Abortion

[andrewducker]

I say that I'm pro-choice, but the truth is that I'm actually anti-abortion. Rather, I'm pro-making sure that women have the resources and education available so that there's no need for abortions save those performed for medical reasons. The best way to stop abortions is to stop the need for abortions -- not with abstinence education that tells girls they're naughty for getting knocked up but doesn't tell them how to prevent it, but with realistic sex education and more resources for young women who find themselves pregnant and unable to afford prenatal care and postnatal expenses of raising a child

Which pretty much sums up how I feel.

Stolen from the ever-vigilant Lady Sysiphus.

Comments

Re: pro-choice

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

It is a common confusion: there is also the confusion where the anti-choice people are claiming to be "pro-life" and "anti-abortion"... there are a lot of strong feelings around it.

But really, there are two places to stand: pro-choice, which means you believe a woman who is pregnant has the right to choose for herself what to do, and anti-choice, which means you believe a woman's decision what to do about her pregnancy ought to be taken away from her.

The one thing guaranteed to make me genuinely angry is a man making any generalised comment* on abortion other than to say "it's up to the woman who's pregnant, surely".

*generalized: Obviously a man who is involved with a woman who is pregnant has a right to comment on/discuss his specific relationship to this specific pregnancy, at the time or afterwards.

Re: pro-choice

[allorin.livejournal.com]

"The one thing guaranteed to make me genuinely angry is a man making any generalised comment* on abortion other than to say "it's up to the woman who's pregnant, surely"."

Surely that's gender-neutral? Why should one woman be allowed to have an opinion on what another woman should do with her pregnancy, if men can't?

Re: pro-choice

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

It's never going to be entirely gender-neutral, because women can get pregnant, and men can't.

You mistake me, though. I wasn't expressing a moral or ethical judgement when I said that men sounding off in a generalized way about abortion make me angry. I was just pointing out that they do. For obvious reasons: these are people who have never once thought about abortion in terms of "I might get accidentally pregnant: how would I feel then?" Men sounding off in a generalised way about abortion generally come across as smug bastards speaking from a great height about an issue that will never directly affect them but which they feel they have the right to preach about.

My ethical position is that, for any pregnancy, there is exactly one person with the right to decide what to do about it, and that is the woman who is pregnant. She may and she should take advice from her doctor, other medical advisors, and people she's involved with, but it's her decision.