abortion question

Max, that's exactly what I was saying. I think there are certain questions that science will never, ever be able to answer. This is one of those.

 

But we do have the freedom on whether to give our dying brother one of our kidneys. It is a life or death decision, if we don't go through a procedure risking our own life and well-being our brother will die. Most will accept the risks and consequences to save his brother. But we do leave it to you. Until a fetus can live outside the womb and come to term without risk (mental, physical, life and death) to the pregant women--yes I believe this decision is best layed in her hands. Just like the decision on whether to give a kidney or a piece of your liver to your brother would be. This would be true even if you poisoned your brother resulting in his liver failure.

 

No it is not considered murder and these life or death decisions are made all the time. That is why we have the phrase “pull the plug” and don't call it execution or murder (though a small minority is against this—saying that society should always use every means available to preserve life regardless of condition). If a fetus doesn't need the pregnant women--if it could develop in “Lorretta”’s box (let’s see who gets this reference ) or with the care of any person or the state, then to me the debate gets much foggier. But for now a fetus does need a potential mother, just like your brother in liver failure might need a part of your liver to survive. Those decisions should lie with the person giving up something to create or save the others life. Hopefully most of the time people choose to save others’ lives but as a society we shouldn’t force them in my view.

 

I dont think that people who know the consequenses of their actions and continue to do things that are detremental to their well being should be on our top priority list. Maybe my statement is a little naive and you make a good point. I think that there are better alternatives to abortion. There are tons of people who cannot have children and if you dont think that you can take care of a child or if you dont want it, then give it up for adoption. I dont care when people say that a fetus becomes a person. I know when I heard my babies heart beats for the first time, I melted. I know when I watched my babies come into this world I had never been as overwhelmed with emotion like I did those two times. I have never cried for joy except on August 22, 1996 and October 9th, 2000. They were my babies when they were in my wife just as much as much as they are now. When my wife was pregnant with our daughter she had some sugar test done and we found out that we were likely to have a down syndrome baby. They wanted to do an amniosynthesis (sp. ?) to make sure. They said that we have the option of aborting our baby if the results came back that she was. I couldnt believe that people would ever use that as an option. My wife and I were given two beautiful children and even if Kalissa had been born with down syndrome she would have been our baby none the less. Just because people flush their babies down the toilet or however they dispose of them doesnt make them less their babies. I think that the whole thing is disgusting.

 

MB, well articulated. I don't agree with your end position if I understand it--that abortion should not be a legal option for a pregnant women, but again you have articulated your position and reasoning behind it well, that is all any of us can ask.

 

The abortion question is so inconsistent on both sides that I can't choose. On one hand you have the Christian right that is adamant against abortion but fully supports the death penalty. Ironically the fetus they save today might be the convict they want to kill tomorrow. On the other hand it's a woman's right to choose what to do with her body yet there are a lot of instances in society where people don't have the right to do with their body as they please, i.e. selling your kidney is a federal crime, taking drugs is illegal. Then we have the changing status of the fetus to fit agendas. A person who kills a fetus can be charged with murder yet a woman can choose to kill the same fetus and it's just her right to do so... that same woman can get prenatal health care help from the government because they'll classify the fetus as an unborn child. A little consistency please...

 

Personally, I wish adoption was the solution but, sadly, it isn't.

Only a small percentage of people who cannot have a child end up adopting. Fertility clinics are booming with business and drug companies are researching new fertility drugs all the time. The reason we've seen the rash of multiple births - quintuple, sextuplets, etc - is because of the advances in fertility research and the overuse of fertility drugs.

Those who can afford the adoption process (which is long and extremely costly) 9 out of 10 times (according to adoption statistics) request a "healthy, caucasion <i>baby</i>". This excludes the thousands of African Ameican, Hispanic and other minority children. It also excludes infirm children and children who are no longer babies.

