posted
It's an abortion thread--the most beaten dead horse at Hatrack. If it makes everyone feel better, it's more of a specific question that a broad discussion.
I was discussing the subject with a friend the other day, and a good point she made frequently is that we need to become more educated when it comes to sex. This point, in fact, seemed to be a big foundation of her argument.
What I'm looking for opinions on is this: For those of you who are pro-choice, could there ever be a point in our education where abortion would become unacceptable, or is it all about the choice?
If we, hypothetically, became so knowledgeable about sex and its risks that there could be no claim of ignorance of the consequences, do you think we could we say "You've made your bed, now lie in it."?
I'm as liberal as they come, and it's depressing to me that it's become almost a knee-jerk reaction for a liberal female to attack a pro-life male for being, to quote my acquaintance, "a right-wing Christian conservative" (I'm closer to the radical end of the spectrum and an atheist).
I know it's referred to as "Pro-Choice", but I always thought the doors for abortion needed to be kept open only for women out there who got caught in mistakes they didn't know they were making (or had no control over) rather than as a form of birth control.
I agree that abortion is needed in some cases, but I can never see where the pro-choice crowd is coming from. [opinion]It seems to me that taking the risk of bringing a child into the world is a chioce in and of itself, and it seems wrong to me to make a different choice at a later point and say, "Just kidding, I'm going to kill you."[/opinion]
I'm sorry if this post is upsetting or inflammatory. I just look around at the world and find the fact that so many people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions deplorable and depressing.
Anyway, to get back on track with my real question: What's with our obsession with choice? Why can't we kill an 8-year-old if it gets to be too much trouble? Why do we place so little virtue in responsibility?
If I seem like a pro-life fanatic now, just think how bad I'd be if I believed in God.
Anyway...pro-choicers, sound-off. I'm really frustrated trying to understand your points of view. Help a poor guy out. Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Frisco, by the way, my "troll" thread was not about you. Let me take a second to come up with an answer.
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posted
I was wondering. I've been called many names in my Hatrack days, but "troll" isn't one of them. Yet. Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Yeah, I was just about to stand up for Frisco. He may be stupid, ugly, obnoxious, and useless to the greater scheme of life, but I will not tolerate disrespect directed toward him.
It is a him, right? The pictures are kinda ambiguous on that point.
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posted
Well, Frisco, I bet I could describe myself as a pro-choice (I'm in favor of the right to abort). But I find this horrible if you say some people choose to have a baby and then abort ! I'm in favor of abortion in cases of rapes or quasi-rapes, and for girls too young to understand what happened to them. I don't know about the women who have a "contraception accident", and about the ones who discover their children will have a grave disease. I guess it's their choice but I wouldn't know what to do in these cases. But deciding to abort when you chose to be pregnant, I don't have words strong enough to say how shoking and unfair and horrible it is. Did I get your point ?
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quote:If we, hypothetically, became so knowledgeable about sex and its risks that there could be no claim of ignorance of the consequences, do you think we could we say "You've made your bed, now lie in it."?
Rationality isn't always what drives our actions, unfortunately. I'm no trying to wiggle here (really, I'm not), but I can think of cases where all the pre-knowledge in the world still wouldn't force me to say "You've made your bed, now lie in it."
For example, suppose a college student works as a peer counselor about rape. She knows thoroughly the consequences of sex, as well as the risks of alcohol use, all the statistics about date rape, tactics to defend herself, what have you. Then, suppose she gets raped. Or suppose her brother dies when she is driving the car that gets hit, or maybe she finds out that she is a carrier for the Huntington's disease that runs in her family (progressive fatal dementia, usually natural death in the 30s or 40s, but high high high suicide rate).
Suppose then she goes through a period of time when she is grieving, when care for herself is at a very low point in her life. This is not uncommon after rape, by the way -- the body belongs to others, there can be a strong sense of disconnect. Maybe she goes through a major depressive episode, maybe it's just grief.
Were she to get pregnant at this time, something in me would recoil at saying "You've made your bed, now lie in it." Mind you, I would encourage this woman to consider all options, including adoption and the full support of her family and community, which is often underrated and unaccessed in such times. We tend to think we are alone when we are in pain.
