartfully worded reference to abortion being 'okay' in cases of rape or incest (with whom).
To conclude, you said that a fetus is human but that because its an unwanted human killing it is justified.
You missed my point. More than half the time the fertilized egg never makes it all the way through the process to live birth. Pregnancy is risky for the woman. The woman MAKES the fetus out of her OWN BODY. Because of that she gets to make the practical decision about whether she uses her body to make this fetus now or a different one later. The woman's energy and resources are HERS and so she does not have to provide them to a 'human life' that has only a 50/50 chance when she is unwilling to do so.
Human lives are ignored and extinguished all the time because they are not valued - the health and deaths of the homeless, malnourished children, the uninsured ill, civilians in areas at war, foreign soldiers are all ignored and people don't care much about their 'extinguishment'. It's the antithesis of equality to allow society in general to direct the effort to sustain lives by the usefulness and 'convenience' of that life to society but insist that women alone don't get to make choices about where to direct their efforts.
Once all humans, born and unborn, are considered equally 'valuable' and sacred, the discussion might be held about whether women get to make choices, but to assert that the unborn are uniquely valuable while ignoring the far more common and far more numerous deaths of all those other unwanted lives is penalizing women for being female. They have to use up their very selves to make that child, and jointly with the father they have an equal obligation to provide economic support for the child AFTER it's born. The 'men have to pay child support' argument would be a lot more convincing if support didn't stubbornly remain at about a third unpaid.
ahunt - Alric was quoting my inartfully worded reference to abortion being 'okay' in cases of rape or incest (with whom).
Ah...following now.
Once all humans, born and unborn, are considered equally 'valuable' and sacred, the discussion might be held about whether women get to make choices, but to assert that the unborn are uniquely valuable while ignoring the far more common and far more numerous deaths of all those other unwanted lives is penalizing women for being female.
I dunno, crowepps. Given the enormous negative impact of unwanted pregnancy in the lives of women, I'm not sure that it is possible to reconcile the "sacredness" and potential of fetal life with the actual value and sacredness of female life. I do not see how it can be done.
Women, their partners and their doctors reconcile these issues all the time with intimate knowledge of the actual unique conditions involved. Women are willing to volunteer to take all those risks because they want children, right up to flirting with death after complications arise to give the fetus a few more weeks to grow.
To me, that is what makes the difference between martyrdom (willing to take the risks) and execution (she knew the risk when she had sex).
Sure, but we are talking about unwanted pregnancies, and unwilling women here...
Sure we are, but don't forget, please, that those WILLING women are the ones who end up getting the so-called 'late-term' abortions when the ultrasound reveals major problems or when the complications start.
In addition, keep in mind that when the willing women who have miscarriages, in order to lessen the chances of infection doctors perform pretty much the same procedure that is done in an 'abortion' to make sure that the uterus is cleared.
Given the complications of willing/unwilling, induced abortion/ spontaneous abortion (miscarriage), etc., it would be pretty difficult to actually sort out who did what without a pretty hefty enforcement arm to monitor and investigate all those women. Unlike every other crime on the books, is there going to be a presumption of guilt unless there's a healthy baby?
In there isn't going to be any punishment of those women who "don't gestate right", is the to pass just a feel-good law so activists can pat themselves on the back about how they 'value life'?
I'm not sure that it is possible to reconcile the "sacredness" and potential of fetal life with the actual value and sacredness of female life.
Unfortunately, for too many the ProLife method seems to be attaching the 'sacred' to virginity, so that pregnant women by definition are less valuable. This is the meme that leads to those statements about 'responsibility' and 'consequences' and 'she knew when she had sex that she was risking'. Female are only sacred until they are 'debased' and made 'unclean', after that they have no value.
Yes human lives are ended all over the world, and sometimes people seem not to care, but people are punished for their deaths. Those who kill civilians in war are tried for war crimes. Anyone who kills a homeless person is tried for murder. homeless shelters are set up and funded, money is sent all the time to starving children, and we are trying to send even more productive and lasting aid than just money. Many countries have free healthcare and some that don't are moving towards it. There is also a big difference between death and murder. nobody is allowed to kill the homeless, or starving or sick. But abortion says that it is okay to kill a human. It in fact provides aid to those seeking to kill this human. This is never something we should do.
Secondly although pregnancy has many chances to go wrong, that doesn't make the life any less valuable. An antiabortion law would ban abortion centres (abortion doctors would still exist for life and death situations), and discourage makeshift abortions. We would arrest those who were definitely guilty of abortion, but very certain evidence would be needed.
So Alaric...once surgical abortion is outlawed, and black market prostaglandins flood the countryside, how do you envision enforcement proceeding? Already, non-surgical abortions account for 1/3rd of all terminations. Essentially, abortion will become a matter between a woman and her dealer, and absent suspension of the 4th amendment, abortion rates will likely NOT decline...much anyway. Seriously, what is your plan? Miscarriage investigation squads?
Just because some people break a law doesn't mean that it's useless to enforce it. Illegal drugs can be purchased from drug dealers. How do police solve that problem? They find the dealers and arrest them while teaching normal people the dangers of drugs. They install penalties for drug dealing and purchasing that serve to deter people. What they don't do is give up and set up centers to sell these drugs to anybody who wants them. Abortions will likely decline because many people will not have access to black market abortions, or will chose not to have one because it is no longer legal and therefore less easy.
Let's see, they made alcohol illegal, prohibiting it turned out to create more problems than it solved and so they made it legal again.
They made abortion illegal, prohibiting it turned out to create more problems than it solved and so they made it legal again.
They made a long list of drugs illegal, and prohibiting SOME Of them has turned out to create more problems than it solved and so there is serious discussion about removing at least marijuana from the 'banned' list, selling it in stores and taxing it.
