It's hard to say. I'm against abortion when it's done simply because a woman does not want a baby.
But I agree with it in certain circumstances, for example if a woman was raped and fell pregnant, or if the pregnancy would put the woman's life in danger, or if the woman was in no condition to look after a baby (ie drug addict or severely mentally ill).
I was born not long after the cut off point for abortions, and I think it should be lowered now that babies are surviving earlier and earlier out of the womb with modern medicine.
Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes but when you look back, everything is different…
you once called your brain a hard drive, well say hello to the virus.
It's hard to say. I'm against abortion when it's done simply because a woman does not want a baby.
But I agree with it in certain circumstances, for example if a woman was raped and fell pregnant, or if the pregnancy would put the woman's life in danger, or if the woman was in no condition to look after a baby (ie drug addict or severely mentally ill).
i am echoing "invisible girl"'s point here, but this, i really do not understand. and i am not picking you out "control freak" because it is a point that many people bring up in this discussion, you were just the last to post.
i don't understand why you think that an abortion is okay if a woman is raped because it is STILL MURDER. how can it be okay to murder "a baby" in any circumstance, even if the girl/woman was raped or in no condition to handle a baby. i guess the "woman's life in danger" aspect is (only slightly) different. surely that is not an ethical judgement (ie. it is wrong to murder a child) than a moral one (ie. it is wrong to not use protection), and i don't think that judgement has any basis at all really.
i am echoing "invisible girl"'s point here, but this, i really do not understand. and i am not picking you out "control freak" because it is a point that many people bring up in this discussion, you were just the last to post.
i don't understand why you think that an abortion is okay if a woman is raped because it is STILL MURDER. how can it be okay to murder "a baby" in any circumstance, even if the girl/woman was raped or in no condition to handle a baby. i guess the "woman's life in danger" aspect is (only slightly) different. surely that is not an ethical judgement (ie. it is wrong to murder a child) than a moral one (ie. it is wrong to not use protection), and i don't think that judgement has any basis at all really.
Is it more favourable to try look out for the baby than the mother?
18.11 28.4 6.5 22.31
My heart just needs his smile, that i can't forget, like so melancholy a kiss.
Surely you've also got to look out for the quality of life for the baby being born. If you ban abortion you force a woman to carry her embryo inside her. Now what if she's a drug addict? The baby born can have serious damage done to it. Can you force her to take care of the foetus whilst she is pregnant if you can force her to remain pregnant?
i guess the "woman's life in danger" aspect is (only slightly) different.
I think it's more than slightly different, because in most cases, the fetus will die either way. The most common example is probably ectopic pregnancy, which is where the fetus implants someplace other than the uterus (usually the fallopian tubes, but occasionally it can be in the ovary or somewhere else in the abdomen). In that case, medical treatment almost always involves terminating the fetus, which technically is an abortion, but the fetus was only going to survive until it got big enough to rupture whatever organ it was growing in, leading to excessive blood loss for the mother, which would be fatal without treatment and potentially even with treatment, and no more home for the fetus. So the fetus dies either way, but if it's terminated and removed before it ruptures an organ and dies naturally, then there's far less risk to the mother.
I think there are also some developmental abnormalities that could occur in a fetus that did implant correctly that could put the mother's life in danger, but a fetus that's sick enough to put the mother's life at risk isn't going to survive anyway.
I guess another possibility is if the mother needs medical treatment that would put the fetus at risk. The most common example I can think of for that is if the mother has cancer and needs chemotherapy, because chemo will kill a developing fetus (chemo basically kills any rapidly dividing cells, which includes cancer cells, but would also fetal cells... actually, cancer cells are typically more like embryonic cells than normal adult cells, so at the molecular level, a fetus looks quite a bit like a tumor). In that case I suppose it would depend on the condition of the mother to some extent, like if she doesn't have nine months left (or close enough for the fetus to be viable before she dies), then the fetus is going to die either way, but if she'll likely to live long enough to deliver the fetus without chemo but stands a better chance of recovery herself if treatment starts sooner, then it turn into choosing one life over another. But I think that if you're going to say she can't terminate the pregnancy, then if you also say she can't undergo chemo while she's pregnant, it amounts to withholding medical treatment because (for whatever reason) she became pregnant, which personally I'd consider unethical, and I think is at the very least debatable. But if you do allow her to undergo chemo while pregnant, surely that would be worse than simply terminating the pregnancy, because the fetus will probably die anyway, but it's likely to be slower, and there's a chance it could end up surviving but being horribly deformed, and probably dying a painful death shortly after birth (since the chemo would kill most or all of its stem cells, my guess would be that if it somehow did survive, it would basically be incomplete -- like it might be missing organs, or parts of organs, or have organs that stopped growing at various stages and stuff).
