Abortion: Outlaw all abortions except in the case of fatal/near fatal danger to the mother, as beginning of humanity cannot be defined and we should err on the side of caution. Instead, put tons of money into birth control research and make safe, reliable birth control available for free to anyone who wants it, with penalties for anyone who prevents another person from using birth control (although you can advise against it all you want). Teach safe sex at school, which can only be avoided if the student can pass a test on safe sex and pregnancy. Work to stress the importance of commitment and responsibility.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I will point out that that was well before I registered. Still, there's no such thing as an original idea, right?
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Me, too. And I tend to fall in the middle, in that I think abortion is abused in this country and is often the least morally responsible choice, but I don't agree that abortion might not be the best option under certain extereme circumstances (and also that those choices shouldn't be legislated).
Eljay for president!
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Right. But if we are well educated about the risks involved -- including the risk of birth control not working -- and still choose to have sex, we do so knowing we may end up pregnant. Then we should take responsibility for our actions, and have the baby.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Right. But if we are well educated about the risks involved -- including the risk of birth control not working -- and still choose to have sex, we do so knowing we may end up pregnant. Then we should take responsibility for our actions, and have the baby.
...and recognize that until we are able to raise the baby decently, we should not risk being forced to take on that responsibility, and thus we should not be choosing to have sex.
The time to decide that is not when someone finds out they are already pregnant. The time to decide if you are ready for a child is before committing the act that could make you pregnant.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would also allow abortion in the event that carrying to term would seriously damage the mother's health, even if the risk of death was small. Say a brittle diabetic knows it would be dangerous for her to have babies, so she and her husband adopt, because they want kids. They use BC responsibly, but, lo, she ends up pregnant anyway. The complications could be serious, but with propper treatment she probably won't die. The risks are high for long-term complications, though, that could seriously impair her ability to care for her existing children.
Again, severely extreme circumstances. Not a choice I would ever want to have to make, BUT, I would want that woman to HAVE a choice.
I would also exclude treatments that prevent implantation (such as "morning after" use of hormones) from the ban. They would be useful in situations where BC was known to have failed or rape. The reason I don't have a moral problem with BC that prevents implantation is that a huge percentage of fertilized eggs don't implant anyway (I saw this on Nova when I was pregnant - it made me realize what a miracle it is that anyone is ever born ). So, if life begins at fertilization, I have flushed multiple lived down the toilet without even knowing it, which would be a terrible waste of immortal souls, if you ask me.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:They use BC responsibly, but, lo, she ends up pregnant anyway. The complications could be serious, but with propper treatment she probably won't die. The risks are high for long-term complications, though, that could seriously impair her ability to care for her existing children.
Would you accept embryo transfer instead of abortion for cases like this?
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Am I going to have to break out my Nuvaring sheet o' birth control statistics?
Birth control isn't 100% effective when used PERFECTLY...and we are not perfect creatures.
By all means, break out that sheet. Then break out such a sheet which includes statistics on redundant birth control use resulting in unwanted pregnancies. And the sheet which includes an analysis of how often exactly, when used properly in all ways, birth control tools fail.
Finally, break out the sheet which includes statistics on accidental pregnancies when couples have had the appropriate surgery to avoid fertility, or just don't have sex at all until they believe they are ready to have children.
That first paragraph is serious, the second one is pretty snarky I admit. But your statement of, "We are not perfect people," seems to be to be burying your head in the sand about how accidental pregancies really come about. I'm using the word 'accidental' in a very specific way, of course.
I have never seen even a whiff of the possibility of evidence which suggests that anything more than a tiny percentage of all abortions performed in this country are done when couples are properly educated about birth control and use the tools properly, yet the tools fail within their own small-to-tiny margins of error as manufactured products.
Which is of course the single most obvious reason for educating the populace in sexual education and birth control, and the single most important reason I personally take the stance I do on this issue.
