Abortion - Your Opinion

[Dirius]

Chia, let's just straighten out a few points.

You start from the principle that abortion is murder. I do not.

A huge dilemma for people like you is what happens to unused frozen embryos in fertility clinics. Is it murder when unwanted embryos are destroyed? Should common treatments for infertile couples be halted? Should all of those stored embryos be brought to term?

Are you familiar with ectopic pregnancy, pre-eclampsia, or the dilemma of pregnant women who must take life-saving drugs to preserve their own health-- that would nevertheless harm their fetus? Is it murder to abort a fetus with severe defects that would have just a few hours to live in severe pain as a baby?

None of these have anything to do with abortion by choice. You are using the very rare instances that involve a difficult situation to advocate for the general practice of abortion. All of these examples are when either the mother or child suffer from an incurable medical condition that usually requires dangerous treatment, and will inevitably kill one or the other.

None of these have anything to do with healthy and viable pregnancies.

 

[Dirius]

I hope we're clear that Dirius is the lapsed Catholic, not me. I was raised in a secular post-Christian family. I converted to Judaism to marry my ex-husband, but have been religiously inactive for many years. I do have spiritual beliefs. (Jews, incidentally, have a wide range of beliefs about abortion: they do not all agree.)

I'm not even sure what religion has to do with this post - given none of us has used a religious argument to debate.

By the way, I was in favour of abortion when I was younger. Almost all the people my generation are, and it is impossible not to be in favour of it at that age, with most of the media and school teachers advocating for abortion.

This is why I've never blamed young women for getting abortions, or for supporting abortions. Their minds have been twisted since they were teens into believing it is somehow good for them, and that aborting babies is in their best interest. Its sad, but understandable. None of them are truly responsible for their decision. Most of them have been lied to their whole lives.

What actually makes me laugh is when I see all the Karens, many of them mothers themselves, advocating for abortion. Worst part is none of them would ever to get an abortion.

 

[Dirius]

Oh, great, Dirius. Give us some examples of unalienable "natural rights." Those wouldn't include such things as an unwanted baby born to a homeless drug addict being guaranteed proper nutrition and medical care at taxpayers expense would they?

What property rights does that baby have? Get real.

The truth is that "natural rights" are trampled out of existence unless enshrined in law; and sometimes not even them.

The great thinkers of the englithnment realised that societies that functioned well back in those days, were those in which the law upheld a certain number of individual rights. This is the great secret to why certain socities, mainly western european monarchies, had superior cultures and were more developed than the rest of the world

However, unlike absolute monarchies, in the constitutional republics that arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, these rights are inalienable, in the sense that our laws are constructed and legislated based on these principles, and not the other way around.

In the U.S., the law is is constructed based on these principles.

I've already answered about how our societies help children in dire condictions in multiple previous posts.

You are apparently unfamiliar with the US Constitution. It is available on-line. Much of it sorts out authority reserved to the three branches of the government. The US Constitution also grants a lot of legislative authority to the individual states.

I don't suppose you care to explain how any of this is supposed to work in a right-wing dictatorship.

In practice, there is no such thing as a "right-wing dictatorship". The right-wing is concerned with the protection of individual rights. If you take the right-wing thinking to the extreme, you would end up with anarcho-capitalism, which is the complete absence of a state.

Most dictatorships have historically been advocates of "statism" (the supreme authority of the government) - which goes against most principles conservatives and libertarians hold up.

Your ignorance of human reproduction continues to appall me. Modern in vitro fertilization does not involve "test tubes." That is a metaphor, or figure of speech. Think petri dish. Then blastocyst is then implanted back into the woman's uterus.

Fetal rights have no serious reality in law in the way that you describe them. As I explained yesterday, it's easy to bequeath to your child's unborn children, if any, a share of your child's inheritance if s/he predeceases you. But this stipulation can hold even if your child has no offspring, real or potential.

Delayed execution of a pregnant woman doesn't mean that the fetus has rights. It means that it is barbaric to execute a pregnant woman. As you noted, such a case seldom arises.

Here you are using strawmans. I showed examples of a case in which the baby was't part of the will, and there was no property bequated to him, but based on claim. The law also shows that injuring a child in the uterus has the same consequences as harming a normal human being, and the child is treated as such by most legal standards. You wouldn't execute a pregnant woman because there is an innocent life there, not because of some concept of "barbarism" (because the execution in itself of a woman would be barbaric).