So I do think that if the woman's life is in danger, that's a very different situation because most of the time, the fetus in question is going to die no matter what, and if it's not, then there's a significant ethical issue that can amount to deciding which life is more important or more worth saving. And I do think that's fundamentally different to saying it's okay to abort a healthy fetus because it was the product of rape or incest, even though it could develop to term without causing direct physical harm to the mother or preventing her from receiving medical treatment.
Emily
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i don't understand why you think that an abortion is okay if a woman is raped because it is STILL MURDER. how can it be okay to murder "a baby" in any circumstance, even if the girl/woman was raped or in no condition to handle a baby.
Sorry to pick on you but I was too lazy to find every post with a similar message.
The OED defines murder as 1. a. The deliberate and unlawful killing of a human being, esp. in a premeditated manner; (Law) criminal homicide with malice aforethought (occas. more fully wilful murder).
Therefore, the idea of abortion being murder seems to rest on the idea that you are killing a human being. Now as murder is a legal term, for it to be murder, the person killed must also be legally classed as a human being. If this was the case, why are pregnant women not classed as two people on censuses? As a society, we don't consider it to be a human being. When someone has a miscarriage, we don't hold a funeral. When someone is pregnant, they'll say "we have two children and one on the way" rather than "we have three children".
Where do you consider a foetus becomes a human being? If it is at the point of conception, then there are 6 or 7 days before the fertilised egg reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins and 80% of a woman's fertilised eggs don't make it. They are simply flushed out in the period. If you consider life to start at conception then pretty much anyone woman who has had unprotected sex and more than two or three periods is a mass murderer.
A foetus is simply a parasite. It is an entity separate to that of the mother that solely exploits the mother's body in order to survive and grow. A mother may love the thing growing inside her as she knows it will turn into a child that she will love and nurture. However, if that love isn't there and the pregnancy is unwanted, then what is the difference between the foetus and any other parasite. We would happily remove a tapeworm if it was making us ill and we didn't want it. A woman should have every right to decide what lives inside her body and exploits her body.
i don't understand why you think that an abortion is okay if a woman is raped because it is STILL MURDER. how can it be okay to murder "a baby" in any circumstance, even if the girl/woman was raped or in no condition to handle a baby.
But if the baby is born, it probably will be treated in a way so bad it would have been better to not have it in the first place.
If I had got pregnant from rape, I would not want that child, purely because I would take out all the anger and pain and violence from the act on that child, and would probably be reminded of it everytime I saw the child.
A druggie mum (not nice but I can;t think of another way to phrase it) may be so badly addicted the child is born addicted to the drugs. Or she may not care baout the baby because she wants another fix.
I'm not saying all people are like this, It's just what I think will happen.
Sorry to pick on you but I was too lazy to find every post with a similar message.
The OED defines murder as 1. a. The deliberate and unlawful killing of a human being, esp. in a premeditated manner; (Law) criminal homicide with malice aforethought (occas. more fully wilful murder).
Therefore, the idea of abortion being murder seems to rest on the idea that you are killing a human being. Now as murder is a legal term, for it to be murder, the person killed must also be legally classed as a human being. If this was the case, why are pregnant women not classed as two people on censuses? As a society, we don't consider it to be a human being. When someone has a miscarriage, we don't hold a funeral. When someone is pregnant, they'll say "we have two children and one on the way" rather than "we have three children".
Where do you consider a foetus becomes a human being? If it is at the point of conception, then there are 6 or 7 days before the fertilised egg reaches the uterus and pregnancy begins and 80% of a woman's fertilised eggs don't make it. They are simply flushed out in the period. If you consider life to start at conception then pretty much anyone woman who has had unprotected sex and more than two or three periods is a mass murderer.
A foetus is simply a parasite. It is an entity separate to that of the mother that solely exploits the mother's body in order to survive and grow. A mother may love the thing growing inside her as she knows it will turn into a child that she will love and nurture. However, if that love isn't there and the pregnancy is unwanted, then what is the difference between the foetus and any other parasite. We would happily remove a tapeworm if it was making us ill and we didn't want it. A woman should have every right to decide what lives inside her body and exploits her body.