Instead of granting a woman the right to terminate something which may or may not be a human life, why not deny her that right in all but extreme cases (and no, proof of rape or incest would not be required, because those things are hard to prove)...and remind her-and the man, since anything redundant would include him, obviously-of their many rights and methods for avoiding the entire business in the first place?
"It's her body" seems an entirely inadequate response to the question, "Well why didn't you avoid it in the first place?"
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Right. But if we are well educated about the risks involved -- including the risk of birth control not working -- and still choose to have sex, we do so knowing we may end up pregnant. Then we should take responsibility for our actions, and have the baby.
...and recognize that until we are able to raise the baby decently, we should not risk being forced to take on that responsibility, and thus we should not be choosing to have sex.
The time to decide that is not when someone finds out they are already pregnant. The time to decide if you are ready for a child is before committing the act that could make you pregnant.
I think that the time at which people are emotionally ready to have sex is very different from the time at which people are emotionally ready to have children.
To say that people shouldn't have sex unless they're ready to have children eliminates the purpose of family planning altogether, even for married couples.
I'll throw another two complications into the fray, accompanied by an offer to expand on them if it is useful or desirable to anyone.
Regarding a discussion of rights: What do we do about conflicting rights when it isn't a matter of placental connection? That is, does a child's right to life trump your right to keep both your kidneys if you choose to? What if it is someone else's child versus your child who needs a transplant (or does that matter)? Should it be immoral to refuse? More relevantly, should it be illegal to refuse?
Regarding a discussion of responsibility for consequences: If engaging in sex that can result in a pregnancy is irresponsible in a given case, how much is that irresponsibility mitigated by those involved engaging in sex which cannot result in a pregnancy? (e.g., non-heterosexual sex, masturbation, and/or sex that involves different body parts) Is there a problem with the potential fallout from enforcing* this sort of choice (e.g., the current trend of viewing oral or other non-pregnancy related sex as "not really sex;" i.e., as a means to preserve virginity) -- and if there is, how much (if at all) does it weigh against what is gained by maintaining this hardline standard?
I suspect that all of us would have fairly thoughtful and considered responses to these questions, but that they would differ. Some would discuss choosing the lesser of two evils, some would not see a problem raised in a given hypothetical, and so forth. I suspect, though, that we'd each have to give a pretty complicated explanation of what makes for right and wrong policy in these cases (all things considered).
------------
*[Edited to add: As Dagonee has pointed out before, I'm fairly committed to the pragmatist stance. That is, I am willing to make concessions in terms of public policy regarding actions which I find less than positive at the individual level. That is, I might make one choice for myself, and possibly recommend that choice to other individuals, but be unwilling to write enforcement of it into law -- e.g., because of the way the law would be unable to take into account individual circumstances, or the likelihood of disparate enforcement of the law, etc.
This isn't a distinction everyone would make, and I do have respect for those people who take an absolutits stance and are willing to bite the bullet in acknowledging and accepting responsibility for how it eventually falls out.]
quote:That first paragraph is serious, the second one is pretty snarky I admit. But your statement of, "We are not perfect people," seems to be to be burying your head in the sand about how accidental pregancies really come about. I'm using the word 'accidental' in a very specific way, of course.
I have never seen even a whiff of the possibility of evidence which suggests that anything more than a tiny percentage of all abortions performed in this country are done when couples are properly educated about birth control and use the tools properly, yet the tools fail within their own small-to-tiny margins of error as manufactured products.
Do you know how difficult it is to use birth control pills perfectly? Absolutely perfectly?
posted
Of course, if it is at all possible, that would be preferrable. I don't think we're quite there yet, though there are people who are working on it.
Edit: This was in answer to Scott R. My network connection is crawling today.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Would you accept embryo transfer instead of abortion for cases like this?
Scott R, I anticipate a serious furor about this issue when artificial wombs become a viable alternative, and I expect the technology is further along than we generally realize.
For what it's worth, my pro-choice position has never included establishing a "right to the death of the fetus." I'm actually anticipating the time when many of the issues about maternal danger and responsibility can be addressed without necessitating some of these choices.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Right. But if we are well educated about the risks involved -- including the risk of birth control not working -- and still choose to have sex, we do so knowing we may end up pregnant. Then we should take responsibility for our actions, and have the baby.
