Aftermath of Abortion

For me, the question is a little simpler with that. The woman decides she does not want to use her womb to bring a child to term and bear it. Currently, the only option is abortion, which does not leave any rights for the fetus. When harvesting is an option, the rights of the fetus become more distinct since we can artificially bring it to term and into the world. At that point, we would be justified in making the harvesting option available in place of abortion.

 

so would you outlaw abortion then? total ban?

cause that kinda flies in the face of, "it's her body she can do whatever she wants to because the thing inside her has no rights, anyway."

 

You are certainly ABLE to, but my point is that passing a law banning abortion is counterproductive at best. It will not solve the problem AND it will cause tremendous harm in and of itself.

 

As important as you think it is, it is still an "if" and nothing more.

 

nothing more than that we MIGHT be murdering babies. eh...no biggie.

 

The people I have known who have had abortions have thought about it. I had a long conversation about it with one of these women before she went to the clinic. She is one of the reasons that I so strongly rail against legislative bans on abortion. She was in an absolutely unteneble situation in which the only way out in her opinion was abortion. She had explored the other options and decided that as early as it was, she could live with the "if" factor.

Had she been faced with a legislative ban, I don't know what would have become of her, but she is now a wife, professional, and a mother of two and maintains to this day that she does not regret her decision. I am sure that you can tell plenty of stories from your experiences, but they only tell one side of the story.

Working to reduce abortion rates is something we should all be doing, but working to ban a medical procedure is recklessly irresponsible IMO.

 

no doubt there.

 

My mistake. Fell into your trap. Delete "parent" Input "women."

Yes. Thanks for making my point. This time YOU slipped up. The constitution was amended to grant rights to living breathing human beings. No grey areas here. These were self sustainable people that had passed through the birth canal and were undoubtedly concious beings. You are suggesting REMOVING rights from women because of your unprovable personal opinions about a fetus.

Thanks again for proving my point. Had you had programs to work with these women BEFORE THEY WERE PREGNANT, you wouldn't have been having those conversations.

Period. End of story.

I really don't understand the resistance to this idea.

IMO, it is wasted energy to continue the legal battles when we could divert our efforts in obviously more productive ways.

We live in America. One solution (outlawing abortion) is an undeniably unanswerable question for Americans. One of the problems is it potentially undermines the very document that grants us the right to talk about it.

The second solution doesn't anger ANYBODY and pre-empts the whole topic of abortion altogether. As an additonal positive benefit to this solution, we don't have extra children born into unprepared family situations.

For me, its a no brainer...at this point in American history.

We tried the legal battles and all it has proven to be is devisive. Lets find another solution folks. Its right in front of your face but you are so entreanched you can't see it. In the meantime, we are wasting time and more or more unwanted pregnancies occur.

 

All we need to do is pass legislation that defines human life as beginning at conception and many of these arguments disappear. At that point, the constitution takes over (ie cannot be deprived of life ... without due process.) Saying unborn babies don't count as much as other people is the new 3/5s rule, and everyone knows how shameful that was. One day soon, a new supreme court will likely end up outlawing abortion anyway. Thank God that W won the election.

 

I could never see doing that.

 

Actually no, they won't disappear. Because defining a fertilized embryo as a human is only an opinion.

IMO, comparing slaves with a fertlized egg is shameful.

and I'm sure God was really pulling for W to win the election.

If you are truely interested in erroring on the side of life, then I'll also expect you to protest the Iraq war and the death penalty.

 

Its hard to keep up with this thread but this part caught my attention.

If we get to the point of developing artificial wombs that won't end the abortion and will introduce a whole hosts of new problems. Women don't always abortions because they are worried about the pregnancy. They are worried about if they can bring up the child. If we can harvest fetuses and bring them to maturity artificially we still need to deal with who raises the child. Do we force the woman who didn't want to raise the child in the first place to raise her now that we've gotten past her having to bear it? We're back to the same problem that we have regarding adoption because everyone of these "harvested" fetuses will have to be adopted or end up being wards of the state.

I can't help but seeing a A Brave New World situation coming out of raising unwanted fetuses artificially.

 

If that happens I predict that will be the end of the Republican party as it now is. There are so many abortions because there is demand for them and a ban won't end that and if we go back to a pre-Roe situation once stories come out about botched back alley abortions we'll see a backlash that would fracture the party as women and moderates abandon it in droves.

While there has been legislation muddying the water about the definition of when life begins there hasn't been a serious legislative effort to push for a hard definition. The USSC largely skirted the issue in Roe making abortion legal by extension so IMO a legislative definition of life beginning at conception could withstand USSC scrutiny. Further even if it didn't a Constitutional Ammendment would easily resolve that issue. To my knowledge there has been nothing considered seriously along those lines. National Republicans I believe are eager to appoint judges who will overturn it because they realize the political backlash from legislating an end to abortion. In this case their looking for there own activist judges to the work of the legislature.

Another problem with defining life as beginning at conception and embuing a fertilzed egg with the same rights as a fully formed human deals with another hot button issue stem cells.

I recently heard of a study that showed that embryonic stem cells are effective in repairing spinal cord injuries but if life was defined at conception then clearly stem cells couldn't be used since they involve dismantling embryos. Imagine the firestorm that will arise if stem cells live up to the promise of curing spinal chord injuries, diabetes and brain damage (and I believe they will) but you can't get those treatments in the US since stem cells have to be harvested from embryos and legally that is murder.

Defining life at conception will essentially do away with invitro fertilization. To produce a successful embryo usually several eggs are artificially fertilized, most of the embryos end up being discarded but under the definition that life begins at conception these are humans so throwing them away is murder. What do we do then implant 50 embryos into the woman who came in for fertility treatment? Find surrogates? Keep them frozen until artificial wombs are developed?

