I don’t see what is wrong with abortion. Could you all just give me your view.
I just don’t see how it is bad. It begs the question about what is life or when does something become alive. I feel when something becomes alive that it is not a quick thing that suddenly happens like a birthday when you suddenly become a year older. It is too hard to define when it becomes life but I feel that we know when there is no life.
I see abortion as protecting a future. If a teenager has a child she is more than likely in a bad situation for a long time with little hope of getting out. If she has the abortion then life goes on the same for her. People say that abrotion is wrong because it is the killing of a person but then why whent that person is all grown up they have no problem sending you off to battle to kill others or die and keep in mind you are protecting their future. Only the person sent to battle has an established life somewhere but the fetus has nothing. It doesn’t add up for me. Please tell me what you think.
It is the woman or her family who has to live with the choice. Men somehow seem to be able to disappear…weird eh???
Pro-life = anti-choice.
If you don’t agree with me or just don’t like anything about it, good! I am really looking for some clarity on this.
yes, well…i am for abortion, i personally dont think that it is possible to have a winning side in this because it is all about personal beleif, and as you said, it is hard to define where life begins, but to me, its wrong to have the mother go through all the ain and have her life (and the childs’) of a lower quality…then we would have many unhappy and unloved childern in the world, and that would result in higher divorce rate, more violence,crimes etc.
i mean, you can not look me in the eyes and tell me that a child from a broken home or a child that had parents that dont love her or take time to raise her would have the same lifestyle and outlook as children from a loving family. not only that, i dont think we need any more orphans, or suicides in this country.
and think about the mother, if its a high school student , her dreams are gone , and a child wouldnt be raised properly if the mother didnt want it in the first place. sure, its unpleasant to have to kill fetuses, but its also unpleasant to see what the parents (and their offspring) that that havent gotten an abortion have gone through.
sure, its easy to say when youre an ld lady who goes to church every sunday, or for someone who has never been in that situation, but if you ask a 16-yr-old who is going through pregnancy tests after prom, i think your reaction would be much different.
dont even get me started on the “if they were raped” or “incest” scenarios…
Unfortunately we are part of a society that doesn’t advocate taking responsibility for our actions. We make vows and break them. We have sex but don’t take responsibility for the consequences. Whatever action we take we make sure there is a back door. Who is to say whether or not that child that would be aborted would add to our lives or not?
Life is intense - we must accept this. More often than not it goes against what we would want for ourselves. On the surface it appears that life is unfair, but its not that at all, its more fair than you or I can fathom. It is only with acceptance of what life brings that we begin to understand life and its ‘secrets’. Life has its reasons. If we are caught in a river against the current, we would do far better to relax into the flow and slowly move towards the edge than to try and swim upstream. Our chances of survival moving with the flow are far greater and more likely than if we resist it.
With all the information freely available, and with all the contraceptive devices and advice readily available, I would have thought it would be needed very rarely (only in cases of contraceptive failure or rape).
Has is not become so easily available that people consider contraception a bit of a drag? (“Hey baby, so what if you get pregnant?”, “Hey, man, so what if get pregnant?”)
Thats a good question. I’m not to sure on how to give you a good answer so I’ll give you this. A child is a big burdon on somebody and people who consider abortion are not doing it because a child could not bring joy to their life but only because they cannot deal with a child in their current situation. Just a little different idea if you believe that all people have a spirit and the fetus is aborted could have no soul or spirit in it so couldn’t it just inhabit another body? It could sound stupid but oh well just a little idea I had.
I don’t know do you know people who have had an abortion?
What it boils down to for many people is that they need to practice sexual responsibility. But you would be suprised how many people an not educated on the subject and how alchohol has an effect on you choice whether to wear a condom or not.
This question appeared on an earlier thread (‘Fall From Grace’), in fairly similar form.
At one point in the discussion, this question appeared;
I will not reproduce my response in entirety (I imagine you will check the thread anyway) - but I will say that my principle concern in this debate is with the question of responsibility.
In passing though; I think that the notion of unbrideled ‘choice’ is hardly the holy grail of moral absolutes before which all other claims must submit.
I had toyed with the idea of arguing that, under certain circumstances, the female in question should be reprimanded or punished in some fashion. In a smaller set of possible cases, the male would be similarly reprimanded. What held me back in advocating this was simply that such things would be difficult to adjudicate or enforce effectively.
