What about abortion?? click dont be afraid

^theres some good points but i dont think that you should be able to have an abortion after the first term. unless of course the mother is in danger. I mean most likely you ll know if your pregnant before your 2nd trimester, and it would probably be enough of a compromise for many pro life advocates. 

i dont want to sound like some preacher shit but i personally think that abortion is wrong cuz after some pro life dudes came to our school and showed us all this shit that proved that a fetus is a human it made me think that abortion is wrong...so ya. plus people can just have the baby and give it up for adoption right away.

way to stand up for yourself.

abortion is the womans choice because its her body and the fetus is part of that.  thats my opinion and i really dont think anyones gonna change it.

dont hate me, but to me the "controlling her own body" argument is BS, and here is why...



lets say i went into the local coffee shop swinging a baseball bat, and then i hit someone... if this person chose to press charges, i would simply walk into court and say "your honer" "i was simply exercising   my right to control my own body"

would this hold up in court?  NO, and here is why, your right to control your body ends the second your actions start hurting others..   and IMO a fetus is a baby.

I agree with drew, the person you struck is not dependent on you for survival.  Therefore it is not linked at all and you would be found guilty of assault and battery with a weapon. 

If you have kept your baby for 8 months and suddenly decide you don't want it you should be in some kind of crazy house. I'm pretty pro choice but partial birth abortion is pretty fucked up.

ya, I agree to an extent, but I also don't think it does society any good whatsoever to crank out a thousand crack babies a day. I mean fuck that shit, we don't need those people in the world, we don't want them in this world. Its a cold way to think about it for many, and I'm not saying I have no heart for these babies or whatever, i'm just saying that a baby born from a mom that can't care for it or doesn't want it is a worse situation in my opinion than an abortion. And adoption agencies and orphanages have way more children than they can give away, so yea

so what makes a crack baby less valuable then you?  ? ? ?


also, just stop talking about the adoption part, you are clearly misinformed... everybody i know who has adopted(and the number is in the 20's ) has had to wait around 1 year.... the only way my family was able to adopt my sister so quickly is because her birth mom ASKED US, while she was in foster care at our home..

contrary to your post, the line is a mile long to adopt all babies (drugs or not) you should really go talk to some adoption agencies and ask them about the number of people who are on waiting lists..

There ARE too many kids up for adoption, the only reason it takes a while is because you have to have background checks and financial stability checks. 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but a baby COULD live outside the mother at 8 months.  That's the line usually drawn, can the fetus live outside the mother.  If yes, abortion is immoral; if no, it's not human, so it's not murder.

And no, being a potential human does not make it human.  Every cell on my body is a potential new human because of cloning, and no one cries murder when I cut myself and start bleeding.

The thing I hate the most about the pro-life side of the debate is they are trying to tell people what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.  It's like telling someone they can't have a tumor removed (not trying to draw a comparison there, just giving an example).

lets face it, we need to make post birth abortions legal in this countryl

Wow, I just realized how emo that sounds...  You get the picture.

Using this logic applied to non-violent drug offenders would mean that a majority of our prisoners would be free and never convicted of using or possessing illegal drugs

True.  I have no problem with that.

im more or less pro choice...but partial birth abortion is wrong. people can argue until they are blue in the face when a fetus becomes a life bullshit..you want to abort your child before it is born whatever go for it...but once you are born...even partially, you are born thats is, you are a person, you are real, and you are alive. there is no kinda born, or almost alive, you are or you arnt. once you are born you are alive. it is wrong to kill a living person. and they way they do it is horrible

the way i see it partial birth abortion and just your standard abortion are just as wrong. A baby in the womb at 1 month is most likely going to turn survive until 8 months so killing it before it has a chance to grow is no different. I think that abortion is the same thing as murder. but by the way I do think that partial birth abortion is a lot more disgusting since you wouldn't kill a baby once it was born, so why would you kill it only a month or two earlier since it's not that much less developed.

^ Im going to put myself out on a limb and say that abortion is 100% social problem, where i live if you had an abortion its a huge deal. 

Yeah, abortion is probably helping some people and fucking up people less then meth and crack but i still see it as a social problem. Do you know what abortion was origionally intended for. This is not some ridiculous bullshit either. Birth control in general, Abortion as the main weapon was intended to cut down the number of minorities, Thats a fucked up reason start it even though i realize it has turned into something greater.  It contributes to the ideology that people don't have responsibility in families, hence the Blacks. Also what the hell is next after abortion, Euthanasia is legal? or maybe docotrs will just weed out babies that are unfit or maybe everyone will just be genetically engineneered to be perfect. Possibly parents wil have the option to kill their 14 year old. (maybe a little ridiculous on the last one). I don't know but I do see it as a social problem because it is killing of kids and it doesn't matter if their mother says it's fine. I'm glad i didn't get aborted and if i was black i would have a 50/50 chance.

