What are opinions on abortion?

[Sanguvixen]

I don't want to get into a long drawn out debate about this.

Let me put it in these terms. You will not miss what you never had.

If you've never had the chance to taste a peice of food, than if you go somewhere where the food is unavailable you cannot miss it.

If you've never had a pet, than you'll never feel the pain of losing one.

If you've never been born, you'll never miss the pleasure of living.

To me a life is not a life until it is outside the mother's womb. Until then the thing is just a mindless parasite sucking up nutrients in it's mother's womb.

It is not murder to have an abortion. Murder is to deprive another person of life maliciosly, with premeditated intent.

Does a person think "I'm going to get pregnant just so I can murder the child through abortion?" I think not.

The fetus/egg has yet to experience life. Therefore I see nothing wrong with aborting it. That is the choice of the mother, and is none of my business.

 

[DivideByZero14]

Amabael

And, DBZ had a very good point. It does sound cold to ask why a child or a full gorwn human being is more important than something else, but he's right. Who decided what the "sanctity of life" applies to? It doesn't apply to fruit flies, and it doesn't apply to criminals who get the death penalty. I don't see anyone concerned about people killing cancer cells. This idea of the "sanctity of life" that we hear so much surrounding the abortiopn debate is silly. It only applies to the things we want to be sacred. It's a pretty good deal, since we just made the whole thing up.

I'm not entirely clear on what exactly "huggles" are, still, but, when I find out, you're welcome to some from me!

Amabael

I think that we need to step away from the "OMG you're killing a baby!" argument, and look at everything else about abortion in a more logical way. Yes, very vulcan of me, I know.

Yay! Vulcan! I'm a die-hard Trekkie, so, yay! *does Vulcan hand greeting*  

[DivideByZero14]

Sanguvixen

Does a person think "I'm going to get pregnant just so I can murder the child through abortion?" I think not.

That's an awfully expensive way to commit murder...  

[iviary]

What it boils down to is, it's impossible to have a middle-ground law on the matter. It's either allowed completely, or not at all. If I were to have a child with severe brain abnormalities, I would consider aborting. It wouldn't be an easy decision, but I'm not sure I would want to bring something into this world, to live a life that's hardly a life at all. That seems more cruel than killing it in the womb.

Also, if I were raped today, as a 16-year-old, I would consider getting an abortion. It would also be a tough decision. It would, in many ways, be a selfish decision. I know I would not be ready to be a mother at 16. But also, I would not want to face the stigma of being a pregnant teenage girl, especially when it was not my error of judgement, or "sluttiness" that got me in that situation.

No matter the circumstances, for me, it would be a difficult decision. The baby would be very much a part of me, and loved on some level, despite the decision I might ultimately make. I think that would be the case for almost all women. But for many women, and many unborn children, it is in fact, the best decision, no matter how difficult. Women should be allowed to right to make that difficult call.  

[Dathu]

Dathu

I'm pro-freedom (call it what you will). I think people should have the right to seek assistance. Besides, even if it were made illegal, people would still do it anyway, they did before. However, since the government considers a human dead when no brain activity exists, it would only be fair to declair non-brain activity as not being alive. Therefor, if a fetus has no brain activity, it is not alive. However, if it does, then it is murder. Plus, there are just too many ways to PREVENT pregnancey. I find it silly that people couldn't think of what to do until six months into the pregnancy. But I don't feel it safe to allow the feverish masses to tell people what they can or can't do with their bodies. Personally, I cringe at the thought or abortion, but I am not about to tell anyone what they can or can't do.

 

[Sanguvixen]

When religious take a stand on Abortion it really isn't about the killing of a child. That is what I think.

It goes deeper I think. Why did Catholics support having many children? Easy! Many children mean many more kids to continue the Catholic Chain(I explained this concept somewhere else in this guild, so go find it).

Really it boils down to the want of controlling what other people do, think, and feel.

Religious want people to act in a manner that they think will bring them passage to "heaven." Lately religion has been poking thier noses into all sorts of places where they don't belong.

Abortion is one of those things that I feel is one of many things that Religion is using to try to make American more religiously controlled.

