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Chris makes some good points, but I am one who thinks that it is the womens choice whether or not she wants to keep a child. I don't think abort is to kill, because the supreme court declares that a fetis is not a human. I think that abortion is wrong when the mother is in labor. That I think is wrong, but I would still say that it is the mothers choice.

I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.

If there's one thing I've learned about abortion, it's that it is the woman's choice to decide. What place to men have on whether or not women should get an abortion (in general, not if the man is the father)? I honestly don't think it is the government's place to decide the morals of abortion. In other words, abortion should be legal under certain conditions and left for the mother to decide whether or not it is right.

An abortion clinic should be opened, but it woudn't operate like a normal doctor's practice. Abortions would have to have legal right given by the courts. For example, if the situation is that the mother just wants an abortion because it makes her tummy look fat, then no, the abortion shouldn't be allowed. Only in the case of rape or situation that deems itself necessary for an abortion due to heavy financial burdens, then abortion should be allowed by the woman. Whether or not she chooses to take the offer is entirely up to her.

If I were pregnant (stretching my imagination), I wouldn't have the abortion just because I might one day see my son/daughter graduate and be thankful I never chose otherwise.

If the world should blow itself up,the last audible voice would be an expert saying it can't be done

This post was edited by Hawkeye on Jul 09, 2002.

I totally disagree with adoption as a compromise to abortion. If a woman is deciding against her child you can't force her to give birth to it. It's psychologically seen too much for woman and child.
With abortion in the first months, the woman couldn't be able to develop a strong relationship for her child as she can in nine months. Nine months are a very long time to get used to the fact you'll get a child. You also have to go through all the pregnancy stuff: go to the ultrasound (see it!), buy clothes for the belly, participate in several lections and last but not least, endure the pain while giving birth. A pain that can only be calmed through holding the child in your arms. Then you'll see it.
Give me a name of one mother who will say then: "Take it away, I don't need this, don't wanna have it".
Every woman will cry mabye for her whole live and her child will keep asking his "wrong" parents why and who and so on. It's a crack in the soul of a child to get to know that his parents aren't the real ones, that the natural mother was too young and so on. There will be a lot of arguments and in most cases the child wants to see his mother. Who will have to explain and so on.
I would never give a child for an adoption if I could abort.
Can you remember having felt anything by the age of 2 months or so? I don't think you're killing a human being. You're killikng something that could become a human being and you're killing this everytime you f**k or jerking off. (Sorry!)
Every woman should have a choice.
We know quite well what can happen if a woman doesn't have one (see "The Cyder House Rules" by John Irving)

"Sie wollen nichts anderes. Sie wollen kämpfen! Sie sind Soldaten! Fucking Wahnsinnige!" - Noel G.

I'm sorry, but you are simply dead wrong. It is not better to kill a child than to give it away. Period.

I'm sorry that the woman has to go through 9 months of pregnancy, and then labor, and then give the child away. Really, I am. But, the woman made the mistake, not the child. It only makes sense that some sacrifice should be made in order to avoid killing an innocent child.

In this case, the sacrifice is not only some inconvenience (which I addressed), but also giving the child up. If the woman cares about the child's future, and she can't support it, she will give it up, not kill it.

Like I said, I am adopted, so I am rather biased here. But, I feel that the bias is wholly justified. The problem with our society is that people don't want to pay for their mistakes. They want them to go away. Well, tough. Wanting a mistake to go away doesn't change the fact that killing is wrong. Killing an innocent unborn child is no answer. Giving it a chance to have a good life, and perhaps better than it would have had were it kept, is a very good alternative to abortion.

In fact, when placing the two side by side, there is only one choice.

<soapbox>
Now, this is directed at the negative-rating-happy person wandering around here: rate us down all you want. The posts here have been well written (all of them, by everyone!), whether you agree with them or not.

I may be going out on a limb, here, but I believe that my writing skills and style have never once merited a negative rating. I do not flame people, use profanity, advertise, troll, nor spam the list. Why the negative rating all of a sudden?

If you don't agree, hit the reply button and tell me. Don't rate me down for disagreement. That's not what it is for.

