Is there an answer to abortion?

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: IrishEyes

Until medical science can find an objective stance, the only person that can make that specific decision is the individual female.

 

I disagree. I'm not arguing about life, or when it starts.

 

What I do not agree with is that the decision should rest with the individual female, if the female is a minor.

At no point did I suggest that this specific discussion was exclusively about "underaged teens". Why do you twist the discussion that way? I directly discussed if there is an objective agreed point at which a new personage exists. And if not, why the Government should be allowed to draw an arbitrarly line. Esp since the ONLY reasons provided are Religious based and thus should be removed from the discussion.

 

Can you reply to this specific discussion?

 

Or are you using the "I decide what my kids do" issue to obfuscate?

The law agrees with that. Abuse scenarios aside, parents have the right to know when their children are considering, or attempting, abortion, and shame on anyone who gets in the way of that with a 'right of choice' agenda.

1) there is NOTHING in proposed laws that protects abused children. Those pushing these parental rights laws ignore such realities.

 

2) parents have "the right to know when their children are considering" something?

 

"Who are the Brain Police" (Frank Zappa)

 

Yep a good ole 1984 supporter.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: Tormod

Originally posted by: IrishEyes

Abuse scenarios aside, parents have the right to know when their children are considering, or attempting, abortion

Ah, yes. But I reckon the abuse scenario is key to Freethinker's argument.

Yes I have made that very clear. But it interfers with attempts to move the discussion to the kneejerk, emotional level.

and shame on anyone who gets in the way of that with a 'right of choice' agenda.

So we are not entitled to an opinion? I hope there is a wink missing here.

Not based on the specific agenda she delineates regularly.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: IrishEyes

I'm not advocating turning abuse victims into baby factories.

Then what DO you advocate for abuse victims? What protection can there possibly be if "parental rights" trump any concern for the actual abuse victim? This attitude even stops the abuse victim from stopping the abuse itself, 'cause who is to tell that parent they DON'T have the Parental Right to rape her?

However, I know that just because a child is not conceived in positive manner, that doesn't mean that the mother will not love that child.

Nor does it mean they will. Statistically however, odds are not in your favor.

Rape is a horrible thing.

Biblical support for rape to the contrary.

And in very rare cases, rape will result in pregnancy.

80% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by assailants known to the victim

 

61% of rape victims are females under the age of 18

 

1 in 15 rape victims become pregnant as a result of being raped

 

http://www.crisisconnectioninc.org/statistics.htm

 

In the U.S., 7 in 10 women who had sex before age 14, and 6 in 10 of those who had sex before age 15 report having had sex involuntarily. (Facts in Brief: Teen Sex and Pregnancy, The Alan Guttmacher Institute, New York, 1996).

 

This works out to about 1,000,000 rape pregnancies a year. And a large percent are teens.

 

Your view of "very rare" is very twisted!

An as unwanted as a rape pregnancy may be, it does not always lead to an unloved child, or an unloving mother. It is, very often, the very existence of the child that can help a woman heal after such a traumatic ordeal.

Also very twisted.

 

Of prison inmates between 15 & 19 years of age, 90% are products of an adolescent pregnancy.

 

Of the top ten disciplinary problems confronting public school teachers, pregnancy is third.

 

Three in ten teen mothers go on welfare within three years of the birth of their first child.

 

Eighty percent of females who become mothers before the age of eighteen don't finish high school and forty percent of females who give birth by age fifteen don't complete 8th grade.

 

Approximately 70 percent of all pregnant adolescents do not receive adequate prenatal care, when in reality, this is the group that needs the most care.

 

The health risks to the baby are substantially greater. Nine percent of teen moths have low birth weight babies. Low birth weight babies are 40 times more likely to die in their first month of life than normal weight babies.

 

http://www.teenshelter.org/data.htm

[lindagarrette]

I'm losing track of the thread. What is the issue? Free choice, abortion limited to sepcific criteria? No abortion at all? If there is free choice, the woman, however old or young decides what to do. Of course the best decision will be made if there is sufficient information about the possibilities of carrying a fetus to birth. Once you start putting restrictions on the procedure, you involve a lot of unfounded expectations. Anti-abortionists who claim to have absolute concern for life, will make exceptions in case of rape. This makes no sense. A fetus is a fetus, regardless of how it was conceived.

 

I find that religious people, particularly those who believe that everyone was created at conception by god and will have life everlasting can favor killing living beings under any circumstances yet object to abortion and euthanasia. But that's another topic.