Look at this scenario. They are trying to get it passed so that in order for a fetus to be aborted, that is should be eunthanized first so that it cannot feel pain. Seems harmless right? Wrong! talk2hand The reasoning behind it is that if that were to be passed, almost all abortion clinics would be shut down. Why? Because they cannot afford the new equipment needed to support the new mandated procedure.

All in all the want to get an abortion is up to the mother. It is her choice, it is her body, and she should be able to do what she wants with it.

When men, and organized religion, and the Gov't starts poking thier noses into something like this...I find it insulting for to me is a women thing..some guys in the guild might not like that, but that is how I view things.

 

[Dande_Lion]

Dathu

I'm pro-freedom (call it what you will). I think people should have the right to seek assistance. Besides, even if it were made illegal, people would still do it anyway, they did before. However, since the government considers a human dead when no brain activity exists, it would only be fair to declair non-brain activity as not being alive. Therefor, if a fetus has no brain activity, it is not alive. However, if it does, then it is murder. Plus, there are just too many ways to PREVENT pregnancey. I find it silly that people couldn't think of what to do until six months into the pregnancy. But I don't feel it safe to allow the feverish masses to tell people what they can or can't do with their bodies. Personally, I cringe at the thought or abortion, but I am not about to tell anyone what they can or can't do.

People who have late-term abortions tend to be the people who were prevented from having them earlier, didn't realize that they were pregnant (yes this still happens) or who had few options for getting a pregnancy terminated before then.

The people having late-term abortions tend to be the poorest or the people living in states where it's difficult to get an abortion. In Mississippi, until recently, to get an abortion, you had to drive to a certain location, which may be four or five hours from where you live, tell them you want an abortion, either drive home or stay overnight, and then get the abortion the next day. Which is not free or anything.

So if you're a twenty year old woman in Mississippi who needs an abortion, it might take some doing to save up enough to make the trip to the only abortion clinic in the state, get the time off work, and many, many women in Mississippi visiting this one clinic have had to sleep in their car overnight and get the abortion the next day, just because they couldn't afford a hotel room.

People don't keep a fetus they don't want inside of them for six months because it sounds like a fun idea.

If someone waits that long, usually they have a good reason, and usually the reason has to do with lack of knowledge or lack of money.

So making late-term abortions illegal hurts the people who need abortions the most.

One woman I met who volunteered at a Planned Parenthood clinic told me her story. When she was eighteen, she got pregnant, and she wanted an abortion. She was only one month pregnant when she went to the place she found in the yellow pages. They were actually a pro-life group masquerading as a group to help people get abortions. They kept telling her that they were doing paperwork, or that they'd lost her paperwork and she'd have to fill it out again, etc, until it was legally too late for her to have an abortion by the laws of the state she was in.

I do think it's a tragedy when someone has an abortion. It's not a good thing. But I think that making abortions illegal and leaving it so that women who get pregnant have fewer choices is not a better option. One of my aquaintances in high school got pregnant and couldn't get an abortion. (I forget why if I ever knew-- I didn't know her well.) She tried to force her body to have a miscarriage, by having her boyfriend push her down stairs and using all the drugs she could get her hands on and drinking more or less constantly. If she hadn't had a miscarriage, the child would have come out addicted to some serious things and with fetal alcohol syndrome. And this "abortion choice" certainly did my aquaintance no good either.  

[Faeletti]

Yeah, i think that it's ok...I don't consider it murder unless the baby is born already.  

[b-asinine]

I am pro-choice.

It is never easy to have an abortion. It is usually only used when there is no other plausible option to run to. If a woman who already has 3 kids, a job that pays 7 dollars an hour, and no insurance and no education gets pregnant, would you still be so anti-abortion? What if the child would be born, only to die of starvation or exposure? Children, and babies in particular, are extremely hard to take care of. A lot of people just don't have the money, and adoption is NOT the best choice. There are tons of children in the U.S.A. who are in government care and never get adopted, which may scar them mentally for the rest of their life.

Personally, I would want to save my child the pain, emotional or otherwise.

A college student that can barely keep up with her bills with too many dreams to hold on to gets pregnant. Her parents are divorced and refuse to help her out financially or otherwise. She makes just enough money to be denied food stamps, but too little to get by comfortably. If she were to have a child, she would have to quit her schooling and get a low-paying job just to keep the baby alive. Think of the psychological damage that would cause both the mother and child.

