Abortion - Are You Pro-Choice or Pro-Life?

[heids]

All I'm hearing here are feelings, you're just saying "I just... " That's not an argument, nor is it a fact, I want a reason why abortions aren't worse than terrorist attacks.

I feel I've answered this: an unborn baby, especially early in a pregnancy, is very different to someone later in life. Neither they, nor others, are harmed, or have a concept of them as a person.

1. They have no consciousness that experiences life. Thus, taking life away from them cannot cause them pain or loss. They're not "missing out" on anything.  There are already 7 billion people experiencing life, it's nothing particularly special, and if you miss out on many blissful moments - seriously, what does that matter, especially when you don't even have the consciousness to realise what you could be missing out on.

Contraception does the exact same thing by stopping the life even beginning - by stopping his sperm fertilising her egg you are destroying the life of poor little Lucinda who would have gone on to have happy relationships and become a politician who promoted environmental sustainability! We don't think like that. It's not rational to think about the lives that could have been, but never were.

2.  No one loves them for them. Once they're​ born, and increasingly as their social circles expand, more and more people grow to love them, and their death would have a huge impact, so killing them at the age of 3 months or 4 years would be very harmful. At this age - they aren't a person yet. No one can even see or feel their existence.

I see zero problem with stopping a life before it starts, and by our reckonings (we count our age and experiences from birth, not conception), "life" hasn't really started before birth.

Once more, the focus is not in creating more lives - how is 7 billion 85000 lives "better" than 7 billion? More important is improving the quality of life of the already existing 7 billion; terrorism is morally wrong, because it reduces the quality of life of those already existing, by injuring them or killing their loved ones.

Let me ask you three questions:
1. Would the premeditated murder of a woman by her husband be worse than the murder of a child by his father who accidentally ran over him?
2. If a woman and a child were kidnapped, and the kidnapper gave you the chance to save the life of one of them, which one would you choose?
3. If you were given the choice of saving 2 25-year-old adults' lives, or 85,000 3-month-old babies' lives, which one would you choose?

1. Obviously. Can't see the relevance.
2. Uncertain.
3. 85,000 3 month old babies. But if we were talking 85,000 unborn and unwanted children, I'd honestly take the 2 25yos.

[jakesilove]

Don't want to jump in too heavily on the question of should you get an abortion or not. Suffice it to say that I am firmly and entirely behind posters such as Elyse, Susie, etc.

I do just quickly want to clarify what it is those who call themselves 'pro-choice' mean. At no point would a single one of us (please correct me if I'm wrong) tell any other human being that they should or should not proceed with an abortion. That is a completely personal choice, and very much depends on your own sense of morality. For instance, Geminii, if abortion were legal you would in no way be 'expected' or 'pressured' in that direction.

Legalising abortion gives the individual the right to make that choice, based on their conception of life, the universe and everything. By legislating against abortion, you are inflicting your values on the rest of society. However, by legalising and regulating, you are not only making the procedure safer and more reliable for those who would find a method by which to perform an abortion anyway, but you are taking away the choice such mothers ought to have.

I think there is an obvious, much deeper philosophical/scientific discussion to be had. Most of what I would have to say has already been said, and I want to really thank those who have made an effort to include facts, data and statistics in what could otherwise be a really complicated issue. However, at it's heart, when we look to decriminalise an act like this, we should ask whether it is more fair to completely ban something that is clearly a contentious issue, or whether we should leave it up to the choice of the individual. I find it hard to believe that anyone would argue that we should aspire to the former.

[kbanks]

Throwing in a comment on the whole 'abortion v murder' debate, I really don't see how the two can be equated, simply because of the lack of malicious intent that comes with an abortion. In fact, most of the time, for women who make the choice to have an abortion, it will be one of the hardest and most heart-wrenching decisions of their lives. I think to say that it is the equivalent to murder is to completely diminish the emotions associated with an abortion.

I also want to point out that the definition of murder requires there to be both pre-meditation and malicious intent - e.g. policemen or women who kill in the line of duty are not guilty of murder, and I would say that shooting someone probably comes closer to the true definition than a termination at 2-4-6-8-10-12-14 weeks.

