Reese

I couldn't find a place to put this in any of the other abortion threads and I thought it deserved a thread of it's own.
I consider myself pro choice but as of late I'm questioning my beliefs because the way the system is being abused.
Let's say, Hypothetically, There's this woman who's had 4 children and put them all up for adoption had 2 abortions and is now pregnant again. She's going to abort this pregnancy as well.

When do you say enough is enough. After multiple adoptions and abortions, Shouldn't the hospitals be encouraged to STRONGLY RECOMMEND that she be fixed?

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Spartak

I heard a person from the NZ Family Planning agency, that after something like two abortions thing start to get a little dicey. Like future health complications and things like that.

I don't think hospitals should have the power to refuse further abortions or to recommend sterilisation. I think the woman in question needs some counselling and probably should be encouraged to actively use contraception.

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Averett

I agree... Two friends in college had 2 abortions each. Both got pregnant again, and had the babies. I mean, there are ways to prevent these things

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maleficent

Birth control is not a difficult concept, if a person can't figure out the basics of birth control, they have no business having sex. There's something seriously wrong with a person who has two abortions, did they not get it the first time? And then to get pregnant again? It's sad that women that irresponsible and stupid should be allowed to become parents, I would feel sorry for the children.

There aren't enough ways to describe how wrong it is to use abortion as a form of birth control, not to mention the trauma that it does to the body.

I don't imagine that these people are going to private doctors for these abortions, but to clinics, that MY tax dollars pay for, so if someone is that stupid, then I have a right to say NO, they can't have anymore.

If they are too irresponsible for birth control, god only knows what diseases they are also carrying. What's wrong with the guys too, birth control is not just a woman's responsibility?

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Polyphobic

I think there are legitimate reasons for abortion. Ex: mothers life is at risk, rape, etc.
However, I firmly believe that it should not be used as a form of birth control. I once had an employee who had 4 abortions. Each one made her sicker and sicker. Towards the end of her employment she was sick at least once a month with some kind of feminine problem.

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Bill O'Rights

I consider myself to be pro-choice. Although 2,3 or 4 abortions is problematic, to say the very least. Anyone can make a mistake. Things...happen, OK? But, for crying out loud, learn from your mistake. Don't keep doing the same thing over and over again. As I said, I'm pro-choice. But, I have a huge problem with those that use abortion as a form of birth control.

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Cynthetiq

if they want to pay for it and it doesn't get funded from my tax payer dollars...

then i don't care how many times they get an abortion. it's ONE less person that could be on welfare.

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lurkette

None of my business, really, but I still have an opinion.

I think one is understandable, absolutely. Two is unfortunate but accidents happen. Any more than that and I think you've demonstrated a level of irresponsibility and inability to plan that should call into question your fitness to have kids in the first place and you should probably just get your tubes tied.

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brianna

I think that cybermike's example in his question was hypothetical, and while there probably are *some* women who use abortion as a form of back-up birth control I think this is extremely rare. Having an abortion is never easy physically or emotionally and i doubt very much that it is often done without forethought. to speak of the extreme as if it is common misrepresents the issue and implies that all women who find themselves in the unfortunate position of considering abortion are heartless and irresponsible, something that is rarely the case.

StephenSa

Gotta agree with Lurkette. After a couple of times COME ON! Take a little responsibility. You're not making mistakes anymore your just being stupid.

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StormBerlin

I agree, but with anything else you don't really want to do, it gets easier every time to keep doing it. I fully believe that there are many women out there who use abortion as a means of birth control. While I am pro-choice, I think there should be a little more regulation as to why people should be able to have abortions. I think it's sick that any woman can walk into a Planned Parenthood that performs abortion and get one in the next fifteen minutes.

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maleficent

Some states have waiting periods on abortions. Is it fair to the young woman who doesn't have a place in her area to have an abortion, to travel a few hours only to confirm her pregnancy, then to be told she has to come back tomorrow for the procedure? Making that trip all over again?
http://archive.aclu.org/issues/repro...g_periods.html
<hr>
You need a license to drive a car, you need a license to own a gun, any idiot can go out and have sex, and just not be prepared for the consequences, where does sexual responsibility start?

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txlovely

As usual, BOR speaks the truth.

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Mephisto2

How many is too many?

One.


Now, before you go bashing me on the head with your placard, let me tell you I'm PRO-choice. I don't believe I have the right to tell you what to do, and that abortion isn't justified in some circumstances. I come from Ireland where we have had a very contentious debate on abortion for many years, with several referenda to change (and rechange) our constitution on the topic; abortion was constitutionally illegal in Ireland and still, more or less, is from a legislative point of view. I'm reminded of one of the placards the Pro-Life campaigners used to carry. Get your rosaries off my ovaries.

