The abortion

In my country a abortion is forbidden. That’s rather well because this intervention may cause very big harms in the psyche woman. How is in your country? Do you make against or maybe you promote the abortion?

Regards

Marha

In the U.S. depends on where you live.
I am old enough to remember when women would
die having self induced abortions. To force a women
to have an abortion, to force her to take care of a life
she does not want, is truly cruel to both her and
the baby. As for arguments for abortion, being
a voice for the fetus has no voice is just bogus,
because the parents speak for the child until the child is
18 in any case. the law is quite clear that the parents is legally
the voice of the child until 18. So why does it change
when its a fetus?

Kropotkin

May I suggest, Peter, that you edit your opinions of your marriage on ILP. Is Peter K. your real name? If so, have you lost your everlovin’? You put your disdain for your wife on the internet. Did you know that? 'Course maybe you just like living on the edge, but her girlfriend could be ME.

Abortion:

I am in the US and it is legal here. I, for one, would have gotten one as a kid, and many times thought I was pregnant… but got out of it unscathed. I will tell you this much: It is so easy to think of it as just another piece of nothin’ that you floss from your teeth, but I will tell you… that all, I mean ALL, of my girlfriends who got one (I was in hs in the 60’s, so they all did) regretted their decision after they had their own children. I am not passing judgement because I would have sucked it out too back then… but I warn you young girls, you DO NOT know what you are doing, and you will feel remorse when you are a mother later in life.

B: May I suggest, Peter, that you edit your opinions of your marriage on ILP. Is Peter K. your real name? If so, have you lost your everlovin’? You put your disdain for your wife on the internet. Did you know that? 'Course maybe you just like living on the edge, but her girlfriend could be ME".

K: you read what you will into my comments.
My wife and I have been together for 15 years and
I forsee many more years. If you wish to call it disdain,
that would be your choice, not mine. And as far as editing goes,
I don’t actually do much of that. I pretty much say whatever is on
my mind. I speak the truth for the simple reason, lies take to
much work to remember. If you are her girlfriend, more power
to yah. If it helps, peter Kropotkin was a Russian anarchist who
I believed in during my anarchist days. That by itself should
tell you everything you need to know.

And as far as abortion goes,
to strike down roe vs wade would be one of this country great
tragedies.

Kropotkin

I never did like Russian history. Good for you… keep it happenin’ with the wife, and tho’ you may not believe it, I agree with you on Roe vs Wade. I was just showing my emotional side toward the issue. I couldn’t do it, but believe it is a choice.

A parent can’t kill the child, even if the child is under 18. I’m not exactly sure how you got to the conclusion that speaking for an underaged child is the same as abortion.

Fetus, Anti-abortion types claim to speak for the fetus
who can’t speak for themselves. The parents of course
speak for children who are already born.
we have a child, well actually she turns 21 in less
then a month, and trust me, the laws are quite
clear about who functions as her legal speaker,
until she turn 18. She cannot enter a contract,
she cannot drink, she can’t even be legally thrown
out of the house, (we tried) Nope once you got a kid,
you are stuck with the kid, legally until he/she/it turns
18.

Kropotkin

Adoption?

I know the law is quite clear in that respect. And i also know the law is quite clear that you can not do the equivelent of abortion to your child who is under 18.

If you can explain to me how “speaking for a child who is under 18” is the same as abortion, then you have a point. But the two are incomparable, saying that your child cannot enter a contract is in no way equal to terminating a pregnancy! (Regardless of what you think the "fetus, anti-abortion types claim)

K: “Fetus, Anti-abortion types claim to speak for the fetus
who can’t speak for themselves. The parents of course
speak for children who are already born.
we have a child, well actually she turns 21 in less
then a month, and trust me, the laws are quite
clear about who functions as her legal speaker,
until she turn 18. She cannot enter a contract,
she cannot drink, she can’t even be legally thrown
out of the house, (we tried) Nope once you got a kid,
you are stuck with the kid, legally until he/she/it turns
18.”

A ;Adoption?
"I know the law is quite clear in that respect. And i also know the law is quite clear that you can not do the equivelent of abortion to your child who is under 18.