I would not have said anything, but I noticed that a large number of well-written posts on this topic have been rated down, as well. Not a single one of them deserved it.
</soapbox>

C

Sig Wanted -- Apply Within

I'm sorry, but you are simply dead wrong. It is not better to kill a child than to give it away. Period.

Look, this is not about killing a child. I mean, come on, nobody's talking about giving birth to the baby and then wringing its neck! It's something that could become a baby within a couple o' months.

As Martin asked, when does life start?

A sperm and an egg cell have the potential to develop into a baby. Does anybody call it murder when a sperm bangs into a rubber (-->millions of dead babies at one shot!), or the fertilized egg cell can't get lodged and dies because of some other contraceptive?

I can understand that you might be biased because you are adopted (I've got an adoptive brother myself), and I understand that many people wouldn't exist today, had their mothers aborted.
But try the same reasoning with contraception instead of abortion: How many people wouldn't be alive today, had their parents used a contraceptive?
And now tell me that contraception is murder because of this!

But, the woman made the mistake, not the child.

Sometimes, yes. Sadly enough there are enough people who chose abortion as their means of contraception.
But what is (f'r instance) a woman supposed to do when she's about to get raped?
"Wait a minute sir, would you please use this rubber?"
What about sexual abuse within the family, or with rape drugs? Put some Rohypnol in her drink (your local drug dealer will happily help you) and she won't even remember being raped!
There are some circumstances where abortion is the best possible solution, even for the unborn child. It might cause worries, but everything else would still be worse.

PS, I agree with you on the rating thing.

When life hands you a lemon, that's 40% of your RDA of vitamin C taken care of.

This post was edited by null on May 22, 2002.

I see your point. I addressed the issue of rape in my earlier posts, and I feel that abortion can be justifiable in that case, as well as when the mother's life is in danger. So, I think we are in agreement there.

However, your arguments about contraception do not and cannot hold water. Contraception is not murder like abortion is. A dead sperm or a dead egg is about the same thing as the cells in your hair or fingernails. A fertilized egg that has a chance of making it without negative intervention is a living (albeit early-stage) human being, and is different from either the mother or the father. It is a new person, a new life.

Killing one's own cells (growing hair, shedding dead skin, contraception, etc) is a far cry different from killing a brand new soon-to-be independent life.

C

Sig Wanted -- Apply Within

A fertilized egg that has a chance of making it without negative intervention is a living (albeit early-stage) human being, and is different from either the mother or the father. It is a new person, a new life.

Let me ask you a dumb question.

When a woman takes the pill, and an egg gets fertilized anyway (nothing is 100% safe), and the fertilized egg can't lodge (which is one of several effects of the pill), the pill has basically killed the baby in its earliest stage of development. So there's a chance that by taking the pill, a potential mother kills a new life and doesn't even know it.

Is this negligent homicide?

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to sound sarcastic. I'm just trying to explain my point of view (which might differ a little bit from yours).

When life hands you a lemon, that's 40% of your RDA of vitamin C taken care of.

This post was edited by null on May 22, 2002.

hmmmmm......well to be absolutely medically technical.....fertilized eggs do not always attach in the appropriate areas.

If they attach or get blocked in the fallopian tubes, they are life threatening and will kill the host

Fertilized eggs are sloughed out of the uterus all the time during a women's fertile years if there is a problem with the uterus, infection present, chemical imbalance, trauma, etc.

Also in one cycle there is usually only one zygote at risk, one egg is released and millions of sperm try like heck to be the winner to fertilize....

I am not picking up how you guys know how ratings are being done.....to be quite honest, if I don't see a red on someone, I figure we are trucking along quite well.

No one here is going to change anyone's mind on something they have strong views on, and if they do have strong views....it is usually due to personal experience or knowledge.

I thought the idea is like a group of people around a kitchen table......discussing different areas in an free thought forum.
Hopefully getting a different view, or seeing another side from someone else's experience or knowledge. You may disagree totally, but you support everyone's right to express their views.

If you let it get too heated.....then we are losing what makes it very special.

And lol.....I can't figure out where Chris or Frank got lousy ratings....dang it..Chris did the bestest Pun and is wise and for Pete's sake.......Frank is pregnant......his hormones are driving him crazy....we gotta give him a little leeway here till he is a Father.

quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

This post was edited by gentledeepwaters on May 22, 2002.