...and recognize that until we are able to raise the baby decently, we should not risk being forced to take on that responsibility, and thus we should not be choosing to have sex.
Alternately, of course, if someone felt they could not raise the child in their current situation they could give it up for adoption.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I saw an interview with some folks who were trying to find a way to transfer fetuses. I think their research involved using cows. The same show also interviewed a man who was working on developing an articficial womb. That was a few years ago, but both agreed that they were at least a decade away from human trials. I need to do some googling...
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Olivet: I saw an interview with some folks who were trying to find a way to transfer fetuses. I think their research involved using cows. The same show also interviewed a man who was working on developing an articficial womb. That was a few years ago, but both agreed that they were at least a decade away from human trials. I need to do some googling...
There is a Japanese researcher who has developed an artificial womb that carried a goat to term (pretty amazing images, seeing the developing goat backlit throught the pink-and-red artificial womb -- very sci-fi-ish). I've linked to this elsewhere here before, but I haven't time to dig right now.
IIRC, the problem was in getting the goat disengaged from the various tubes and machinery at the time of "birth," and possibly also (stretching my memory here) an issue with the legs breaking (?). But far, far along from where I'd expected. I'm pretty sure I'll see it developed for human use within my lifetime, and that simply boggled my mind.
(Of course, maybe I'm just easily impressed. *grin)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Olivet-- my dad worked in a company (Grenada) that was successful with transferring embryos between cattle.
This was back in the eighties, but he's done some embryo transfer work as early as last year. I'm not sure what the extent of his involvement is...
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
For those who think abortion should be limited to certain cases: If these cases include rape, does the woman have to "prove" that she was raped? If so, how?
Yes, which is an excellent reason to use birth control pills as a part of a sexually-active couple's plan to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. Putting all of one's eggs in one basket is pretty foolish. That's the point of the aphorism so far as I can tell, right?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
(And BTW, I am getting ready to drive 5 hours to a casino where I may or may not have internet access, which I may or may not have time to use anyway -- and not because I'll be gambling. Work stuff. But I'll definitely be back when I can, and please don't take any silence on my part in the upcoming day or two as anger or disinterest. Take care, all.)
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Regarding a discussion of rights: What do we do about conflicting rights when it isn't a matter of placental connection? That is, does a child's right to life trump your right to keep both your kidneys if you choose to? What if it is someone else's child versus your child who needs a transplant (or does that matter)? Should it be immoral to refuse? More relevantly, should it be illegal to refuse?
The simple answer here is that there is a difference between taking an action to end a life and taking an action to save one. I don't think it needs elaboration but I will if you wish.
quote:Regarding a discussion of responsibility for consequences:...
I'm not sure I followed you, CT. I think I'll wait for you to elaborate before I answer there.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by ClaudiaTherese: Regarding a discussion of rights: What do we do about conflicting rights when it isn't a matter of placental connection? That is, does a child's right to life trump your right to keep both your kidneys if you choose to? What if it is someone else's child versus your child who needs a transplant (or does that matter)? Should it be immoral to refuse? More relevantly, should it be illegal to refuse?
Withholding a kidney is passive, with the incidental consequence of death; elective abortion is active, with the express purpose of killing. There's a fairly broad line between the two. Passive apathy can be justified (or at least tolerated) a bit more than active malice, in my opinion.
As for the inevitable question (not from you, but someone) of why a child has a right to use someone else's uterus and not someone else's kidney, I think that gets back to personal responsibilty for pregnancy-causing behavior. But let's assume, for the moment, that the child does NOT have the right to use his/her mother's uterus, in the same way that I don't have the right to swim in my neighbor's pool. Is the death penalty a fitting remedy?
Posts: 326 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
The rape exception is one of the sticking points when you look at the compromise position. I can totally see the number of frivolous rape accusations rising if making the accusation was the only way to get an abortion.