Medical abortions through RU-486 will be as close as the nearest dealer. Every woman who goes out of the country will fill up her purse with Plan B to pass out to her friends when she gets back. Some women are learning how to do suction abortions and stockpiling the machines just in case. The rate of abortions won't go down at all. What will happen instead is that the death rate for women will go up.
You're equating the value of alcohol in the 20's to abortion now? Wow, I didn't realize abortion was so rampant. Prohibition was flawed on the basis that everyone drank alcohol, to ban it was almost like banning TV now..a stupid idea. Once again, if anti-abortion laws were put in place, it would not be a flat out ban on abortion, it would be severe restrictions placed on abortions. Abortion clinics would effectively be gone, as the amount of legal abortions would drop to about 1.2% of whatever they are now based on my last look at the statistics for abortions that were done for health reasons. Hospitals would carry out abortions to save the life of the mother. Abortion is done so commonly now because it is so socially acceptable. If it were made illegal, the number of abortions would go down. To say to the contrary is ridiculous. The penalty would be based on the situations. Doctors performing illegal abortions would lose their license/jail time. The mother could face jail time/fine/whatever the courts see as a necessary punishment. To say that a law shouldn't be made a law because it would be broken, is not a sound argument. People are murdered all the time, cars are stolen, and fraud is still on the rise yet all of these things are illegal. Why? Not because it will mean everyone will stop doing them, it is so that the amount of people doing these things decline and it becomes more difficult to pull off these illegal maneuvers.
David Marniss, you are actually incorrect. In countries in which abortion is illegal, abortion rates are much the same as in countries in which abortion is legal. In countries in which abortion is illegal, however, the number of women maimed or killed due to unsafe, illegal abortion is much higher.
Do you understand what I'm saying? Banning abortion doesn't stop abortion. Every day, throughout the world, women are desperate enough to knowingly risk their lives by obtaining illegal abortions (globally, about 70 000 women per year die from complications associated with unsafe abortion. The number of women permanently or temporarily disabled by unsafe abortion is, of course, much higher, but I can't remember the number off the top of my head). And, you know, the fact that women are prepared to risk their lives to terminate pregnancies really should dispel the notion that women casually terminate pregnancies for no particular reason.
This whole conversation is insane. Attempting to reduce the abortion rate by reducing or eliminating supply is doomed to failure. The best way to lower abortion rates is by reducing demand - i.e. reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. Comprehensive sex education, affordable and accessible contraception and a decent social safety net are just a few measures that would reduce the abortion rate.
Banning abortion doesn't result in an end to abortion. An abortion ban would allow opponents of safe, legal abortion to pat themselves on the back for their moral victory, and that's about all it would accomplish.
You're equating the value of alcohol in the 20's to abortion now? Wow, I didn't realize abortion was so rampant. Prohibition was flawed on the basis that everyone drank alcohol, to ban it was almost like banning TV now..a stupid idea.
Your knowledge of history is inadequate. Actually there were large segments of the population who never alcohol, and who saw the alcohol consumption of others as a major problem afflicting society. So far as the consumption of alcohol, prohibition actually WORKED during the first year when the consumption of alcohol dropped tremendously. The defects of ENFORCING that prohibition, however, were discovered to be worse than the original problem with alcohol.
Once again, if anti-abortion laws were put in place, it would not be a flat out ban on abortion, it would be severe restrictions placed on abortions. Abortion clinics would effectively be gone, as the amount of legal abortions would drop to about 1.2% of whatever they are now based on my last look at the statistics for abortions that were done for health reasons. Hospitals would carry out abortions to save the life of the mother.
Certainly LEGAL abortions would drop tremendously, however ILLEGAL abortions would rise precipitously, together with a huge increase in the death rate of pregnant women.
Abortion is done so commonly now because it is so socially acceptable. If it were made illegal, the number of abortions would go down. To say to the contrary is ridiculous.
First, I wouldn't say that abortion is 'socially acceptable'. If it was, those 'sidewalk counselors' would stay home. Secondly, prior to the ruling in Roe v Wade, when it WAS illegal, the number of abortions was very high, as was the suicide rate for women.
The penalty would be based on the situations. Doctors performing illegal abortions would lose their license/jail time. The mother could face jail time/fine/whatever the courts see as a necessary punishment.
The courts don't set 'necessary punishment', laws do. So what laws would YOU like to see and what punishments would YOU like to see enacted in them?
To say that a law shouldn't be made a law because it would be broken, is not a sound argument.
A law shouldn't be passed if it is UNENFORCEABLE and past experience, here and in other countries, have shown that making abortions illegal doesn't stop them.
Your knowledge of history is inadequate. Prohibition didn't work because it deprived people of something harmless. It went too far. Laws prohibiting the consumption of liqueur during certain times and places, etc would have much more effective. The difference between alcohol and abortion is that abortion is the killing of a person, vs the ability to drink some beer. One ends in death, that's the difference.
The presence of advocacy against doesn't mean it isn't socially acceptable. The presence of 'sidewalk' counselors doesn't mean it's viewed as terrible. Abortions High=High Suicide rates for woman...is what you just said...>_>
The problem with abortion is that the majority of people who have abortions don't view the child growing in the womb as a person. Just 'a clump of cells'...completely ignorant of the fact that everyone is a clump of cells. That's what a multi-cellular organism is. It's effectively wide spread ignorance. If more time was spent on education, in terms of Contraceptives, Pregnancy, Abstinence, etc, it would be a lot more effective than just allowing abortion to be completely legal.
