I Love Abortion: Implying Otherwise Accomplishes Nothing for Women's Rights

One of my favorite memories was when my wife was about 6 months pregnant. Our son was moving around in her belly and had a hand/foot/something poking out. I pushed on it. He pushed back. I pushed on it again. He pushed back again. That repeated itself for a minute or two.

He was a child. A fetus and a child. At that moment it was clear to me that life doesn't begin at birth. I'm not sure it begins at conception either, but I know I'm not in a position to dictate when it begins.

I get that some people look at abortion as a reproductive health issue. But if you believe at some point before birth the fetus is a living being, it's justifiable to see it as a human life issue.

 

As a parent, I could care less about this person's opinion. Of course, I really could care less about your opinion, as well, except for when you make posts that can only be described as racist about the President. Yeah, that bugs me.

I'll add an edit. I usually enjoy your posts in other forums. Sadly, what you do in here, along with basso and a couple of others (I enjoy basso's posts in other forums), is a form of BBS excrement.

 

This may be the philosophical problem with saying abortion should be rare, but not the politically strategic one. A very large percentage of women in this country are relying on their morals and demographics to dismiss abortion as something that is wrong and unnecessary. Some of them live in socially and religiously homogeneous enough parts of the country that they can easily influence future generations of women to feel exactly the same way. Their prospective roles as wives and mothers is core to their identity, much more so than their right to something they don't want or (somewhat accurately) don't expect to need. So advocating abortion as anything other than a contingency will only drive them to oppose it to a point beyond what liberals perceive their practical self interest would allow.

 

Nobody said that education would eliminate the need for abortion. Congrats on ""disproving"" a strawman!

Um...what?

Of course I recognize that people have different views on the morality of abortion. That's the whole point. Women should be able to make that judgement for themselves, without the fear that a bunch of ignorant assholes (male or female) are going to relentlessly decry the evil of their promiscuous ways.

Yeah, this one's pretty easy. See, you hate women. You hate that modern technology and law have empowered women to take control over their own reproductive systems, which until very recently had been a common tool of male domination (patriarchy).

What's unfortunate, but still unsurprising, is that you continued to hate women after becoming a Christian.

Slut shaming makes baby Jesus cry.

 

He was asking if you recognize the point of view that abortion ends a human life and therefore makes morally objectionable to be complicit.

A woman who has had several abortions likely has very little control from "modern technology" (lulz) of her reproductive system.

 

And advocating abortion as merely a contingency is met with the same resistance. You lose either way if you try to engage this issue by moralizing about it. If you focus on the question of women's rights, you can at least begin to see how anti-choice arguments and tactics fit in the broader dynamics of patriarchy.

 

It seems to me you are still arguing the morality, but just conceding a stalemate in the issue of when a human life begins. Women's rights arguments just say that it doesn't matter when human life begins because it is a greater evil to force someone to be pregnant when they don't want it. Still a moral argument.

 

In another words, you don't and cannot see any point of view beyond your own.

'modern technology' makes it that if a woman doesn't want to become pregnant, they can very easily avoid it. Thus they have not obtained any control of their reproductive system. Oral contraception empowered women, not abortion. Abortion has existed for much longer.

 

No, I wouldn't.

I don't support wholesale bombings of villages to demonstrate the strength of our nation because I don't believe that makes us strong.

I also don't support abortion but I do support the only two things that have ever successfully reduced abortions: sex education and contraception.

I have also been vegetarian for 25 years and vegan for 19 years, with the exception of one month when I was directed by a doctor to try to change my diet. I tried but I could not go back to eating dead animals.

I am also strongly against the death penalty and strongly anti-war.

My positions on life and death are actually closer to those of the Vatican than are yours.

Don't ever say you're more pro-life than me. You're not even close.

 

Abortions didn't begin in 1973; they only became medical procedures rather than being performed with coat hangers, punches to the stomach or throwing oneself down the stairs.

Also interesting to note that abortions went down when Clinton was president (and pushed sex ed and contraception) and they went back up when GWB came in and changed all that up for abstinence only programs.

Your guys have caused more abortions than pro-choicers as a result of your party's weird insistence that "just say no" is a better policy for reducing unwanted pregnancies than birth control.

Opposing gay adoption and gay marriage (leading to families) is also not a great way to make sure unwanted children are well cared for when they are born.

 

Nor am I. I appreciate your humility on this matter.

Instead of talking about people being anti-life or anti-choice, wouldn't we be better off by reducing unwanted pregnancies (the tragedy that precedes 99% of abortions) and providing better care for unwanted children when they are born?