And then in THAT climate, I can see actual rapists getting off because there is just a general sense of reasonable doubt about all rape cases in which the woman gets an abortion.
I AM in favor of the "illegal with exceptions" position, but issues like this are why I think we need to be very careful about taking the plunge into it.
pH, sex is an unusual case, because evolution gave us two conflicting issues:
1. Sex is AWESOME. 2. Sex often results in heavy, life-changing responsibilities.
Our culture teaches young people to expect to have ALL of #1 without ANY of #2. They can feel emotionally-ready for sex because they feel like they're mature, it doesn't seem like a big deal, they're being careful, they're in love, and did I mention, it's AWESOME.
The problem is, you CAN'T have #1 without #2. I'd argue that if someone isn't ready for the risk of pregnancy, then they are NOT entirely ready for sex. They might be ready for the first part, but sex comes as a package deal.
It's like saying that because you're emotionally ready to handle a huge paycheck, that means you're emotionally ready to be the CEO of a major worldwide accounting firm.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, it's a very tricky problem, Puppy. Part of me wants to say, "If many rape claims were made that were untrue, the transgression would be on the individual woman involved and not the state." But then I am left with the same problem: the killing of something which may or may not be a human life.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
As a general rule, I'm against changing ethically-sound laws because they accidentally encourage bad decisions.
For instance, I find the "back-alley abortion" argument TOTALLY unpersuasive. "If we outlaw abortions, millions of women will die getting back-alley abortions with coathangers!" People making bad choices and hurting themselves because the wrong thing they want to do is illegal isn't a reason, for me, to make that thing legal. It strikes me as being akin to giving in to terrorism to allow people to do something awful simply because they threaten to hurt themselves if you don't.
However, back-alley abortions involve people hurting themselves. Frivolous rape accusations hurt innocent victims, so we have to be more careful. A criminal taking himself hostage is a far less sticky situation than a criminal taking other people hostage.
Posts: 1539 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
The rape exception does become a difficult question. In a perfect world, education about the importance of reporting a rape when it happens and why would be included in the manditory sex ed, and then there wouldn't be a question of if a woman is just reporting it because she's pregnant and wants an abortion, because there would be the police report. But there are so many reasons that rape doesn't get reported that I think it would take a sea change in our culture to make that effective. Which I'm hoping the widespread sex ed and free birth control would help with. But, when it gets down to it, I would take the woman at her word.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Puppy, the thing is, I disagree with your premise that "[o]ur culture teaches young people to expect to have ALL of #1 without ANY of #2". I agree that there is oversexualization (particularly in advertising), but I don't know how you can correlate the two. Maybe certain parts have glorified it... But I still consider this a playing out of the reaction of the prior culture that taught the opposite concerning #1, and taught correctly #2 (and for much longer, mind you). Today it's swung a bit the other way, with (assuming your school system has any sort of credible sex ed) at worst being mum on #2, IMO, but not teaching the opposite.
At some point, we're going to realize and internalize #1 and #2 at an intellectual level, and maybe then we can make some headway.
It depends on which end of the spectrum you've started on, I suppose. I don't know what my point is exactly, but that one sentence bugged me for some reason.
posted
I think it also depends on whether Puppy meant modern American culture when he said "our culture." To varying degrees, young people have been having unmarried sex for as long as there have been young people.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:Regarding a discussion of rights: What do we do about conflicting rights when it isn't a matter of placental connection?
This is pretty much the central question of the idea of legally enforceable rights. The key is to balance the interests and make a decision - something easy to say and difficult to do.
Factors for possible consideration are the responsibility of the mother for the pregnancy (ranging from unprotected sex through failed birth control through rape), the risk of harm to the mother (ranging from severe inconvenience for 9 months and the associated risks of pregnancy through life-altering change through mental or physical health risks to death), and the nature of the fetus being aborted.