Again, I see your point. Let me just acknowledge that you have made a very good point, and then clarify my statement a bit.

A fertilized egg that is not able to stay embedded never really had a chance to begin with, and therefore fits within my definition above. The effects of the "pill" are really in place before conception ever occurs, and the fertilized egg never really has a chance beyond that. Now, I acknowledge that things get even thornier when you take into account the "day after" pills, etc.

An egg that can't embed is not negligent homicide, in my opinion. If it was, then all of the natural abortions that happen in the extremely early stages when people are trying to get pregnant would also fall into that category.

So, I agree that splitting hairs on this point is not very instructive nor very helpful. It does nothing for the arguments on either side, since things rapidly degenerate into the finer points of what is alive and what is not. I agree that when you get down to this point, that is a question that is very difficult to answer.

Having said all that, I think my arguments make more sense when split into a few simple points:

1) Abortion is murder. Murder is wrong.

When is it not murder? It is clearly murder when the child has a human form (we have these emotions about how things "look" for a reason), but that point is easy to split hairs on, because abortion can happen at many different developmental stages. So, where clarification is necessary (especially in the early stages, like embedding after fertilization, etc), I invoke point number 2:

2) Abortion is an unhealthy and incorrect escape mechanism. These escape mechanisms represent much that is wrong with society today.

This goes along with the notion that a big problem with people is their readiness to sidestep responsibility for their own actions. It's easier to make someone else suffer for my mistakes, so why not do it? The patent unfairness in this is evident when one considers that a woman who exercised poor enough judgement to be part of a one night stand will readily make the innocent unborn child pay the price for it.

Is the child at fault? Not at all. Is it hard for the woman to go through pregnancy and birth, only to do what I consider is the right thing and either keep the child or give it up for adoption? Yes. Is that a reasonable price to pay for a spectacular mistake? I think so. Is killing the child a reasonable price for it to pay for the woman's mistake? How could it be? It hasn't made any mistakes.

(For my thoughts on the man's part in this, see my other posts)

Now, like the first point, this one can get down to some crazy hair-splitting as well, especially when one considers rape, danger to the woman, danger to the child, or pure emotional trauma. In these difficult issues, I invoke the final point:

3) Abortion is justified when the mother is in immediate physical or serious emotional jeopardy.

The last point is intentionally subjective and vague. If you can get past the first two points (and I believe that the majority of abortions would not make it past point number 1, and that a vast majority would falter at point number 2) then abortion becomes a very difficult judgement call. It is an emotional and a difficult decision to make, and nobody can make it for anybody else. At that point, and at that point only, does the woman really have a choice to make that nobody can blame nor judge her for, no matter what the outcome.

If she makes the choice against the direction of the first two points, in my opinion, she is clearly in the wrong, and the choice to abort does not really belong to her.

I think that pretty well sums up how I feel and what I think about the issue in toto.

C

PS: It wasn't a dumb question. I do respect your viewpoint very much, so I apologize if I got a little heated a few posts ago :)

Sig Wanted -- Apply Within

This post was edited by chris on May 22, 2002.

I think this discussion is going a bit too far.
We could also say (hard gone) that abortion helps regulate the population because when every woman keeps her accidental child where will we go? There will be many adoptives. I know there are some few families (but thanks to modern medicine they become less) who can't (or don't want) get children and so want an adoptive.
There are thousands of organisations who will look for one for you and mostly because millions of children are dying in South Africa and other 3rd world countries. Families who want to adopt help saving a life. You know contraception is a big problem in these countries! The woman just get pregnant and pregnant but can hardly nurture themselves.
So we European etc. have big privileges: contraception and social help.
But what I want to say is: A woman should have the opportunity to decide for herself, together with the father and after several discussions with experts. Abortion is a shock for every woman and noone is doing it for fun. Every one sure had many sleepless nights on that topis because it's a hard decision. Sure, some people say it's easy to take two tablets and go home but it isn't. And also afterwards the woman has to deal with it.

"Sie wollen nichts anderes. Sie wollen kämpfen! Sie sind Soldaten! Fucking Wahnsinnige!" - Noel G.