Debate Abortion

Basher, your posts are making less and less sense here. I'm not even sure what you're arguing here. My position is that a woman should be free to choose to have an abortion if she wants one. You're going off on a tangent about laws which only apply in the US, and which only take effect if the parents are willing to force their daughter to have an abortion she doesn't want, which I'm assuming isn't a particularly common occurence. As I said, I'm pro-choice. Choice being the important word in that sentence. I never said I was in favour of parents being able to force their children to have abortions, because I amn't. Frankly, I don't see what it has to do with the debate at all, as this thread is about debating whether abortions should be freely accessible. Obscure laws like the one you mentioned really don't have anything to do with that. If you want to stop things like that from happening, get rid of that crazy law; don't argue that all abortions should be banned.

Edit: Whoops, sorry, I probably should have re-read your first post again. OK, I realise that you're not arguing that all abortions should be banned, but I still don't agree with you using that anecdote about the girl whose parents forced her to get an abortion as evidence to back up your position. We're arguing the principle of freedom to choose here, obscure laws which only apply in very specific areas and extremely uncommon circumstances really don't have much to do with that.

 

I think you need to re read Basher19's opinions on this topic.

 

I for one am against abortions. If they don't want to have the baby they can always give it up to adoption. What right does anyone have to take a life especially one so young. If the child lives they might oneday become a person of great importance. I am also pro-choice but people should just come to their senses and figure it out that abortions are just plain wrong.

Also shouldn't the parents have been more careful when they were having sex. The majority of people who have abortions are teenagers or 20 somthing years olds who are just to wrapped up in their own hormones to think about the consequences of having sex.

Also about people saying how it isn't killing unless the fetus is 6 months old or less, it is still denying the existence of living thing which has its own right to live.

So anyway no on abortions

 

Um, according to this your pro-life. I am a little confused on what you mean by that. Other then that I total agree with you.

 

I mean that people have the right to make up their own minds but sometimes the choices ar not the best ones. Almost everybody has the right to live. (hope you understood that!)

 

I should throw in my two cents on a topic that I find very important.

The only allowances I would give for an abortion would be if it were in the case that the mother's life is in danger if she were to give birth, or in the case of rape where it was not the mother's choice to have sex in the first place. With that said, I'm not 100% against abortion. HOWEVER, I consider myself pro-life.

Why? Because an abortion terminates human life. It is essentially murder.
I realize that some people choose to abort because they don't want to bring a child into a world where their lives, they believe, are destined to be painful and, at a lack for a better term, not good. But by this reasoning, it is then not immoral to go around and kill every homeless bum or hopeless low-income inhabitants of the world so we can save them from "suffering."

The following facts are not my own words, but taken from a friend. I can't put it any better:

The zygote meets all of the scientific criteria needed to establish the existence of biological life: metabolism, development, the ability to react to stimuli, and cell reproduction. Thus, according to purely scientific definitions, life is indeed terminated in an abortion.

The debate over exactly "when" a human being can be said to exist in the mother's womb is directly linked to the evolutionary theory called ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (a.k.a. Recapitulation.) The theory states that in the course of an embryo's development (ontogeny), the embryo repeats (recapitulates) the evolutionary history of its species (phylogeny). Thus, the embyro, over a thirty-eight week period of time, was believed to pass through a protozoan stage, a fish stage, a reptile stage, a bird stage, a primate stage, and ultimately, its human stage. It was believed that the embryo didn't reach its human stage until about the twelfth week of pregnancy. This theory was used as a defense for abortion, claiming that a first trimester abortion didn't constitute the killing of a human fetus, but rather the termination of a "lesser" species, such as a fish or a frog.

Of course, this theory has been proven, in modern science, to be total nonsense. Modern science has revealed that the developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life; it doesn't repeat (recapitulate) any "evolutionary history." To quote French geneticist Jerome L. LeJeune: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence." To argue that a human being doesn't exist until a specific point in its development requires scientific ignorance.

If anyone would like to argue that a fertilized egg isn't "complex enough" to constitute human life, keep in mind that the zygote contains 500,000 pages worth of chemical instructions, even when it's the size of a pinhead. This "encyclopedia" contains the instructions for the egg's genetic future. In time, this fertilized egg divides into the 30 trillion cells that comprise the human body, including 12 billion brain cells, which form more than 120 trillion connections. The developing human remains a member of its species throughout this ENTIRE process.