fuck 'em let them do drugs, honestly who cares so long as they are not physically harming other people let them do alll the crack in the world, it's only their lives that will get fucked up

the chance of them fucking up others is a lot greater if tey are "[doing] alll the crack the world". i know you didnt mean it literal, but endorsing people fucking up their lives is a bit fucked up if you think about it. im sure your intetions werent that, but yeah.

interesting thread though, it def. was a good read before i go to sleep

well if it's legal prices go down etc etc so there won't be as much crime involved person to person, however i suppose there will be more people doing it so there will be more crime, but i don't see people getting mugged so someone can buy cigarettes, but it's up to debate

yeah but it's probably for something other than cigs

true, i spend too much money on booze though, i should probably stop, but i was at a cougar bar the other night, and they were buying the drinks, i think i shall go back to that bar more frequently now haha 

generally i'm the youngest guy in there, and what do cougars want? fresh meat, just make a few comments always say something like "what are you? 28?" when they're clearly 35, be charming and cheesy, and you my friend shall be swimming in cougars, it helps if there's a local cougar bar near you, i've found about 3 in my area that are always packed with cougars, it figures i met a girl at the cougar bar who was my age the other night, hmmm i should call her

My thoughts on abortion:
It's going to happen whether or whether not it's legal, so do you want it happening in a clean sterile environment, or do you want a black market for abortions that can potentially lead to fatalities in the person receiving the abortion?

^i dont think there are many people that are willing to get an abortion like that dude

Drew, you know that could only mean one thing, and it wouldn't involve going to an abortion clinic, but potentially a trip to the emergency room

Now that i think about it this is the worst argument for something ever. Stealingis illegal, but people still do it, and so is murder.

i'm a pro choice person but i think that third trimester abortions are sick and second trimester is iffy. if youre going to get an abortion get it as soon as possible. the situations that people get born into can sometimes suck especially if the people having the baby arent ready. its unfortunate really.

Depending on where you stand, abortion ALSO kills millions of people a year, and it sure ruins the unborn fetuses' lives more than the druggies, seeing as their life is simply pre-empted...

What you said before, that fetuses are "human but don't have the same rights as people" is really hard for me to grasp. At what point in development do we consider human life "life enough" to be protected by the universal, inalienable right to life that all humans have? Is it arbitrary to whether or not someone is inconvenienced by the pregnancy?

The idea of a what is and isn't life is so wrapped up in the personal willingness for sacrifice. You had your own close call, but you were man enough to take charge if you had to. I commend you. And you see, for people in a situation to be pregnant, life begins once the period is skipped, once the test comes back positive. For others, this same scenario does not find itself categorized as life, merely as an inconvenience to be dealt with before shit gets ugly.

The argument about being in control of your own body only makes sense superficially. It implies that you have jurisdiction over this clump of cells developing in you, like you would over bacteria or a virus to exterminate it; something foreign, something "parasitic" as you called it.

Except, this clump of cells is absolutely removed from the female body genetically, so much so it must be defended against the body's immune system at all times, lest it be attacked and devoured. This clump of cells has a unique human genome the likes of which the world has never seen, nor will ever see again. From the very start the cells have the capability, if left to develop, to produce another human life, one which will be, if not cherished, protected by their right to existence.

When did the Constitution become relevant and real? Was it when the final word was wrote, the final name signed, or when the idea was first formed, and the players assembled to make it happen?

Ajay & Drew FTW!

if abortion is going to stop a baby coming into the world without a parent that cares for it so it has a fukd up up bringing then im fo it

If it is really such a subjective sense of when the baby is considered alive why not allow the mother to make that decision?

If it really is an argument that breaks down over when to call a fetus a 'person of moral concern' why does it matter to the mother what you think?

and if you really want to start arguing about the idea of something -- or the conception of something constitutes it's existence (in our case a fetus having rights from the moment it is conceived), aren't you forced into the belief that the ONLY sex you can morally have is sex intended for baby making? 

why start at conception -- take up an every sperm is sacred argument, where intentionally waisting the opportunity of life is like killing a baby. 

^ interesting point right there for the extremists

Abort...abort!!

2 month limit. Thats what i say. The kid is in the mom, so it doesnt get a say.

The decision should be left up to the potential mother to be.

Though, IMO, girls these days are getting younger and younger at the point of becoming pregnant. The average pregnant girl I see on the street, in the mall, at the grocery store, is young. High school young. Are they really old enough to make the choice on whether or not they want to become a mom? Do any of them actually know, or can even imagine, what it's like to be a mom? The issue of abortion is not one that is more concerning than the way parenting is being handled these days. This may be off topic, the conversation of abortion leads to me thinking of this. And in thinking this, seeing everything that's around me, I say abort them all. Abort anyone who is younger than 21. They have no idea what they're doing, and they're ruining their lives. 90% of them will never be good moms. Thus, creating a world of misfit children.