A law that's unenforceable? It's enforceable, it would just be difficult. It is impossible to stop organized crime. That's a fact. And yet, every day, they(the law enforcement body) try. That doesn't mean it should be legal. Suicide is illegal. How do you enforce that? You can't, yet it's illegal. Abortion shouldn't be legal because it deprives people of human rights. Not to mention the fact that abortion in other countries is used as population control. Used as a method to receive a male heir(killing the female children in the womb, then try again).
Actually, I'd say the real reason prohibition didn't work (as with laws against, well, anything) is that as long as there's demand, someone will supply. Drugs are illegal. Prostitution is illegal. In some places, abortion is illegal. That doesn't stop those who want these things from obtaining them. Abortion shouldn't be outlawed because ultimately that would only cause more suffering for pregnant women without actually saving lives. As with anything, the best course of action is to find ways to reduce demand. Abortion will happen with or without laws against it, but it can't happen without demand for it.
David Marniss, I note that you haven't bothered to directly address my comment from July 17th. In that comment, I pointed out that banning abortion in other countries has not had any significant effect in lowering the abortion rate in those countries. Do you think this would be different in the US? If so, why?
I also pointed out that globally, approximately 70 000 women die each year from unsafe abortions (you can verify this by googling unsafe abortion death rates - I'm not in the mood to find links for you, since you didn't bother to respond to my previous post). The vast majority of those deaths occur in countries in which abortion is illegal. The rate of injury resulting in permanent disability is far higher.
Now, you can say 'well, murder is illegal, but it still happens, so should we make that legal???!!', which is the standard response from advocates of illegalising abortion. But it's not comparable. The reason it's not comparable is that abortion bans are not only ineffective, but they actually result in harm. Could you please tell me the point of a law that is not only ineffective, but harmful? Why is that desirable to you?
Don't bother with comparisons with drug laws, please. I would argue that drug laws as they stand in the US at the moment are both pointless and harmful. I advocate decriminalisation of all drugs; substance abuse should be treated as a health issue, not a legal one. In Portugal, decriminalisation of all drugs has successfully reduced rates of drug use, increased the number of people who've sought treatment for drug addiction, and so forth.
So please answer my question. Why is banning abortion or very drastically restricting it desirable when a) it is ineffective, as it results in no significant decrease in abortion rates; and b) is harmful to women, as it increases the number of women who are maimed and killed by unsafe, illegal abortion?
You say that illegalizing abortion is unsafe to women.And compare it to the illegalizing of drugs. But the example you gave of Portugal's drug policy would not work. Do you intend for abortion to be treated as a medical problem? Yet provided by the medical industry? So the same hospitals would be performing abortions and providing therapy to stop them from seeking them? I would also like to mention that much more is at stake in legal abortion. Law can not say that killing a human is okay just because the murderers may hurt themselves.
Law can not say that killing a human is okay just because the murderers may hurt themselves.
You might find that people here listened to your viewpoint more respectfully if you didn't use dismissive hot button words like "murderers".
Let's repackage this with perhaps equally unbalanced text:
"The law cannot say that inducing a miscarriage is okay just because women would rather die than be pregnant."
Why not? Since in EITHER case the fetus is going to be dead, it seems sensible to me to save the life of the woman instead of executing her for the capital crime of not wanting to be a mother.
I'm beginning to think that what is motivating some ProLife activists is Freudian -- they absolutely do NOT want to think about their own mothers having sex for fun and need to insist that the only reason Mom would have had sex was to be rewarded with wonderful THEM!
Either that or there's some kind of power and control issue: "I am a MAN because I MADE you pregnant and you'd better shut up and pretend you're enjoying it because you don't get any choice to reject MY seed."
This much hostility to women just cannot be generated entirely on the basis of concern over the 'innocent fetus'.
Crowepps, yes. A more concise version of Alaric's comment would be something like 'those murdering sluts deserve to die anyway'.
This is actually making me laugh. It's been said countless times that woman who are going to die, shouldn't be restricted from abortions, because killing your child to save yourself makes sense. It's 1:1. So that entire little rant up there is moot. Abortion should be restricted to woman who actually need them. Not to any single person who just feels like killing their child.
Really, a woman can kill her child after birth to save herself from natural death? Or is it that its using her body and the right to life doesn't extend this far (which is being argued elsewhere in this thread)?
If a woman is going to die, unless she aborts her child, she should be allowed to kill the child. But otherwise, there's no justification for abortion. It's simply because life is valuable and that one life is going to be lossed either way. The woman merely gets to choose if she is willing to die for this child, or if she would prefer life.
The law has an obligation to prohibit acts that are wrong. Some actions are wrong but simply don't seem important to some people because the victims can't voice objections. The fetus is a victim in an abortion. The law should do more than just protect the woman, it should strive to protect both. If women seek unsafe abortion outside the law that only displays a problem with those women's refusal to acknowledge the victim, not with the law itself. In saying murderers I meant to show an example. What if a country had a large population of serial killers? But with murder illegal these killers had to go through lengths to not get caught in their actions. What if these killers ended up injuring or killing themselves a lot in the attempt to commit secret murders? Should said country revise its law and permit murder? No. What if the killers have powerful advocates who outnumber the advocates of the victims? Still, no. Murder in the objective sense is the ending of the life of a human being. The fetus is a human being. A murderer is one who commits murder, that is one who ends the life of a human being. Therefore it isn't a stretch at all to apply this word to those who perform or have abortions, regardless of how good their reasons may be. This is not to say that I hate women, or even to say that I hate those who have had abortions, but it does mean that what they are doing is wrong. Your reasoning for why prolifers exist is insane. And your closing statement is incorrect. Our hostility is not directed at women, it is directed at the prochoice side. And with good reason, after all why is it impossible to believe that some people out there are concerned about inoccent humans being killed?
Sigh. Yes, abortion is and should remain a medical issue. They should remain legal and be performed safely by trained medical professionals.
