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Questions for pro-lifers

LibraryLady said:
I refuse to discuss abortion with any anti-abortion person who has not adopted a child.
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Who exactly is it that wants to talk with you anyway?

"I won't sign autographs for those who ADORE me.... No, go away! Let me be!"
 
American said:
Who exactly is it that wants to talk with you anyway?

"I won't sign autographs for those who ADORE me.... No, go away! Let me be!"
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Various people, co-workers, people who are canvassing, etc. Why? Don't you ever get in these discussions?
 
Art Vandelay said:
I think that there are important shades of meaning of "opposed to abortion". There's "it's a shame that happened", there's "that's morally wrong, but it should be legal", there's "that should be illegal", and many more opinions in between. Which is why I distinguish between "pro-life" and "anti-choice". Many people in the former category are not in the latter. Oh, and
"trial" comes from the verb "to try", of which the correct conjugation here is "tried".

peptoabysmal Actually, it doesn't always terminate a human life; conception can happen a few days after intercourse. If the morning after pill is an abortificant, so is regular birth control. And sometimes it's taken after a rape, or a drunken act, or otherwise unplanned event.
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The emergency contraceptive/morning-after pill has three possible ways in which it can work (as does the regular birth control pill):

Ovulation is inhibited, meaning the egg will not be released;

The normal menstrual cycle is altered, delaying ovulation;
or
It can irritate the lining of the uterus so that if the first and second actions fail, and the woman does become pregnant, the human being created will die before he or she can actually attach to the lining of the uterus.
In other words, if the third action occurs, her body rejects the living human embryo, and the child will die. This result is a chemical abortion. ...http://www.morningafterpill.org/mapinfo1.htm
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It can terminate a life. How about "attempted murder?" Is there a way to tell if a life was terminated or just avoided being created? I don't know...
It also carries a good deal of health risk for the woman who uses it. My greatest objection to abortion is when it is used just because the parents can't afford a child or some other reason which creates hardship on the parent. Being a parent is hard. This reason is the overwhelming reason that abortion is used and far outweighs all of the cases we are talking about in this thread. The pro-abortion side has always used scare tactics and "what if" questions to promote it's cause.

"Why not" doesn't seem like a good reason to charge someone with murder, nor does mere precedent. It also seems to conflict with your position on the first question. Is it not murder if the woman was raped?
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Mere precedent? Precedent is valid in court. We are talking about changes to law here. My view that it's OK to abort a child of rape is not rational and based more on retribution towards the rapist, which is why I said I would prefer to torture the perpetrator.

Why is it legal for a woman to have an abortion in more states than it is for a woman to sell her body in prostitution? Isn't it her body and she can do with it what she wants?
 
kimiko said:
As one of my younger sisters has Downs, is severely retarded, cannot speak, is mostly deaf, and has a host of other health problems, I can say with some experience that a severely developmentally disabled child is not a case of "inconvenience". The vast majority of people don't have the faintest clue what kind labor is involved in caring for a child like that.
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I apologize. I did not mean to downplay the significance of caring for a handicapped child. I still do not agree that the amount of labor involved is reason enough to terminate a life.

For one thing, this relies on a prediction made before birth. What if the prediction is inaccurate and the child is born, maybe not perfect, but healthier than predicted?

What if Steven Hawking's mother had information before his birth that he would develop ALS? (Yes, I know that this not a hereditary disease, just giving an example of someone who is severely disabled and yet the world would be a little less without his contribution)
 
peptoabysmal said:
My greatest objection to abortion is when it is used just because the parents can't afford a child or some other reason which creates hardship on the parent. Being a parent is hard. This reason is the overwhelming reason that abortion is used and far outweighs all of the cases we are talking about in this thread. The pro-abortion side has always used scare tactics and "what if" questions to promote it's cause.
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Just curious, what kind of neighborhood do live in? I live in a fairly bad one, not dangerous-to-walk-down-the-street caliber bad, but still not one where I want to eventually settle down. I live on the second floor of a two family house, and my downstairs neighbor is not a decent person.

She has three kids, and treats them miserably. During the summer, when we have our windows open, she can be heard screaming (and I do mean screaming) at them in the middle of the street: "Get your !@#$ in here or I'll beat the !@#$ !@#$ out of you!" At night, when they are inside, you can hear more of the same through the floor. Child services has been called on her several times, but what they've accomplished is hard to tell.

You can't tell me this person (I have a hard time calling her that) should ever have had these kids. They are obviously unwanted, and will therefore suffer neglect and abuse, making it extremely difficult for them to amount to something more than their parent. I feel sorry for them.

This neighbor of mine is hardly unique on my block. You hear similar instances all the time, but hers is the most obvious to cite since she lives right under me.
 
