Abortion

[Morrighan]

Curtis, everyone has different beliefs on when "life" starts. My personal opinion is that until we come up with some instrument that measures the "soul" entering the child, then we should err on the side of life. Whether you call it "soul" or "spirit" or whatever else, if you believe that there is some part of you that continues after the body dies, then you should be opposed to abortion. Other than that, the line is too thin. I really believe strongly that abortion is wrong, and it's murder, but the whole argument is based on unprovable beliefs on both sides, which is why there can be no compromise and no argument that will persuade either side. The arguments aren't based on fact; they're based on convenience and religion, which are not quantifiable arguments. You take a lot of both on faith and personal beliefs. Please, let's just leave this lie. The line is straight down the middle and nothing I can say or you can say will change anyone's mind.

Morrighan

[Curtis]

Whether you call it "soul" or "spirit" or whatever else, if you believe that there is some part of you that continues after the body dies, then you should be opposed to abortion. Other than that, the line is too thin.Morrighan

I don't believe that some part of you continues after the body dies. I do believe that the line is very thin.

castle2001: "Not an apt simile. Tonsils and the appendix are removed only when infected." -- That's a good point. Let me try a different simile then. If I can ever get the money together ("fat" chance), I'm going to have liposuction. Morally, I see no difference between me getting five pounds of fat sucked out and a woman getting a 16 week fetus sucked out.

I believe that abortion is the stupidest method of birth control, just as liposuction is the stupidest method of figure control, but I also believe that AS LONG AS THE FETUS IS PRE-VIABILITY, fetish101 is right that it's part of the woman and no one should be able to tell her what she can do with it. Once it's far enough along to survive outside its host, it should have rights of its own, and a legal standing/advocate.

I'm going to thank drake7 for digging out this dead thread and Morrighan for re-aligning it along the deviant path of abortion rights. ("deviant" as in it deviated from Alex's original theme of whether abortion is proper material for stories in the Library.) It'd been so long that I had forgotten that this WASN'T a similar thread that I began at the same time, which WAS on the topic of abortion rights. I'm not sure how prostitution entered into it. Anyway, I apologize to Alex for being the one who, apparently, initiated the hijacking of this thread.

[Morrighan]

I didn't want to do this. I was going to let it alone. I had, I swear to you, forgotten about our earlier discussion and was off debating politics in another forum. And oddly enough, we got on the abortion argument there is well. So I have a dare for you who say that a 'fetus' is nothing more than a tonsil, an appendix, an ingrown hair. That think that a sixteen-week old fetus is the equivalent of five pounds of fat.

I was going to leave this alone, because in my mind, as much as I enjoy the variety of topics posted here, this wasn't a subject fit (for me) to discuss in these forums. But I saw this and I CAN'T leave it alone. It made me, literally, sick. So this is my dare: follow the links below. Look at these pictures, which are validated by a pathologist's report. Look at these pictures, and come back and tell me again what you just told me. I am sorry, I swear to you. I don't want to come off as a right wing lunatic, but...anyway. Look at them, really look at them. Look at the difference between eleven weeks and look at twenty weeks. The links are below. Follow them, and if your opinion remains unchanged, I have nothing left to say.

http://www.priestsforlife.org/resour...s/archive1.htm
http://www.priestsforlife.org/resour...rted/index.htm


Morrighan

[Curtis]

Well, I looked through archive 1. What was your point?

[fetish101]

Well, I looked through archive 1. What was your point?

Well, her point was to change your opinion.

It didn't change mine. Yes, those aborted fetus' did have hands, feet, heads, eyes etc..but this is not something that I hadn't taken into consideration. I've been to Rotten.com before. Those images did not give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside by any means, but they do not persuade me that women shouldn't have the right to an abortion.

The priests for life can pose the little things any way they like, I still believe firmly that they were not sentient beings worthy of personal rights.

[Curtis]

They certainly were nothing new. Life magazine did a photo series on fetal development around 1970; we studied it in Biology in high school in the mid-70s; and Time (and I think National Geographic) have done photo essays on the subject in the past two years. I agree with you that it's irrelevant -- they're meant to shock, not inform -- but they really aren't shocking. If anything, I'd say they support my position. The 11 week images are just masses of undifferentiated tissue. They could be frogs or anything; they're certainly not human.

fetish, you've brought up another issue, which drifts even farther off-topic: What rights do non-sentient beings have? I don't believe the Bible is the word of God, so I don't believe that man was given dominion over the beasts. I believe that we're care-takers for the planet and that we have responsibilities toward the less-intelligent creatures, but not rights over them.