Education needs to happen before the sperm and egg dance in the womb. It's getting pretty rediculous.

Drew, raspekt.  beyond that, a lot of you need to get your shit straight.

imo, guys who are against abortion should do their part in preventing women from ever being put in a position where abortion would even be considered.  if you're so against abortion, don't have sex.  honestly, in most cases if a girl found out you were against abortion, she wouldn't sleep with you anyway, so if you want to give your dick a chance of ever getting wet, keep your stupid opinion to yourself.  personally, i'm 100% pro-choice.  i'm never going to tell anyone what they can or cannot do to their body and, frankly, i'll never be pregnant, so it's a topic i, as a guy, will never fully understand or appreciate.  we humans have never had a real issue with killing other humans (let's be honest about it...), so the whole argument about whether or not the fetus is alive is moot.  thousands of people are killed everyday around the world for far less legitimate reasons than saving some 16-year-old rape survivor from becoming a mother (ei- oil).  i don't want to hear any bullshit about "if she didn't want a baby, she shouldn't have had sex" or "well, she needs to live with her mistakes".  THAT'S BULLSHIT.  if you are a guy, you will never understand what pregnancy is like, the toll it takes on a woman's body, and how the stigma that accompanies an unwanted pregnancy can ruin a person's reputation and sometimes their life, so shut the fuck up.  abortion isn't about the baby- that ought to be fucking obvious.  the baby dies- shit clearly isn't about that baby.  it's about the mother and almost any doctor will tell you that even with a healthy pregnancy and delivery, their first priority is the mother's well-being.  so, as much as the right-wing catholic retardards (if they knew anything, they wouldn't be catholic, so fuck 'em) want to turn this into a debate about the baby, IT ISN'T ABOUT THE FUCKING BABY.  it doesn't matter if its little heart is beating or if it has fingernails or whatever- if the mother is at some kind of risk, if she's not suited to be a mother, of if the baby is a result of a rape or incest, abortion should absolutely be an option the mother should be able to consider.

anybody who says otherwise should just go play with used needles at an AIDS clinic.

well spoken. i studied a lot about abortion in this ethics class. one of the most convincing articles that ive read on it breaks down the argument very well. it begins by laying out the two different arguments, which are parallel arguments. proving that a fetus is a human being or not is enough to prove the morality behind abortion.

a anti-abortionist would say that life is present right at conception because the fetus looks like a baby and possesses characteristics like a genetic code which is necessary and sufficient to be called human. this is obvious and is sufficient to say abortions immoral.

a pro-abortionist would use a similar strategy. fetuses are not social being. this is enough to say that they aren't human and therefore abortion is not a wrongful killing.

now we come to a stand off. the first saying "it is always wrong to take human life" and the latter, "being a person is what gives you moral worth, only persons have the right to live".

now each side is either too broad or narrow in their description of the wrongness of killing. according to the anti-abortionist, it would be bad to kill human cancerous cells, they are alive and human, their moral principle concerning killing is too broad. then they change to say "its bad to end the life of human beings" and we are back at the argument of whether or not the fetus is a human being.

whereas the pro-abortionist, like you said, runs into trouble in that their description is too narrow, what about handicapped and comatose people. attempts to patch this problem up are made in claiming that even kids and the unproductive or handicapped are of social worth and moral being, which is just as big a stretch and arbitrary as the anti-abortionist saying that the definition of human beings includes fetuses. its a standoff.

there are more problems with both sides arguments. anti-abortionist are grounding all their claims in the idea that it is prima facie (always, no matter what) to kill a human being. if they mean human bring in the biological sense, then you run into a problem of why a biological difference makes someone human or not. if thats the case then how can you base a moral conclusion on number of chromosomes, isn't that a biological difference like skin or hair color? if you mean human-being in the moral sense, well you can't really take it into account in this way because that is exactly what needs to be established.

but the pro-choice position also has problems. by saying "only persons have the right to live" and they define person in terms of psychological characteristics, then they must explain why psychological characteristics should make a moral difference. the standoff continues, if a pro-choicer must explain how psychological characteristics should make a moral difference, anti-abortionist must explain why biological characteristics should make a moral difference, and vice-versa.

if either side says a person is a person on purely moral grounds it doesn't help them escape or prove their point: neither has resources or facts to back up that claim.

stay with me a little longer,
so far both sides are wrong in their moral generalization, if a answer came from why killing is wrong rather than arguing the legitimacy of their moral claims, which is what all these claims and generalizations are based on(the essence of the wrongness of killing), then an answer may be found.