Law can not say that killing a human is okay just because the murderers may hurt themselves.
And in under 20 words, you've just shown yourself to be unworthy of any further verbal engagement on my part.
The presence of advocacy against doesn't mean it isn't socially acceptable. The presence of 'sidewalk' counselors doesn't mean it's viewed as terrible.
Then why are we even here discussing it? If it's 'socially acceptable' the discussion should be over.
You're going to have to make a choice between 'society is protecting itself by banning abortion' and 'abortion is socially acceptable'. Both things cannot be true. Unless what you mean is PATRIARCHY is attempting to protect itself' which of course requires that everybody be kept firmly toeing the line of what greatgrandpa thought was a good idea.
What? Why can you not simply justify abortion, everything comes back to the oppression of woman and the progression of the patriarchy. Without resorting to Modern Feminist BS, why don't you simply explain why a woman should have the ability to end a persons life, when her life is not at danger.
Why can you not simply justify abortion, everything comes back to the oppression of woman and the progression of the patriarchy. Without resorting to Modern Feminist BS, why don't you simply explain why a woman should have the ability to end a persons life, when her life is not at danger.
Uh David, I'll answer the question, but I would like to point out that calling feminism "BS"...pretty much costs you whatever shred of credibility you may have possessed. As to your question...YOUR body may not be used to sustain the existence of another against your will. Likewise, my body may not be used to sustain the existence of another against my will. Equality!
Okay, I'm almost certain I answered something like this already. Whatever, I'm getting used to repeating myself here. 1)In the case of consensual sex the fetus is not inhabiting your body against your will. All women know that sex carries the risk of pregnancy and many choose to take that risk. To claim afterwards that you were not given a choice would be a lie. 2)You are punishing the fetus for existing. That's your defense. That the fetus exists and you don't want it to so you may kill it. Existing is not something that the fetus has control over.
1)In the case of consensual sex the fetus is not inhabiting your body against your will.Well, yes, it might infact be inhabiting my body against my will.
All women know that sex carries the risk of pregnancy and many choose to take that risk.
so what?
To claim afterwards that you were not given a choice would be a lie. Since no one here has clained any such thing, I do not know what you are talking about. 2)You are punishing the fetus for existing. Project much? That's your defense. No, review.
That the fetus exists and you don't want it to so you may kill it. Existing is not something that the fetus has control over. Actually, the conflict arises not over existence, but location.
If you didn't notice, I said modern feminism. Which is fundamentally different from just plain old feminism. Technically I'm a feminist, but I'm not a modern feminist. Modern feminism is effectively an attempt to overpower men, it has nothing to do with gender equality. The sole purpose of modern feminism is to give woman as much power as humanly possible so as to sort of get back at men for holding up an oppressive patriarchy for so long.
Back to your argument; "Likewise, my body may not be used to sustain the existence of another against my will. Equality!"
My body can't be used to sustain life, yours can. And for the most part, the act that initiates said sustenance is a consensual act that the woman chooses to involve herself in. It's not as if the government is raping you and then forcing you to take a child to term, it would merely mean that if you had sex, and offspring was produced you would be responsible for the life you brought into the world. As would the man who participated the sexual act.
Equality would be, that if abortion was legal, a man wouldn't have to pay for child support. Because just as the woman has autonomy over her body in regards to other human life, a man should have autonomy over his bank account, once again, in regards to human life. But that's not the type of world I would wish to live in.
Certainly your body can be used to sustain life...bone marrow, kidney, liver, blood, and YES, semen.
yours can. See previous.
It's not as if the government is raping you and then forcing you to take a child to term,
So there is a rape exception? Because we're not hearing it anywhere else in this thread.
Modern feminism is effectively an attempt to overpower men, it has nothing to do with gender equality. The sole purpose of modern feminism is to give woman as much power as humanly possible so as to sort of get back at men for holding up an oppressive patriarchy for so long.
If you wouldn't mind, could you point me in the direction of some feminist literature you've read upon which you've based the opinion expressed in the paragraph I've quoted? That'd be much appreciated.
As someone who identifies as a feminist, would you say you identify more with first or second wave feminism? In what way? What school of feminist thought appeals to you most? Marxist feminism? Eco-feminism? Liberal feminism? Radical feminism? (for example) What is it you find appealing about whatever school of feminist thought you prefer?
"What? Why can you not simply justify abortion, everything comes back to the oppression of woman and the progression of the patriarchy. Without resorting to Modern Feminist BS, why don't you simply explain why a woman should have the ability to end a persons life, when her life is not at danger."
Alright, I'll bite. Quite simply, It's MY uterus. MINE. Not yours, not the child's, MINE. And no one has the right to use my body for anything against my will. If an unintended pregnancy occurs, then it is my RIGHT to decide if I'm willing to continue it or not. Carrying a pregnancy to term is essentially an act of charity, same as organ donations and food banks. That the fetus must die as a result is unavoidable, but irrelevant. To use an old cliche, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. My right to bodily autonomy cannot be mitigated by anything, that is the definition of a right.
Surprise! David Marniss is an anti-feminist. I can see why someone who believes women are walking, talking incubators would have some trouble with the idea that the womenfolk are equal human beings with as much right to bodily autonomy as men, though. What a thought!
Why is my 'little rant' moot, David? I guess that means you believe it's irrelevant whether a law will a) achieve its purpose (presumably, that purpose is to save foetuses, is it not?); and b) cause more harm than good. Is it incomprehensible to you that some of us - women, for example - might consider more dead women (and just as many dead foetuses) constitutes 'harm'? I don't think you understand the point of legislation, David, or the factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing and implementing it (will it achieve its purpose; will it be a net social good; what negative results are likely to result from it; potential problems with enforcement; and so on and so forth).