I think it's incredibly hard to imagine being in that situation until you are, I consider myself 100% pro-choice but still couldn't tell you the decision I would make if I was in that position. But I also think that to classify it as murder of any kind is an incredibly damaging stance to take in an issue where the emotional and mental health of the women (and men, let's not assume that it's always entirely the women's choice, sometimes it's married couples who cannot afford another child or feel they have reached an age where they cannot raise another baby), is already going to be under strain.

I think for me, personally, the best (or worst) example is to think about a teenage girl who is raped, and makes a decision to terminate a resultant pregnancy. Financially, emotionally, mentally, she has made the decision that she cannot bring that baby into the world. I think that instead of choosing to tell her she has committed murder, she needs our support instead.

[K888]

I must have missed that when checking the thread. Can you link me, because I expect appropriate evidence or retraction for a fearmongering claim like that. There is no clear evidence that termination in the abstract will lead to significant fertility problems, except in specific circumstances. The long term safety of the procedure is endorsed by the various professional bodies. I'm sure somebody will tell me it causes breast cancer as well though.

Take it from someone who has done abortion counselling professionally, you people are all banging your heads against a wall. I've never seen people that aren't indifferent to start with, reach an accord on this.

Sure thing, I was referring to this excerpt from Younem's post on the first page:

Women who have an abortion are significantly more likely to suffer sleep disorders or mental illness like anxiety or depression. Many abortions lead to fertility problems years after the procedure has taken place.

[geminii]

I feel I've answered this: an unborn baby, especially early in a pregnancy, is very different to someone later in life. Neither they, nor others, are harmed, or have a concept of them as a person.

When you're killing off a baby - or a bundle of cells, whatever you want to call it - you are harming that 'thing' (in my belief, 'human'). Obviously. Because you are taking away its right to life. You're harming it physically, too - although it may not feel pain, an abortion can be carried out by pulling all of the baby except for its head out of the birth canal, then stabbing it with scissors so that the brain can be vacuumed out. It is literally a human. With a brain, limbs, everything. According to you when is it classified as a human?

1. They have no consciousness that experiences life. Thus, taking life away from them cannot cause them pain or loss. They're not "missing out" on anything.  There are already 7 billion people experiencing life, it's nothing particularly special, and if you miss out on many blissful moments - seriously, what does that matter, especially when you don't even have the consciousness to realise what you could be missing out on.

"Thus, taking life away from them cannot cause them pain or loss. They're not "missing out" on anything." - Um, yes, they are missing out on something, just a little thing called, you know, LIFE.

2.  No one loves them for them. Once they're​ born, and increasingly as their social circles expand, more and more people grow to love them, and their death would have a huge impact, so killing them at the age of 3 months or 4 years would be very harmful. At this age - they aren't a person yet. No one can even see or feel their existence.

Why are you measuring the worth of a person by the amount of people who love them? Is an abandoned orphan, then, also worthy of being killed? After all, no one loves them, and that's your justification here, right?

I feel I've answered this: an unborn baby, especially early in a pregnancy, is very different to someone later in life. Neither they, nor others, are harmed, or have a concept of them as a person.
Contraception does the exact same thing by stopping the life even beginning - by stopping his sperm fertilising her egg you are destroying the life of poor little Lucinda who would have gone on to have happy relationships and become a politician who promoted environmental sustainability! We don't think like that. It's not rational to think about the lives that could have been, but never were.

Okay but listen, a sperm isn't a life yet. When conception occurs, that's when a life begins. The baby's sex is determined, it has different DNA to its' parents.
Think about it like this. If you left a sperm by itself without stopping it using contraception, it wouldn't become a baby on its own. If you leave a fertilised egg by itself without abortion, it would likely develop into a baby.

I see zero problem with stopping a life before it starts, and by our reckonings (we count our age and experiences from birth, not conception), "life" hasn't really started before birth.

Yes, if you're considering that we start counting how old someone is from birth. However it's common sense to say that an unborn baby is alive. At a certain stage it has a brain, a beating heart, and can hear outside the womb, and even learn to recognise its' mother's voice.
A baby born prematurely at 30 weeks is considered alive. Is the only thing that makes a baby alive, in your mind, is whether it is out of the womb or not? That's quite ridiculous given a baby just over halfway through the pregnancy could survive if taken out of the womb. So a premature baby at 30 weeks is considered alive, while an unborn baby of a woman who is 30 weeks pregnant isn't?

