The Upside of Abortion

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Thats a very pretty ivory tower you live in.
[/quote]

Really, ivory tower?

And you know who you are referring to (me)?

You know what I’ve had to overcome? What circumstances I’ve been dealt?

Ivory tower my ass. Fact is poverty and finishing school are cowardly reasons to have an abortion.

Grow a set and deal with what life gives you. Raise the child, work your ass off to support him/her and make due. That’s what great people do in case you hadn’t realized…

Life isn’t a free ride. Sometimes it get’s pretty damn tough. Mom has to be tougher.

Wanna ask me how I know?

122

[quote]derek wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Thats a very pretty ivory tower you live in.

Really, ivory tower?

And you know who you are referring to (me)?

You know what I’ve had to overcome? What circumstances I’ve been dealt?

Ivory tower my ass. Fact is poverty and finishing school are cowardly reasons to have an abortion.

Grow a set and deal with what life gives you. Raise the child, work your ass off to support him/her and make due. That’s what great people do in case you hadn’t realized…

Life isn’t a free ride. Sometimes it get’s pretty damn tough. Mom has to be tougher.

Wanna ask me how I know?
[/quote]

I know that the person I’m talking to isn’t now, and, come to think of it, never was looking to discuss the issue, but rather pass judgement on others.

It doesn’t matter if you think the reasons are good enough. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re “cowardly reasons” or that they make the women who get abortions for those reasons cowards.

For that matter, it doesnt matter if you think abortion is wrong, immoral, murder, slaughter, genocide, or anything else.

Your personal position does not compromise, in any way, the inherent, intrinsic rights that every human being has.

123

[quote]derek wrote:
CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
Thats a very pretty ivory tower you live in.

Really, ivory tower?

And you know who you are referring to (me)?

You know what I’ve had to overcome? What circumstances I’ve been dealt?

Ivory tower my ass. Fact is poverty and finishing school are cowardly reasons to have an abortion.

Grow a set and deal with what life gives you. Raise the child, work your ass off to support him/her and make due. That’s what great people do in case you hadn’t realized…

Life isn’t a free ride. Sometimes it get’s pretty damn tough. Mom has to be tougher.

Wanna ask me how I know?
[/quote]

I know that the person I’m talking to isn’t now, and, come to think of it, never was looking to discuss the issue, but rather pass judgement on others.

It doesn’t matter if you think the reasons are good enough. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re “cowardly reasons” or that they make the women who get abortions for those reasons cowards.

For that matter, it doesnt matter if you think abortion is wrong, immoral, murder, slaughter, genocide, or anything else.

Your personal position does not compromise, in any way, the inherent, intrinsic rights that every human being has.

124

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:
It doesn’t matter if you think the reasons are good enough. It doesn’t matter if you think they’re “cowardly reasons” or that they make the women who get abortions for those reasons cowards.

For that matter, it doesnt matter if you think abortion , murder, slaughter, genocide, or anything else is wrong.

Your personal position does not compromise, in any way, the inherent, intrinsic rights that every human being has to treat other human beings as chattel.
[/quote]
It takes a truly brave woman to have the abortion of her dreams.

125

[quote]The BBC is reporting that a man’s sexual orientation may be determined by conditions in the womb.

That leads to an interesting question.

Just as we treat other pre-natal conditions, should we not treat this condition as any other illness?[/quote]
It’s a woman’s intrinsic right to do so.

126

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

Strawman.

I never said the child does not have a right to life.

I said the childs right to life does not supercede the mothers right to decide if she will get, be, or remain pregnant, a right which she always has.

Is that any clearer?

[/quote]

I don’t want to come across as dense, but no, that’s not particularly clear. Further, I have no interest in creating strawmen just to have something to knock down, because I’m honestly trying to understand a position completely alien to me.

If you could bear with me a while longer, I’d like to break the situation down a bit into a few points upon which we may or may not agree:

  1. While both a sperm cell and an egg cell may be alive, neither one constitues an individual person, or human being.

  2. When a sperm cell and an egg cell are joined (or at least very soon thereafter), something new results from that joining. By ‘new’ I mean that it is neither an egg nor a sperm cell. I’ll call it a ‘thing’ for convienience.

  3. At some time between the point at which this thing comes to be, and the point at which this thing is issued a social security number, it must turn into a person, or a human being. This assumes of course that the thing in question is not rejected by the body or is in some other way caused to cease its development.

  4. People, or human beings have Rights. One of these includes the Right to Life.

Can we agree on that much?