The law seems to hold fetuses in the same regard as any other human, and grants them rights based on this condition.

Why do you hate the idea of women having autonomy over their own bodies? What about her rights?

You don't think that homeless babies, hours after birth, have Constitutional or natural rights as you defined them. They have no right to food, shelter, or hygiene. You cannot stand the thought of the state providing such babies with the basic necessities of life. That's what you would call socialism. Your fall-back position is condemning the mothers.

You keep repeating the example of babies, but I have already answered how our western nations have always taken care of dispossessed children by means of charity.

I have no problem with women having autonomy over their bodies, but the skull of a 6 month fetus that gets crushed during an abortion process isn't part of a woman's body.

 

[waybread]

Dirius, At this point in the discussion, I wonder if your ignorance of women's reproductive health is deliberate. Is it, the less you know, the less you would have to modify your views?

The figures vary somewhat, but in the US, something like 2% of pregnancies are ectopic. (You remember what that is, right??) Pre-eclampsia affects 2-8% of pregnancies worldwide. It can have a range of outcomes, usually pre-mature babies, but it can severely damage the pregnant woman's health. https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx

Women with fertility treatments are typically implanted with multiple fertilized eggs in the hope that at least one can be brought to term. With multiple fetal developments, however, the fetuses often are not all going to survive as healthy babies. Doctors often recommend the therapeutic abortion of the least healthy and abnormally developing fetuses to give the healthiest ones a better chance of survival.

If we add up the various rare disorders , it turns out that serious complications are not unusual. In the case of a particular woman, it's 100% of her pregnancy and life.

Never mind the mental anguish of some mothers who were violently inseminated against their will.

You subscribe to a cruel joke about poor, unwanted children being well looked-after. Some countries do a better job of this than others. Look up data on child malnourishment in the USA. Why do you imagine some children wind up in foster care? What do you think is the adoption rate for older minority children with severe disabilities? Are you aware of homeless children?

Dirius, it's time for you to step up and educate yourself.

There are cases when the pregnancy will not carry to term on its own due to some medical condition, or when the pregnancy endangers the life of both the baby and the mother. Termination is required in some of these cases, but these where not viable or healthy pregnancies to begin with - in these examples the child would not have survived either way, and the abortion process is usually the result of saving the mother's life. But these are a very few exceptions.

Our societies have always claimed responsability for poor children. In christian societies, orphaned children have always been taken care of (in most of history by ecclesiastic institutions), and have always had access to food, clothing, shelter and medical care. Adoption is also available when the parent is not fit to care for the child. Not to mention that "right-wingers" as you put it usually run lots of charitable institutions to help those in need, particularly children.

This idea that conservatives or libertarians don't care about children the day after they are born - is just a lie from leftwing propaganda.

 

[waybread]

Dirius, since when is abortion ever a laughing matter?

Shame on you.

I personally think abortion is tragic. It is not a question of "favoring" abortion. Ideally every pregnancy should be wanted. But when it is not, women deserve therapeutic abortions; under their rights as autonomous human beings.

I remember the days before Roe v. Wade, and how desperate women and girls resorted to an underground of "backroom butchers" or self-induced procedures involving knitting needs or caustic substances inserted into the vagina.

Your smug piety is not going to stop abortion. Misogynists like you will only drive it underground and make it more dangerous.

You have no idea what "Karens" have gone through in their lives. None.

You know nothing about the reproductive issues of young girls. Nothing.

Don't boast about your ignorance, Dirius. You only make it more offensive.

I'm not even sure what religion has to do with this post - given none of us has used a religious argument to debate.

By the way, I was in favour of abortion when I was younger. Almost all the people my generation are, and it is impossible not to be in favour of it at that age, with most of the media and school teachers advocating for abortion.

This is why I've never blamed young women for getting abortions, or for supporting abortions. Their minds have been twisted since they were teens into believing it is somehow good for them, and that aborting babies is in their best interest. Its sad, but understandable. None of them are truly responsible for their decision. Most of them have been lied to their whole lives.