If you can explain to me how “speaking for a child who is under 18” is the same as abortion, then you have a point. But the two are incomparable, saying that your child cannot enter a contract is in no way equal to terminating a pregnancy! (Regardless of what you think the “fetus, anti-abortion types claim)”

K: It is about the contract that is entered into by the parents.
At the heart of the matter is the “state” forces the parents
into a contract that they hereby do or don’t do certain actions.
For example, the state legally requires parents to feed, clothe,
shelter, even put a bed in but not furniture
(don’t’ ask how I know this) and the state requires compliance with
the contract until the age of 18. Now the real question is at what
age is the contract to begin. Anti-abortion foes say the contract begins
at conception and normal people feel the contract begins at birth.
Thus is the real question. When do you force people to begin the
contract. Once the child is born the contract begins, and parents
cannot kill the child. Why not at conception? The problem
is really about parents who don’t know that a pregnancy is
happening. How do you prosecute those who don’t even know
that a pregnancy is happening. Accepting a contract must
be voluntary and done with full knowledge of the participants.
Thus you must choose birth for the contract instead of
conception.

Kropotkin

In my country (the UK) it’s pretty much abortion-on-demand for any woman who chooses to go through with it. I’m not in favour of this system for a variety of reasons.

  1. The female in question isn’t obliged to tell her parents, even if she’s under 16. Reports suggest girls as young as 9 are being granted abortions and the morning after pill.
    icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/
    0100localnews/page.cfm?objectid=12398123&method=full&siteid=50002

  2. The female in question isn’t obliged in any way to even tell the father of the baby that she is pregnant, let alone discuss the issue of abortion with him. This to me seems absurd, and is one of any number of examples of sexism in the laws governing children, as is well documented.

  3. The female in question isn’t asked for her motives. This to me is important. A woman who doesn’t want to have a kid for the sake of having to take time off work and potentially losing money doesn’t have my sympathy. One who is impoverished, has no idea where the father is and has no support from her family does have my sympathy. Unlike the hardcore liberals, I don’t extend my sympathy to everyone.

  4. The number of abortions keeps increasing. Surely the aim must be to decrease the number, clearly our attitudes and policies are failing.

I am aware that I emotionalize everything, but I agree with you, SIATD. We are failing if we are teaching our children a quick fix for everything including the consequences of sex. We throw out, buy new, value nothing least of all this piece of unwanted flesh. I wish I could argue in a more pragmatic way, but I simply get motherly about the whole thing and I can’t stand it. Where is the education? Where are the discussions? What about adoption? I am all for passing those condoms out in high schools. Make them fun colors with glitter if you have to. Everyone gets all puritanical, but give me a break - most of those teens are doing it. Let’s protect them and help them along the way and not make it into some Moral Majority rod-up-our-ass-fest.

You want to hear a really funny policy? Blair’s government recently proposed (and quickly dropped) the suggestion that they would set up a reward card scheme to try to convince kids to stay lawful. They honestly thought that a policy of essentially bribing kids into behaving well is a decent solution to the reckless anomie of present British youth. As though it had completely escaped them that perhaps a short term obsession with material possession might in fact be one of the causes of lawless behaviour and anti-social viewpoints. Like I said, they dropped the policy.

True, there are loads of couples waiting to adopt, particularly in the US. They even go to foreign countries to get children because there aren’t enough available on US soil.

But of course either you go into hospital and have an abortion, or you waddle around pregnant for months then go into hospital to give birth. Either way you’ve got to go into hospital, and the former option has (usually) fewer ill side-effects.

What I find outrageous are the serial abortionists. Women who have 3 abortions a year or more. This is what I mean by ‘abortion-on-demand’. No questions are asked about this woman’s mental state, or why she is so reckless about pregnancy (and by implication, about sex). She’s just booked in, trussed up, chopped out and sent home. Why? Because it’s cheaper and easier to keep performing abortions than it is to send the woman for some form of analysis and therapy.

And because there’s no western government with the balls to make abortions harder to get because of the obvious outcries from women’s pressure groups.