[Freethinker]

Originally posted by: lindagarrette

I find that religious people, particularly those who believe that everyone was created at conception by god

This is an interesting situation. Up to te mid 20th Century, most religions had no problem with Abortion. Even the Catholic Church had no problems with abortions till the mid 1800's. But then the Catholic Church had issues with the Immaculate Conception and found they ahd to revise their stance on ensoulment. Thus began the attack on an invidual woman's right to control her own body.

 

But Protestant churches didn't care. And they had far more control of the Government than Catholics did. So the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops developed and published their "Pastoral Plan" in 1975. It included direct action items to convince evangelicans to fall in line with the Pope's proclamation. They developed the Christian Coalition and created the Fundy Anti-choice juggernaught we see today.

 

Fundies suckered into following the Pope! How funny is that?

[pgrmdave]

Would it make sense to define the beginning of life as when the cell has full human DNA?

[motherengine]

a lot off bad logic follows this debate (though i am not suggesting it has found its way in here). one thing i find interesting is the lack of doctor's 'rights' involved in most discussions. if it was just an issue concerning a woman's 'right' than she could use the tree bashing method of old. and it is a life we are talking about and it is killing a living organism but this has very little to do with whether the 'choice' to kill in this instance should be constituted as murder or not. should a doctor be allowed the legal 'right' to kill a fetus and should a child/woman be allowed the 'right' to allow a doctor to commit this act. however one feels about all of this i think it serves no one to hide the brutallity of what is going on behind rhetoric and term wars like 'its a life' vs 'its a choice'. just some thoughts to chew on or spit out.

[C1ay]

and it is a life we are talking about and it is killing a living organism but this has very little to do with whether the 'choice' to kill in this instance should be constituted as murder or not.

 

I think it does. The very term 'murder' is defined as the unlawful killing of a one human by another human. The law wants to have it both ways though. Irf a mother wants to terminate a pregnancy via a doctor it is not considered murder. If the same woman is shot dead, her killer is charged with a double murder. In one case the rights of the fetus are not violated because it has no rights, it is a fetus instead of a human because it is not born yet. In the other case they are violated and the charge is murder which, by definition, implies the fetus is human. IMO, good law does not have such double standards.

[maddog]

Back to the orinal statment...

I don't agree with abortion, especially government funded, or late term abortions. I think that underage children should be required to tell their parents if they want to have an abortion.

1. I feel abortions are becomming to common. However, I still defend the Roe vs Wade decision. I just

wish that programs would be created to lesson the number of them per year.

a) Institute free pregnancy evaulations in high schools. Make available prophylactics to high school

students.

:) Have consuling to determine root of desire to have abortion. If due to rape/incest abortion is

acceptable. If incest parental consent for minor would not be urged.

c) Late term abortion should only be considered in medical nessecary cases to save life of mother, etc. I

heard of once case where a baby went to full term and was born without a brain. Only had a brain stem.

This baby died after a two days and until then was kept on life support. This is a case where late term

abortion would qualify.

 

On a similar note is the harvesting of stem cells. People are all upset that abortion would be used to

intice abortions to be sought like going to give plasma now. A solution here is only harvest stem cells

from the placenta of newborns after birth and to have parents have full donor rights as to disposition of

the stem cells harvested. They could retain these cells for their family or donate them to research.

 

As for Federal funding of abortions. I am for it as long as we as the public don't make it a panacea.

Abortions can create more problems than it solves. To be considered on case by case basis.

 

Just my two cents.... :cup:

 

Maddog

[motherengine]

a friend pointed out an interesting issue concerning parental rights and abortion: in certain states in america a woman can legally have an abortion though if said woman is killed the one doing the killing can be charged with double homicide.

[kaelcarp]

The pro-choice and pro-life standpoints are, oddly, not necessarily at odds with one another if you think about it from angles other than the standard ones, especially if you assume certain technological advances in the future.

 

Pro-choice view: Woman has the right to do what she wants with her body.

 

Pro-life view: Fetus is a person and has the right not to be killed.

 

The only way I have ever thought of to reconcile these two views is to allow non-destructive abortions only. You allow only the removal of the fetus without killing it. For this to work, we have to assume a level of technology that allows the fetus to be safely grown outside of the womb. I'm not sure such technology exists yet. Basically, the fetus is put up for adoption or given over to the state. Alternatively (though this makes the idea somewhat inconsistent with law), the fetus is allowed to live or die on its own, without support (which, for most, will mean death).

 

I had a long conversation about this on another board, and there are many problems that arise with it, most of them economic. Are there any other ways that both sides of the debate can have their desires met?