Are such cases few and far between? I'm sure that they don't make up all the cases of abortion, probably not many, but I always wonder what the full story is when I see someone behaving in an unhealthy or self-destructive manner.
I wouldn't make policy based on this counter-example, Frisco, but the knowledge that lives are often this complex makes me wary of indulging in the frustrated satisfaction of saying "You've made your bed, now lie in it."
posted
No, Frisco just happened to post when I was still writing. I'm always up for a good abortion/Boy Scout/homosexuality thread. *grin
I just ran across something else while skimming which became, in the reading, so outrageously offensive that all the cleverness in the world wouldn't save it.
It took a little reminding of myself to keep from inadvertantly bumping it to the top with a scathing rejoinder, that's all.
I don't take well to mockery of other persons for sport and pleasure. Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
Ah!!! The old "you ought to have known better, so you're stuck with it..." argument.
I don't have a theoretical answer for you. I have a practical one. Education DOES reduce the incidence of unwanted pregnancy. Yes, even if all the education amounts to is "wait until you are ready and able to support and take care of a child."
But I think the more education the bigger the impact on reducing unwanted pregnancy.
So, the pro-life and the pro-choice sides should be be strongly united on the point that we should always invest in educating our young people about sex and its consequences.
Do I think there's a point at which we say "you're too stupid or undisciplined and therefore you must now go through with your unwanted pregnancy?"
No.
Those aren't the people I think should be having children. And God forbid they shouldn't be the ones raising them. If you could truly demonstrate (theoretically, of course) that someone had all the knowledge and still went off and got pregnant...wouldn't you be saying the above?
Truth is, people make mistakes. They will always make mistakes. And while I may not agree with their decision to abort or to keep the child, or to give it up for adoption...the point is that it is their decision. They DO have to live with the consequences of whatever decision they make.
Abortion is a terrible choice. So is raising a child when you are lacking in resources and life skills. So is giving away a child for adoption.
They are all hard, difficult, etc.
I might hope that the pregnant woman and the guy who got her pregnant would choose to do the best thing for the child -- and think unselfishly. But I don't count on it. And I don't really expect it. Not of teenagers "in trouble" anyway.
And not of their parents who still want their own child to have a shot at life without being encumbered too soon, etc....
So, back to the practical side of things, I don't think I would ever support a law that coupled education with criminalizing abortion.
I would would, however, support a law that made sex education compulsory and I would expect it to continue to work as well as it has so far...
<see teen pregnancy rate -- the news is pretty good>
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By the way, I'd support aerosolized birth control in all public places. Also in the drinking water. You should have to pass a rudimentary test to get the antidote (like getting a driver's license), plus there should be a short cool-off waiting period for that decision to sink in (as when buying a gun).
And, CT, rape is included in those instances in which I think abortion is justified, as is fatal disease.
And I really wouldn't use the phrase "You've made your bed, now lie in it." I didn't mean to make it sound like I got any sort of personal satisfaction from something like that--I'm not the judgemental type. It just seemed the most fitting cliché.
Your example of the brother dying in a car accident was a good one. I'm much more rational than sensitive, and it almost had me convinced that it was the right thing. I understand how people would side with abortion in that case.
[TMI ]I'm in a similar situation right now. I'm in love with (and in the process of moving in with) a woman. She's currently separated from and in the process of divorcing her husband (not my doing, I promise).
She found out last night that she's two months pregnant (his, not mine--not possible). She's unhappy, for both the obvious reason that she's leaving him and because she does not want children. We'd never approached the subject, but it turns out that we share the same opinion and she's not getting an abortion because she was fully aware that this was a possible result, even with birth control.[/TMI ]
But I agree that not all people could handle this sort of emotional stress. I'll have to do a bit of thinking on that point.
*waits for Lalo's frantic IM demanding to know why he wasn't the first to know about this latest development in the Eddie&Brooke saga*
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quote:By the way, I'd support aerosolized birth control in all public places. Also in the drinking water. You should have to pass a rudimentary test to get the antidote (like getting a driver's license), plus there should be a short cool-off waiting period for that decision to sink in (as when buying a gun).