You are an incredibly cowardly debater, David. You're an insult to my intelligence.
The "human rights" that you're referring to is clearly the so-called rights of the unborn, which is a lot of baloney.
hoary pro life argument for a near blanket abortion ban. It would force women to "think twice" and become "more chaste". Gee, you could just enact a law mandating burqas while you're at it. *snerk*
Your grievance shall be avenged.
Abortions will likely decline because many people will not have access to black market abortions,
Oh boy...first of all, the days of isolated women lacking information, support and financial resources are gone. Women are connected, informed, determined and employed. If you think that women will not be able to access pharmaceutical abortifacients, you have a remarkable low opinion of female resourcefulness.
They find the dealers and arrest them while teaching normal people the dangers of drugs. They install penalties for drug dealing and purchasing that serve to deter people.
And this is working soooo well in our society. What are the incarceration rates for non-violent drug offenders? You really looking to add 900,000+ women to the prison rolls...annually? And are you suggesting that all miscarriages be investigated by the police? Because short of such draconian intrusion, your proposals are pointless. I could go on.
What the hell are you talking about? It has nothing to do with the competency of woman, abortions will go down after it is legal because there will be a penalty. No one goes out of their way to break the law. And because it is against the law, the socially accepted nature of abortions will also go down with time. How does creating anti-abortion laws somehow turn every single country into a fascist state? Please, tell me? Every time I get into an argument with a modern feminist(there's a difference) they always straw man the enforcement aspect. How does child services work? Tip line. No one complains about that. If someone knows about an illegal abortion clinic, they will report it and the clinic will be shut down. Woman going out of their way to get these abortions will be penalized in some way, in whatever the courts feel necessary. Why would miscarriages be investigated by the police? Unless there is suspicion to believe that a person has purposefully committed an abortion, there's no reason for an investigation. This is Canada, not the Soviet Union.....>_>
One more time...historically inaccurate. Do some research. From the Janes to PA country doctors, to bayou midwives, abortion has flourished across this nation since its founding, socially acceptable or not. The profound distinction between history and now is the educational, economic and social empowerment of women. We're not going back, and today we have the internet, and the knowledge, support, resources and wherewithal to circumvent the kind of restrictions you advocate.
As far as "socially unacceptable?" Clearly you are not familiar with the pattern described as "abortion is immoral, except for mine." Again, do some research. You are deluding yourself if you think that simply outlawing abortion will end, or even limit the practice.
Enforcement? Your response to the question of enforcement is "tip lines?" Seriously?
That's how child services works. It's not my invention, it's how laws like these are enforced. The government doesn't start monitoring everyone. It just checks when there is suspicion. You're basically saying that woman nowadays have the ability to circumvent the law, or will at least be able to if these laws come into power? Then why are you arguing for it to be legal? Obviously it has some bearing on reducing abortions. That's why there are laws, to reduce certain events. In this case, that's abortion. And abortion would still be available to people that actually need them. This isn't about suppressing woman, no matter how much you allude to that. It's about preserving basic human rights to all humans.
That's how child services works. It's not my invention, it's how laws like these are enforced. The government doesn't start monitoring everyone. It just checks when there is suspicion.Good Lord, man, if stopping abortion is going to be handled the way child services are currently done, you might as well not bother. There are THREE MILLION reports of harm to children every year, ONE MILLION of which are found to be justified when they are investigated.
You're basically saying that woman nowadays have the ability to circumvent the law, or will at least be able to if these laws come into power? Then why are you arguing for it to be legal?Because circumventing the law kills them.
Obviously it has some bearing on reducing abortions. That's why there are laws, to reduce certain events. In this case, that's abortion. And abortion would still be available to people that actually need them.No, the purpose of laws is to be able to PUNISH PEOPLE who are 'immoral'.
This isn't about suppressing woman, no matter how much you allude to that. It's about preserving basic human rights to all humans.
Except the women, who lose their rights during their reproductive years.
Yes, and that means that 1 million children are saved from harm. The system may be inefficient, but because it is there, it can be improved and the fact that is has some success at all is justification enough. Or are you saying that Child Services should be removed as well, because apparently children don't matter.
Circumventing the law kills them? What about the child? Less than 1.2% of abortion are for health reasons. That means that over 98% of abortions occur merely because the mother doesn't want to go through pregnancy. "**** it, let's just kill the child", is effectively the reaction. I have never said that I wanted woman to die from child birth. If a woman is going to die, she has the right to kill her child over herself. But that is the vast minority of cases, and I don't believe that completely legalizing abortion in all cases is the stance to take for the vast minority of pregnancies.
No, the purpose of law is the protect society. To some, sexual promiscuity is immoral, yet it's legal. To some premarital sex is immoral, yet it's legal. Morality is too ambiguous for to base laws off of. In this case, an anti-abortion law would protect those people that are being killed by abortion.
Reproductive rights? Yes, you have your reproductive rights, but those rights don't trump another human life. Given that the majority of abortions aren't from rape or anything like that, I don't see how you're losing your rights. You chose to have sex. A possible occurrence is pregnancy. Just because you don't want to face that, doesn't mean you should be able to kill your child. The woman must bare the child, and the father is also responsible to that child till the child becomes an adult, his wallet is bound to that kid till 18 years of age. It's not as if the woman is the only one who is bound by a pregnancy. It is both the mother and father that have to face the responsibility of their actions. There's no going around that.
"Clearly you are not familiar with the pattern described as "abortion is immoral, except for mine." I'll save you the trouble of looking it up. http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/anti-tales.html
David, you still haven't addressed my comment. Why not?