To pick up on that particular point, a baby/foetus born after 24 weeks is seen as a stillbirth (and is registered as a death) as opposed to a miscarriage and as such, can have a funeral held.
18.11 28.4 6.5 22.31
My heart just needs his smile, that i can't forget, like so melancholy a kiss.
pro-life except in cases where the mother's life is in clear danger. the baby/fetus/whatever you want to call it has it's own DNA from the moment of conception, so while it is dependent and attached to the mother's body, it is it's own person, another separate life. taking that life away for no good reason is murder, in my opinion. that's just my stand on things.
I'm pro-choice, but personally I'd never have an abortion, regardless of the circumstance.
My opinion is that abortion is murder, and shouldn't be allowed. However, it's not up to me to judge people on what they choose to do. I don't like the idea of someone having an abortion. One of my friends did for convenience and whilst I didn't like the fact that she'd done it, it was her choice and not really my place to be an opinionated bitch about it.
If I'm asked by someone however, I'll always say not to abort. *Shrugs*
i am too lazy (& don't know how) to multi-quote.
first of all, i am pro-choice. my post earlier was me being critical of some pro-lifer's conflicting ideas. i said "murder" because i was trying to relate to those who do think it's murder. if it is believed to be murder then it will still be murder of a "baby" regardless of how the baby was concieved.
@ invisible girl, to be honest i didn't know much medically about illnesses/diseases that could effect a pregnant woman so i was ambigious. i do think it is different but i didn't want anybody to catch me out on that since i didn't/don't have the proper medical knowledge of mother/feotus illnesses to back it up. i agree with much of your post.
@ invisible girl, to be honest i didn't know much medically about illnesses/diseases that could effect a pregnant woman so i was ambigious. i do think it is different but i didn't want anybody to catch me out on that since i didn't/don't have the proper medical knowledge of mother/feotus illnesses to back it up. i agree with much of your post.
Don't worry -- I wasn't attacking you or anything, I mostly just wanted to explain more about the medical issues :)
Emily
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I am pro-choice. Though I believe murder is wrong and everyone should be given a chance to live, I still think it is more important to have the freedom to have the choice.
Actually I must admit I am slightly torn over this as I can see there are very good arguments for both sides. Everyone should be allowed the chance to live, so by having an abortion you are denying someone that chance, however having a baby can destroy people's lives, as well as the babies. Who'd want to be born into a world where no one loved you? where you weren't wanted? That could do more harm than good.
But as I believe everyone should have a choice, I also believe that baby should have a choice, which it doesn't. So I don't know tbh.
Never forget what you are for the rest of the world will not.
Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you
But I think its only really ok if you get raped (excuse me) or things like that, (to make this short.). I don't know if people who are pro-life know, if you keep it, the man that raped you can have rights to seeing it, and living with it, and so on.
Also, women have worked so hard for our rights, and if the government wanted to, they could take all our rights away tomorrow.
So I kind of feel like, even if it is a good or bad right, pro-life is basically saying take away one of our rights thats ours.
That's part of why I'm pro-choice, and yeah I don't like how pro-choice makes us sound pro-death.
Last edited by Mistakenly Beautiful : 23-10-2008 at 01:26 AM.
Reason: Bad typing :))
I don't like how pro-choice makes us sound pro-death.
The same can be said from the pro-life side, of course (that they're anti-choice), but I think that "pro-death" (or "pro-abortion") would be a separate category, like I consider "anti-choice" a separate category (as I explained in my first post here -- there are people who believe abortion is murder, but then there are also people who see more as a punishment for whatever actions led to the unwanted pregnancy, and it's the latter group that I consider "anti-choice"). However, I've yet to meet anyone who's "pro-death" or "pro-abortion"... Although actually there are probably people out there who would advocate it as a means of population control or such, who I suppose would be pro-abortion...
But yeah, I agree about pro-choice not being the same as pro-abortion. Personally I'd never have an abortion (and I decided that when I wrote a paper on abortion in the 8th grade, so this isn't something I've decided only after I'm old enough to have kids without it completely messing up my life), and my reasons for believing abortions should be legal have nothing to do with thinking it's a "good" thing to do. I feel it's controversial enough that it should be left up to individuals to decide if it's something they want to do, and even if it weren't, banning abortions doesn't stop people from having them.
Emily
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