That doesn't mean we can't eat meat. Humans are omnivorous, and I, in particular, am carnivorous. It does mean we shouldn't mistreat our meat animals...or our pets.

[fetish101]

fetish, you've brought up another issue, which drifts even farther off-topic: What rights do non-sentient beings have? I don't believe the Bible is the word of God, so I don't believe that man was given dominion over the beasts. I believe that we're care-takers for the planet and that we have responsibilities toward the less-intelligent creatures, but not rights over them.

That doesn't mean we can't eat meat. Humans are omnivorous, and I, in particular, am carnivorous. It does mean we shouldn't mistreat our meat animals...or our pets.

Well, without pulling out my dictionary, by sentient what I was trying to convey was conscious. Animals are conscious. My cat is conscious. He definitely knows what he likes and doesn't like. This gives him rights. It does not however give him the same rights as a human. We as a society practice humane euthanasia for animals that are either too sick, mentally unstable, or too numerous to care for. These rights also do not apply to livestock killed for consumption. What I believe, and luckily the rest of society does too, is that all animals have the right not to be abused. Animals killed for food are done so in a humane, mostly painless manner. Animals that undergo euthanasia never even feel it coming.

[GaryWilcox]

I wonder how many people in this thread have actually been through an abortion.

I have. Or, my ex wife has, with what would have been our child, while I sat in the waiting room.

It was a decision we made together. I think that there are valid reasons to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but when I look back on our's, I know that we were just scared of what it would do to us, and the kind of parents we would be.

Letting go of all of the crap surrounding the shape of the fetus... the simple truth is, it was a part of me in her, growing into a seperate life, and we killed it because we were afraid we'd be bad parents.

I don't want to protest abortion clinics. I just feel like people should be informed before they go to an abortion clinic or terminate their pregnancy with some herbal cure that they should consider that this kind of decision wil haunt them for the rest of their lives.

It's irreversible. Having another child is not the child you aborted; it can never be undone.

[Curtis]

(Hmm. 500th post)

That sounds like a good reason to me. A lot of women have multiple abortions, so I'm guessing they weren't too haunted by the experience. I expect that sort of thing varies from person to person. Certainly Roe agrees with you.

[fetish101]

I wonder how many people in this thread have actually been through an abortion.

I have. Or, my ex wife has, with what would have been our child, while I sat in the waiting room.

It was a decision we made together. I think that there are valid reasons to terminate unwanted pregnancies, but when I look back on our's, I know that we were just scared of what it would do to us, and the kind of parents we would be.

Letting go of all of the crap surrounding the shape of the fetus... the simple truth is, it was a part of me in her, growing into a seperate life, and we killed it because we were afraid we'd be bad parents.

I don't want to protest abortion clinics. I just feel like people should be informed before they go to an abortion clinic or terminate their pregnancy with some herbal cure that they should consider that this kind of decision wil haunt them for the rest of their lives.

It's irreversible. Having another child is not the child you aborted; it can never be undone.

Well, I assume this question is directed to the pro abortionists here, myself being one. I have been through 3 abortions, although none of them were my child.

My mother had an abortion when she was 20, 10 years before she had me. Both my parents have gone through this with my sister and I in great detail, citing numerous reasons as to why they made that decision when they did. Monetary, mental, emotional, career reasons were the biggest ones.

My sister, now just 18, had a self induced abortion 2 years ago. She had unprotected sex, got pregnant, got really scared and found out over the internet how to perform it. I am the only person that she told about it, therefore I am the only person that she has ever talked to, confided in, or looked to for support in the matter. It was not fun going through it, but I firmly believe that she will lead a much better, balanced, successful life as a result of this. She was simply not ready for the burden.

The third abortion I have been directly connected to was my girlfriend's best friend. They have known each other since kindergarten and are very close. While this was not quite as bad for me as my sister's abortion was, the role I played was now my girlfriend's responsibility in that she was the only person her friend confided in. Obviously, I found out about it through her and offered her a lot of support having already gone through it.

My point is this; I am not someone who is just blindly throwing out his opinions on subjects that I have not ever considered. I understand abortions, and the emotional problems they cause. Knowing all this, I am still able to say with 100% certainty that the ability to have an abortion should be a right afforded to all women/couples.