Abortion

[Almost Yearly]

I can't resolve my contradictory views on this.


Actually that's cop-out bollocks. We should stop murdering people to suit our lifestyle. In the womb, in the desert, in perpetuity. There.

[Partridge's Love Child]

Don't listen to him, he's on drugs.

[Almost Yearly]

Saw the littl'un opening and closing his hand at 20 weeks. That's serious drugs. Kinda clouds the ..erm.. waters. I mean, as euphemisms go pro-choice is right up there with friendly fire isn't it. I'm not a rampant anti or anything, but the heart does put up a pretty good fight against the mind, which of course doesn't want a world crammed with starving unwanted children. Perhaps the hencole solution is in fact the only rational one.


I can't resolve my contradictory views on this.

[Partridge's Love Child]

It's because you can't think straight, because you're on drugs.

I'll stop now.

[Mr Colossal]

Call me insensitive, but I don't really care for all this 'the baby feels things after so and so weeks old'. If the couple in question are incapable of looking after tha baby, or not in an ideal situation be it age-wise/ money wise then they should get rid of it. Besides, it can't rememebr anything once its been terminated anyway. Obviously this idea might upset people with kids, who can imagine what it would be like if their bundle of joy was killed in the womb, but save it.  If its not born alive it doesn't count. Unless its resuscitated of course...

I suppose how the baby came about would determine a lot. If the man doesnt use conctraception then decides he doesn't want it i beleive the woman has a right to tell him to fuck off. He should pay for his stupidity/arrogance.

That guy whos got his mrs pregnant 3 times  whos on the pill, whilst using condoms is just mad. (keeps mouth shut  incase hes still with her)

They must've made that 'most fertile man in... ' film with you in mind haha. You've made my dream of becoming a promiscuous love-stud just that tiny bit smaller now.

What about stories where you hear of  women using pregnancy as a reason to stay together/for financial benefit? Maybe they should create a ' If contraception fails and the man dosn't want the baby, The mother must  agree to recieve no child benfit from the father' law.

But i guess that would be harsh on the child growing up to find his father rejected him.  Maybe over sensitivity on certain issues is  the  problem with this country. Which is a new debate in it self.

[Artemis]

I was always 'pro-choice' until my partner became pregnant and we were faced with the bleak choices of giving birth to a child we couldn't support financially or emotionally at that time, or having it aborted. I hadn't appreciated the various shades of grey that exist between "women's choice' and 'murdering bastards'. Not least of all, I hadn't appreciated, as Peter Singer correctly points out, that whether you're pro or against choice, it isn't really the point; it's a cop-out. The central issue is whether or not a foetus has moral interests and value and if not, at what point it does. Personally, I couldn't live with a third or even second trimester abortion, because the line between 'collection of cells that could potentially grow into a human being' and 'an unborn child capable of self-awareness' is far more difficult to draw.

I do not believe that the potential for a foetus is enough to justify protecting it's survival at all costs. We decided on an abortion in the end (surgical rather then the abortion pill) because we felt it would have been crueler to bring a child into a world when we couldn't support it properly. It was a very painful, difficult time for us both and remains a sensitive topic, obviously. We still have the little scanned picture they printed out for us to confirm the pregnancy before they terminated it; you can see the formation faintly.

Not an issue to be dealt with lightly, if only because of the emotive nature of the topic; it does grate me to hear (though not on this particular forum) the casual moralising and oversimplification of issues like this, as if it's quite a simple black and white topic, which you can either be 'for' or 'against' - in reference to a recent thread, it's that kind of attitude that does make me wonder if the general public (or at least the section of it that tends to have such ignorant, ill-informed opinions) are indeed idiots.

[Cliche Guevara]

Call me insensitive, but I don't really care for all this 'the baby feels things after so and so weeks old'. If the couple in question are incapable of looking after tha baby, or not in an ideal situation be it age-wise/ money wise then they should get rid of it. Besides, it can't rememebr anything once its been terminated anyway.

Wouldn't adoption be a viable/better option if the couple are unfit to care for the baby? And by saying "it can't remember anything once it's been terminated anyway" you may as well be justifying the murder of humans in broad daylight. After all they won't remember once they're dead.

I'm not sure where I stand on this tricky issue. I wouldn't want to deny any woman the choice to terminate her pregnancy, while I would also like to see that a developing baby, which has it's senses, wouldn't be terminated due to the will of someone else.

[Artemis]

Wouldn't adoption be a viable/better option if the couple are unfit to care for the baby?

We considered adoption, but I don't think either of us could have lived with any degree of peace knowing that our child was 'out there' being cared for by someone else because we were 'unfit' at the time. We also didn't consider it fair to the child to be denied its birth parents, when (at the time of our consideration), we didn't consider it to have a human 'interest' so much as a human 'potential'.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I tend to have a logical, Mr Spock opinion on this subject. If no other person is suffering from the death of a feotus/baby, then I can't really look at it as being a 'wrong' act. The unborn baby doesn't know about it, the mother chose to kill it so is presumably okay with it. Logically speaking (and pardon me if this sounds cold), but human life is only of value based on it's value to others. A man alone in a room all his life is of no value to anyone but himself.
If I had no family or friends I wouldn't particularly mind being killed (As long as it was quick) because I wouldn't know about it, and no one else would suffer as a result.

Of course, there are other complications with abortion, the mother may regret what she did years down the line, or the father may be distressed by it, but you can say that about lots of things.
The way I see it, if I had been aborted, I wouldn't care. Because I'd be dead. How can you miss something you never have in the first place?

[Artemis]

human life is only of value based on it's value to others.

No it's not! Human life has an inherant value, as does any life with a conciousness and self-awareness. The man who spends all his life locked in a bedsit may be of no value to anyone else (though indirectly he's of value to anyone who shares the view that all life is inherently valuable) but this doesn't mean he's not of value at all.

[El Unicornio, mang]

By value I don't mean that that person would be worthless, I would never have that attitude about people, I mean that in a logical sense a person with no friends or family being removed quickly from the world would have no negative repurcussions (aside from butterfly effect style ponderings), not even to the person who was removed, as long as they didn't know about it.

[Artemis]

Well, no arguing with that I suppose.

Damn.

[Mr Colossal]

Wouldn't adoption be a viable/better option if the couple are unfit to care for the baby? And by saying "it can't remember anything once it's been terminated anyway" you may as well be justifying the murder of humans in broad daylight. After all they won't remember once they're dead.

Mr Unicorn has hit the nail on the head as to what i was trying to explain. If you shot your average human in the street in broad daylight, it should at least have some knock-on effect. He has experienced life, he has people who depend on him etc. People should  miss him. Whereas your average unborn baby, has not experienced anything yet, and if his parents don't want him, and nobody knows of its existence, its termination will have no effect on anybody whatsoever on anybody, bar perhaps  the doctor sanctioning the abortion... Who should be hardened to this type of activity anyway.

[Artemis]

Yes but the religious amongst us (not me, I hasten to add) would argue that life itself is sacred, and it's this sanctity that requires protection.

Anyway, by way of response, I don't know quite what you mean by "your average unborn baby" - that seems a bit vague. At a certain point, the unborn baby has experienced stuff - it isn't in some kind of pre-birth coma until it pops out and starts its experiences. That's what stops me from feeling comfortable with an abortion in the later stages of pregnancy.