I agree wholeheartedly. I thought Slash and I were the only ones bold and crass enough to suggest that sort of thing.
Bob, I totally agree with your practical answers, too. It's just not very comforting to me. I don't think these "...stupid...undisciplined..." people should be having children. But I think the child should have some chance--some say for its life. Hell, a coin flip. Loser is terminated.
Wow. Did I type that?
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posted
I know, Frisco. (and I'm sorry about the difficulties of your relationship, right now -- sounds very painful all around ) I appreciate your thoughtful question, and I appreciate the dialogue. You are a good person to have difficult discussions with, and I love having my brain tweaked about its assumptions.
My interactions with others are highly, highly flavored by having read literally tens of thousands of novels. From when I started reading until I was twenty-five, I read an average of about three books a day (and more on weekends). Having been immersed in someone else's shoes for so much of my awake thinking time makes for a wealth of imagination in interpreting others' motives and actions. It may well not be a good thing overall ( ), but it does make it difficult to see things in black and white.
By the way, as one of my examples, I meant for the woman to get pregnant not because of rape, but because of later (voluntary) sexual activity -- sexual activity engaged in voluntarily, but not an action she would have engaged in before. For some women, being raped leads to not caring about what may happen after.
For example, I was raised to believe that the act of sexual intercourse is binding on a spiritual level; i.e., whomever one first had sex with would be (in God's eyes) one's spouse, and all other sexual relationships thereafter would be adultery. Voluntariness or involuntariness was irrelevant -- it was a spiritual law governing the spiritual/carnal creatures we were made to be. This, as you can see, gave me great agony after being raped myself. [My first thought immediately afterward was, of all things, "now I'll never be able to call a unicorn." And then the "spiritual marriage" part hit home, and then I found myself drinking coffee in the student union, having failed several finals and having completely lost at least a day from my memory.] I'm sure the time immediately [and for months] after that in my life was rife with bad choices. I think it was my first major bout with depression, and thankfully I have worked my way through it. And I didn't want this to be a confessional, but more an explication of what I think of when faced with a young woman who is making irrational decisions. (Sorry if TMI )
posted
I suppose if it has to be a case of choice for all or no choice, it has to be choice for all.
I just get irritated at the "It's her body, and her business what she does with it" mentality. I walk away from too many conversations with the pro-choice with the feeling that they'd support a woman with an abortion fetish.
Talking with more realistic pro-choicers in this thread is helpful, though. Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
I understand. I have the same response to those who claim that any accusation of rape must have some basis in truth. (What planet are you living on? Have you never met someone who makes horrific things up?) Mind you, a five-year-old coming up with a complaint of abuse is far different context from a twenty-five-year-old. Adults are much, much less straightforward than kids. But still, I'd wonder what sort of life history would lead someone to make up something so vile about another human being. Doesn't make it okay, certainly doesn't make it right, but does make it probably pretty complicated.
quote: By the way, I'd support aerosolized birth control in all public places. Also in the drinking water
Hmmmm. I can see pros and cons to this thought expressed by CT. But I don't know that I agree with it. (probably for the same reason I'm against them forcing floridation on me in the water supply). How can you be PRO choice, yet basically give people no choice on birth control by playing big brother and having it as you describe above?
If such a policy were the case, I know that I, for one, would probably have never had kids. I didn't want kids at the time I got "unexpectedly" pregnant years ago (while unmarried -- got pregnant during a drunken night out) Yes, I took the philosophy of "you made your bed you lie in it" with MYSELF -- I don't know that I would feel right thinking that about others. Of course the upside now, 18 years later, is a wonderful son who is brilliant and that I can't imagine life without (even though the "father" in this case wanted me to consider abortion).
But birth control in all places when I was THAT age would probably have turned me into a shameless hussy (if I wasn't already one) because at least the FEAR of getting pregnant kept me a virgin through high school...
quote: It's her body, and her business what she does with it
A lot of people said that here in the seventies, and some now. And I don't agree with that. Because - and that's another point I'd like to discuss - this leads women to make children without the consentment of the father. I mean, they say they take contraceptive pill as they don't, for exemple. I don't find this fair. Women in the seventies used to shout "a child, if we want, when we want". This can be discussed, but if you think it is effectively a choice you have the right to make to have children or not, I don't see why men wouldn't have this choice.