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this - if you agree that the thing in question (child?) has a right to life, then you should be able to justify taking away that right before saying that someone else’s other right supercedes that right.

Some in this thread have argued that the thing in question does not gain the right in question until it is breathing on it’s own, which means (to me, anyway), that at any time up to and including the mother’s final contractions, any doctor can(with the mother’s consent, of course) open mommy up and turn the thing in question into steak tartar, sew her back up, and everyone can go out for some beers.

Am I mis-stating the argument? Am I missing something important? Is a person’s right to Life dependant upon something other than the fact that that person is alive?

127

[quote]pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?
[/quote]

YES!

128

[quote]tGunslinger wrote:
pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?

YES!

[/quote]

+1

129

[quote]derek wrote:
Who’s deciding that the children will all lead miserable, sad and painful lives if someone had allowed them to live, you?

That’s pretty damn presumtuous of you.

Every girl I know that had an abortion was at the very LEAST middle class with good families. I know that’s not the case with every child but how can anyone predict that a child will lead such a life?

Shall we even get into all the great people that were born into very tough circumstances yet made one heck of a life for themselves?[/quote]

You didn’t answer the first part of the question, which is actually the most important one:

Where are all the adoptive families for those millions of kids?

Nor did you answer the second part: How much are you ready to pay to make sure those kids get a reasonable level of comfort in life?

As for leading sad lives, I’m simply going from the basic fact that they’re unwanted children. Children born to people who weren’t ready for them; who have already shown they’re bad a planning (since they got pregnant “accidentally”). Just look at the numbers of people here who keep ranting about noisy kids whenever a “What Do You Hate” thread comes up.

The fact that you know a few middle class people that have had abortions says nothing, except that you generally frequent middle class people. The demographics of abortion show that the poor are over-represented. Many are very young mothers who aren’t mentally ready to raise a child.

Still, your contention was that all those abortion could be carried to term and given up for adoption by families wanting to adopt. That makes plenty of sense; giving children to people who want them is probably the best way to insure the children have a chance at a happy, well-adjusted life.

I just want to know: Where are all those millions of families?

As for all the great people born in difficult circumstances, that’s very nice. A bit naive, I think, since for each of them I can point to about a hundred thousand criminals who’ve often had rough childhood; absent fathers; were beaten by drunk adults, abused, etc. It’s very laudable to want to save every potential human life, but I think the reasoning should take into account more than the first nine months of life.

130

[quote]tGunslinger wrote:
pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?

YES!

[/quote]

So quantity of life is the important factor, quality of life has no relevance?

I don’t understand how you can practically worship the human fetus, but once it is born be completely indifferent to how much pain, misery and sickness it experiences. Isn’t life after birth the actually important part of it? Why is there so much compassion for the unborn child and complete indifference towards the infant, toddler, child, etc?

131

[quote]pookie wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
People that make money off of the 1.3 million that are done annually in the US.

There’s a difference between providing the service as part of your work and actively encouraging it. Are you suggesting that some people are actually pushing for more abortions as a way to increase revenue? That’s sick.
[/quote]

I have no evidence it is true. Merely my suspicion that people would do it.

I saw a Frontline episode called The Last Abortion Clinic a year or two ago. It was decidedly pro-abortion. One of the lines that struck me was the abortion provider encouraging a girl to have an abortion and telling her it is “courageous”.

I was thoroughly sickened.

Ther shouldn’t be, yet there are.

It is the leaders of the debate that have defined the sides and even the terms we use.

Both sides want to remove freedom to chose. The anti-abortion activists often want to eliminiate the choice altogether.

The pro-abortion crowd wants such quick abortion on demand that the mother to be often does not get the info necessary to make the right choice and frequently makes a choice she regrets.

132

[quote]derek wrote:
orion wrote:
derek wrote:
Ninety-three percent of the abortions in America are for convenience. The mother’s health is an issue only three percent of the time, and the baby’s health is an issue only three percent of the time. Rape or incest are issues only one percent of the time. Ninety-three percent of all abortions in America are performed just because someone doesn’t want a child!

Now THAT’S fucking senseless and disgusting.

83,9234% of all internet statistics are made up on the spot.

Are you saying over 89 thousand percent, 89 million percent or did you fuck up your joke by using a comma?
[/quote]

That is the way the Europeans often use the decimal.

