I wouln't even consider it as a decision.... Who cares if the father leaves, there will always be deadbeat mothers and fathers, you don't kill the kids just because things are getting real tough. They shouldn't have to face the punishment for their parents mistakes. As I said earlier make sure you have some sort of a support system before you get in bed, if you don't have one, then stay out....
A doctor is murdered by an insane person and we get 32 pages of a few people raving about abortion and "murder." My sympathy is with the murdered physician and his grieving family. The rest of it is recycled D&D threads, swollen feet and all, along with some swollen male egos.
Are you seriously saying your attitude towards abortion wouldn't be different if you were able to have a child? really?
Actually, if a person holds their belief on the subject as a moral issue and part of their moral makeup, then no...it would not matter. People that make the argument that it would completely change their outlook simply find it hard to believe that people have moral convictions. My sister is completely against abortion. She can have a child. Is that really so hard to believe?
Well stated. Regardless of whether an individual agrees that abortion should be legal or not has no bearing on the fact that a man was shot to death in cold blood.
Of course you're right; I understand moral convictions. I'm all for em' Just don't force yours on me. Have all the babies you want. I don't care, but if I don't want them that's my decision. And what deck said I said on about page 5 of this thread. I’m out
I wasn't saying one way or the other what any person should do on this issue. You expressed surprise that his opinion would not change if he could bear children. I merely pointed out that it really isn't that far fetched.
To everyone's credit I don't think there is anything to debate regarding what started this thread. Pro-Life, Pro-Choice I think everyone here agrees that this was a heinous act.
So you don't care that this girl was lied to by here boyfriend, was going to be abandoned by her family and end up being a single mother at 18 and a college dropout? You can't see that that isn't a very very hard decision and just a matter of comfort?
This could sound callous, but if the baby is a result from rape, the victim could very well carry to term and then give the newborn up for adoption. Under the pro-life mindset, the baby is innocent and no matter how deep the anguish of the mother is carrying, it's still a matter of her "comfort".
The reason abortion opponents trivialize why women have abortions is because the pro-Choice side of the argument insists on such a wide berth and, in fact, the statistics seem to bear out that most abortions performed are just a form of birth control. The pettiness of swollen feet is raised because in the code of the law, that would be sufficient "reason" to get an abortion. In fact, it's tantamount to a "no-fault" situation as long as the 13-week deadline is met, isn't it? My oldest daughter's Resident neo-natologist was an unwed mother of two who came out of an impoverished situation with two kids (as I recall) in West Virginia. I agree that it is hard to replicate the miracle of pregnancy. Trying to foster an analogy of biological dependency on a male falls short, though, because we didn't create the life and that life is not innocent and helpless. No one argued against aborting babies until someone started aborting them. It would depend on other factors. Nature of the relationship. Duration of the friend/loveship. My general health and my family responsibilities. I know that could set about a firestorm but what I "owe" to an adult peer is vastly different to what I "owe" to a child of my creating. I'm aware of the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy of my oldest daughter was characterized by a full placenta previa. The first Mrs. G and I were watching a movie on TV one night when she was about six months along in her pregnancy. She got up to go pee and discovered a LARGE pool of blood underneath her. For those who don't know (and as best I can recall) a placenta previa is a medical condition in which the placenta attaches across the cervix-- either partially or fully. "Ours" was fully. This is a problem because the placenta is intended to attach to a smooth uterine wall and a cervical opening is not such a place. Also as the placenta grows with the child, it's own weight can cause it to tear away from the wall resulting in bleeding out for the mom and loss of nutrients and oxygen for the baby. A poorly-attached placenta will detach more readily. She had three months of bed-rest. No more than a couple of minutes on her feet (potty breaks and showers and grabbing snacks) at a time and as limited as possible. We had two subsequent hospitalizations when vaginal bleeding returned and we had a two year old at home. My oldest daughter was born in April of 1986 by C-section and then spent five days in neo-natal intensive care with something called Cantrelle's Syndrome-- esentially under-developed mid-body development. She was born with an incomplete rib-cage and sternum, multiple Atrial and Ventral Septal defects. She's had four major surgeries (including a new heart valve the week after high school graduation) and numerous non-surgical procedures. They built-up her ribs and sternum with a sea coral lattice structure and re-sutured the muscles in her abdomen to rid her of the hernia. Today she looks great in a bikini but has no belly button. She just graduated from college and has spent the last year living and working in New Zealand and is coming back to the states on July 2. She is just an awesome young woman. A generation earlier, she would have died as a very young child. Her first heart surgery was at age 3 and again at 7 and 9 and 18. She will likely have to have that valve replaced sometime in her lifetime again. Just because I'm a man doesn't mean I haven't lived with the issues that abortion and the medical risk of pregnancy throw on the table. Yeah, it is different but she was my baby, too. We endured lots of anguish and heartache and financial loss. She was worth every tear and every penny. If we had not loved her and felt responsible for her, we could not and would not have done it for her. And to answer finalsbound, of course the father is on the hook for at least the duration of the pregnancy. Is it fair that women bear an extra burden in all this? I guess it's not but then a lot of things in life are not fair if you want to look at it that way. Of course, one could also look at it as a privilege... no relationship is as memorialized as the mother-child relationship.
For me, it's not so much about "rigid morality regarding human sexuality and marriage," but about life and death. My own two adult kids are sexually active and my daughter has been living in New Zealand with her boyfriend for the past year and she "was with him" for the two years prior to that. I feel no seething disapproval for their lifestyle; it wasn't mine and I see some benefits as well as some problems with more casual, sexual relations. Unwanted pregnancy is, of course, the largest issue.
To finalsbound: I went back and found and read your long post about your friend. How much of that is "factual?" To read your telling, most of her decision-making was just based on conjecture, i.e. what her parents would think, what they would do et al if they found out. Seems like she made a lot of decisions based on suppositions. It could have gone either way: her parents could have rejected her like she feared or they could have sided with the baby like (TA-DAH) Sarah and Todd Palin did. How embarrassing was that for her as governor of Alaska and a well-known fundamentalist and IN SPITE OF IT ALL nominated to be the VP candidate on the Republican ticket in spite of the "shame" of Bristol's failure... The stupid boyfriend does not just disappear because he doesn't return phone calls. He can be held accountable.
You'd think it would be that easy. How easy is it for the mother to be completely rejected by the baby's father, and then have to beg/coerce him/get a court mandate that he be in their lives? Not only is it not always feasible, but getting him to stay around when he doesn't give two ****s about the mother or child is especially hard. I would know...my biological father is one of them. The only time he ever showed up was to sign me over to my adoptive father when I was 3. I'm obviously thankful my mother had me, but I just really, really can't see these situations as black or white. Seeing so many women put in these no-daddy-around situations just makes me compassionate toward the dilemmas of women who are alone.
You're lucky to have gotten the white when you could have gotten the black. I have great compassion for single mothers, but it doesn't extend to supporting a decision to end their child's life just to make their life easier. That's exactly why the father is "running away." My focus is on the child because his or her survival is dependent on the mother's decision and there is nothing he or she can do about it. The mothers can get through it. Many, many have.
As long as this is the case, you will be ignoring the root cause and not doing anything to address it.
With respect to the root cause (which I assume you mean unwanted pregnancies), around 33% of abortions in the U.S. are to women 20-24 years of age. I assume the vast, vast, vast majority of them know that a child may be born if you have sexual relations. I also assume that the vast, vast, vast majority of them (and/or their partners) know about birth control and have access to it. Serious question - With respect to that demographic, what can be done to reduce those unwanted pregnancies? They know what may happen. They know about birth control, yet they still have unwanted pregnancies.