Furthermore, you are talking about removing our rights here, not yours. You are advocating restricting women's physical autonomy; laws that would affect us, as women, not you. I would therefore suggest that you have the decency to address us politely and respectfully (I recognise that the latter may be difficult, given that you don't actually respect us as autonomous human beings), rather than being aggressive and hostile ('what the hell are you talking about?' and so forth). You really should be trying to convince us of the validity of your argument - since, again, you wish to restrict our rights - rather than aggressively attempting to impose your beliefs on us.
This is one of the problems I have with the pro-foetus men on this site: you show up here to inform us that we should be forced to continue unwanted pregnancies, except perhaps under certain circumstances under which you might generously permit us to terminate, and then get hostile and aggressive when we object to that kind of imposition.
It is not our obligation to be polite or respectful to you, by the way, as we are not advocating a removal of your right to bodily autonomy. It's up to you to convince us that you are not, in fact, motivated by loathing of and contempt for women. So far, you're failing rather spectacularly in that regard.
Ah, I see, so we must be nice to you since we are on the "offensive" and you have every right to call us misogynists, idiots and lunatics because you are defending your point. Have you ever heard of innocent until proven guilty? How can you say that since we are not on your side you have the right to assume that we hate women? How can you say that we don't respect you as autonomous human beings? I can't speak for everyone else, but I DO! and most prolife men that I know DO ALSO. If your only defence for your side is that those against you aren't grovelling at your feet, then I suggest you give up arguing about anything. Why don't you try responding to our points as if we are human beings instead of vilifying us for no reason at every opportunity. We don't get aggressive when you object to our point, we get mad when you insult us instead of actually stating reasons for your objection.
I'm sorry if at one point I've seemed aggressive or hostile, but to be honest, I haven't been met with anything even remotely polite. And if your only example of me being impolite is saying "What the hell" in reference to someone's absurd/ludicrous notions than I think you're grasping for straws.
I am attempting to restrict your ability to kill your children. This is not because I hate woman, this is because I believe that human life is valuable. Secondly, I didn't respond to your comment because I thought someone else already had, and I figured that they'd do just fine on their own without me holding their hand. And since I'm assuming your comment is the one concerning the amount abortions not decreasing due to becoming illegal, I'll just go ahead and refute it now since it won't be that difficult.
First of all, the majority of unsafe abortions are conducted in developing countries, in contrast to countries like the US and Canada, 1st world/developed countries if you will. This has two meanings; the first being that any abortions, legal or illegal will be conducted in ways considered dangerous from a North American perspective. This coupled with the fact that even legal abortions are dangerous mean that woman will be injured by abortion, legal or not. This also means that unsafe abortions in developed countries will be vastly better than unsafe abortions in 3rd world countries. If you combine the fact that a combination of the increased education about the dangers of abortion will reduce the amount of attempts to abort in tandem with the fact that unsafe abortions will be much safer in more developed countries you'll see that there is nothing wrong with making abortion illegal other than it'll piss some people off. Not just woman, men too. If you didn't know, there are many men that support abortion merely because it means they can abandon their responsibility to the child produced from their promiscuity. There are also cases of men forcing woman to get abortions just for that reason. So I don't see how you can unilaterally state that abortion is all good.
Lastly, I'd like to note that none of that matters. Once you recognize that a human is developing inside the womb, and that an abortion is the killing of that person, it does not matter how difficult it is to enforce, or how many people follow that law, by nature of a human life being in danger anti-abortion laws would have to be instituted. Also, you say that 'we'(Pro-Life Advocated I'm assuming) allow you abortion in some cases. It's not a matter of us allowing it, it's a matter of what's fair. A woman's life is valuable and so is the child's. However, if one of them is going to die, then the woman should be able to decide if she wants to die for her child, or if she would prefer to live. It makes perfect sense. No one is forcing a woman to die against her will.
And if your only example of me being impolite is saying "What the hell" in reference to someone's absurd/ludicrous notions than I think you're grasping for straws.
I used that as an example (yes, a minor one) because it was the one I read just before commenting. A better example might be 'you just want to kill your child!!!111'. And as far as that particular claim goes, you do realise that plenty of pro-choice people have never had abortions, right? Some even have children! Some don't plan to have abortions themselves at any point in the future. Such women believe, however, that other women are best equipped to make their own reproductive decisions, and that no one, male or female - including you, David - should have the right to interfere. It was an obnoxious, inflammatory, inaccurate claim, and I'm not sure why you made it other than to provoke and/or to be an asshole.
I am attempting to restrict your ability to kill your children.
Same old obfuscatory rubbish, trying to pretend there's no difference between a foetus and a child.
Secondly, I didn't respond to your comment because I thought someone else already had, and I figured that they'd do just fine on their own without me holding their hand.
You mean Alaric's comment? Actually, it seems Alaric does need someone to hold his sweaty little hand; his response was so brainless, misogynistic, hyperbolic and pathetic that he actually did me a favour in demonstrating to me that he is unworthy of any further responses.
First of all, the majority of unsafe abortions are conducted in developing countries, in contrast to countries like the US and Canada, 1st world/developed countries if you will. This has two meanings; the first being that any abortions, legal or illegal will be conducted in ways considered dangerous from a North American perspective. This coupled with the fact that even legal abortions are dangerous mean that woman will be injured by abortion, legal or not. This also means that unsafe abortions in developed countries will be vastly better than unsafe abortions in 3rd world countries.
Yes, most illegal abortions occur in developing countries, but you're missing a confounding factor in your analysis: For the most part, it's developing countries in which abortion is illegal. In most developed countries, it's legal, and actually, the availability of safe, legal abortion is a reliable indicator of the status of women in a given society.
Thus, more women are going to die from illegal and unsafe abortions in developing countries.
