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

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Pardon me for playing Devil's Advocate and asking for an opinion from the foetus' point of view.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Are you also going to ask for an opinion from the dilators?

The foetus doesn't have an opinion, no more than the tools used to induce an abortion have an opinion.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Prognosticate then.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Predict the future?

If the pregnancy is not terminated, if the woman doesn't have a spontaneous abortion, if the foetus is born, then a baby exists. If the baby is born in the UK, the odds are that the baby, once adult, will be of the opinion that a woman has a right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy: that appears to be the opinion of the majority of people in the UK.

But the foetus, as a foetus, has no opinions, and never will. That is a sure prediction - unlike the demographic guess that if the foetus stops being a foetus and becomes a baby, in twenty years time the adult the baby grew into being will probably be pro-choice.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think that we are discussing at cross-purposes. What is your definition of a n unwanted pregnancy?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

If the woman who is pregnant doesn't want to be pregnant, it's an unwanted pregancy. What's your definition?

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Is this a wind-up?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No.

You asked me what I meant by an unwanted pregnancy, and I've told you. Then, which seems fair, I asked what you meant.

[cx650.livejournal.com]

Your answer is far too simplistic for me. I do not seek to change anybody's opinion, I am trying to learn, to understand why people think and feel the way that they do. As I am sure you are aware, this is a very contentious issue, and I take it very seriously. To be honest, and without wishing to be rude, your replies have taught me nothing at all.

To answer your question, where there is pressing medical or social need.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Your answer is far too simplistic for me.

My answer is what I believe. I decline to make what I believe more complicated to suit other people.

I do not seek to change anybody's opinion, I am trying to learn, to understand why people think and feel the way that they do.

Well, that's a lifetime's job. But why would it be hard to understand that many women would not want to have their human rights taken away from them by fiat, regardless of whether or not they're pregnant?

As I am sure you are aware, this is a very contentious issue, and I take it very seriously. To be honest, and without wishing to be rude, your replies have taught me nothing at all.

Fair enough. I wasn't attempting to teach you anything, nor aware that you expected me to teach you anything.

To answer your question, where there is pressing medical or social need.

That seems to me to be a very odd way to define "unwanted".

[cx650.livejournal.com]

"I decline to make what I believe more complicated to suit other people."

I don't ask that you make your beliefs more complex, just that you help me understand them more accurately.

Regarding learning being a lifetime job, I fully concur. I am 51 years of age, and all my assimilated experience wisdom does is to confirm that I know almost nothing at all.

My definition being 'odd' may be a result of the previously mentioned 'cross-purpose'. I was specifically referring to late term abortions. If a woman wants a termination just because she doesn't want the child, I would hope that would have been addressed much earlier, i.e. before the foetus is sufficiently developed as to make the procedure a 'serious operation'. Under that specific circumstance I would totally agree that the woman has the right to decide whether anyone likes it or not.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I don't ask that you make your beliefs more complex, just that you help me understand them more accurately.

Well, when I've gone into more detail, you've dismissed my beliefs as "rhetoric".

I was specifically referring to late term abortions.

Every time I try to follow through an argument about at what age a foetus "deserves" legal protection from abortion, it ends up getting more and more fiddly with tiny little points being counted as if they were major changes, simply because there is no one point in the entire gestation period that anyone can point to and say "Now that foetus is a person, and the day before it wasn't."

The really big (literally "sea-change") point is, in fact, the obvious point: the moment of birth. (Well, okay, not "moment" - the whole process can take hours or days or if you're lucky only minutes, but certainly not a moment.) That's my reason for picking that as the time the foetus ceases to be a foetus, with no rights, and becomes a baby, with all the rights of any human being.