Abortions anyone?
 

This topic is one of those that everyone has conflicting opinions on. Myself, I'm pro choice. But, before I go on, I'd like to say partial birth abortions should be outlawed (aren't they trying to do that now?). I would say there should be a good reason, but who's to decide what is "good enough"? If some sixteen year old gets "caught up in the moment" then the pregnancy should be the price of stupidity. But if that same sixteen year old used contraception and still got screwed... different story. I know it can never be like that because there's no way to decide. Anyway, I don't see how people can not be pro choice. I know the whole "it's murder" thing, but if they regulate abortions to early in the pregnancy, it's not even a human. And what do you say to the 16 year old rape victim when she has to leave school? The life she wanted is gone forever, could you just say "sorry, it's your fault you were raped!"

What do y'all think?

It should be judged on a per-basis system. As you said, it is totally unfair to blame someone for being raped. But many times you'll hear of young girls looking for a good time and having unprotected sex.

I disagree with abortions for the irresponsible and incompitent, I also disagree with the irresponsible and incompitent raising children though. This brings up a large question which I don't have an answer or opinion for.

Interesting topic, thanx for making it.

You're NEVER going to change anyone's mind, and that's why women will CONTINUE to have abortions even if they are illegalized. They will just be messier, more painful, and more dangerous.

We should have learned from Prohibition that you can't legislate morality or responsibility.

The best course of action would be to keep abortion legal, without exception, except in the last 3 months where it would be ILLEGAL, without exception. And after that if the wonderful women's groups who are protecting female freedom of choice and the wonderful women's groups who are protecting the sanctity of birth are unhappy with this arbitrary judgement, they can pour the uncounted piles of cash they receive every day to make a big controversy about this issue into something USEFUL like sexual education and contraception research and education so that situations in which a woman has to choose whether to have an abortion or not don't even have to HAPPEN.

Case closed...

Meridae'n point is a very good one. I had never thought of it like that before. Personally i dont think that i'll ever figure it out. For a long time i was totally pro-choice because i think that people should be aloud to do what they want, with there bodies and otherwize. But then i met my friend Caryol hows mother was going to have an abortion. And she told her this. Her plan was to have an abortion but at the last min. she couldnt do it so Caryol was born. So how can i tell Caryol that she should be dead and that i support people killing other babies like her. So i dont know i guess the only way is looking at ever case individually.

Oh, I thought you were giving them for free or something.

I've been on the opposite side YourNeverThere, at least with my sister. She had already had three children, and her boyfriend threw away her contraception then had his way with her. She had to get an abortion because she couldn't support her three children, and then ADD another one to mix.

In New Hampster, we just got a law that says that if a minor is going to get an abortion, then the parents must be informed. It doesn't say that they have a choice, but that are informed. I believe the reason for this bill is so that parents have a role in the lives of their children. To this, I also totally disagree. How is informing your parents, where in some circumstances might get them more harm then any good, going to get them involved with their children. Like was said above, if you keep on putting restrictions on it, you'll have more females finding other ways to abort the baby, or like another situation we had here a bit back, a girl had her baby, then threw it into a dumpster.

I think partial birth abortions are just wrong and they should definately not be allowed. I think a Woman has the right to choose, but I would never even consider it personally.

Re: Abortions anyone?
 

Otherwise known as D&E, the name the anti-choicers give this procedure is intended mainly to engender just this reaction. D&E isn't particularly controvercial as such, so they had to use a more emotional name to get people to object to it. THINK, man!


So you give a life sentence for a few minutes of being a 16-year-old. Harsh.

Very harsh...

Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

Thank you denim, I was just about to explode over this one. Just FYI, the AMA is in favor of so-called partial-birth abortion, properly called D&E.

In some cases, a D&E is the best option for a late term abortion, as it is the safest for the woman. For that reason, I prefer it be kept legal instead of legistlators trying to play doctor.

That being said, I think two trimesters are plenty of time to decide that the mother does not want a baby, so I am in favor of restrictions in the third trimester.

Even if the girl's been raped there's still the option of putting the kid up for adoption. It isn't just a choice between ruining her life or killing the child.

I see your point, but a life-threatening situation can develop anytime during the pregnancy and even if the original intention was to carry to term, situations happen where carrying to term will most likely kill the mom.

going through the 9 months of pregnancy to give up the kid for adoption is iffy.

Vermin, I like you and respect you as a fellow TFPer, but I don't agree with you here. I don't believe a man- _any_ man can comprehend what it would be like to be raped and impregnated by the rapist, then forced to carry the product of the rape to term.

Precisely. We just don't know... so our opinions in this matter are not overly relevant

I think pro choice means just that.
I would not allow abortions after the fetus is viable, simply because the line between a potential human, and an actual one has to be drawn somewhere.

Also, I think that it is completely and totally hypicritical to make value based decisions on whether or not a particular person should be allowed to have an abortion. Because by doing so, you are in effect saying that I think abortion is wrong (read: murder) so I am going to limit it. For this reason, I think there can be no real middle ground between pro-choice and anti-choice people. Either you believe that an abortion is murder, or you believe that you are just removing a ball of cells.

Like I said, I make an exception for a viable fetus because I consider it to be essentially human (third trimester?). Before it becomes viable, however, it is essentially just a tumor, and I could care less whether someone gets rid of a few.

I think I should mention that if I ever got my girlfriend pregnant, then I would be there for her unconditionally, regardless of her decision about keeping the baby. I think that is really only a choice she should make, and I think she needs to know that I will be behind her whatever she decides.