There is only one conclusion, and it's summed up nicely by Dr. Hymie Gordon, a professor of medical genetics and a physician: "It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception."
-Odin

 

Thanks I understand now.

I am going to use this in my next pro-life meeting (Yes, I am in a club at school) I mean that quote makes a lot of sense.

 

I feel abortions should be a last resort if birth has a good chance of seriously injuring/killing either/both of the people involved.



Also, to everyone who feels that the "life begins at conception" argument is valid, while its essentially true, I have here a dillema for you.

As you know, many, many animals are killed for food.

Is that fair to them? Its not like they get a say.

Go vegetarian you say?

Sick bastard.

You'd actually be killing more animals with a vegetarian diet due to the billions of field animals killed by the machinery.

The only way to prevent those deaths is if you plant and pick those crops by hand, possibly by yourself to make sure those animals dont die.

"But Neph, you silly boy, that isn't convenient at all!" you say?

So wait. You're saying that needless deaths are ok if its convenient?

My my, quite the double standard.

If you're STILL fighting this argument, you might say that animals are a lesser life form and dont count.

By what standards? Is it their potential?

If you feel that a beings potential is what deems there worth, then every woman who has a definite oppurtunity for a good education/good job should be allowed abortions, as an unwanted child could destroy those and thus ruin HER potential and replace it with unguaranteed potential.

God, I love playing Devils Advocate.

 

A minor note: Intentional genocide based on religion is a tad different from (as in the example given) a single abortion which may be occuring for one of several reasons.


And as a side note, people often bring up the "mother with a lot of kids will give birth to a deaf kid" and they rattle on about his disadvantages like poverty and such, and if you say "Yes, abort", you get Beethoven. If you don't abort the vegetarian, non smoking, non drinking man, you get Hitler. Using your logic, I should kill all "good" kids and let the severely flawed be the only living people. You can't predict what a child will be like due to traits he may have.

Personally, I think we should have baby liscences. Until you obtain your liscence, your reproductive cycle is disruped somehow to prevent conception. Oh yes, I hear your cries. "But I can be a good mother!"

I dont care, Person With Good Intentions. Given overcrowding, dwindling resources and the like, you need to prove you deserve to have a kid. In the meantime, here's a baby monkey. Enjoy.

 

Neph, I agree with you so much on the issue of baby licenses, it's not even the beginnings of funny. I see so many utterly incompetent people with children, kids who are growing up in a doomed environment, destined to be nothing more than the same scum that they're being raised by. It's sickening. And I'm not just talking about economics. Parents who are rich can create just as awful catastrophes passing for children as the abjectly poor can.

"Question 1: Your child is: A) Precious B) A nuisance C) A punching bag" - If you answer B or C, NO KID FOR YOU!.

*cough* Anyways, I should go to bed.

- Ark

 

Medically speaking, that may be true, but there's a problem with using it to back up an anti-abortion position. Firstly, let's take souls out of the equation. I'm an atheist, I don't believe in the things. Now without the idea of a soul, what is it that seperates human life from animal life? I mean, since most of you presumably eat animals, I'm assuming that you don't have any objections to their slaughter. So what makes human life so sacred? Answer: The capability for rational, abstract thought. Something which a clump of cells the size of my thumb definitely doesn't have. And that's why I don't see a problem with aborting a fetus.

 

Then this argument, taken to the extreme, could be used for the extermination of the mentally ill and those who no longer show that they are capable for rational, abstract thought. Of course, since you don't believe in the soul, it would be difficult for me to debate any more with you using that example. So anyway . . .

You said that a fetus does not have "the capability for rational, abstract thought." The definition of "capability" is "the ability to undergo or be affected by a given treatment or action" and is also defined as "qualities, abilities, etc., that can be used or developed." By the very definition of capability, a fetus IS INDEED CAPABLE of rational and abstract thought. These human skills can be developed.