But imagine a case where the male and female engage in regular unprotected sex, due to fact that they simply prefer it that way (i.e. they do not like condoms or the side effects of contraceptive treatment, and never bother with morning-after-pills because, frankly, they couldn’t be bothered).
They are aware of the risk; they most certainly do not desire children; and they think nothing of aborting whenever the female happens to fall pregnant. This is an extreme example, to be sure, but probably a real one in one form or another. It does not matter how close to this example we may get in a real scenario, as for my argument it suffices to say that I do not think that the sanctity of ‘choice’ extends even anywhere near to an example as extreme as this. I think just on this example alone the portion of people who want to totalize or absolutise choice, no matter what the circumstance or context, come across as rather barbaric.
In any case the question I had asked at the time was;
In my earlier post I had discussed two arguing strategies used by pro-choice advocates. The first had been to accept that abortion was a form of murder and proceed to offer the argument; ‘well the child would have a bad life and the mother’s life would be ruined etc etc’. Of course the argument is better than this - so please use your imagination and read the above as a signpost for a fuller exposition. I will call this the ‘quality of life’ argument.
The other argument was to dispute the definition of murder.
I am not too interested to discuss the second argument right now, as this thread opened with a version of the first.
I said earlier that ‘choice’ should not be considered sancrosanct. Evidently the pro-choice position does not consist solely in this idea. There is also the other argument, which I labelled above the argument for ‘quality of life’.
In my earlier post I had written;
And this;
I would like to add to this my thoughts on the below quote from this thread;
Really I think that, to begin with, the argument that this debate can never be resolved because it is a matter of ‘personal belief’ is invalid, or inapplicable. There are people who think paedophilia is just swell, but we expect a consensus in our community as to whether it actually is or not; such a consensus might not be conclusive, but not everyone has to agree in order for us to feel warranted in applying the consensus in a uniform manner, across a community. The victims of paedophilia carry a normative status as members of our community, which affords them rights which, again, we normatively agree to uphold and enforce.
Given all of this, all that matters would be the argument ‘a fetus is a human being at some stage X’ - for us to apply to the fetus the same rights as to the child victim of paedophilia.
Another argument I might offer is; that it is spurious to say that the child is ‘better off’ not being born, rather than being born into a difficult life. Even if we were entitled to make this judgement (which, due to above argument, I contest) it would still not follow that the child stands to benefit from never living beyond the womb. She simply would not exist to feel the relief of not having to live in such dire circumstances.
So I do not think that the ‘quality of life’ argument is valid against the ‘life’ argument.
Admitedly, I would have to say that the child does not stand to be harmed either, for the same reason - that there is noone there to be harmed. Yet if we prohibit murder, then I feel warranted in using this argument regardless. It nullifies the entire line of reasoning.
I definitely agree with the sentiment here;
Also here;
In light of the above, I disagree with any statement of the kind;
Quote:
A woman should have the right to end the life within her if she so chooses (no matter the reason). It is her body, her choice.
I offer this earlier quote from my post as my final thoughts;
The most important question to emerge from the above paragraph is, under what circumstances may we take from another his/her future?
james, you never mentioned anything about the mother. doesnt the mother have any say in this? and it isnt like were killing a BABY, were killing a FETUS, and whether or not it is considered “life” is different for each person.
I am not sure what sense you have in mind when you say I have not mentioned anything about the mother. Do you mean that I have not appreciated the effects of unwanted childbirth on the mother? The two ideas you raise in your response are both identified in my post - the first (bold) in relation to the concept of choice; and the second (italics) in relation to the question of whether abortion constitutes murder. I made it clear in my post that I was not going to consider the second - except to say that it is very dubious and irresponsible, in my opinion, to simply say that the definition of ‘life’ differs between people, and then treat this as a sufficient reason for abortion, rather than one which is really neither here nor there. I would simply say that at some point the fetus becomes alive, and that even if we do not have a consensus on when this occurs, we ought to have in place some kind of working hypothesis for dealing with individual cases. Personally I am willing to accept Roe v. Wade until something better comes along.