Jesus said:
Just curious, what kind of neighborhood do live in? I live in a fairly bad one, not dangerous-to-walk-down-the-street caliber bad, but still not one where I want to eventually settle down. I live on the second floor of a two family house, and my downstairs neighbor is not a decent person.
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Now I live on a large ranch in the country. No neighbors for miles. I have plenty of urban experience under my belt. I have lived in one place where it was dangerous to walk down the street.

She has three kids, and treats them miserably. During the summer, when we have our windows open, she can be heard screaming (and I do mean screaming) at them in the middle of the street: "Get your !@#$ in here or I'll beat the !@#$ !@#$ out of you!" At night, when they are inside, you can hear more of the same through the floor. Child services has been called on her several times, but what they've accomplished is hard to tell.
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This sounds rather tame actually. I had a neighbor whom I had to regularly rescue from getting the hell beat out of her by her husband while she was pregnant. Screaming, yelling, cursing... all the time, all hours of day and night. I still have pain in my lower back from one encounter with this brute.

You can't tell me this person (I have a hard time calling her that) should ever have had these kids. They are obviously unwanted, and will therefore suffer neglect and abuse, making it extremely difficult for them to amount to something more than their parent. I feel sorry for them.
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And if she didn't have kids, she would maybe have drug addicts hanging out at all hours, who knows? You can't cure crappy people with abortion.

This neighbor of mine is hardly unique on my block. You hear similar instances all the time, but hers is the most obvious to cite since she lives right under me.
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Is abortion legal right now and applies to this situation? Is so, then why didn't this woman make use of it? Are you suggesting that perhaps there should be some government agency who decides who should be parents and makes those unworthy undergo manditory abortion?

Abortion won't solve the kind of problem you cite here. It sounds like you wish you had some right to perform retroactive abortion on this woman's children.
 
1) Are you against abortion in cases of rapes ?
2) Are you against abortion when tests show severe developmental problems of the fetus ? (we assume mother's life is not in danger)
3) Do you consider the emergency contraception ("morning-after" pill) to be abortion ? If not, why ?
4) Do you think that women who abort should be tried for murder ? If you answered "yes" in (3), what about those who have taken the "morning-after" pill ?
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I fall into the anti-abortion camp and it's for reasons that seem more nearly religious than anything else in my life.

Humanity is a thing I hold most dear. In a perfect world all pregnancies would represent the joyful propagation of humanity. It's from this "perfect world" perspective that leaves me thinking that abortion represents a diminishment of that which I hold dear. In America it happens over a million times a year and it boggles the mind. It says something to me about who we really are that I don't like to entertain.

On the other side of the "pro-life" issue there is the death penalty. I'm not against it. When horrors afflict the body and mind of the public it can be a good and necessary thing to remove them. Capital crimes causing extreme suffering of the defenseless are examples of horrors afflicting the public mind.

I say this because it's important to me how acts affect the mind. 1) Rape is such a violent intrusion that I would support a woman choosing to abort for her mental wellbeing or to carry her pregnancy full term so that something good might yet arise from the horror - also a mental wellbeing argument.

2) Severe developmental problems? Were I a woman I believe I'd choose to abort. It's a test of my respect for humanity that I find hard to explain. I would want the best for my child and for humanity. Looking at it from my male perspective and unsentimentally I think I'd embrace the abortion choice as the best one.

3) I don't consider the morning after pill to be abortion. The morning after there may, in fact, be nothing to abort. The true reality of what happens is unknown. Abortion is a choice when the reality of growing life in your womb is known. I do not put "morning after contraception" or any contraception technique at the same level as choosing abortion. To me, the acts spring from different mental postures because of different known realities.

4) No, they generally shouldn't be tried for murder. I think there might be some extreme circumstance I could imagine where I wouldn't mind if they were. For instance, carrying a fetus nearly to term and then aborting to punish the father to gain some perceived power or control over him. Or to do it repeatedly just to gain notoriety and raise anger in the population. Not a likely situation. But it takes all kinds and people are known to go to extremes to make their statement.

I am anti-abortion but very pro-choice. I think we show our character in the choices we make. Life is about making choices. I wish the situation was was so much more rare. A million times a year in America alone seems like an abomination. I'd sure like to think better of humanity - it's all we got.
 
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wolfgirl said:
There is a big difference between the morning-after pill (emergency contraception) and the abortion pill (RU-486). Are you aware of that?
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Yes I am. I am sort of being tongue-in-cheek about this question since it is one of those "what-ifs" that is thrown around to make you think about abortion in another light.

The regular pill is abortion in it's most literal sense, and I'm OK with that. Abortion is a "nice" name for termination when it's used to refer to a fetus.
 
LibraryLady said:
I refuse to discuss abortion with any anti-abortion person who has not adopted a child.
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This is an argument that one would expect from the anti-abortion camp because it sounds as if you consider pregnancies and births as a life purpose.