so it is wrong to kill us. why is it wrong? there are many answers. because then others would loose good experiences with us, or because it makes whoever killed us brutal, or even better, killing is bad because its effect on the victim. the loss of someone's life ends all experiences, activities, enjoyment that would otherwise be ones future. the loss of such experiences and future personal life, which are valuable, or means towards something valuable, to either us or our friends and family. this natural property, that killing is serious wrong because of the loss of ones future, is the best explanation to what makes killing bad. since fetuses have a valuable future ahead of them, they have a right to life, and this right to life makes them human, and therefore bad to kill them.



if someone retorts with a good counter-argument i will continue a debate with more counter-arguments and their debunking, but i highly doubt this will be read by many people and i want to nap.

also, i myself am not sure where i stand on the topic of abortion, it is a very difficult subject. one of my major problems and the only thing of which i'm sure about is the implications that come with making abortion illegal. i do not like that it teaches people or makes people feel and act as though they don't have to face the consequences of their actions. this attitude is not healthy for themselves or the community and that is my biggest object with pro-choice. also, this wasnt written just to argue with you drew, i just replied to the only post i read, a respected opinion, and i figure it'd get read more as a reply of yours. so thats my two cents. hope people read this, took a while, and ill look for a link to the article if anyone shows interest.

should've written my response to this. i agree with so many of these points but it still bothers me.

your first point: "guys who are against abortion shouldn't have sex". i would say, "guys who are against abortion shouldn't have sex, unless they are ready to deal with the consequences that MAY occur, a baby"(and for me that would be deal with it in a respectful and fatherly way). agreed, the whole theory of whether a fetus alive is complete garbage, there is no conclusion we can seriously come too, not enough resources and knowledge.

that said in rape cases, if the mother is going to die, incest etc. abortion should definitely be considered permissible. i hope you read my post above and see what you think.

this is just absurd. continuing your argument:

my response: then when is she not allowed to kill her child? when its born? why does it matter to you what she does with her kid?
your response: "oh its a human once its born so you cant kill it"
my response: back to square one, who says its a baby when it comes out and not as a fetus?

Check out this article written by an abortion doctor:
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=283931&p=1

"I can take a woman, in the biggest trouble she has ever experienced in her life, and by performing a five-minute operation, in comfort and dignity, I can give her back her life"

"I have been an abortion provider since 1972. Why do I do abortions, and why do I continue to do abortions, despite two murder attempts?

The first time I started to think about abortion was in 1960, when I was in secondyear medical school. I was assigned the case of a young woman who had died of a septic abortion. She had aborted herself using slippery elm bark.

I had never heard of slippery elm. A buddy and I went down to skid row, and without too much difficulty, purchased some slippery elm bark to use as a visual aid in our presentation. Slippery elm is not sterile, and frequently contains spores of the bacteria that cause gas gangrene. It is called slippery elm because, when it gets wet, it feels slippery. This makes it easier to slide slender pieces through the cervix where they absorb water, expand, dilate the cervix, produce infection and induce abortion. The young woman in our case developed an overwhelming infection. At autopsy she had multiple abscesses throughout her body, in her brain, lungs, liver and abdomen.

I have never forgotten that case."

i mean, though interesting, this has nothing to do with the morality of abortion. its just a sad story. imagine if you heard the fetuses telling their stories. it too, would be sad, and there would many many more...

This is an absurd and completely illogical argument. No sperm in and of itself has the capacity to become a human life. Conception is the point where new genetic material is created and the potential for an individual, adult human being begins; as such, it is the only clear line.

I hate this argument. I don't understand how people can't see that it only makes sense from a pro-choice viewpoint. From a pro-life stance, sure males can't get pregnant so they may never be the instigator of an abortion, but they are certainly the VICTIMS of abortions. For that reason, this "men can't get pregnant" argument is rhetorically worthless.

It frustrates me how this whole issue is so clouded by semantics tied to religion and feminism. "Pro-life" people are not necessarily opposed to women's rights and "pro-choice" people do not necessarily endorse infanticide. The only questions here revolve around whether or not the unborn deserves rights and, if so, what rights are those and how do they interact with the rights of the mother? This is not a question of religion, women's rights, or politics; it is a philosophical question of what beings warrant what legal protection.

I imagine one could find instances wherein somebody wanted to commit a murder but couldn't obtain a firearm and used a more grisly, painful, and "inhumane" method. So should we provide would-be killers with high-quality guns so they can commit their crimes in a cleaner fashion? I mean, they might do it anyway, and it would make such a nasty mess.

Should Americans not have judged the Holocaust? "Well, we're not Germans so we can't understand the problems the Jews/gypsies/homosexuals/etc. have caused them"?

I realize that from a pro-abortion rights stance these arguments seem like over-the-top, completely absurd hyperbole. But from the viewpoint that the unborn is a person deserving legal rights, legalized abortion in the US has killed almost 4 times the number the Nazis did.