133

[quote]pookie wrote:
John S. wrote:
So what your saying is the mothers right to chose is worth more then a baby’s life? What kind of monster are you. If your going to have sex you better be ready for the chance that a kid will be made. If a woman is raped, its sad it happened but if she doesn’t want the kid there’s adoption.

Where are all the adoptive families for those kids?

According to this site: http://photolisting.adoption.com/ there are 100,000 children currently awaiting adoption in the US. You propose to add 1.3 million each year? I’d like to believe that your idea was a solution, but the demand for adoption is simply not there.
…

[/quote]

Most people want to adopt infants not children. It is a sad fact.

Our adoption placement system is broken in the US. People travel halfway around the world to adopt.

134

[quote]pookie wrote:
tGunslinger wrote:
pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?

YES!

So quantity of life is the important factor, quality of life has no relevance?

[/quote]

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.

135

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Our adoption placement system is broken in the US. People travel halfway around the world to adopt.[/quote]

But even those numbers (international adoption), from what I can find, only amount to a few thousands, maybe tens of thousands at best.

While the adoption solution sounds great on paper, the actual numbers do not seem to bear it out in reality.

There are far more abortions each year than families looking to adopt, even infants.

136

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.[/quote]

That’s very cute.

Why does every anti-abortion proponent run away from that question?

I don’t understand how people can be so obsessed about the first nine months of life, but completely disinterested in the well being of the children after birth.

If it’s none of your business past birth, why is it your business before? What’s the point of simply getting population+1?

Why don’t I ever see anti-abortion proponents supporting economic solutions to the problem? Increased welfare for some years (until school maybe?) to allow the mom to care and raise the child. Various incentives to make sure a poor, single mom won’t have to work 12 hours a day at minimum wage (or resort to illegal endeavors) to be able to feed her kid?

There’s a weird disconnect here that I can’t understand. If life is precious, and pretty much everyone agrees it is, why is not important during its whole duration? There’s more to life than simply being not dead.

137

[quote]pookie wrote:
pat36 wrote:
I do wonder what, if anything, you propose we should do with those 1.3 million unwanted children that would be born each year if there were no abortion.
[/quote]

Want them and raise them. People have to take responsibily for thier actions. Bad or not ideal situations for raising children is not a good reason to kill one. You have to draw the line and far enough back to make sure you are not taking the life of a human being. I for one am against taking a human life and concider doing so a big deal. Call me stupid but I think killing is wrong.

I do not believe the line is arbitrary. If the “line” is not at conception, it is very close to it. Until we can prove exactly where life begins, we have to give the little sack of cells the benifit of the doubt. The price of being wrong is too high.

138

[quote]derek wrote:
tGunslinger wrote:
pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?

YES!

+1[/quote]

+2
Nobody was born with the right to a good life. We are very fucking lucky. Beside plenty of great people have risen out of adversity and shitty birth stiuations.

139

[quote]pookie wrote:
tGunslinger wrote:
pookie wrote:
Is the point simply to make sure they get a chance at life, no matter how miserable, sad and painful that life is?

YES!

So quantity of life is the important factor, quality of life has no relevance?

I don’t understand how you can practically worship the human fetus, but once it is born be completely indifferent to how much pain, misery and sickness it experiences. Isn’t life after birth the actually important part of it? Why is there so much compassion for the unborn child and complete indifference towards the infant, toddler, child, etc?
[/quote]

It’s about taking a life not ensuring a good life. If we wanted to end misery by taking life we could nuke half of Africa where people live in miseries we could not even imagine.
No, bad qulity of life does not justify abortion, if you think abortion is killing, which I do.

140

[quote]pookie wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:

You take the good, you take the bad,
you take them both and there you have
The facts of life, the facts of life.

That’s very cute.

Why does every anti-abortion proponent run away from that question?

I don’t understand how people can be so obsessed about the first nine months of life, but completely disinterested in the well being of the children after birth.

If it’s none of your business past birth, why is it your business before? What’s the point of simply getting population+1?

Why don’t I ever see anti-abortion proponents supporting economic solutions to the problem? Increased welfare for some years (until school maybe?) to allow the mom to care and raise the child. Various incentives to make sure a poor, single mom won’t have to work 12 hours a day at minimum wage (or resort to illegal endeavors) to be able to feed her kid?

There’s a weird disconnect here that I can’t understand. If life is precious, and pretty much everyone agrees it is, why is not important during its whole duration? There’s more to life than simply being not dead.
[/quote]

I would rather pay more taxes and have more orphanages than see 1.3 million babies murdered a year.

I would rather live in an orphanage than be dead.