EDIT to add : Farmgirl, this does not applies to your case. I was thinking about couples who live together or are together since a long time (at last one year) and the man said he didn't want children and the woman said she would do what she has to do to avoid being pregnant, and then does not because she wants children and is too lazy or too afraid to argue about that with the potential father.
[ January 13, 2004, 09:01 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
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posted
Frisco, the whole framework of what you are allowed to do and what you are required to do for just punishment and so on is totally foreign to the way I look at this.
First of all, legally speaking, I am pro choice, for the woman, no questions asked. I don't consider it a matter that the law is properly concerned with at all.
But to get my perspective on it, let's pretend we aren't talking about someone's baby, but pretend it is you inside your own mother's womb that we are discussing. Once we have that first person perspective we can see things from the point of view from which I tend to see abortion issues.
1. All babies deserve loving parents, who are prepared to give them some sort of chance in life.
2. All babies want to live and not be snuffed out, just like anyone.
3. When you are completely innocent, and more helpless than you'll ever be your whole life, then the very people who brought you into being by an act of love, the two people in the world from whom you ought to be able to count on love and protection, if they decide for their own personal reasons you have to die, well, that's very very very very harsh and sad.
So I myself would never abort a healthy fetus. I've seen my friend raise her severely disabled Downs baby, and I don't know what I would do if I had a Downs fetus. Probably abort it. I am not sure. I know for sure that I would never question such a decision made by others. The toll on her family has been quite high. There are circumstances that make it possible and others in which it really isn't possible to raise a baby like that. Her son had to have multiple major surgeries before he was 1 year old, and he nearly died many times. Now (16 years later) she has had an episode of cancer and the extreme stress she was under for so many years has to have been a factor in that. Will she recover? We hope and pray she will.
Also in medical situations where there is some not completely defined risk to the mother versus the not completely defined chances of whether the baby could survive or not. Again the mother should be legally the sole chooser, though of course by all moral right she should consult the father as well. But it's her body so she is the one who makes the ultimate choice of whether the risk is worth it, under the advice of her doctor.
I believe the state has no business whatsoever in dictating things so essential and so personal, upon which everyone feels extremely strongly, and upon which there is simply no consensus. So I am strongly in favor of reproductive rights. The mother, as far as the law is concerned, ought to have total say.
But all that said, we are talking about someone's LIFE. Whether it's legally categorized as a person or not, remember it's YOUR LIFE we are talking about. What is the right thing to do? That's a whole different question, about which I feel very very strongly.
I believe sex is NOT to be undertaken for purely recreational reasons, mainly for this reason among others. When you do so, you are playing russian roulette with someone's life. In other words, be prepared to make a good stable home and a good start in life for the person you are potentially making, before you decide to have sex with someone, and this includes choosing the baby's other parent as someone you'd want to be married to. In other words, wait until you are married. Period. That's the only moral option.
Little baby Frisco deserves a chance. He does NOT deserve for his own mother and father, who by all that's right in the universe ought to be his protectors and nurterers, to plan and carry out his demise. That is just too too sad for words.
Real life is harsh. Sometimes the choice is between evils. I can't judge or even examine someone else's choices. But I know what I would choose. I love babies. I want my own very badly. But my children deserve to have both parents, at least to the extent that I can choose the life they are born into, and they deserve to be wanted and loved. So I chose not to have kids out of wedlock, because a husband is something that I never have found. But I feel very sad for the children I did not have, even. I wish I could have kids. What's doubly triply sad is for people who have a healthy fetus to be unwilling even to undergo the few months inconvenience it would be to continue the pregnancy full term and put the baby up for adoption.
So the whole idea of making beds and lying in them is not in the picture at all. The way I think of things, this is someone's life you are playing with. Your choices have serious consequences. So please, I beg of you, by all that's holy, choose well.
Edit to clarify: Not meant to be directed at Frisco, but just in general an explanation of what sort of pro-choicer I am.