So, whilst I support the women's right to choose I just personally don't know if I could go through with it, or feel comfortable with a child of mine being aborted.

See? It's possible to hold a peronsal moral stand, admit it is not perfect or written in stone and could change in certain personal circumstances, AND support the other side of the argument on principle; ie, I'm pro-choice, but anti-abortion.

Why can't we all get along like this sometimes?!


Mr Mephisto

Kaos

She should be the poster "child" for sterilization.

brianna

i don't know what sort of "test" you propose we give women before allowing them to have an abortion not to mention what you want done if she "fails". there is no one served by forcing a women to keep an unwanted child and i certainly don't see how you can justify forcing someone into putting a child up for adoption. you could possibly make a case for forced sterilization but even though we all like to joke about it i don't believe that many people *really* want to go down that road.

abortion is ugly. but no one benefits from condemnation -- this energy could be much better invested for counseling and education.

maleficent

The problem should be solved before it gets to the point where someone has an unplanned pregnancy. Birth control is pretty effective when used properly, and its really not that hard to use. if a person isn't smart enough to use it properly, then don't have sex.

Education is critical, but where's the education coming from? I know of many women back in college who "forgot" to take the pill one day, How could you forget? You are sexually active, how could you forget?

Women seem to get all the condemnation, these aren't immaculate conceptions we're talking about.

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Mephisto2

It's pretty simple.

This is one of the few things that ARE black and white.

You either allow abortion or you don't. If you allow it, then you can't say "Only twice, or only three times..."

So I'm pro-choice. And I personally would simply choose not to abort (in most circumstances).


Mr Mephisto

Shades

I disagree that it's a black and white case. No other law we have is- sometimes shooting someone is OK, and sometimes it isn't.

While I agree that the men are as equally responsible for the abortion (how not?), it must be rare to have them around at the clinic. I'm personally A-OK with forcing citizens to become sterilized, it's not like there aren't enough children up for adoption, much less there being too many people on Earth. Here's my dream law- two abortions, tubes tied for the ladies. Two illegitimate children they abandon or have aborted, tubes cut for the fellows. What could be more fair to society?

I don't know how women can forget the pill either. I've been on a once a day pill for over a year now, and I have only forgotten to take it once. I know a girl who forgot to take her birth control for a fucking MONTH, during which time she got pregnant.

Abortions due to personal irresponsibility or "accidents" like "I forgot to take the pill" SHOULD be condemned, damnit. That's damn recklessly irresponsible behavior, both towards your own life and a potential other life. Telling someone "It's OK, you messed up, but don't let anyone shame you for that kind of behavior" is backwards.

But on top of that, I would also like to see the men in as deep of shit as I want to see the women. For example, force the men to reimburse the state for the cost, and make the abortion count as their first illegitimate kid (towards the rule of two I proposed earlier). Maybe even spend a month or two in Federal Pound Me in the Ass prison.

The problem is that both sides of this issue are too polarized. The anti-women-pro-patriarchy side wants no abortions, ever. The pro-baby-killers want women to be able to flush one down whenever the urge hits her, on the state's nickel no less. I think rational people are uncomfortable with either option. Having an abortion that isn't from rape (or something equally horrendous) or because the mother's life is in danger (I guess- my birth put my mother's life in great jeopardy, but she had me taken out in a C-section with no anesthesia rather than the alternative) are the only cases I can agree with.

Because you made a mistake or can't provide a good life isn't a good enough excuse to do this an unlimited amount of times. If you couldn't have provided a good life, don't have unprotected sex. If you're so unlucky that birth control has failed on you twice, maybe you just need to bow to fate.

So to close this rant, I would like to see mandatory sterilization for men and women, and I would like to see personal responsibility advocated, and the lack thereof condemned.

hilbert25

I'd have to agree with Mr. Mephisto, one.
But I come from a different point of view. I am not pro-life, I'm not pro-choice, I'm not pro-anything. I'm just anti-choice.

I think that it would be fine for anyone to have an abortion, but they need to prove to the government that the baby deserves to die. Thus people who were raped can have one, or medical problems, or incest. But those who use it as birth control are SOL. If we're going to have justifiable homicide and the death penalty, we might as well have abortions, but only after court procedings.

Reese

I'm not saying anyone should be denied abortion, If you go to the clinic to have your 3rd abortion you shouldn't be turned away at the door. That will only lead to dangerous do it yourself methods. I'm saying that they should recommend that she be steralized because obviously she's not going to learn. She's using Abortion as birth control.

If she does want to have children in the future, there's always adoption.