Because of my beliefs on the final factor, the responsibility factor ends up being discarded for me. If the act of abortion is killing a human being, then we have a long history of moral justifications for killing human beings to draw on. If responsibility is taken into account, then it should be taken into account on both sides. The fetus will usually have less and sometimes have the same amount of responsibility for the situation. This is ultimately why even rape doesn't change the outcome for me.
So the choice becomes balancing the consequences. Again, I'm starting from the premise that the consequence for the fetus is the death of a human being. We generally allow private persons to take life only in response to imminent threat of serious bodily injury (although some states allow deadly force in response to property threats as well).
It is a relatively new innovation in the law that allows the legal taking of the life of an "innocent" (a person who did not intentionally create the life-threatening situation), and it is not universally allowed in the common-law jurisdictions of the world. It used to be only allowed to kill someone who had some moral culpability in the existence of the life-threatening scenario. Even today, deadly force cannot be used to defend property from a non-culpable person.
Pregnancy, of course, is unique in that it is not property but the body which has been "trespassed" upon. However, this difference is clearly not at the heart of the current abortion rights scheme, since unborn babies who could survive outside the womb can be destroyed instead of simply removed from the place they are "trespassing."
Even prior to such circumstances, however, the temporary (albeit long) "trespass" does not outweigh the harm caused by killing a human being (which is my premise, remember).
quote:That is, does a child's right to life trump your right to keep both your kidneys if you choose to? What if it is someone else's child versus your child who needs a transplant (or does that matter)? Should it be immoral to refuse? More relevantly, should it be illegal to refuse?
Jim-Me summed up my answer to this succinctly. As you know, I've never been able to articulate fully why the distinction between action and inaction is so important, which suggests to me that it is very close to a first principle for me.
Not all inaction is morally non-culpable, of course. Refusing to reach into a bathtub to pull out a baby that has just fallen into the water is nearly as morally repugnant as putting the baby in the bathtub to drown in the first place. Both actions are well into the moral equivalent for murder for me.
But the greater the risk a particular act poses for the actor (and kidney donation is not without serious risks, as opposed to reaching into a bathtub to pick up a baby) and the expected benefit (the success rate of kidney transplants is not nearly as great as the success rate of picking up a baby who just fell into a bathtub), the less moral culpability I think exists. At some point on the risk/success chart, there is no moral obligation to act to attempt to save someone, even though to make the attempt would be a moral good. You'll note that I haven't ventured an opinion as to which side of the chart the kidney transplant situation would fall.
The moral line for actions is not nearly as graduated. It is wrong to kill the only other shipwreck survivor to eat him (or, to be less gruesome, to prolong the amount of water left).
The action/inaction distinction is far more important with respect to what actions should be legal. Essentially, far more actions should be legally forbidden than are legally required. The force of law is a terrible one - necessary, but inherently coercive, and to be reserved for particular types of harms and particular types of causes of harms. I would likely be opposed to the kidney donation being required by law.
This is a fairly consistent principle in my moral outlook - witness the discussion about forcing pharmacists to fill particular prescriptions we've had.
The huge fuzzy area I've left untouched, of course, is that many inactions can be expressed in terms of acting and vice-versa. So before the analysis I've alluded to above can even be reached, a whole other complex question ("Is this an act or an omission?") needs to be answered. However, I think the answer to that single question is clear in the abortion/kidney transplant hypothetical.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:To varying degrees, young people have been having unmarried sex for as long as there have been young people.
Absolutely. In past times, though, I think they had a better understanding that their actions might lead to pregnancy which would in turn result in a significant weight of responsibility. Increasingly, it seems to me, sex is divorced from parenthood in most of the informational forums in which it is presented to adolescents.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I would dispute that (tricky to do, as neither of us can offer data). If anything teenagers today have more data available to them than ever before. The problem is not only one of misinformation or ignorance, it is also one of "this can't happen to me" and willful ignorance. And those are ancient.
Something else to figure, in these deliberations. If a woman is raped and keeps the baby, can she have the father's parental rights permanently blocked? Annulled?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
quote:In past times, though, I think they had a better understanding that their actions might lead to pregnancy which would in turn result in a significant weight of responsibility.
