I've changed my mind on this topic before and some posters here and elsewhere (reddit, talking heads on TV, friends in chatgroups) have swayed me back to a place where I find myself supporting unrestricted abortion again.
While I find gender selection abortion disgusting, and abortion as a birth control method immoral and reprehensible.... the harm done in enforcing a ban on these is too great. In the end we have to trust women and their doctors to make the right decision and not be deplorable human beings.
No easy solution exists but Canadian law seems to cause the least harm.
Last edited by White Out 403; 05-23-2019 at 05:02 PM.
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So you've ignored the 4 posts I made previous to that?
I've read every post in this thread. I'm not sure what point you think you have made that I should be addressing here. The affects of pregnancy on women has been brought up multiple times. My view is that the sacrifice a woman goes through while pregnant is great, but necessary because the right to life is the most important human right. I said as much myself earlier in this thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ark2
I am against the death penalty, so in cases such as this, I believe that the rapist should spend the rest of his life in prison. At the same time, I believe that an unborn baby is a human being that is entitled to rights and protections and that does not change regardless of how it was conceived. I do not say this lightly, as I understand that bearing a child, even under the most ideal and consensual circumstances, is an incredible sacrifice that a woman is making. In instances of rape, I can only imagine what it is like. Having said that, I do believe that the right to life is the most important right and cannot be invalidated because of rape.
So I am not sure why exactly you think you are bringing some sort of unique angle to this discussion.
Quote:
Most anti-abortion sentiment stems from concern for a fetus, and the mothers concern is discarded.
According to who?
Quote:
Is this a real question? Yes. Obviously.
Was it unconscionable during WWII, even if it would have meant the allies losing?
I think you significantly overestimate the level of empathy in the general population.
Sacrificing your time, body and life is hard, posting anti-Abortion memes on Facebook and voting in regressives is easy.
Given that we can't even convince Americans to pay slightly higher taxes so that pregnant women can have access to healthcare, I'd guess most of these people aren't willing to sacrifice to keep a baby alive. They like the idea in theory but they don't actually walk that talk.
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AFAIK, the only women in this thread are wittynickname, peanut and girlysports. My sister lives in Washington DC and she is part of an online group/board of women professionals (lawyers, nurses, accountants, etc), and the majority of the women there are pro-choice.
AFAIK, the only women in this thread are wittynickname, peanut and girlysports. My sister lives in Washington DC and she is part of an online group/board of women professionals (lawyers, nurses, accountants, etc), and the majority of the women there are pro-choice.
I've mostly peeked into the thread but otherwise stayed quiet. Because you aren't going to convince someone to change their mind in a thread on the internet. Until we as Americans can agree that healthcare is a right, until we as Americans can agree that $7.25 is not a livable minimum wage, until we as Americans can agree that it's worth a few extra dollars in taxes every year to ensure that children in poverty can eat, that children deserve an education, until we can do something about the fact that children in Flint are still being poisoned with lead--every other argument in here is a non-starter for me.
We as Americans don't treat living humans with the care that these people want to treat zygotes, and until conservatives start treating actual existing humans with the respect they have for fetuses, I just don't have much to say about their arguments.
Last edited by wittynickname; 05-23-2019 at 05:07 PM.
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The full statement of Ursula K. Le Guin: many tweets in a row:
“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950
and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant,
he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant,
..."We all #####ed her, so who knows who the father is?”
And he laughs at the good joke….
What was it like,
if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved— what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child,
this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,”
this child whose father denied it …
What was it like? […]
It’s like this:
...if I had dropped out of college,
thrown away my education,
depended on my parents …
if I had done all that,
which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done,
I would have borne a child for them, …
the authorities,
the theorists,
the fundamentalists;
I would have born a child for them,
their child.
But I would not have born my own first child,
or second child,
or third child.
My children.
The life of that fetus would have prevented,
would have aborted,
three other fetuses …
the three wanted children,
the three I had with my husband—
whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one,
I would never have met …
I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California,
without work,
with half an education,
living off her parents….
But it is the children I have to come back to,
my children
Elisabeth,
Caroline,
Theodore,
my joy,
my pride,
my loves.
If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted,
they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law.
They would never have been born.
This thought I cannot bear.
What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could?
What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage?
Who couldn’t tell her mother?
Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? –
because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist.
You know what it was like for her.
You know and I know;
that is why we are here.
We are not going back to the Dark Ages.
We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman.
There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness.
We are not great powers.
But we are the light.
Nobody can put us out.
May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”
I've changed my mind on this topic before and some posters here and elsewhere (reddit, talking heads on TV, friends in chatgroups) have swayed me back to a place where I find myself supporting unrestricted abortion again.
While I find gender selection abortion disgusting, and abortion as a birth control method immoral and reprehensible.... the harm done in enforcing a ban on these is too great. In the end we have to trust women and their doctors to make the right decision and not be deplorable human beings.
