quote:I know a lot of people here agree that if there is a medical choice between saving the life of the mother and that of an early stage fetus, the mother's life should come first. What I question is whom do we trust with this decision.
And yet, somehow, we muddle through with self-defense as a justification for violence, even killing.
quote:The same people who argue that "You can manage your money better than governmental beaurocrats" are also saying that these definitions, and the answers to these big questions, should be taken from the hands of the women involved and put into the hands of those untrustworthy beaurocrats.
Who's in a better position to determine if those 4 kids in the subway are going to pull a screwdriver and mug you? The government? Or you?
On a side note, you really, really, really should stop conflating two ideas that are held in common by some people as a way to denigrate one of them. Deal with this issue on its own terms, because there is far less overlap than you seem to think there is.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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One thing needs to be made perfectly clear: NO ONE is obliged to do anything about this in order to make Pro-Lifers right. Abortion is wrong or right irrespective of what ANYONE is willing to do to help out a woman in those straits.
I am not saying that providing other solutions is not necessary or helpful or the right thing to do at all, but "oh yeah? well what are you going to do to help this person not lay in the bed they made?" (in most cases) or even, to put it as charitably as possible "well, what else is this poor person supposed to do, carry and care for the baby?" makes for a very weak argument and it should be telling that it's often the strongest one brought out.
For my own part, the people who I think have the most important and strongest ability to step up to the plate are the fathers and grandparents of these children. The stories of boyfriends or parents demanding abortions are the most sickening I've heard in my life. What kind of support is that? And where is the pro-choice outrage at these deadbeats? to turn the question around, what are you pro-choicers doing to support women subjected to this emotional abuse and the trauma of abortion itself?
One last side note to Dan: My understanding is that taking the baby to save the life of the mother has NEVER been illegal and should not have put the doctors you speak of at risk. I could be wrong about this, but I am fairly sure of my source (which is admittedly and unabashedly pro-life). As far as who makes that decision... well, there is risk in any pregnancy and it is increased by a couple of orders of magnitude if there is a C-Section involved. My cousin died in childbirth a few years ago, so it still happens, even with a "normal" pregnancy.
But situations where a pregnancy is a present threat to the mother's life are fairly clear cut and identifiable. The most common is an ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo implants outside the womb. The child can't (to my knowledge) survive this one and the mother's life is at risk from internal rupture and bleeding because the implanation area isn't designed to expand with the child's growth.
The only really nebulous threat of which I am aware are the huge multipregnancies which result from in vitrio or sometimes (though they say there is no causal relationship here) fertility drugs. In these cases the doctors and parents work together to decide what to do now, and I don't see why that should change or be threatened by anti-abortion legislation as discussed here.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Tresopax: Not all abortions occur after premarital sex. Some couples feel they are not financially able to give a child a good life or simply don't want kids. Banning premarital sex does not solve for this.
That's why I suggested we could also consider some sort of ban on sex without the willingness to have resulting children. There could be some sort of required signed agreement, perhaps when applying for a marriage liscence, agreeing that privacy rights in regards to the unborn child are forfeited if the couple engages in sex that could induce pregnancy.
As I said though, most people would probably find ways around any such attempted bans - but really somehow the message needs to be gotten across that it is unethical to engage in sex, even as a married couple, unless you are prepared to accept a baby, or unless you are willing to undergo medical proceedures to ensure pregnancy should be impossible. That is the appropriate time to decide you don't want the kid - not after he may or may not already exist.
quote:Also there are many, many cases where the risk to the mother is significant if a pregnancy is carried to term. Often termination of the pregnancy is the only way to protect or save the life of the mother. A ban could be a death sentence to women facing these dangers.
Well, I was suggesting abortions remain legal, plus even if you banned abortions you could easily make exceptions for those cases. Thus, this is not a problem.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Tres, I believe abortion is wrong in most cases, but your ideas are way too radical for me. I'm not sure we could or should legislate responsible behavior. Sign a contract giving up privacy rights to an unborn child?? Do you realize how many doors that opens up, even for those who want to KEEP their babies? What does that lead to? If I don't live up to or agree with the state's ideas of proper pregnancy care, they have the right to enforce it... or even monitor it? No, I think not.
If a married couple doesn't want any more children, I do agree that it is a good idea for them to use birth control or even to get an operation to prevent it--but that is up to THEM as to what method they use.
Saying a married couple can't have sex at all if they don't want children... that's radical and insane.... in my opinion.