In fact, in America there is a growing number of children who are wards of the state because they don't fit the desired choice of most adoptive parents. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to become a foster parent due to a multitude of new regulations. As a result, many prosptective parents are looking to overseas adoption from Asia or Eastern Europe and Russia.

I would love nothing more than for every baby (and potential baby) and child to have a loving caring home, but that just isn't the case.

 

And yet, we don't want homosexuals adopting.

 

The "living will" point is more relevant to my take than yours. A living will usually dictates the conditions in which you allow a person to die, not the conditions in which you intervene to keep them alive. If someone doesn't want a pace maker, doesn't want to be resuscitated, doesn't want to be on a breathing machine, doesn't want to go through dialysis, even if a person doesn't want to take in food or water, they don't have to. Sometimes when physicians allow people to die it is the patient's decision (e.g., living will, verbal consent of a conscious person) other times it is family members that make that decision (when the patient can't make a decision for herself). The law in fact gives people the right to make such life and death decisions about themselves and in the absence of someone being able to do so for herself, it gives the right to next of kin.

 

MadMax:

No problem. I know you weren't intentionally trying to deviously insinuate your position. I just think some questions are loaded in themselves, so that they can't be neutral. They make an argument just in how they're worded...

 

Man you are just trying to stir the pot arent you.....




.....and no, we don't.

 

Thanks for saying this. It really is the bottom line.

In my case, since no one knows when life begins, I can't support abortion. Since the possibility exists that life begins at conception, the possibility exists that abortion is murder. This is far from a 'religious', or 'spiritual' viewpoint.

If life does not begin at conception, and abortion is legal, nobody dies.
If life does not begin at conception, and abortion is illegal, nobody dies.
If life does begin at conception, and abortion is illegal, nobody dies.
If life does begin at conception, and abortion is legal, many people die.

As you can see, the only time death could enter into the equation is when abortion is legal. You can say absolutely, without a doubt, that no one dies when there isn't an abortion, however you can't say the same when there is.

 

Not all.

I've never understood the paradox of being for abortion and against capital punishment or vice versa. I'm against abortion and against capital punishment. Both parties have inconsistent policies relating to the importance to the right to life.

Hard line Republicans: He's guilty. DIE
hard line Democrats: oh, you can't kill that poor little innocent rapist. The evidence in the murder trial wasn't beyond a shadow of a doubt.

hard line Democrats: Women have the right to choice. Kill the fetus.
Hardline Republicans: Right to life. Save the poor child.

I rate the right to life as the number one right a person has. Liberty (in this case Choice) and pursuit of happiness are secondary rights that will and have been overriden by the right to life (in some cases even the life of non-humans).

Jeff brings up a good argument for practicality and real world problems. My problem is that the US government doesn't have the right to kill or authorize the killing of human life even if it is impractical.

I value free choice, but I value human life more in particular my own. Unwanted pregnacies is a crappy situation in which both sides can't be pleased. I wish I could snap my fingers and make the problem go away.

 

Yeah, but that's not what I said. That would be drawing a conclusion between my opinion on abortion and the facts I listed on adoption and that conclusion would be wrong.

I don't support choice as an option for me. For me, there is no choice. I wouldn't do it if it were up to me alone. However, I am not comfortable removing that choice for someone else because I'm simply not convinced that life is sentient prior to a certain point. I just don't want to be responsible for the decisions of others when it comes to something that personal.

Of course, I'm not an activist or anything. It's just an opinion. I doesn't really have any power other than what I believe.

As for adoption, my wife and I looked into it for ourselves. I have tremendous sympathy for orphaned children and as much respect for people who choose to adopt.

By the way, thanks for the kind words, sort of.

 

I am staunchly against the death penalty, and am somewhat pro-choice (although I view abortions negatively, I don't believe that a one-week old fetus is a human being yet). I don't see a contradiction. Killing people is murder, removing a mass of cells is not. By the way, my anti-death penalty stance has zero to do with the quality of the evidence and everything to do with the value of human life.

By the way, I don't consider myself hard line anything.