For me, "murder" is only when you kill another human being that can form thoughts (even on the lowest of levels), can feel pain, and you do it with malicious intent. If someone tells me that aborting a fetus is murder because it's taking in nutrients and has a purpose (forming into a baby), then I tell them that sperm has a purpose (impregnating the egg). So, is every man who takes his love life into his own hands a murderer? Plants have a purpose (turning sunlight and carbon dioxide into "food" and oxygen), so is eating salad murder? Is eating a hamburger murder? What about spraying Bug-B-Gone for that ant-infestation?

-b.  

[hikikomorihime]

My opinion: I'm 100% pro-choice, but I do think it's a darn shame that in this day we still need to depend on a freaking SURGICAL procedure to help us control birth (in cases where contraceptives failed, or weren't used at all).

It's downright heartbreaking that some people have to have abortions due to rape, because rape is a horrible experience that no one should have to go through. Getting pregnant by rape only further compounds the tragedy (although I think if someone is going to say that abortion is murder, it should apply to all healthy fetuses, not just the ones conceived in love, for consistency)... It's also heartbreaking when someone has to abort due to health issues, because they are the women who will be hurt most by it. They are the women who wanted so badly to give birth, but couldn't.

Still, in the first case... I wish we had greater access to contraceptives, and that there wasn't such refusal on the school and parent level to teach kids how to use them. As a result, we have adults walking around who don't fully understand how various contraceptives work, who believe in silly urban legends to keep from getting pregnant. I'm always told by those who live these well off lives how easy it is to get contraceptives, but that's not always the case for the indigent. Those without vehicles, without an excess of money, what are they to do? In the case of pregnancy, they have to choose between saving up for an abortion (which doesn't always work out), a life living on welfare in which they will be accused of "working the system", or they have to choose between giving away a child they gave birth to and bonded with. Gah, and our government has idiots fighting to make it harder to get hormonal contraceptives as if they were battling terrorists! WTF?!

crying Sorry, got off onto a rant...  

[SkeletonPhoenix]

We must abort as many as possible so that satan can grow in power and consume the world in eternal hell fire. I'm just joking. No brain function=not sentient=I'm fine with the law now=Pro-choice.Though I think the law could be extended it a little bit.  

[Dirty Dirty Shisno]

I am a f*****t guy so presenting any opinion at all would make me an epic d**k in my opinion BUT, gun to my head any woman should be able to abort even just as birth control. It's a piece of meat that can potentially ruin that woman and maybe that woman's partners life forever. As long as it's done professionally so the woman is at minimum risk for death or barren-ness it's all up to her. Once again, I know I'm a total d**k for presenting an opinion.  

[b-asinine]

Dirty Dirty Shisno

I am a f*****t guy

So?

Dirty Dirty Shisno

gun to my head

No one's putting a gun to your head to tell your opinion. Just FYI.

Dirty Dirty Shisno

It's a piece of meat that can potentially ruin that woman and maybe that woman's partners life forever.

While it is true that, technically, all humans (and fetuses) are simply sacks of water and muscle, that just sounds cold. Now, I'm pro-choice, but I highly disagree with your wording. It can be taken entirely out-of-context. Are you saying that it's okay to kill something (take, for instance, another human being), simply because they are molecularly walking atoms?

And, though I agree that having a baby at the wrong time could be disastrous, it's a rare case that having a child will completely ruin someone's life for, lyke, EVAR (not counting when childbirth would harm the mother and put her at risk). I think contraceptives and adoption are far better than abortion, of course, I just didn't like your arguement.  

[Sanddru]

Completely pro-choice in any and all circumstances, and also see nothing wrong with abortion.

Not all pro-choicers think abortion is right, since it's more about supporting choice than abortion itself, so I felt I needed to add that.

I'm against giving birth to a baby you're just going to give up, as the system has plenty of children already needing those adoptive parents.

So for me it's only between abortion and parenthood.
And I'll choose the first one if I end up pregnant before wanting to be a parent.  

[x__Death-Of-Glitter__x]

I'm pro-choice.

There is absoloutley no way I'd ever approve of people being forced to ahve Children. Some people are not ready to, or just do not want to re-produce.
I completely agree with Sanguvixen's argument about how abortion isn't murder, because the fetus has yet to experiece life.