My point was in regard to illegal abortions, not legal ones, and you lost me when you leapt to the conclusion that unsafe abortion would be safer in developed countries than in developing countries. Does that mean that if I shoved a coat hanger into my cervix and haemorrhaged to death in Australia, I would do so more safely than I would if I were in Nicaragua? The term 'unsafe abortion' - at as least I interpret it - means 'an abortion that is unsafe'.
If you combine the fact that a combination of the increased education about the dangers of abortion will reduce the amount of attempts to abort in tandem with the fact that unsafe abortions will be much safer in more developed countries you'll see that there is nothing wrong with making abortion illegal other than it'll piss some people off.
Education campaigns informing women and girls of the dangers of unsafe abortion are going to reduce the rate of unsafe abortion? Now you're just being insulting. Given that we're not idiots and all, we already know that abortions performed by non-medically trained providers are unsafe. I cannot believe you're even serious there. Do you need an education campaign to know that, say, prostate surgery or administration of chemotherapy drugs for testicular cancer are dangerous when performed by an untrained person, or by oneself? I really doubt that you do.
You're still operating on the assumption that girls and women have abortions just for 'convenience', and that being forced to complete a pregnancy and give birth is just a minor imposition. Every day, women and girls around the world risk their lives obtaining unsafe, illegal abortions, knowing damned well that it could kill them. This really should illustrate that many women and girls are, for a variety of reasons, incredibly desperate not to continue a pregnancy; that unwanted pregnancy and childbirth are more than just an inconvenience.
Look, this is the best comparison I can come up with right now: Imagine that as soon as a male person had sex for the first time, they were placed on bone marrow and kidney donor registries. Imagine that upon having sex for the first time, all men with two functioning kidneys were required to donate a kidney. Imagine that all sexually active men were required to donate bone marrow whenever it matched that of someone who required a bone marrow transplant. Would that feel like nothing more than an inconvenience to you? A minor imposition? Would you be appreciative if I were to inform you that I planned to lobby for this to become law? Imagine that there were a very real chance of this happening. What would your opinion on that be? Bearing in mind that if you violated the law and refused to donate your bone marrow or kidney, not only would you be imprisoned, but an innocent person would die, would you feel this law were reasonable? Would you be comfortable with it?
If you didn't know, there are many men that support abortion merely because it means they can abandon their responsibility to the child produced from their promiscuity. There are also cases of men forcing woman to get abortions just for that reason. So I don't see how you can unilaterally state that abortion is all good.
The former point may well be the case; however, not all men are assholes. I know more than a few men who support that availability of safe, legal abortion because they respect women's right to bodily autonomy, and they're aware that the consequences of banning abortion would be worse than you're willing to acknowledge.
Where did I unilaterally say that all abortion is good? Do you understand that being pro-choice means that one believes that it should always be an individual pregnant woman's own choice whether to abort, continue a pregnancy, raise the resulting child herself or put it up for adoption? I have no investment in what choice other women make; what I care about is that they are able to make that choice. I don't support coerced abortion any more than I support coerced continuation of pregnancy and childbirth. Being forced into either against one's will is an unacceptable violation.
Lastly, I'd like to note that none of that matters. Once you recognize that a human is developing inside the womb, and that an abortion is the killing of that person, it does not matter how difficult it is to enforce, or how many people follow that law, by nature of a human life being in danger anti-abortion laws would have to be instituted.
How is this not essentially saying that you don't care whether an abortion ban actually succeeds in saving foetal lives, or whether women die as a result?
Also, you say that 'we'(Pro-Life Advocated I'm assuming) allow you abortion in some cases. It's not a matter of us allowing it, it's a matter of what's fair. A woman's life is valuable and so is the child's. However, if one of them is going to die, then the woman should be able to decide if she wants to die for her child, or if she would prefer to live. It makes perfect sense. No one is forcing a woman to die against her will.
No, that's your view of what's fair. Why should your idea of what's fair trump my view of what's fair?
I'm struck by the comment about "normal people". So, in your opinion, any woman who uses a non-surgical method to end a pregnancy is therefore "abnormal"? Of course abortions would decline if women who have had all options taken away can't find a way to get around them. But be warned, history has shown us that outright abortion bans (or just draconic restrictions) are largely unworkable and take more time, effort and money to enforce than they are worth.
Your grievance shall be avenged.
If you actually believe that all war crimes result in punishment, the deaths of the marginal or poor are investigated as thoroughly as those of the middle class, and that all murderers are punished, you have an unusually optomistic view of how things actually work in this country. Look up the percentage of crimes that remain unsolved.
It's true there are laws against actively killing the homeless or starving or sick, but there aren't any rules requiring the general population to allow the homeless to move into their homes, requiring the general population to feed the hungry at their own tables, or requiring doctors and hospitals to go all out in treating the sick if they are uninsured. What's the moral exception that makes deaths acceptable if they happen through negligence? What's the moral loophole that allows people to hand over a few bucks to someone else as their agent to save those marginal lives while AT THE SAME TIME insisting on their right to force strangers to continue an unwanted pregnancy in person?
You may not be old enough to remember, but the reason those 'abortion centers' were created in the first place was because of ProLife hysteria about abortions being done in hospitals as though 'those women' deserved the same care as everyone else and 'those doctors' deserved to deliver needed health care in the same setting with 'decent' people.
To arrest 'those definitely guilty of abortion' how are they going to be identified? What proofs will the investigative force need to identify which pregancies were miscarried and which were aborted? Are there going to be jury trials where the women can tell their stories? Do you think the death penalty is appropriate for girls and women not wanting to be pregnant or perhaps how many years in prison? Who is going to take care of their other children while they're in prison?
Perhaps the law would go to the lengths of forcing people to care for the hungry and homeless if their taxes did not go to build shelters for them to live in. The difference between those examples and the unborn fetus is that the fetus can not be cared for by anyone but the mother. Unless a fetus shelter becomes a possibility, the mother should care for the child for those 9 months. Perhaps others could help, after all many prolife groups specialize in providing financial aid to those who can't afford pregnancy. But the direct care of the child always falls on its mother because there is no other way.