Do you think that arresting women because they refuse to carry a baby to term is the solution? Do you think arresting doctors is? Because you still can't ban back-alleys.

As I just posted to texxx, you know what really helps prevent unwanted pregnancies and therefore abortions? Condoms. You know what doesn't? Abstinence only programs.

You know what helps take care of unwanted babies when they are born? Allowing every suitable single parent or couple to adopt. Yes, even if they are (gasp) gay.

Not accusing you at all because I appreciate your post very much, but most pro-lifers oppose the very things that would dramatically reduce abortions in favor of criminalization. Who exactly are they wanting to throw in jail?

 

I guess you are talking about in the United States and massively exaggerating, but the point about abortions increasing under Bush seems false. What numbers are you using?

I found they decreased during both presidents terms.

 

It is impossible to force someone to carry a child to term. Any woman can have an abortion regardless of the law if she is willing to risk her life and safety in the process and we know that before Roe v. Wade that is exactly what happened.

Want to stop abortion? Stop unwanted pregnancy.

You might as well try to make sex illegal as abortion.

 

The article is making an argument against this. I guess she wants this issue to live on and make people hate each other.

 

You quoted me but you don't seem to be responding to any actual point I made, or that was made in the article.

 

You were talking about whether it was moral to force someone to be pregnant. I was responding directly that it was impossible to do so. A moral issue seems sort of moot to me when discussing whether or not to do the impossible.

As for the stats you asked for, I don't do research for my casual conversations here. I've read several times that abortions went down significantly under Clinton and that unwanted pregnancies rose in line with abstinence only programs (which discourage contraception). That made a lot of sense to me and I didn't look into it with a particularly critical eye. And maybe I'm wrong about the stats; I don't know. Everything I write here is from memory. I can't footnote it. If I'm shown to be wrong I'll happily acknowledge that and apologize. But I'm pretty sure I'm right. And yes I was talking U.S. only. I'm not sure why that is an interesting distinction -- since I'm talking about how American policy affects abortion I take it for granted that we're talking about abortion in America.

If you'd care to argue that abstinence only does a better job of preventing abortions than sex ed and contraception, that would be a fun argument to have. Otherwise I am not an ideologue on this issue. I am for, as the saying goes, keeping abortions safe and legal (since they will happen anyway) and doing everything we can to reduce them by providing more and better loving homes for those put up for adoption and by aggressively encouraging men and women and boys and girls to use contraception if they are going to have sex and do not want to have a baby.

I am strongly in favor of this being a part of our public education system and I would be for imposing this on private religious schools as well. I don't like the idea of imposing anything on anyone that goes against their core beliefs, but that is how strongly I feel about reducing abortion. I am extremely troubled by both the idea of abortion itself and I am extremely troubled that anyone wanting to stop abortions would oppose birth control. I would mandate this aggressive sex ed from fourth, fifth or sixth grade, because while it might be uncomfortable to talk about sex with children that young it is better than having them wind up pregnant or beset with a serious STD.

I think you also asked me about the original article. If so, I plead ignorance; I didn't read it.

 

I'm saying none of those moral arguments--I'll grant that they all are. I was responding to pouhe's cynical comments on the ideology of "whole regions of girls and women" by offering an alternative to the traditional discourse of my-body-vs.-right-to-life. Instead of engaging in that conversation, I will argue that abortion is good because it is a necessary and effective defense against patriarchal domination. That may be a moral question as well, but it does not depend on the irresolvable issue of when life begins.

Huh? No. The point of view that 2 + 2 = 5 is stupid, but I can very clearly see that point of view, which is beyond my own (everybody knows 2 + 2 = spaghetti). In fact, I know it's stupid is because I can see it very clearly.

This is still a tangential matter, though. I'm sure there are many folks out there who think my views on abortion are stupid, and God bless 'em! Still, we should have a serious discussion on patriarchy and its manifestations in the abortion debate. There is more ground left to cover on that topic, thus fewer preconceptions.

That's why I said, "modern technology and law." Legal abortion is tremendously empowering.

 

Actually I was telling LScolaD that he was still in a moral argument but just a different one that circumvents the fetus/baby argument. I was referencing a thought experiments that forces a choice between the woman's rights and the rights of her baby.

Thought experiment from wiki:

If you decide that it is better to allow her to kill than forcing her to be pregnant, all arguments about when life begins become irrelevant. Extremely famous argument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violinist_(thought_experiment

It's factually incorrect.

her views differ from yours.

 

You should.