[ January 13, 2004, 11:39 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
I am pro-choice for just one reason. I can not see how I, a man, can legislate what a woman must do to her body.
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And it isn't any of my business, but I can't help being nosy and wondering what your girlfriend decided, after you shared so much. It sounded like she ruled out abortion, but you still said she doesn't want children. Is she putting it up for adoption?
(feel free to not answer)
AJ
(and if she just found out last night, it is possible she hasn't made a decision yet because she needs time to think on it!)
posted
I may be the first pro-lifer to post on this thread.
"Do I think there's a point at which we say 'you're too stupid or undisciplined and therefore you must now go through with your unwanted pregnancy?'"
I think there is. Why? Because it's not "you're too stupid, and therefore must be punished," but because it's "you don't get to kill your child."
It has nothing to do with a woman's choice. It has nothing to do with whether I, a man, can tell her what to do with her body. It has nothing, in fact, to do with her body at all.
No one -- not me, not a woman, not anyone -- should have the right to kill someone else because that life has become inconvenient, for whatever reason it happens to be inconvenient.
I recognize that compromise is necessary here, as a component of human mercy. For this reason, I think it's logical to permit things like the morning-after pill and first-trimester abortion; I can think of few excuses, however, for late-term abortion.
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posted
Aeriolized birth control. *shudder* While I agree that many people would be best served to never have and raise children, I would be tremendously opposed to giving anyone the right to dictate whether or not I (or anyone else) could have children. Just like so many are adamant that church and state be well separated, I don't want someone else literally forcing me to comply with their political/ideological agenda. It's like swatting a fly with a Buick--some people won't be very good parents, so let's force everyone, good parents and bad parents, to meet our own subjective, politically charged standards to qualify for the right to reproduce. What happened to the much-vaunted education approach that seems to work so well for teaching kids about sex?
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posted
pssst, Anna Jo, I was asking Frisco to pretend it was HIM as an unborn fetus we were talking about. It was hypothetical. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
My biggest problem with abortions is that (I _think_...but I'm not sure) the grand majority of women who have them are married. At least in some upper-class circles, women will use abortion as a form of birth control in and of itself, since they don't want to deal with the hassle of the pill/condoms/patch/whatever.
But like others, I do think that there are many cases in which it should be permitted, and I think all of those have already been stated (rape, fourteen-year-olds, etc).
posted
Where on earth did you hear that, pH? I'm not questioning you, I just find it stunning that someone would consider a procedure at a hospital to be less of a hassle than using a condom or taking a pill.
quote:What happened to the much-vaunted education approach that seems to work so well for teaching kids about sex?
I'm both impatient and not nice, and that drives my opinions on this. Plus, I'm entirely too emotional to be data-driven, as I am taking care of yet another brain-damaged child in the ICU. Less than a month old and most of his brain is mush, still seizing despite being put down in a phenobarbital coma.
Luckily, I am not making public policy on this matter. I would not be in a good position to do so.
I am, however, pretty much fully aware of the possible consequences. I'm also pretty much opposed to such draconian measures. Would you believe, then, that I have come to be willing to advocate such a drastic measure? That this is the sixteenth case of child abuse I have been involved with this year?
posted
Bob: I'm not sure. I know it was a fairly common practice at my high school; girls didn't want to go on the pill because it might make them fat.
I have no idea what goes on in their minds.
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posted
Um...a girl unwilling to go on the pill because it makes them fat...unless these girls were then committed to abstinence or their partners and they were practicing effective alternative means of contraception (which I assume was NOT the case from your post), I just have to say that you are proving my point about these being just the sort of people who shouldn't be having children in the first place.
While I too get worked up about the thought of abortion as taking a life (it is), I also get worked up about the horrid things that people do to their unwanted children. And I get worked up about what happens to those same kids if they manage not to die in childhood and later try to become parents themselves.
It's all horrid. And abortion is not the worst part of it, frankly. The kids in body bags or lying in ICUs. That's the worst of it. That's the sin America really should be damned for...
We don't even talk about it.
Anyway, I'll get off my high horse now.
I really do believe that people should have to pass a test before being allowed to have children. But that's not practical either.