If you think abortion is wrong, then dont' have one (or get someone pregnant).

i might not have said it in my first post my really i dont have any fully formed ideas on this subject, personally i just think its up the the girl, becuase as a guy i will never understand what does on in a female when she deciedes to do whatever she does, so its hard to post :)

This issue has been discussed recently in the Politics forum. Check it out, the subject has something to do with "Roe vs Wade".

Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

That's funny. D&E = Deliver & Eliminate?

The very label "pro-choice" is an attempt to paint the lobby as being one of reproductive freedom, instead of just an attempt to justify what should be considered infanticide. There is propaganda-spewing on both sides of the issue (this is supported by your act of calling pro-lifers "anti-choicers"), don't pretend that your shit doesn't stink.

By the way, D&E or partial-birth abortion, is "controvercial" [sic] enough to be illegal in nearly every civilized nation but the USA. Well, it will be illegal here soon as well -- it's just a matter of time.

I totally agree with this. There are so many frickin couples out there looking to adopt, and they have to pay so much money that its not even funny. I realize that it would be tough to give up the child you just gave birth to, but I think it would be a lot more rewarding than not even giving the kid a chance.

Also, a lot of times it's not even the pregnant woman's choice. It's usually the lazy ass boyfriend who can't take his damn responisbility's choice (i'm just guessing here, but the majority of abortions come from single women who got knocked up by their boyfriends)....Anyone that I've ever met that had an abortion was strongly pressured by the father or by some friends. I don't think any woman in their right mind would want to kill a baby without outside pressure, but then again, i've met some pretty fucked up women.

I know a handful of adoptive parents (about a dozen) and when they were adopting they all were pretty particular about their child. The white parents wanted white babies and the black parents wanted black babies; the were all looking for perfect little babies who looked like them. For the most part all of them didn't mind waiting, either. One couple I know turned down 3 different kids because "they weren't white or they were too old."

Never once did I hear them say "It doesn't matter what he/she looks like I'll love them all the same." If the dozen parents I know are indicative of the whole, then that's a shame.

I can't imagine having to give a kid up for adoption knowing there's a good chance he's going to live in foster care growing up because he didn't fit some idealistic mold these adoptive parents were looking for.

By the way...just to stay on track with the subject. I'm all for abortion used responsibly. It's one thing to have an abortion because of circumstances, it's quite another to use it as a last ditch effort at birth control.

Re: Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

There's nothing funny about any of this.
Just sad.

Pro-choice, anti-choice, pro-life, baby-killers.

No one is pro-abortion. No one wants to be in a position whether through ignorance, failure of birth conrol method, rape, incest, carelessness, or illness, no one wants to be in a positon ever to have to terminate a pregnancy.

I would say take a look in the mirror.

Hypothetical scenerio of a real possibility: A mother of two kids gets pregnant, fully intending to carry the pregnancy to term. At the beginning of the sixth month, she develops a serious, life threatening heart condition. The strain of carrying the fetus will kill her if she carries it to term.

Should we a) terminate the pregnancy, saving the mother's life, or b) have her continue with a pregancy that will kill her and perhaps the baby as well, leaving two, possibly three children as orphans?

There's no good choices here.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

That is where you're wrong. There are people who don't see it as a problem to have an abortion since it is perceived by many as just another form of birth control. The_Dude, for instance, says he grew up thinking of it as a form of contraception. That, imo, is much more scary than the fact that every political group uses propaganda to paint the "other side" as wrong. Yeah, the whole pro-choice/pro-life/anti-abortion/pro-baby-killer nonsense is ridiculous, but it is simply politics.

I'm not anti-choice. I am willing to give people the benefit of the doubt if they have taken steps to show that they deserve it. If someone uses multiple forms of birth control, all of which somehow fail, they made an effort to prevent it and should be able to use RU-486 or a first-trimester abortion. If they have unprotected sex and then wait and wait and wait, they have accepted responsibility for the pregnancy by default.

This hypothetical is the exception, not the rule. You cannot legislate hundreds of millions of people based solely on .0000001% of cases -- that is what an exception is.

If abortions after 12 weeks were banned, yes, of course, there should be room for exception where the mother's health is concerned. However, forcing an abortion at this point to save the mother should not be allowed -- in that case it should be up to the mother to decide if she wants to abort or go ahead and take a chance.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

Legistate hundreds of millions of people? Do you mean hundreds of millions of women or fetuses? No one is going to force a late term abortion on anyone.

And in re: that .0000001% figure, got any statistics to back it up?

The day I start dictating what women can and cannot do with their reproductive organs is the day that a "castrate america- for morality!" bill passes the Senate. I would very much like to keep people from making laws about my penis, so I figure I should show women the same courtesy.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

This is an error of decimal misplacement and old data on my part.

According to the CDC (link), there are roughly 12 deaths per 100,000 births per year, 60% of which occurred after the live birth and so would be prevented by an abortion. There are roughly 4 million births per year, which would equal about 480 deaths per year. According to the Census Bureau (link) there are roughly 300 million people in the US, all of which would be effected by abortion legislation -- not just women who are pregnant right now. 480 deaths out of 300,000,000 people effected = .00016%. So, legislation which supports abortion in the case of preventing deaths from pregnancy complications, is catering to .00016% of the population of the US.

Better? :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Abortions anyone?
 

That is awesome seretogis, and I completely share your opinion on the whole issue.

By comparison, roughly 470 people are struck by lightning per year, and 73 of them die due to the lightning strike. (link).

Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.