Once more, the focus is not in creating more lives - how is 7 billion 85000 lives "better" than 7 billion? More important is improving the quality of life of the already existing 7 billion; terrorism is morally wrong, because it reduces the quality of life of those already existing, by injuring them or killing their loved ones.

So now you're insinuating that unborn babies 'don't exist'? What?! Of course an unborn baby exists, what do you mean, like it's not real or something? Are you serious here?

1. Obviously. Can't see the relevance.
2. Uncertain.
3. 85,000 3 month old babies. But if we were talking 85,000 unborn and unwanted children, I'd honestly take the 2 25yos.

1. Think about the victim, not the circumstances of the murder. In one, a child was murdered. In the other, a grown woman was murdered. Although both are bad, I would argue that the child's murder is worse. Of course in this case the father obviously didn't mean to kill his son - however, the loss of a child is much worse than the loss of an adult. The kid was four, the woman was much older. Obviously the child should have been able to live a lot longer than he did, while the woman would have already lived a significant portion of her life. What I'm saying is, it's worse to take the life of a child than an adult. Don't you agree?

Legalising abortion gives the individual the right to make that choice, based on their conception of life, the universe and everything. By legislating against abortion, you are inflicting your values on the rest of society. However, by legalising and regulating, you are not only making the procedure safer and more reliable for those who would find a method by which to perform an abortion anyway, but you are taking away the choice such mothers ought to have.

I don't think any 'mother' ought to have the choice of killing their unborn child. Just because it's unborn, we treat it like it's nothing. Almost no one here is putting themselves in the shoes of the victim, which is something I always do when considering a topic such as this. I put myself in the shoes of a baby, and I think - would I want to be aborted right now? And the answer would obviously be no. I understand that babies are obviously not intelligent enough (yet) to consider such thoughts, but I don't think killing someone without their consent is an okay thing to do. Like, the baby hasn't given you the thumbs up to kill it. It's not like, "yep, no problem mum, you can go ahead and kill me, it's not like I'm alive or exist or anything". No, if the baby had a brain capacity of an older individual, it would obviously not want to have been aborted.
I ask myself this - am I glad my parents didn't abort me? And I think if you all ask yourselves this, the answer would obviously be yes. Because no unborn baby is sitting in the womb, wanting to die. Therefore, it's morally and ethically wrong. So why allow people to do it?

I think there is an obvious, much deeper philosophical/scientific discussion to be had. Most of what I would have to say has already been said, and I want to really thank those who have made an effort to include facts, data and statistics in what could otherwise be a really complicated issue. However, at it's heart, when we look to decriminalise an act like this, we should ask whether it is more fair to completely ban something that is clearly a contentious issue, or whether we should leave it up to the choice of the individual. I find it hard to believe that anyone would argue that we should aspire to the former.

As I said in my answer above, it is wrong to legalise something so morally wrong. If the government of Australia was like, "okay, we're making murder legal, now, because we understand it's a grey area sometimes, and it can be necessary sometimes. It's an issue that requires "much deeper philosophical/scientific discussion" and it's clearly a "contentious issue". Therefore, we will "leave it up to the choice of the individual."" Would that be ok?

I think for me, personally, the best (or worst) example is to think about a teenage girl who is raped, and makes a decision to terminate a resultant pregnancy. Financially, emotionally, mentally, she has made the decision that she cannot bring that baby into the world. I think that instead of choosing to tell her she has committed murder, she needs our support instead.

Less than 1% of all abortions occur as a result of rape. Would you be willing to agree that all other abortions are ok or are you using this as an excuse?
If you want my response to this situation specifically, I believe that the rapist should be emasculated, but that doesn't mean you get to kill babies.

[jamonwindeyer]

Hey All,

The admin team has discussed, and we've decided to lock this thread.

Everyone has had the chance to say their piece and I think everyone who has wanted to say something has had the chance to do so. This is a very sensitive topic (perhaps directly relevant to some people's personal circumstances). In the interest of protecting the wellbeing of all those browsing AN in this busy period, we feel it is best for the discussion to finish here.

Feel free to message me if you have any concerns

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