What actually makes me laugh is when I see all the Karens, many of them mothers themselves, advocating for abortion. Worst part is none of them would ever to get an abortion.

 

[waybread]

Dirius, try not to be disingenuous about rightwing dictatorships. You know exactly what I mean. And so does everybody else on the planet.

 

[Dirius]

In the following post you have confirmed that:

a) the % of pregnancies that present problems which may require abortion is very low, and problematic pregnancies usually occur in older women trying to force pregnancies past their prime.

b) dispossesed children are looked after by a combination of charities, adoption and foster systems.

I'm not sure you even read what you write.

Dirius, At this point in the discussion, I wonder if your ignorance of women's reproductive health is deliberate. Is it, the less you know, the less you would have to modify your views?

The figures vary somewhat, but in the US, something like 2% of pregnancies are ectopic. (You remember what that is, right??) Pre-eclampsia affects 2-8% of pregnancies worldwide. It can have a range of outcomes, usually pre-mature babies, but it can severely damage the pregnant woman's health. https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/preeclampsia.aspx

Women with fertility treatments are typically implanted with multiple fertilized eggs in the hope that at least one can be brought to term. With multiple fetal developments, however, the fetuses often are not all going to survive as healthy babies. Doctors often recommend the therapeutic abortion of the least healthy and abnormally developing fetuses to give the healthiest ones a better chance of survival.

If we add up the various rare disorders , it turns out that serious complications are not unusual. In the case of a particular woman, it's 100% of her pregnancy and life.

Never mind the mental anguish of some mothers who were violently inseminated against their will.

You subscribe to a cruel joke about poor, unwanted children being well looked-after. Some countries do a better job of this than others. Look up data on child malnourishment in the USA. Why do you imagine some children wind up in foster care? What do you think is the adoption rate for older minority children with severe disabilities? Are you aware of homeless children?

Dirius, it's time for you to step up and educate yourself.

 

[Dirius]

Dirius, try not to be disingenuous about rightwing dictatorships. You know exactly what I mean. And so does everybody else on the planet.

Ok please explain to me.

Did the fascist regime have social welfare? they did.
Did the fascist regime have socialized health-care? they did.
Did the fascist regime have high taxes and regulations? they did.
Did the fascist regime promote worker's unions with protection from the state? they did.

Tell me are these what you would call "right-wing" principles? Or are they more left-wing principles?

What did the fascist had in common with right-wingers? Oh they were nationalists... just like the Soviets and Cuban revolutionaries.

Get real waybread, every dictatorship in the world has been to some degree a leftwing totalitarian state. The only exception was Pinochet's in Chile.

 

[Dirius]

Of course it is a laughing matter. Why wouldn't it be? From your perspective its not like its murder. Its just a woman having a simple medical position, as it was their choice.

Dirius, since when is abortion ever a laughing matter?

Shame on you.

I personally think abortion is tragic. It is not a question of "favoring" abortion. Ideally every pregnancy should be wanted. But when it is not, women deserve therapeutic abortions; under their rights as autonomous human beings.

I remember the days before Roe v. Wade, and how desperate women and girls resorted to an underground of "backroom butchers" or self-induced procedures involving knitting needs or caustic substances inserted into the vagina.

Your smug piety is not going to stop abortion. Misogynists like you will only drive it underground and make it more dangerous.

You have no idea what "Karens" have gone through in their lives. None.

You know nothing about the reproductive issues of young girls. Nothing.

Don't boast about your ignorance, Dirius. You only make it more offensive.

 

[waybread]

Dirius, you simply don't get it.

You surely realize that there are people in your camp who want to deny abortion under any and all circumstances. They don't understand (as I am not sure you do) examples where pregnancy does threaten the mother. Sometimes you say that you would support abortion in such cases, then you switch and say that they're so rare nobody has to think about them. Which is another way of your saying "no exceptions."

Pregnancies can be medically healthy and viable that nonetheless cause the woman (or girl, let's be honest) extreme mental anguish.

It's not the job of the police or the courts to give abortion seekers a questionnaire to determine if they pass your "convenience" test or not. Either you accept that fertile women own their own bodies or you would deny them that basic human right.

You're not a big "rights" proponent, after all, Dirius.