I personally don't believe life begins at conception and have a hard time considering an undifferentiated mass of cells as a human but I also believe that defining life as begining at conception is going to cause a whole hosts of other problems.

 

are we talking baby killing????

sign me up!

 

First krosfyah, I appologize I cannot post often, life keeps interfering with Clutchfans.net.

My intentions were not for you to feel guilty and I am not trying to change your mind.

I am expressing how disturbing to me it is that we kill our unborn instead of protecting our unborn. I certainly understand all the very difficult and unfortunate circumstances that lead to abortion I have tried to make it abundantly clear that as a Pastor my wife and I have many times been right in the middle of a woman's struggle and suffering do to very extreme hardship and misery.

I think there is a perception that if I am against abortion I am for all the evils that women may be exposed to. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I do not think you are a bad person. I think that it is bad that society views abortion as a good thing. You said yourself it is bad.

I agree.

We apparently agree we have two wrongs to deal with- unwanted pregnancies (and all the evil women face in these situations) and abortion.

If every abortion was done to save the life of the mother, I would say let each mother make that decision. Give up her own life for her baby or give up her baby for her life. I would find nothing wrong with that choice. It is one's own responsibility to give up their own life. If my mother and I were in a sinking ship and there was only a flotation devise for one and neither of us could swim, I would give her the choice with a clear conscience. Given the circumstance that only the mother or the baby can live, not both, then that mother must make that decision. That is an unfortunate situation that every Dr. in the country would try to avoid.

Now that is a case of life or death. Breathing or dead, in the grave or still kicking.

But when abortion becomes a matter of a convenience that is entirely different to me.

Unwanted, teen pregnancy, poverty, selfishness, irresponsibility, lack of education, recklessness, population control etc. They are all bad, but not worth murder.

All of these reasons for killing the baby are unjust and they trample the right to life that the baby should have. The unborn human should be protected from the self serving decisions of others when it comes to life and death.

A mother should suffer the inconvenience rather than kill.
If my wife makes my life miserable and I no longer want her I could kill her for convenience sake. It something that happens in some cases. And in some cases of violent abuse it is actually judged to be self defense. But to legally at the discretion of personal convenience have spouses in bad marriages end it with killing is insanity. Some marriages are pretty bad and cause great emotional and mental distress, financial hardship and poor quality of life. But to say kill the spouse? That's an easy out isn't it.

If killing was the answer to unwanted marriage, teen marriage, high risk poverty marriages, lack of marriage training, lack of preventing unwanted marriages- we better become better husbands fast.

The issue of when life begins is so mute to me.

If chimpanzee's all of the sudden started aborting their chimps National Geographic and most of the animal activists in the world would be all over that spending millions trying to stop them and find out what turned them into savage beasts?!? They would check their diet, grab them all up and haul them to safe havens and work hard on the problem until they got them back to 'normal' reproductive behavior. Not because the chimp 'fetus' was not a chimp, but because they know they 'ARE' little living developing chimps inside those momma chimps.

I am not trying to be crass or crude or stupid, I am trying to explain that human reproduction is just that, making living babies.

That is the course of all nature.

Because we are more intelligent and we have moral choices we should be better equipped to protect the unborn than all other species.

Stop aborting babies for convenience sake. Spend all your energies preventing 'unwanted pregnancies'. Throw all the pro-choice and pro-life energies and resources into preventing back ally abortion, unwanted pregnancies, education, parenting, training, prevention, recovery, catching those who fall through the cracks etc.

We could all work together and we could stop killing babies.
It will never be perfect but at least killing would not be the preferred choice.

(I know we could argue all day about 'killing' the unborn child- what difference does it really make in the womb, out of the womb?) Well a baby is not viable out of the womb in a hospital nursery. Just leave the baby to itself for 90 days and see if it feeds itself, changes itself etc. The baby will die. In fact it takes quite awhile for a human baby to become 'viably' alive.

And the little thing at 6 months old still depends on the mother for life and still doesn't have what we would term 'conscienceness' you know memory, thoughts of running through fields green grass, choices between what is right and wrong, in fact we don't know much of what conscienceness a baby has except feed me or change my diaper.

Viability is not a reproductive issues. Life is a reproductive issue. In fact life is the reproductive issue. The only one.

That is why this debate is so sad to me.

 

ok..i'll say it again. stop making assumptions about what I know or what I can see. stop it. you have no idea my relation to this issue...you have no idea where i'm spending my time in relation to this issue.

by the way...your traps are crap. there is no designation for rights only to "living, breathing human beings" in any opinion or anythng else. in fact, just the opposite. there ARE restrictions for abortion that the Supreme Court of the United States...again...you need to read Roe. the Court extended protections for babies after the FIRST TRIMESTER (first 3 months). So it is not correct to say that the Constitution only supports rights for "living, breathing human beings."

 

I'm in.

 

Here is what I do know about you. I know you have spent a lot of your time on this thread arguing ONLY about abortion and NOT once have I heard you suggest anything proactive about stopping unwanted pregnancies...except once as a concession.

Regarding legal designations for a fetus, I am NOT debating whether certain restrictions should apply. I see certain restrictions as perfectly legitimate compromises. My beef is with the camp that will stop at nothing until we make a full ban of all abortions. I've said that at least twice in this thread. So, as you say, FIRST TIMESTER. A first trimester fetus should NOT be afforded the same rights, IMO, as a walking breathing concious human being. Let me rephrase that, we should NOT eliminate the rights of 50% of Americans (woman). Doing so flys in the face of the constitution...and the Supreme Court agrees.

But who would have guessed, two people come to irreconcilable differences on the issue of abortion. I bet that never happened before.