I think that it is all good and well to talk as if there is no fact of the matter in relation to the definition of ‘life’; but we should hardly carry this over into practice, because simply equivocating on the definitions will not magically eliminate whatever harm or lack thereof we might be inflicting on the child - regardless of what we think. I think in terms of policy making, we ought to be much more of the frame of mind which says; ‘even if we all defined the fetus as in some way not a human being, there remains the possibility that, in actuality, it is one; and because of this, we ought to be more cautious.’
I have though, thought about the effects of unwanted childbirth on the mother. You seem to have raised an objection which I have already attempted to answer, rather than raising an objection to my answer itself. And incidentally your second argument seems to beg the question against the very conceptual distinctions which form the centre of the debate. I am led, from these observations, to wonder whether you have read my post with sufficient exactitude.
I apologise if this comes across as too heavy-handed.
Shouldn’t we be putting more resources into educating children about the ‘hazards’ of sex and the responsibility that comes in the case of a mishap ?
I’m pro abortion btw. I don’t think that it should be used as a contraceptive though, we have plenty of contraceptives on the market.
I’m also disappointed that in 2005 the majority of birth control still lies with the female and in the event of a pregnancy, so does the rearing of the child should the father flee the scene.
As a teenager in the 60’s I learned about sex at school and from friends, why do we still seem to hold the same fear of talking openly about sex that we did way back then ? We seem to have the same problem talking openly about death
Abortion is fine, I personally don’t see anything wrong with it. The only thing is though, if there’s someone who chose to have a baby, but then all of a sudden changed their mind, that’s almost like a murder just because someone couldn’t make up their mind.
Abort or not should be entirely up to the parents. As a cultured state, the governmet should provide the facility at a certain costs:
Free for compasionate reasons, e.g. rape, disability.
Normal prices for more personal reasons, e.g. divorce, depression.
Expensive for no particular reasons.
Not allowing abortion is stupid; is cruel; is religious; is vialiting human right. What about the fetus’ right? The simple anwser is: it’s got no right. What’s right anyway? Nothing.
Abortion will always be with us. A pregnant woman who is determined enough to terminate her pregnancy will find a way to do so, even at the risk of her own health. If an abortion clinic staffed with professionals is not available, she will seek an abortion through unlicenced practitioners or will attempt to perform an abortion on herself. A clinic will provide a sterile enviroment,counselling, and will inform the woman of abortion alternatives like adoption. It gives the woman a support network and allows her to make an informed decision regarding her pregnancy. A frightened teenage girl trying to terminate her own pregnancy so her parents don’t find out, taking advice from equally immature friends because there is no one else she can talk to without revealing her “secret”,is not a situation that should exist in our modern society.
However, the availability of abortion should be coupled with education and the availability of contraceptives. They should be giving out contraceptives in High School…not just condoms,but the pill,depo-provera injections,contraceptive rings, etc. They should have classes in masturbation, oral sex,anal sex…any type of sexual activity that does not result in pregnancy.
Why not? I’m not implying that the teachers should actually have sex with their students, or that actual masturbation and sexual contact should occur in class. All I propose is that sexual education should extend beyond sexual disease and naming body parts. Let young women know where their clitoris is and how to stimulate it…sharing this advice with young men will only serve to enhance the sexual enjoyment of both. Teach fellatio,cunnilingus,safe anal sex,masturbation tools and techniques. Human beings are sexual,even more so in their teens, and it would be healthier for society to be more open-minded about sex.
As it stands now, teens hide their sexuality like a “dirty little secret” from most of the adults in their lives. No wonder they end up getting pregnant or contracting STDs…most do not have adults to seek the counsel of regarding matters sexual. They end up getting their sexual education from other teens and the media/porn industry. What they end up learning are things like “I can’t get pregnant during my period”, “I can’t get pregnant if he pulls out before ejaculating”, “If I douche after sex I won’t get pregnant”, “Having anal sex will mean I’ll end up wearing a diaper”, “My vagina smells offensive to men so I dare not ask for cunnilingus”, “Only sluts perform fellatio”…etc,etc…
Knowledge about any aspect of life is always preferable to ignorance.
Don’t you think that the risk is a little too huge for this? Don’t you reckon that a promotion of sexual intercourse is likely to result in more big teenage girls? Bottom line is I think: children want sex, so regardless of what you tell them about sex or how you tell them, they’ll have it if they decide to; and they’ll get big if they failed in contraception. So I say: don’t worry too much about freaking condoms and economise abortion.