None of these have anything to do with abortion by choice. You are using the very rare instances that involve a difficult situation to advocate for the general practice of abortion. All of these examples are when either the mother or child suffer from an incurable medical condition that usually requires dangerous treatment, and will inevitably kill one or the other.

None of these have anything to do with healthy and viable pregnancies.

 

[waybread]

Of course it is a laughing matter. Why wouldn't it be? From your perspective its not like its murder. Its just a woman having a simple medical position, as it was their choice.

Dirius, surely even you can conceptualize situations positioned somewhere between murder and a laughing matter.

 

[chay]

The great thinkers of the englithnment realised that societies that functioned well back in those days, were those in which the law upheld a certain number of individual rights. This is the great secret to why certain socities, mainly western european monarchies, had superior cultures and were more developed than the rest of the world

However, unlike absolute monarchies, in the constitutional republics that arose in the 18th and 19th centuries, these rights are inalienable, in the sense that our laws are constructed and legislated based on these principles, and not the other way around.

In the U.S., the law is is constructed based on these principles.

I've already answered about how our societies help children in dire condictions in multiple previous posts.



In practice, there is no such thing as a "right-wing dictatorship". The right-wing is concerned with the protection of individual rights. If you take the right-wing thinking to the extreme, you would end up with anarcho-capitalism, which is the complete absence of a state.

Most dictatorships have historically been advocates of "statism" (the supreme authority of the government) - which goes against most principles conservatives and libertarians hold up.


Here you are using strawmans. I showed examples of a case in which the baby was't part of the will, and there was no property bequated to him, but based on claim. The law also shows that injuring a child in the uterus has the same consequences as harming a normal human being, and the child is treated as such by most legal standards. You wouldn't execute a pregnant woman because there is an innocent life there, not because of some concept of "barbarism" (because the execution in itself of a woman would be barbaric).

The law seems to hold fetuses in the same regard as any other human, and grants them rights based on this condition.



You keep repeating the example of babies, but I have already answered how our western nations have always taken care of dispossessed children by means of charity.

I have no problem with women having autonomy over their bodies, but the skull of a 6 month fetus that gets crushed during an abortion process isn't part of a woman's body.

I've seen a 6 month old foster baby in temporary care with his little head all stitched together and his skull mending crooked like a broken egg shell.
There are many more displaced children than adoptive parents, institutionalised children suffer,
Around 1.5 million children orphaned or without their primary caregivers due to Covid 19, US having the 4th highest amount.
Children suffering at the border, beyond the border & within the border regardless of who is the President.
Charity is not raising them...socialism is.

 

[Dirius]

I've seen a 6 month old foster baby in temporary care with his little head all stitched together and his skull mending crooked like a broken egg shell.
There are many more displaced children than adoptive parents, institutionalised children suffer,
Around 1.5 million children orphaned or without their primary caregivers due to Covid 19, US having the 4th highest amount.
Children suffering at the border, beyond the border & within the border regardless of who is the President.
Charity is not raising them...socialism is.

Yes children in the foster system suffer. But your alternative is to kill them with an abortion instead?

Measures to take care of dispossessed children have existed in Europe since at least the middle ages, and none of these are perfect. But all of them are preferable to aborting the child. Sometimes the state has taken care of them, sometimes a guardian is appointed, sometimes the religious institutions have taken care of them. These may not be perfect, but its preferable to live and have a life, than be dead.

I'm sure most people who were orphaned or adopted will tell you they would have prefered to die, wouldn't they?

 

[Dirius]

Dirius, you simply don't get it.

You surely realize that there are people in your camp who want to deny abortion under any and all circumstances. They don't understand (as I am not sure you do) examples where pregnancy does threaten the mother. Sometimes you say that you would support abortion in such cases, then you switch and say that they're so rare nobody has to think about them. Which is another way of your saying "no exceptions."

Pregnancies can be medically healthy and viable that nonetheless cause the woman (or girl, let's be honest) extreme mental anguish.

It's not the job of the police or the courts to give abortion seekers a questionnaire to determine if they pass your "convenience" test or not. Either you accept that fertile women own their own bodies or you would deny them that basic human right.

You're not a big "rights" proponent, after all, Dirius.

Because you are using a small percentage of cases that involve unviable pregnancies, to advocate and justify the general practice of abortion on viable and healthy pregnancies. These are not same.