As for enforcement. The only way a certain verdict could be delivered is if a woman sustained an abortion injury, or was caught in the act of aborting. Of course it is very unlikely for this to happen so most effort would be put into finding those who performed abortions. I don't think the death penalty would be a good idea but jail time is fine. And as for their other children. What happens to the children of any man or woman arrested for murder, rape, robbery etc? They likely will live with relatives until time is served.
To summarize, nobody can serve as an agent for the mother. It's simply impossible. I would also add that except in the case of rape, the woman voluntarily created the life inside her. The analogy of turning down a homeless child about to die does not quite fit with abortion. It is more like leaving a child onto the street where you know they will die. Why? Because the homeless child is not your responsibility,but according to the law your own child is.
If people are going to insist that other people live by the precept that 'all life is equally valuable' then that homeless child IS their personal responsibility.
It's does not work as a precept to say 'all life is equally valuable except when I'm personally inconvenienced' because that would leave abortion legal.
You continually reference the fact that society is unfair to everyone as justification for allowing abortion. I don't understand this train of thought? If these acts of unkindness are wrong, how does this justify abortion? If we can't start doing the right things merely because we're still doing some wrong, nothing will ever get done. A homeless child is the parents responsibility. If the child cannot be cared for by the parent, that's why we have child services. Society does attempt to protect the lives of its citizenry, just because it's not very good at it doesn't mean we can't try to continue to protect the lives of every person we can the best we can. Baby steps, seriously. Just because it won't have a radical effect over night, doesn't mean it won't have an effect. Merely because the fetus is an earlier, not as developed stage in human development, doesn't mean it's any less valuable.
Merely because the fetus is an earlier, not as developed stage in human development, doesn't mean it's any less valuable.
It doesn't mean it's any MORE valuable either. Why start 'valuing life' with an undeveloped stage of human life when there's all kinds of developed life around that could use a hand? In my opinion, it's because it all HER responsibility, so it's a cheap and easy morality, one where the consequences rest entirely on someone else.
Society does attempt to protect the lives of its citizenry, just because it's not very good at it doesn't mean we can't try to continue to protect the lives of every person we can the best we can.
Seems fair to me to continue to be 'not very good at' protecting fetuses until sure time as society is really excellent at preventing rape, spousal abuse and discrimination against women. Once the WOMAN actually is protected, it would be a good time to start discussing her contents.
No, it doesn't make it more valuable. They are of equal value, so when a situation arises where there are two options, one leading to one dead and the other alive Vs both alive...really, which is the more fair choice to the both of them. You mention this constantly, "Why start 'valuing life' with an undeveloped stage of human life when there's all kinds of developed life around that could use a hand?" That's not an argument for abortion. Maybe if people weren't so busy fighting for people to be allowed to be alive, we might have some extra time to help some living people. But where we are now, the value of life itself is in question.
Well, for one thing. Spousal abuse is almost even in Canada. http://www.imfcanada.org/article_files/Canadian%20Spousal%20Abuse%20Stat...
As you can see from those statistics, it's not just woman, it's everyone who's in trouble from abuse. Secondly, as for discrimination against woman, I agree with you there. There is discrimination against woman, however not all of it is, "I won't hire a woman". It's more like, "I'll hire a woman because we don't have enough woman, not because she possess more skills than her competition." Quota's are BS. If woman wanted to be looked at with respect and dignity, they should be on the same playing field as men. So it's no longer gender differences, it's just a matter of who's better. This is not to say that there aren't legitimate wrongs being perpetrated on woman, however to say that woman are the slaves of the post-modern world is ridiculous. Life is more complicated than that.
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1
Weekly Pulse: DIY Abortions; Pawlenty Screws MN on Sex Ed
By Lindsay Beyerstein on September 2, 2010 - 4:00pm | 1 comment
Locked Up, Pregnant, and Shackled: Governor Schwarzenegger Can Unchain Them
By LeaJay Harper on September 2, 2010 - 7:00am | 0 comments
Pawlenty's Executive Order Puts Politics Before Lives
By Sarah Stoesz on September 2, 2010 - 7:00am | 1 comment
2
Access to Abortion: Red State, Blue State, Interstate
By Amanda Marcotte on September 2, 2010 - 7:00am | 10 comments
Post-fertile Boomers Push Birth Rate Drop
By Elizabeth Gregory on September 1, 2010 - 9:00am | 1 comment
3
Local Context Matters to Women's Lives: A Report from Delhi
By Sara Stratton on August 31, 2010 - 3:30pm | 0 comments
Back To School: With Sights on White House, Pawlenty Sacrifices Minnesota Teens
By Robin Marty on August 31, 2010 - 2:45pm | 0 comments
4
Working with Jailed Pregnant Women Changes a Physician's Career
By Dr. Carolyn Sufrin on August 31, 2010 - 7:00am | 2 comments
(VIDEO) Listen to the Lives of Ordinary Catholics
By Lon Newman on August 31, 2010 - 7:00am | 41 comments
Sex Ed is "Poison"? We Don't Think So
By Leah Reis-Dennis and Elizabeth Reis on August 31, 2010 - 7:00am | 2 comments
5
Glenn Beck, Alveda King, and Reproductive Rights
By Marjorie B. Signer on August 30, 2010 - 7:00am | 42 comments
Waiting For Results: When Ultrasounds Just Aren't Perfect
By Robin Marty on August 30, 2010 - 7:00am | 2 comments
Today
- Locked Up, Pregnant, and Shackled: Governor Schwarzenegger Can Unchain Them
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