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Originally Posted by Flashpoint
Two questions.
1) Should abortion be used as a form of birth control? If we argue that it is exclusively a women's right to choose then this is essentially what we are saying.
I agree - it should be a woman's right to choose. But when framed as a form of birth control, I certainly feel less comfortable with it. Make no mistake - rightly or wrongly this is what we are moving towards.
2) What about the man's rights? A woman can choose to carry the child for 9 months, and this ties the man to 18 years of child support. How is this equitable? She has the ultimate decision to have the child or not. The 2/3rds of a year she carries the unborn is what gives her the right to decide the fate of the father for the next 2 decades.
This doesn't seem fair to me.
And what of the flip side - under what circumstances (if any) should a woman be obligated to carry a child to term?
Many questions. No answers.
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1) If a woman chooses to use it as a form of birth control, so be it. I don't necessarily like it, but it is entirely her choice. I don't like women appearing in those Girls Gone Wild videos, but I can't tell them not to do that stuff, as I have no control over their bodies.
2) This is more difficult to answer. I said that I view abortion as primarily a womens issue, but not exclusively so. I do believe that men should have a certain amount of say while the woman is making the choice, but I ultimately believe the woman still has the final decision. She is the one carrying the child to term, she is the one that will give birth, she is the one that will be providing care afterbirth in terms of breast feeding and the like.
I understand a man not wanting to have to be "tied down" to a child for however long. I would be inclined to make the argument that it is a slightly different situation because telling a woman she should or should not have an abortion is specifically telling a woman what to do with her own body. When a woman has the baby, there is no instrusion on his body so there is a bit of a difference, IMO. I do realize it would be an instrusion on his life, but I still see it as a slightly different issue. Don't get me wrong here, I do not like this situation for men, but I don't see how this is justification for telling a woman what to do with her body.
3) I can't think of any circumstance where a woman should be forced to carry a child to term.
Like you said, it is a complicated issue with many questions that have no definitive answers, but I will always firmly believe that women should have abortion as an option, should they choose to go that route. I don't like the idea of someone telling someone else what they can or cannot do with their body.