No easy solution exists but Canadian law seems to cause the least harm.
I just want to give you props for this post. I know you get the gears a lot on this forum (rightly so, in cases) but it takes a mature and aware person to be open to having their mind changed on a topic like this and share it with us. Kudos to you.
It's a big issue in the past few weeks. I don't really want to get into the Alabama BS, as that's an obvious disgusting troll job to try and overturn existing law and there is plenty of room in the America Is No Good Thread for that.
There are a lot of opinions and emotions involved in this issue, and those opinions include opinions on who should even have an opinion (or at least one that actually affects policy). But it seems pretty rare that I see someone with actual experience share theirs. I'll state my own position and experience first.
Well done. Thanks for putting your personal experience 'out there' eloquently. I am sure many men feel the same way, and it's much better to have honest discussions about the subject of abortion, than to just say 'Pro-Life' or 'Pro-Choice.' People who insist the answer is cut and dry baffle me. Everyone who faces this horrible decision goes through their own personal thought process, fears, stress, etc.
When I think of abortion, I don't think it's a choice I would make- but what other women do with their bodies is none of my business. Having said that, there are definitely some caveats in my thought process.
I remember when George Tiller was murdered, the doctor who performed partial-birth abortions for women who were up to full term in Kansas. I was living in the state at the time, and with his abortion clinic and those Westboro Baptist lunatics, it was a complete circus.
I will admit, I wasn't entirely sad that he was shot. I saw the websites and the pictures of full term dead babies, and they made me sick. I mean let's face it.. the idea that a woman's health is at stake so bad that she needs to have an abortion when her baby is viable outside the womb is pretty rare. In fact, I thought that a partial birth abortion would be more traumatic for a woman. Either way, she'd have to deliver the child, so I just didn't understand why a woman would want to make that choice. I completely understood first term abortion reasoning, and even early second term, but I didn't understand the third/full term reasoning.
But then... my ex sister-in-law got pregnant. And, she seemed to have a healthy baby. But in the beginning of her third semester, she found out her baby had some serious issues. They found out that her baby would basically be born breathing, but would be, for lack of a better term, in a permanently vegetative state.
She decided she wanted to continue with the pregnancy because 'God' told her to. I thought she was brave. And then I watched her baby grow up to be 7 years old. He was in a wheelchair is whole life that held his head in place. He made guttural sounds once in a while. He had 16 operations by the time he was 3. He died as he lived, in agony.
And while I still think she is a hero, as she loved him more than anything, I don't think I would have made that choice for myself of the child. And, I wouldn't want to begin to tell someone else in that situation what to do or think.
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The gender near-parity in pro-life sentiment is easy to explain: Women are more religious than men.
64 per cent of American women say they pray daily, compared with 43 per cent of American men. In Canada, those figures are 30 per cent and 28 per cent (which helps explain why abortion is much less of an issue here).
If this seems surprising, it's because the spokespeople who purport to speak on behalf of women are atypically irreligious, while the most prominent proponents of religious faith are atypically male.
I'm so blown away by this statistic that I haven't stopped thinking about it since you posted it a week ago. To think grown ups that I interact with out here in the real world get down on their knees, clasp their hands together, and mumble out a prayer to a god they think can hear them and cares about them enough to intervene in their lives is astounding.
I was raised areligous. Obviously I've heard of praying and know what it's all about, but I've never thought of it as something a grown person would do. I picture kids in their jammies saying a prayer before bed. Fully grown adults, though? That's seriously weird.
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Bodily autonomy. Completely subsidized and available contraception. Guaranteed and enforced 100% spousal support from absentee fathers and mothers. Generous subsidies and tax relief for both single and partnered mothers and fathers.
Not sure why this is so hard.
I added the parts you left out. Remember... the underlying goal is equality, not more than.
Just because negative things happen more often on one side of the fence than the other, it doesn’t mean both sides don’t deserve the same desired outcome.
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OBJECTIVE:
To assess whether indicators of limited access to services explained changes in rates of second-trimester abortion after implementation of a restrictive abortion law in Texas.
CONCLUSION:
Increases in second-trimester abortion after the law's implementation were due to women having more limited access to abortion services.
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This just came across my radar, but seemed presently relevant.
There has been a tonne of controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood director-turned-anti abortion activist Abby Johnson with the recent release of Unplanned: a film adaptation of her memoire.
With all the talk here of arguing on the basis of emotional appeal, the Abby Johnson case is significant.
I keep seeing this story come up without the detail that she's the one that initiated the fight and would not back down from it. The person who shot her was ruled to have done it in self-defence.
It's still ridiculous but she's not an innocent person either.
It is fair to say that Alabama has fallen to ISIS?
Fallen to? When was Alabama not like this?
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