I don't even agree that premarital sex should be legislated. Adults should be free to have sex whenever they want to... they just have to live with the consequences. And, to me, that does not include raising a baby that results from their coupling. Adoption is a viable alternative...and newborn babies have a very high adoption rate... much higher than older children, sadly for the older children.
posted
fugu, I think we are stepping up to the plate to help people, what I meant to get across is that I hope we step up even more if abortion is criminalized, because I think the need for adoption services and the need to help impoverished young women with unplanned pregnancies will go up. If the need is greater, then the help provided should increase as well.
in other words, for the pro-life community, the striking down of Roe vs. Wade shouldn't mean they can all pack up and go home. They should say "Okay, abortion is now illegal, so what are we going to do to help girls and women with unplanned pregnancies who previously would have had abortions?"
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Thing is, I don't think all that great a job is being done right now. For one thing, there are certainly lots of people going for abortions that aren't going for adoption instead, or going for abortions who lacked birth control, et cetera.
I think many people are doing very good jobs, but I think the overall result is lacking.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Brettly, we have been saying for 4 pages now that an abortion ban would include an exception for the life of the mother.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Saying a married couple can't have sex at all if they don't want children... that's radical and insane.... in my opinion.
I didn't say that. I said they shouldn't have sex at all if they aren't willing to take the child and raise it as well as they can, regardless of whether or not they "want" to. And even then you can get around it through surgery or other proceedures that protects you from pregnancy. What's insane about that? Or has our society gotten to the point where its considered insane to give up sex rather than risk killing an innocent person?
quote:I don't even agree that premarital sex should be legislated. Adults should be free to have sex whenever they want to... they just have to live with the consequences.
Why should adults be free to have sex whenever they want to, but not be free to have abortions whenever they want to? One way or the other, you are attempting to legislate responsible behavior. We could legislate neither, and leave all the decisions entirely up to the individual. But, if we must legislate one or the other, to me it make sense to legislate against sex, because that is the one that is more clear cut. Weighing the potential killing of a person vs. being unable to raise that child is a tough call. Weighing the potential killing of a person vs. not being able to have some sex seems like like a much easier call to me.
Truthfully, I'd prefer legislating neither, and trusting people to make good judgements themselves. However, I know many people don't trust the judgements of others and demand legal bans to enforce good judgement upon them. If that is the case, I'm just pointing out they are attempting to ban the wrong thing.
quote:You can't say abortion should be legal because it is killing a "innocent human life" and then say oh but in some cases that the state feels differently we will allow an "innocent human life" to be killed.
So killing is either ALWAYS wrong or ALWAYS okay? I think its perfectly okay to say circumstances dictate whether any given act is wrong or okay.
posted
I'm writing this post from prison. I was arrested two nights ago for having sex with my wife, without any "protection," and purely for the sake of mutual personal enjoyment. We had no intention of bearing or raising an additional child. My wife is an adjacent cell.
How the govenment found out just what our intentions were, we may never know. But they knew. And now we're both busted. Our two existing children have been placed at a foster care agency.
But they're right. The feds, I mean. We shouldn't have had sex like that; it was just stupid and irresponsible. Since we don't have the $5000 ($2500 each) to pay the fine, I think 6 months in jail is totally fair.
I'm glad that law was finally passed.
--Steve (now affectionately known as "Matilda")
Posts: 1862 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
I'm in favor of abortion being legislated, rather than sex legislation. I condemn unsafe sex when no child is desired, but I don't believe laws should be made against it. Rather, a couple should be required to live with the consequences of their actions. I don't see this as a punishment, but rather as a natural result of some sexual encounters. I don't believe the child should have to suffer through having parents who don't want children, so I am in favor of early adoption. Because we have people willing to adopt, the parents don't have to live with the consequences of their actions for 18 years, as they would have had to many years ago. Since a couple would know what would be required of them if they have unprotected sex, hopefully it would cause them to take protective measures and even, perhaps, to abstain from promiscuous behaviors all together. And if a couple does not want to have children EVER, then perhaps they can choose to have an operation, but never demanded of them by the state.
Also, when I say it should be legislated, I'm not talking about a full-ban. Perhaps a decision can be made between the patient, the father, a doctor, and a counselor or something like that. Personal and private. I suppose that system can be abused...but I'm not comfortable with the state peeking into our private lives.
And I doubt anyone will agree with me here, but I think the father should have some say in the life of his own child. I'm not in favor of the woman having the right to abort a baby that is only half hers. If a couple disagrees about an abortion, I think the one who doesn't want the abortion to take place should win that argument.
quote:More clear-cut maybe, but unenforceable definitely. What's the point?
And an abortion ban is enforceable? I'm not sure about that. I suspect it would lead to many very dangerous methods of circumventing that ban.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: And an abortion ban is enforceable? I'm not sure about that. I suspect it would lead to many very dangerous methods of circumventing that ban.
And why, exactly, is that suddenly everyone's responsibility?
I'm sorry, but if people actually choose to do the whole "in an alley with a coat hanger" thing, aren't they at least a little bit responsible for it?