I said the situation was hypothetical only because I don't know how much of the real situation is fact.
Actually, what I explained in my original post was probably 99% fact. I ended up leaving out the information that I got from a third party because I don't think it related to the topic, but the truth is that she most likely would have aborted the children she put up for adoption if she had her way.

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fnaqzna

One, two, three, fifteen...

What difference does it make?

It's a traumatic experience and most women don't enter into it lightly. There's no need to legislate. The women that are unaffected by this procedure probably won't let a little thing like the rules stop them in any case.

No limit is the way to go. Trust the people that actually own the womb to do what is right for them.

Shades

No. That assumes that the people who own the womb are responsible, and trying to argue that all women are responsible would be like saying all men are nice guys. That's not reality. Try swapping other words for womb in there and see how it sounds: guns, cars, liquor, corporations. There's something broken about a system where Jane Roe herself has come out strong against it.

The reality is that some, not all, not a majority, of women having abortions are doing so lightly. If you refuse to believe that, then just take it hypothetically. Hypothetically, is it OK to use abortion as just another form of birth control? I gotta say no.

soccerchamp76

Any abortion is too many.
Abortion is murder, plain and simple.
In regarding partial birth abortion, it is only a matter of inches that determines whether or not the baby has legal rights to LIVE.
If you are still not convinced, take a look at some abortion pictures, they will surely change your mind. It is sad when prisoners guilt of a capitla offense get killed by the state by a painless injection AFTER they are offered a free meal of their choice and an innocent baby gets sliced and diced, scorched with salt, or have their brains sucked through a fucking TUBE!!
It is sick and utterly pathetic, but that is my opinion on the issue.

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Tophat665

BINGO!

Actually, I'm somewhere between this and lurkette's post. One is too many, but I know it's going to happen from time to time, so I don't stress over it too much. Hospitals really ought to start noodging repeat customers toward a more permanent solution, though.

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brianna

none of the things you listed are body parts. do you honestly think that my uterus is equivalant to you liquor?

it makes no difference if a woman is responsible or stupid or cruel it's her womb. it's her body. i don't see anyone advocating castration for men who father illigitamate children.

Shades

Neither did you see anyone advocating hysterectomies for women. However, you could have easily read that I did recommend that the men be sterilized.

I won't speculate as to wether abortion is up to full blown murder or not, but there was something definitely alive before that's dead after. For that reason alone, I think that this should be taken more seriously than gun, car, liquor, or corporation ownership. While one could argue that this is only about the woman, there are costs to society as well. Those clinics aren't free. Not to mention that one has to question the judgment and maturity of anyone (man or woman) that has had more than 2 potential offspring aborted.

Additionally, the main problem I see with the current system is the utter lack of any checks. Some women can and do have abortions almost on a whim. Even if it's just one, is that not too many? Shouldn't there be some kind of check and balance to the system? As a society, we got together and made all kinds of laws about what people can and can't do with their bodies, so it's not like that's some sacred boundary that's never crossed.

hilbert25

I didn't want to bring that up, but yeah, anyone who argues for partial birth abortion does not actually understand what it entails. Anything involving forcing scissors into the back of someone's neck and sucking their brains out with a vaccuum is not a medical procedure.

And to brianna, what about trusting a rapist with his penis? He must know what to do with it? His raping of someone affects somebody else's life just as much as a woman's abortion does, perhaps even less so, since you can't recover from not living.

Don't we sterilize rapists? Why not serial abortionists?

brianna

hilbert: do we sterilize rapists? i don't think so. and i wouldn't advocate cutting their penises off either. i find it somewhat disturbing that i'm being asked to compare a woman who gets an abortion to a rapist.

I am certainly not advocating abortion as a birth control method. I'm not even defending abortion, it's an ugly horrible thing that no one enjoys. but even in the worst case you cannot force someone to raise a child, force someone give a child up for adoption or force someone to be sterilized. such acts are counter to a free society and besides being extremely cruel would never be legally enforceable. we live in a country built upon a respect for personal freedoms even when individuals use those freedoms unwisely, i'm glad. I would agree that suggesting birth control option to any woman who gets an abortion is a good idea and most state require counseling which usually includes a birth control discussion.

i also find the argument that you should have a say in a woman's abortion because you're paying for it extremely questionable. i've been looking online trying to find a figure representing the percentage of planned parenthoods budget that is government money and what percentage of that money goes towards abortion but i'm having a hard time. however, i do know that lots of people who go to planned parenthood pay for the services -- it's not free, it's on a sliding scale, if you can afford to you pay and lots of individuals and organizations donate money to planned parenthood, they are certainly not only a governmentally funded institution. if you really want to bring financial arguments in i'm sure that forcing a woman to raise a child she can't afford would ultimate be much for costly to society than an abortion.