Are there any statistics that point whic part of the population in the States has the highest rates in abortions? Do we have similar statistics for the part of the population in which children never know who their father is?
 
peptoabysmal said:
I apologize. I did not mean to downplay the significance of caring for a handicapped child.
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Thank you. :)
I still do not agree that the amount of labor involved is reason enough to terminate a life.
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Neither do I, but that's not quite the judgement parents have to make; they have to decide whether they will be able to adequately care for the child they bring into the world.
For one thing, this relies on a prediction made before birth. What if the prediction is inaccurate and the child is born, maybe not perfect, but healthier than predicted?
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That's why the decision is so heart-wrenching.
What if Steven Hawking's mother had information before his birth that he would develop ALS? (Yes, I know that this not a hereditary disease, just giving an example of someone who is severely disabled and yet the world would be a little less without his contribution)
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Although severely disabled, he is still exceptionally high-functioning.
 
peptoabysmal said:
Now I live on a large ranch in the country. No neighbors for miles. I have plenty of urban experience under my belt. I have lived in one place where it was dangerous to walk down the street.


This sounds rather tame actually. I had a neighbor whom I had to regularly rescue from getting the hell beat out of her by her husband while she was pregnant. Screaming, yelling, cursing... all the time, all hours of day and night. I still have pain in my lower back from one encounter with this brute.
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Even though there are worse neighborhoods, and worse people, this is hardly tame. I can't call child abuse tame just because other kids might be in harder situations. These kids have the deck stacked against them from the start, and it's not fair to them, or the taxpayers who have to support them, since the mother obviously can't.

And if she didn't have kids, she would maybe have drug addicts hanging out at all hours, who knows? You can't cure crappy people with abortion.
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Actually, she has already taken care of that department. There are plenty of cretins hanging out with her already, and influencing the kids. In the summer, I usually have to climb over people who don't live there, but hang out anyway.


Is abortion legal right now and applies to this situation? Is so, then why didn't this woman make use of it? Are you suggesting that perhaps there should be some government agency who decides who should be parents and makes those unworthy undergo manditory abortion?

Abortion won't solve the kind of problem you cite here. It sounds like you wish you had some right to perform retroactive abortion on this woman's children.
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She is incapable of handling these children in a productive way, therefore she shouldn't have had them. Look, I'm pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I believe people who don't want kids, myself included, should practice responsible birth control at all times. Abortion should be the absolute last resort, and should not be used lightly.

However, given that this person did not have the sense to use proper birth control, she should not have had the kids if they were just going to be born into an abusive household. Would she be a more decent person if she had had an abortion(s)? Of course not, but at least she wouldn't be putting these kids through torment, and basically destroying their chances at a productive adult life.
 
Cleopatra said:
This is an argument that one would expect from the anti-abortion camp because it sounds as if you consider pregnancies and births as a life purpose.Quote]

That's certainly not how I meant it. Most anti-abortion people I meet are also against subsidized daycare, more money for education, and other child oriented programs. As someone else on the thread stated, as long as the child is in utero, his or her life is sacred. After the child is born, who cares?

Therefore, unless someone has demonstrated concern for an unwanted child by adopting and caring for it, I cannot take that person's attitudes against abortion seriously.

This is probably bad logic and someone will, no doubt, point out the fallacy, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I know a large number of families who have indeed adopted, not to mention one of my cousins, and also one of my closest friends are adoptees as well.
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Ok, i have a question, at some point i may get a child with a significant other through in-vitro(if she really wants to). For me to accept that i would want really good tests for autism and the like performed on the fertilized eggs.

So, we have a batch of fertilized eggs. lets say 20, in a petri dish.
Is it ok to throw away the 10 of them that are severely handicaped?
Is it ok to throw away 5 of them and only put the last 5 into the uterus?

Just wondering which of those constitute murder for pro-lifers.

note: i have no idea how many eggs you play with in reality, but the number shouldn't really matter.
 
peptoabysmal said:
My greatest objection to abortion is when it is used just because the parents can't afford a child or some other reason which creates hardship on the parent.
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What's wrong with that reason? Is there something wrong with not wanting to spend the rest of your life in poverty?

Mere precedent? Precedent is valid in court. We are talking about changes to law here.
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Courts aren't supposed to make the law, but interpret it. The legislators are supposed to make law, so they should have some reason other that precedent.

The pro-abortion side has always used scare tactics and "what if" questions to promote it's cause.
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"Pro-abortion side"? Who are they?

What if Steven Hawking's mother had information before his birth that he would develop ALS?
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What if he had been conceived through rape? Would that be an argument for rape?

Mark
Given that any sexually active woman is flushing fertilized eggs most every month (look it up) how does this affect the "Right to life" argument? Are all sexually active women serial killers? Is God a serial killer?
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Can you give more details?
 
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