A baby that's just been born is only in the preoperational stage of cognitive development - their thought is tightly bound to physical and perceptual experiences. This is a much less rational and abstract train of thought than that compared to an adult who has reached the formal-operational stage where they have developed and grown to be capable of having cognitive abilities that allow them to think in more and more abstract terms. A fetus is just earlier in the stages of growth than a born baby. These are skills that take time to be acquired, which humans are capable of doing since they are actively developing towards this stage of life since they were a fetus.

-Odin

 

One could also argue that those people are a drain on society and thus it would be beneficial to kill em therefore freeing up some more resources.

Im not saying "lets wipe out every non-perfect human", Im just playing devils advocate here.

 

You're twisting the meaning of 'capability' there. Regardless of the dictionary definition of capability, a fetus is unable to think rationally and abstractly. It can't. Period. In fact, until a good bit into the pregnancy, it doesn't have a brain to think with at all. You're arguing against abortion because the fetus has the potential to develop the capability for abstract thought, and as I said earlier, if you're going to start going down that road, you might as well protest against condoms and masturbation because those sperm also have the potential to develop the capability for abstract thought, they just have a bit further to go than the fetus does.

 

I've noticed that you all are kind of ignoring this post. Even though it gives good points, maybe some people don't want to change what they think..

I guess the people here who believe in abortion think that my niece should have been slaughtered just because my sister wasn't ready for her and just because she wasn't "capable of thought" at the time. I guess they think that she isn't worthy to be alive right now because women when they are in that situation of pregnancy during their teen years should just give up because none of them can handle raising a child.

My sister is now married, not to the guy who raped her but a pretty good father who accepted that she had a child and loved them both. Joel and my sister have a family with my niece and two other sons now.. And Melanie is now an intelligent girl who makes her family proud.

It's interesting to see some Piaget used here

 

People have different experiences and different views in life and of life and of other things. That is exactly why debates like this come up. And most of all, no one is ever perfect (except for maybe Richard Simmons. What a bod). And That Guy; you are completely twisting what being "pro-choice" is. Pro-choice isn't saying "you're not old enough, the child could be handicapped, it could be deformed, the birth could kill you, so let's kill the fetus". It's giving the woman the opportunity to take up such a chance. Saying such things as "I guess the people here who believe in abortion think that my niece should have been slaughtered just because my sister wasn't ready for her and just because she wasn't "capable of thought" at the time." shows you really don't understand what our side is. Before you start to argue it, you should know what exactly it is you are arguing against. If I ever came off as thinking that all situations should be aborted, I'm sorry, because that's not what I meant.

I just hope that when this world becomes insanely overpopulated with orphanages and adoption agencies flooded with kids, that some of you won't make a complete one-eighty and regret such a thing happened. As I said, surely, things as abortion and (to please a certain few out there) "illegitimate" pregnancies will continue to happen all the while and, I at least think, it's impossible to get rid of it all. Doing research on certain subjects is an iffy thing, as well, because in spite of what everyone may say, they are always biased... for example, about Post Abortion Syndrome, did they mention anyone that was okay after the abortion? Problem is, neither Pro-Choice nor Pro-Life really makes a point that could contradict theirs (Which is really the whole point of debating, I guess). But, as I said, the information you are getting is biased, so you really have to do complete and utter research on all aspects for it to really be fair, if you're going to rely on research that is.

But anyway, everyone is different, so everyone will have different ideas, different ways of handling things, different ways of thinking about certain situations. So, let me ask you a hypothetical question... if your sister had, somewhere along the line, decided to get an abortion, would you have thought any less of her?

Just something to keep in mind.

And congrats.

 

If she had an abortion I wouldn't have looked down on her at all, instead I would tell her that I'm sure that her child forgives her if she felt guilty afterward. If she just thought that it was okay and lived her life and got into more situations and had more abortions then that's where I would step in and give her a talking to!

Though, that is how I am now.. before the whole thing occured I didn't even know what abortion was. I thought it was totally okay for a woman to choose the fate of the child inside of her. My beliefs were partial and maybe a bit biased towards pro-choice at the time at the time though those changed when events like what happened with my sister came up. The same with Quisty and many others I know who are pro-life. Including women who have had abortions in the past and who realized who they lost...