Reese

No, We don't sterilize rapist but we do take extreme measures to make sure a convicted rapist doesn't do it again. The sex offenders database seems to help reduce the number repeat offenders.

Unlike rapist, Knowing that someone had an abortion before isn't going to stop them from doing it again. I'm not saying that the SODB stops all or even alot of offenses, but it does help.

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denim

Why? Doesn't bother me in the least.

soccerchamp76

Because you aren't the one who is being aborted

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denim

Ask those who are being aborted, then. I suspect you'll get no complaints.

telekinetic

Two things...First of all, if that doesn't do you any good, try "fist"...but, in my opinion, the logic is bad, anyways.

*raises hand* I am in favor of it, and the laws are starting to go that way, too, observe:
Deadbeat Dads Offered Jail or Vasectomy

I am usually a clever smartass, in person and online, but I'm just gonna try to weigh in with a voice of reason here. Bear with me.

Everyone agrees that it is absolutely imperitive that we fight to protect life, babies espcially. In our society, one of the most vile crimes is killing a child, and, regardless of the amount of justification or rationalization, noone would say it is a womans right to smother her newborn baby.

However, it is also important that we not lose any personal freedom. The government should not have any control over our personal lives, if the only person affected is ourselves. It woudl be an outrage if condoms were made illegal, or if a government decided that people weren't allowed to have their wisdom teeth removed. It is essential to our society that we don't allow legislation to take away these very important pieces of personal freedom.

Almost everyone will agree with those two basic facts: We need to not kill babies, and the government needs to not tell us what to do with our bodies. At this point, schools of thought diverge.

Everyone who contemplates the issue has to believe one of three things. Either a fetus becomes a person at conception, a fetus becomes a person at birth, or a fetus becomes a person sometime inbetween. I do not foresee that there will ever be any way to 'prove' scientifically that one way of thinking way is more accurate than the rest, so it ultimately comes down to an educated opinion around which people form personal beliefs.

Any time personal beliefs are the foundation of an argument, it is very difficult, and almost pointless to debate it. There is very little anyone can say that will convince someone with one belief to join another school of thought, since all sides are based on opinions (albeit opinions that can be backed up by facts).

This entire post was a very roundabout way of answering the original question.

If you believe that life occurs at some point after conception, and you could theoretically abort before that point, then, IMHO, you have no ground to argue anything except that having multiple abortions or using abortions as birthcontrol is dangerous, ineffecient, and expensive--not that it is wrong.

If you believe that life begins at conception, then any abortion is too many.


I suppose you could theoretically believe that abortion is wrong, except in cases of _____, but I never understood people with that arguement...the circumstances don't change the point at which you believe life occurs, so how does it matter?

I apologize if this is considered flamebait, I just don't understand people who try to argue about abortion.

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hilbert25

Actually we don't quite sterilize, but there have been laws like this: http://archive.aclu.org/news/w082396a.html on the books.

Now why would you not compare getting an abortion to raping someone? Granted it's an extreme case, and I did not mean to say that people who have abortions are evil, But, I did mean to show a case where the federal government does regulate your body.

Tell me, which is worse, killing an innocent woman or killing an innocent pregnant woman?

And if they are the same, then would kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach be no worse than kicking someone who isn't in the stomach? Since you're only stopping a bodily function rather than killing someone?

The courts no longer see it that way, so how come if I kill your unborn child it's illegal, but if you do it's not? Or at least how come it's more illegal than me cutting your hair against your will?

denim

There's a difference between you doing to me, and me doing to myself. That's kinda obvious.

telekinetic

That is true, but if a fetus isn't a part of YOU, but its own indepentant person, then there is no difference.

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denim

And if it is a part of me, then it isn't, and I've got rights to my own body.

brianna

a fetus cannot live on it's own and it's physically connected to the mother that makes it a part of her body. and as a part of a woman's body the fetus has an immense effect on the woman's health both physical and emotional. being pregnant is hard, it's even harder when you didn't want a baby to begin with. no one (especially no MAN) can comprehend how difficult it is to be faced with the possibility of a baby that you do not want and i think it's incredibly egotistical and condescending to say that an outsider has any domain over another person's body.

if the pro-life movement is so concerned for the life of the baby why arn't they looking for a way to easily allow a fetus to develop without a mother? where's my artificial womb?

telekinetic

The survival date for premature births is getting pushed back on an almost monthly basis...I believe the earliest surviving baby is around 10 weeks, and babies born between 15 and 20 weeks have a better than 50/50 chance of survival now.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/child...eemies.chance/

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/inter...648024,00.html

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