Again, not to be callous here, but I have yet to see a line of reasoning that at all makes it the prolife position's fault or responsibility that desperate and uneducated people exist.
Because there isn't one.
It is humorous how often prolifers get referred to as emotional or religious (and gladly there has been little of that here) while prochoicers tend to be protrayed as the impartial, rational ones... but this whole line of thought is nothing more than "oh look at those poor people... we must do something!"
And yes, we should. The idea that killing their unborn children is at all a solution has yet to be shown, much less that it is a good one. The idea that it could possibly be the best one or, as the "if you make it illegal they'll just go into the alleys with coat hangers" argument assumes, the ONLY alternative is just ludicrous and nothing more than an unreasoned, unsupported assertion based on the idea that people did it once. People also sacrificed their babies to Ba'al once, that doesn't make it a good idea.
Now, as to what the prolife group DOES need to do... well maybe it'll surprise some people what my opinion is on that... maybe it won't, but I'll outlay it in a bit...
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Katarain: I'm a little afraid.
Merely a jest, ma'am. I am not really comparing sex ed to pornography.
and, lest you be afraid of something else, Dagmar Doubledick and his "theatre" are fictitious as well as facetious.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:And why, exactly, is that suddenly everyone's responsibility?
I'm sorry, but if people actually choose to do the whole "in an alley with a coat hanger" thing, aren't they at least a little bit responsible for it?
I just think would make outlawing abortion counterproductive to some degree if people were just going to kill the unborn fetuses anyway, only through less healthy and more dangerous means.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I don't think the circumstances which cause abortion are economic.
I think they are largely social pressures. We've done so much demonizing of pregnancy and child rearing and how difficult and limiting and how much it "ruins your life" once you are pregnant... not to mention the stigma we attach to out of wedlock births. I knew a woman who was openly sexually active and never ashamed of it at all... when she got pregnant she was worried about telling me because I "would know [she] wasn't so pure."
In her mind, being a sexually active college student was fine, but being a mother while she was still in college was evil... made her a bad person. That's how far we've got our moral teaching fouled up.
I have said before and elsewhere that we attach too much stigma to sex. There ARE groups of people afraid to talk about it. I'm VERY easy going on the subject and I get nervous talking to real people about it, particularly when it's my sexuality we're discussing. We need frankness and reality. We need to be able to call things sinful or wrong without making the people who do it out to be sinful or wrong. We need to be able to discuss moral mistakes like mistakes on a math test (though, if we're talking about my parents, this is not such a good idea :-/). We need to be able to discuss moral failures like failing a class at school. And we need to admit our own failures, too.
We need to quit gossiping, quit making ourselves out to be better people than others. We need to approach people with love and understanding and compassion and aid, however little.
And these are not things that can be done by groups of people. They have to be done on an individual basis. Parents so concerned with their reputation that they demand their daughter get an abortion need to be replaced with parents who only care about what is good for their daughter... really good and healthy for her. Boyfriends who treat sex as a touchdown and babies as a penalty need to have their heads rearranged. Girls who think they will have no life if they have a child need to be shown that there is a way to do it, and need to be given the support to do it... not by the government, but by their friends and family.
What prolifers need to do is get off their high horses and get down in the muck... and many of them do... but not as large organizations, but in their lives. When we quit judging women by their promiscuity, when we quit calling girls "slut" and guys "stud" for the same behavior, when we quit raising "men" who feel ok abandoning their progeny, when we quit teaching girls that a child means they can never do anything for themselves again and their life is over and belongs to someone else, when we quit treating children as a life-interrupting disease, or pets, rather than the blessing of heaven (or life, if you prefer) on our race... THEN we will begin to make a dent in demand for Abortion... and, given the lowering in the rates of abortion recently, perhaps we have. One can always hope.
posted
I want to apologize for my strenuous words in this thread.
I am certainly not so cold hearted as to have no sympathy for those who experience pregnancy in less than ideal conditions. My brother had his first child while he was still a recent high school graduate and her mom was still in high school. I was on my third kid before I was able to secure a total family income over $35k a year and had my first while bringing in $9.50 an hour and my second while unemployed.
What I am so worked up about is the idea that by being pro-life I am somehow personally responsible for helping these people make better decisions. It's manipulative to suggest it... like the bum who asked for money getting all pitiful and whiny because I didn't give him enough, in his estimation (really happened, which is why I call him a "bum"). Charity and compassion are surely the greatest of virtues and perhaps that's why I get so riled at being accused of not having them, but they cannot be compelled and whether or not I could conceivably do more to help someone has little bearing on the question of whether their action was morally permissible or not.
So, please forgive me if in my reaction to this I have offended anyone or given the impression that I am unconcerned or unsympathetic to them or their situation. But I insist on being allowed to give on my own terms, so it can be *my* gift. I will not be blackmailed into providing by pictures of human misery.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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