Cases in which the pregnancy endangers the mother's life are very different, and usually the treatment will cause complications for both child and mother - the death of the fetus is in most cases certain if you attempt to save the mother's life, and if you don't both of them will usually die.

Trying to jujstify an action by using a rare and complicated instance as the prime example is moronic.

 

[Dirius]

Dirius, surely even you can conceptualize situations positioned somewhere between murder and a laughing matter.

If the fetus isn't alive, then abortion isn't murder, and its just a simple medical procedure that removes a tiny and unnecessary part of the woman's body - and we can joke and laugh about it all we want because its not something serious.

So which is it?

 

[Ukpoohbear]

Why don’t you adopt that same compassion towards animals, which includes mothers and babies being separated and murdered?

By leaving animals alone, you are sacrificing a lot less than when you ask a woman to become a mother under any circumstance.

In all the discussion I’ve had with you about Veganism, you agree it is cruel but it tastes nice and you simply don’t care if it’s murder.

As someone who has had an abortion, I also knew it was cruel but I didn’t think it was murder either. It’s not so black and white as you try to make it out to be.

 

[Dirius]

Why don’t you adopt that same compassion towards animals, which includes mothers and babies being separated and murdered?

By leaving animals alone, you are sacrificing a lot less than when you ask a woman to become a mother under any circumstance.

In all the discussion I’ve had with you about Veganism, you agree it is cruel but it tastes nice and you simply don’t care if it’s murder.

As someone who has had an abortion, I also knew it was cruel but I didn’t think it was murder either. It’s not so black and white as you try to make it out to be.

Simple, because I place higher value on human life than on animals. And while I believe we should care for animals and not misstreat them, they are not the same as humans.

Animals are our food, our sustainment, our prey.

 

[Ukpoohbear]

Simple, because I place higher value on human life than on animals. And while I believe we should care for animals and not misstreat them, they are not the same as humans.

Animals are our food, our sustainment, our prey.

It’s all life though that you passionately defend. To what extent are you passionate about it? You wouldn’t have your career in finance I think it is if you fell pregnant and chose to have a baby. You might, but the likelihood falls drastically because most single mothers struggle to get out of poverty - they might just sacrifice their own life to raise their children and hope they don’t make the same mistakes.

Or, if when I fell pregnant you were the father, would you have taken on that task rather than me abort the baby? Maybe there should be things in place to stop potentials fathers not being as effected by it as women, and maybe I would have kept the baby but instead I thought of myself a a single mother with no family support and that’s why I made the decision I did. And I don’t regret it, even though I do believe to a *certain extent* it was murder.

 

[david starling]

A woman should have the right to refuse to carry an early stage pregnancy to term. Simple as that.

Btw, an average of 700 women die from pregnancy-related complications each year in the U.S.

 

[Dirius]

It’s all life though that you passionately defend. To what extent are you passionate about it? You wouldn’t have your career in finance I think it is if you fell pregnant and chose to have a baby. You might, but the likelihood falls drastically because most single mothers struggle to get out of poverty - they might just sacrifice their own life to raise their children and hope they don’t make the same mistakes.

Yes I probably wouldn't have the life I do now, I would have another type of life. That doesn't mean it is correct or justifies such an action.

Or, if when I fell pregnant you were the father, would you have taken on that task rather than me abort the baby? Maybe there should be things in place to stop potentials fathers not being as effected by it as women, and maybe I would have kept the baby but instead I thought of myself a a single mother with no family support and that’s why I made the decision I did. And I don’t regret it, even though I do believe to a *certain extent* it was murder.

Hard to say - because when I was college aged I wasn't opposed to abortion, and the me in the present can only see things in retrospect and with a biased view. I would love to stand here all high and mighty and tell you that I would have done everything correctly, but the truth is I don't know. But that doesn't mean my actions would have been correct or justified.

As I mentioned though, I don't hold anything against women who have gotten abortions, in fact I understand them, because society as a whole pushes and manipulates women into aborting fetuses rather than keeping them. However, there is a large section of the population which promotes and supports abortion, even though they would personally never get it. There is another section of the population which profits over it -> which reveals the true nature of why so many politicians, businessmen, celebrities, etc. actually make the push for abortion.