Riddle me this. Why do you believe that in only cases of abortion that a human has the right to "choose." Why not in the case of drugs, the phrase "it's my body" could work in that situation. Or how about their right to "choose" that they can become prostitutes?

And adoption clinics going insane? This may be heresay(there I am contradicting myself) but for a project in my Soc class on adoption there can be waits of over two years for those who enter a list to adopt a child. As well, I pointed out before that this will increase as homosexual marriages are now allowed.

 

The adoptions thing first; do you even realize just how much population could jump up with the lack of abortions? Not to mention such a thing could cause some women to resort to self-injury and intentional miscarriages.

And as for your other point, I think it could. If people want to use drugs or sell themselves, why not? Suchs things were made illegal because of debates like this and people insistant upon creating some sort of perfect, unachievable reality.

Good for you, Quisty and other women for "seeing the light" or however you want to put it... but does that make anyone who doesn't mourn such an event wrong? Well, okay then.. go ahead and throw that label if you want if some people aren't turned by guilt-tripping, doesn't matter to me. I've had friends and family members who had abortions, so you people aren't alone.

 

On "its my body": Thats right. It is their body. And if they want to drink, screw and mangle it, well, thats their choice. Is it necessarily good? Oh hell no. But frankly, its their choice, and if they want to do things to such an excess that they become their very own chlorine tablet for the gene pool, oh well. Nice knowin' 'em.

And That Guy, what about those who don't have a caring family to support them? You gave your story, time for me to give mine.

If you're youthful in terms of experience, you may not want to read this one, folks.

My friend Samantha* was a very bright girl. Around age 10, her parents divorced. Due to fighting and neglect, she felt very unloved by her parents and ended up looking for love in all the wrong places and ways. At age 12 she became a prostitute. At age 13, she was impregnated by her 22 year old boyfriends 50 year old father. She did give birth but gave it up for adoption very quickly. She wasn't forthcoming with the details but there may have been mental retardation along with physical defects due to her drug use. At age 15, she became pregnant again.

She had a miscarriage. She can no longer have children at all.

During this entire time she recieved very little actual support from her family. Her brother somewhat stood with her, but more as a sort of "Yer still cool, you still rule!!!" support, not "lets discuss this" support. Her mother became disgusted and in between pregnancies Samantha was sent into rehab. Her father lived in another province and has trouble associating himself with her.

To date, Samantha still does drugs and still has tons of sex. She is no longer a prostitute though. She hopes to become a nurse (but frankly given her record I kind of have a hard time seeing how she'll make the grades.)

I am not saying abortion would have solved any of this, save that she'd be able to have kids at a more "proper" age and situation. I am, however, saying that some people do not recieve support.

Recently, another friend of mine became pregant. Tina* refuses to give her child up for adoption. She is 17. The guy who knocked her up left her. Her parents have disowned her. She refuses to give the child up for adoption due to fear that it will hate her for its entire life. Tina has no job, by the way. I'm trying to convince her to give it up for adoption (Im NOT trying to convince her to abort, as she can give birth safely, I do not condone abortion unless its dire circumstances, and her religious beliefs would stop it anyway) but to date she refuses. This is not someone who is emotionally or financially prepared to take care of a child.


* = names changed for protection sake.

 

Don't worry, that's why we have starvation promoted by big countries (that was dark humor - see bottom of the post)

Now, seriously: It seems that you've completely forgotten the times (less than 50 years ago) where contraceptives were forbidden - there was no "pill", and AIDS was something completely unknown to the world.

In those times, people weren't just doing it like monkeys. And there's a reason. The percentage of teenagers having sex was much lower than today. And most unwanted pregnancies are, guess what, due to teenagers, as we say in Mexico, "eating the sandwich before lunch".

About overpopulation, we can start another debate about that. Look at European countries, a "success in population control". Their populations are getting extremely elderly, and now those countries (like Sweden) are promoting immigration because the
couples living there don't want *any* kids. And the poverty in poor countries is not caused by overpopulation, but by resources being concentrated by a few rich men in a few rich countries.

So please don't use overpopulation to defend abortion. That's just an excuse for rich people not to share their money. Otherwise, how can you justify population control being taught mostly to poor people [edit](say, poor black people in poor black neighborhoods)[/edit]?