The realities of the situation make me want to just yell at people. But the bottom line is that I'd rather have abortion available than not because I think there are worse things than dying before your ungrateful parents take it out on you.
And Tom, one thing you said up above did sort of concern me. You said it isn't about "her body." But it is. Without her body (or someone else's) a fetus cannot survive.
So for the fetus, it's ALL about her body.
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posted
Um, Tom? If you compromise on allowing first-trimester abortion, you're in the pro-choice camp. You're out in the far end of it, where I tend to hang around, but you're there.
I still don't understand the arguments over what type of abortion is understandable (rapes, underage, etc) and what kinds are not (inconvenience, whim). The child produced is the same. The fetus created from a rape is no different than the fetus created by loving parents. The difference is in how the mother perceives it.
And after a certain point, the fetus' life must be considered near equal to the mother's. Few here, i think, would say that a woman has the right to abort a day before birth just because she changed her mind. It should be a sliding scale where the rights of the mother are paramount at conception, the rights of the fetus are equal after viability, and there's a constantly shifting balance between them depending on conditions.
So.
First trimester abortions, no questions asked. Second trimester abortions, only in cases of severe danger to the mother or severe danger to the child (Down's, etc). Third trimester abortions, never unless the mother will die otherwise and the fetus cannot be taken out alive.
With this schedule, the nature of the pregnancy is utterly besides the point.
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quote: permit things like the morning-after pill and first-trimester abortion
Well, that's what I'm in favor of, and I define myself as a pro-choice ! Of course, to abort after the third first months shouldn't be allowed, and is not here in France (except cases of severe disease withy risks of death for the mom).
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posted
Being for first trimester abortions and deeming them logically permittable with a sigh aren't exactly the same.
Sex, to me, is like a contract between mother and fetus. If there were some way for there to be a legal process in order to negate it, that would be great. But if we had women petitioning for abortions, I'm afraid the system would end up as corrupted as the rest of the government.
posted
I doubt you would find many pro-choice people who were actually for abortions at any point. Its called pro-choice for a reason.
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quote:Second trimester abortions, only in cases of severe danger to the mother or severe danger to the child (Down's, etc).
For the most part, I prefer to stay out of these discussions, but I really want to point out the logical inconsistency of the statement here.
Severe danger to the child??? (with Down syndrome as an example)
Let's be honest - people abort based on prenatal testing because they personally don't want a kid with a disability. To suggest it's somehow saving the kid is dishonest. Not that people don't do it. Still doesn't make it true. More palatable maybe, but not true.
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posted
I'm anti-abortion but pro-choice. Actually, I agreed with pretty much all of ak's post.
I also agreed with sndrake. For the most part, it has become unacceptable to euthanize (or allow to die through neglect) children with serious disabilities (including those far more disabling than Down's). Why would a fetus with such a disability be fair game?
And mind, I do not consider an unborn child to have fully human status. It is certainly a life, but killing it is not, IMO, murder. Neither may it be done casually, and I consider it horribly wrong (but not something the government should be legislating) to have an abortion because the mother/parents are too young, can't afford the child, etc. Put the baby up for adoption.
However, serious risk to the mother (physical OR psychological; direct OR indirect) does seem to be a legitimate reason for abortion. And I don't think the government has any business deciding how much risk is enough.
I also have no problem with the morning-after pill or similar substances. Until 40 days post-conception, it's barely even a life.
posted
I am moderately pro-choice. If a child is or will be seriously ill, or will die, or the mother will die those are cases for a third or late second trimester abortion. First trimester, I wouldn't stop someone getting an abortion, but I would definately ask questions.
I don't believe that abortion is just a form of birth-control.
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posted
I just want to clarify - I wasn't trying to actually put out a position on whether or not a woman should have the right to have an abortion under given circumstances.