Either we censor popular culture so it isn’t full of sex (the principle reason why so many kids below 14 are having sex) or we do something reactive about it by teaching them frankly and simply about sex and contraception. The Dutch, for example, did the latter and managed to decrease their teenage pregnancy (and abortion) rates significantly. Where is the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the US? In the Bible Belt.

It obviously isn’t as simple as I’m making out, but we do know that present attitudes don’t seem to be working too well.

You know, PK, for a relativist you spend an awful lot of time telling others what to think about truth, justice, normality and all those other things you are meant to believe are relative to the individual and not for peope to prescribe unto others.

You probably won’t even understand this criticism, let alone be capable of formulating an adequate response.

I have posted this before - I gave my teenage boys a gross of condoms. Everyone scoffed ( I am in the Midwest) but I didn’t care. I said, “if you are gonna take it out - wrap that sucker up.” (I told my boys in those exact words and they respected it.) It is up to every invdividual parent to make sure their kids are protected - and not just from pregnancy.

K: Anti-abortion foes say the contract begins
at conception and normal people feel the contract begins at birth.

T: “You know, PK, for a relativist you spend an awful lot of time telling others what to think about truth, justice, normality and all those other things you are meant to believe are relative to the individual and not for people to prescribe unto others.
You probably won’t even understand this criticism, let alone be capable of formulating an adequate response”.

K: I shall happily discuss this matter with you when I get
a response about certainty.

Kropotkin

I think you’ve proved my point quite adequately. This is a response regarding the issue of certainty, about which you are similarly contradictory. You act like you are certain that the world in uncertain, which is logically contradictory. Your position is untenable, and you yourself demonstrate by contradicting it frequently. If you are so uncertain why do you talk so much?

Interesting… So you think you can kill your children until they are 18 ? If not, I don’t see the point of your argument : the fact that you speak for your children is that you educate them and try to preserve their life…

Marc

Consider what is destroyed in an abortion:

Whether or not you believe that a child (fetus, embryo, ect) has the capacity to feel pain or not whenever you dismember it, whether or not you believe it has a supernatural soul or not, whether or not you believe their size significant or not consider the following:

You are taking positive action, one consequence of which is the elimination of the life of the child. If you do not take that action, barring any other disaster (and we do view such events resulting in stillbirth as disasters. Why?) , the embryo will develop into a baby, which will be born, and live a human life. If you do take it, you will destroy the child (or the vehicle for the creation of that child, whichever you prefer), preventing all that follows from occuring.

I’ve heard this referred to before as a fallacy of argument from potential, but I don’t see why it’s fallacious. Most of morality deals with the potential consequences of our actions. Environmentalism is based on an argument from potential (which is sound), along with a lot of pseudoscience (which is unsound, but that’s a different issue). Anything beyond living selfishly in the range of the present moment is based on an argument from potential. One moment, the potential for the child to live, for a human life to exist, is significant and high, the next, it’s zero - because of what was done.

One of the only ways to escape from the judgement of abortion as morally wrong is to devalue the life of a child. If you don’t hold human life as valuable, I don’t see how it is possible to be moral, or hold any sort of moral authority. I’ve heard the most hideous euphamisms in reference to the human embryo. I’ve heard them referred to as “tumors” or “wads of flesh”. Tumors don’t have the potential to become human life! Wads of flesh are not in the process of budding into new human beings! I’ve heard them say “that child wouldn’t have been loved, therefore it shouldn’t be born”, as if the value of your existence is determined by the appraisal of others! If your value as a human being is subject to the subjective evaluations of others, their emotional attachment to you, ect, then you could not possibly value freedom or human rights (including the “right” to abort another human being)! Regardless of your appraisal of the pleasantness of someone elses life, it is a life! It’s not zero! To terminate them in the name of mercy, to preclude existence of any sort, is perverse. Medicine exists to help people live.

I honestly don’t see why this is a partisan issue, or a religous issue. It should be an issue of the most basic obvious morality.

MRM1101,

Thank you for the “potential argument” : very interesting. This is the first time I hear that one !

Marc

Am I the only one who thinks the point when a fetus develops a brain might be morally significant? Surely that’s a big step up from an undifferentiated mass of cells.