When you say "past times," what time period(s) are you referencing? I don't think I would agree that, for example, medieval adolescents had such an understanding. If you mean something within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, then I don't think that would be unreasonable (though I still wouldn't take it as a given).
quote:Increasingly, it seems to me, sex is divorced from parenthood in most of the informational forums in which it is presented to adolescents.
I can't really judge this. I haven't noticed a change in the relevant portion of my lifetime, but I'm 25.
I have had sex with little regard for the consequences, but that's precisely what I'm suggesting people have always done (and, I think, will always continue to do).
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
My belief is that the movement from an agrarian society to an urban society removes one of the most powerful teaching methods about the connection between sex and parenthood. That's partially where my comment was coming from.
I agree there's more information than ever before, but I believe that the information holds dramatically less immediacy to adolescents, and so doesn't have a significant effect in their decision processes.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:I don't think I would agree that, for example, medieval adolescents had such an understanding. If you mean something within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, then I don't think that would be unreasonable (though I still wouldn't take it as a given).
Heh, I would tend to think the opposite!
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:I don't think I would agree that, for example, medieval adolescents had such an understanding. If you mean something within the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, then I don't think that would be unreasonable (though I still wouldn't take it as a given).
Heh, I would tend to think the opposite!
I agree. The mere fact of living centuries ago doesn't make people stupid. They understood cause & effect.
Posts: 326 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
They were also much less removed from the lives and breeding livestock and other animals than most people are today.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:I don't think I would agree that, for example, medieval adolescents had such an understanding.
Are you saying that medival adolescents didn't know that preganacy comes from sex?
No. Nor am I suggesting they were stupid. I'm saying there's no reason to think that they were more mindful of the consequences of sex than modern adolescents.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Reason #1: They were much less removed from the lives and breeding livestock and other animals than most people are today.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
I won't try to convince you. My reasons for believing this are perhaps too convoluted to lay out and certainly affected by growing up in a rural area.
I think the decision to have sex is often a thoughtless one, as you've pointed out. But I also believe that even thoughtless decisions (or maybe especially thoughtless decisions) are strongly influenced by the stories and metaphors of our everyday lives, and in severing ourselves from farms we've also severed a strong psychological tie between sex and parenthood.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
| IP: Logged |
I just wanted to add (and perhaps it has already been mentioned and I missed it) - that although any debate about abortion seems to always bring up all these "special case scenarios" (rape, incest, life of mother endanger, failure of birth control even when used properly) -- the already documented statistics show that BY FAR most abortions taking place at present fall into none of those special cases. Very very very few of current-day pregnancies resulting in abortion fit into those special criteria. Most are convenience and/or financial, and the pregnancy came about via unprotected, consensual sex.
posted
And we replaced that with television series which show attractive young people bed-hopping with no consequences whatsoever. Where if someone does get pregnant, it's a punchline and they give birth to a perfect, beautiful baby then carry on their sitcom lives as if nothing ever happened.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Senoj, I was originally going to ask you to elaborate on it. It might be worth exploring in a thread of its own.
I grew up in a rural area myself -- a town nominally of roughly 3,000 that more than doubled in size when the local university was in session. Though I grew up "in town," so perhaps it would be fairer to say that I grew up near a rural area.
My perception in adolescence was that, in this regard, there was no significant difference between kids who'd grown up "in town" and kids who'd grown up on farms outside town. But I wasn't doing those sorts of things as an adolescent, so my perception could certainly be skewed, or my town could have been abnormal.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Farmgirl, we HAVE discussed that, and I think everyone agrees that that is a bad state of affairs. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are circumstances under which a moral person might choose abortion. So the argument of special circumstances does have a place in the discussion of whether or not abortion should ever be legal.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Still, there's no such thing as an original idea, right?
![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
). So, if life begins at fertilization, I have flushed multiple lived down the toilet without even knowing it, which would be a terrible waste of immortal souls, if you ask me.
![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
)![[Wink]](wink.gif)