What I was reacting to was the suggestion that "termination" of pregnancies involving Down syndrome or other disabilities are motivated as acts of compassion toward the child. (I've known a lot of people with Down syndrome of varying abilities and not one seems to regret being alive)
I feel OK when people defend abortion for eugenic purposes - at least we're having an honest discussion then. The suggestion that these actions are motivated by compassion rather than perceived self-interest is - creepy and not a little revolting.
posted
Bob: No, I really don't think these girls should be having kids. Absolutely not. But I think it's stupid that they use it as a way to absolve themselves of any responsibility because quite frankly, if a girl gets pregnant at that particular high school, she can either have an abortion or drop out. They don't really have a middle ground.
Of course, it doesn't help that the sex-ed classes are focused almost entirely on abstinence.
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posted
I agree there. I think the abstinence message is worth teaching, in context. And the context needs to be reality. If a kid is already sexually active, teaching abstinence is probably not going to work.
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posted
As a rule, I agree with aka and rivka's sentiments. But if wishes were being granted, I'd definitely like to see CT's program put into effect.
A couple of the problems I see with making abortions illegal include: *the fact that women will still seek abortions; only instead of a clean clinic, they'll use a back alley butcher or a clothes hanger. In these cases, not only do we sacrifice the fetus, but woman as well.
*with the snail's pace at which red-tape moves, who's going to approve the special needs abortions quickly enough to make sure that the pregnancy doesn't fall into week 14?
Despite these concerns, I abhore the idea of killing a child. Like CT, I have both been witness to and experienced too much child abuse from neglectful or violent "parenting". On the other hand, I currently know at least two loving, happy couples who have been trying for 5-7 years to have a child. They've been waiting for better than 2 years for that "call" from the adoption agency. They get weepy just being around kids, their need/love is so strong.
With "parents" this willing and able available, abortion not only seems distasteful but a needless waste of love.
What I'd like to see is not only more sex education, but public education that following through with a pregnancy and giving the child to good adoptive parents is a mature and positive alternative. And for teens and others during the last 3, most obvious monthes of pregnancy, a place funded by the state adoptive agencies where the women could find safe haven away from the eyes of their peer group.
Eddie- I know that with an ex-husband in the picture, adoption becomes a bit more complicated. Yet, nothing is easy at this point.
I wish you both wisdom and strength.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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My precocious 5-year-old is again asking me sex ed. questions. She wanted to know if it hurts when the babies come out. I told her yes, it does. I explained that it was working muscles very hard. She has been upset by the idea that she hurt me when she was coming out. I told her that it was worth it, and that I was willing to experience pain to have her in the world. I also explained that it was a lot like the burn you feel when you exercise muscles that are not used to being used. That idea seemed to help.
But then she asked how a woman could make it so she WOULDN'T have a baby. And, because I want to be truthful, I had to tell her a little bit about modern medicine. We reviewed how babies get started. And then I told her that the most effective way to not have a baby is not to mate. I also mentioned "medicines" a doctor can give to make the body not let a baby get started. I skimmed over "putting something in the way", but it was mentioned. And then she asked me, "What if a baby already gets started?" And I had to tell her about abortion. I didn't go into it very deeply at all. I did tell her that some people choose to have the baby taken out, but that it kills the baby. Thank goodness she didn't have any more questions about that!
Sadly, because Abortion, Homosexuality, Sexual Abuse, and Sex itself are plastered everywhere in our world, I feel I have to educate my daughter so that she can learn to live in this world. I'll never forget her coming to me proudly in Target, holding a card, and saying, "Mommy! I can read this word. S-E-X, that says sex!" This card had been placed at her level, not mine.
I hope that by having honest dialogue now, my child will have the information she needs to make wise choices later. In fact, she started this conversation by trying out the adult phrase, "Mommy, I need your advice..." And after talking a while, she told me that she needed for me and Daddy to help her pick out a good man when the time came. I can only hope that she will still come to me when she's a teenager, but even if she doesn't, I hope I will have given her what she needs.
I'm wondering when she'll start asking about AIDS or STDs now... Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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]I'm in a similar situation right now. I'm in love with (and in the process of moving in with) a woman. She's currently separated from and in the process of divorcing her husband (not my doing, I promise).![[Frown]](frown.gif)
) I appreciate your thoughtful question, and I appreciate the dialogue. You are a good person to have difficult discussions with, and I love having my brain tweaked about its assumptions. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
), but it does make it difficult to see things in black and white.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
