DIG,

I've always held the opinion that you have to take a test and get a license to drive a car, but any moron can have children. I think parenting classes should be mandatory for your first born child.

Want2Stay

Drunk driving laws don't prevent drunk driving either. Homicide laws don't prevent murder. I guess we should toss them all aside.

The NUMBER of abortions that are performed illegally when there are laws against abortion are but a minute fraction of the number that are killed when abortion is legal. To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant of the truth.

Yes, some abortions will be done underground...or in back allies. That is where CRIMES are supposed to happen.

This is true. However, you can take away a drunk driver's license and keep him off the road to prevent him from killing anyone else. Unless abortion were punished by sterilization, you can't prevent someone from getting pregnant again.

I realize it's unpopular here but I still hold to it. Provide better choices and women will pick them. Right now I shudder to think of what a young, unmarried, pregnant girl's future holds in the US. In a great society like yours, it shouldn't be that grim. I'd wager that 95% of the women that have abortions now would choose something else if they could.

Again...ignorant to the facts. Taking away their license does nothing. They still drive.

Here's a thought...if someone performs an abortion...put them in jail. If someone has an illegal abortion...put them in jail. You have then taken away their ability to murder any more children.



Wow...you just don't know the facts do you. Later on they may wish they had chosen differently...but, when it is a matter of convenience in most cases...they CAN CHOOSE something different. They opt not to.

If there is nothing inherently wrong with abortion, and if abortion is truely a "privacy" issue and a "freedom of contraceptive rights" issue , then what possible difference does 1 or 100 abortions make?

It is illogical to say 1 abortion is OK, but we need to limit the number of abortions.

Anyone who says they are "pro-choice" abdicated their right to limit the number of choices ... if they truely believe it is a "right to choose."

If it is a RIGHT TO CHOOSE, then 1 or 100 abortions is equally a right choice.

The thread title is "How to reduce abortion numbers" and I'm addressing that question.

I don't understand what this sentence means:


Choice is individual. It's about choice for yourself - as in I choose what I want done/not done to my body. The opposite of this is you deciding what is done/not done to my body. When talking about numbers, we're talking about a population, not an individual.

Pro-choice is not the same as pro-abortion. The difficulty arises with the fact that pro-life contradicts pro-choice when the choice is abortion. If the choice is to carry the fetus to term, there is no contradiction.

This is why I feel it would be more effective to proactively tackle the issues that make abortion seem like an attractive choice, rather than retroactively punishing those after they have done it. If their circumstances are so grim that risking jail is better than the consequences of carrying out a pregnancy, then clearly there is a serious problem.

Keep telling yourself that lie.

:RollieEyes:

I read in SAA something that I think is very relevant here. A lot of people say they are pro-choice because they believe that the mother (and father?) in this situation are in a good spot to make such a decision. But I learned reading SAA and other sources that folk's values change according to their behavior. So someone who wouldn't have an affair, for example, and finds themselves on that slippery slope, may have found that their values have changed temporarily. You read this on the board all the time.

I don't think it's a big stretch to think that a teenager or an adult in a situation that they didn't want to think would happen to them could see their value system take a temporary shift, too.

... and to the little body inside the womb. By the way, half of that little body inside the womb legally belongs to the father.

It's NOT only choosing what happens to your body - it is another person's body as well .... and another person's CHILD.

I do understand your logic. I used to work for Planned Parenthood - but my life experience has profoundly changed my views.

This philosophy has never made any sense to me.

If it's about choice...

Then isn't a woman who has an abortion taking away her baby's "choice" to live?

And for those who argue a fetus isn't a baby or human, tell that to God.

A 15 year old kid who can figure it out. Why not be pro-choice anti-abortion? You can choose to keep the kid or give it up, but NOT to kill it. I have 2 relatives that have adopted. One was on the waiting list for 3 years and the other for over 1 year. Then the consequences of the actions would be felt, not a quick, easy out.

Tabby, you continue to say this, but surely you have been able to see the logical fallacies in this assertion? The discussion is not and has never been about the WOMAN'S body, the discussion is about protection of the BABY'S BODY. I used to parrot these pro-abortion bumper stickers too, but truly when you think them through, they are really silly. And this is one of the worst ones.


Another leap in logic. One is either pro or anti abortion. And pro "choice" is not pro choice at all. The term pro choice is disingenuous doublespeak. This "choice" is never offered to the one whose life is up for grabs. So, no they are not "pro-choice" at all.

I consider myself to be truly "pro choice" because I believe the one whose neck is on the chopping block should get a "choice" too. Or at least DUE PROCESS under the law, the same as any other rapist or murderer.


But it is a "CHOICE" if one aborts and risks jail. With freedom comes responsibility and women are big enough girls to take responsibility for their actions. It would be more effective to proactively outlaw abortions and imprison abortion butchers and women who kill.

Both our kids are adopted.
One day about 2 months ago, I found out one of my physician coworkers was himself adopted into a family where his parents had 2 birth children and adopted 2 more.

My coworker said to me: "Being adopted has made me very anti-abortion. I am forever grateful that my birth mother did not abort me in her womb."

My 2 kids have said this also.

Like I said .... life experience has changed me .... and this is not my only reason for changing my views.

Not everyone views abortion as murder. Not everyone believes in the same God. Some cultures, China for example, have mandatory abortions. Some people view the fetus as a parasite on the woman's body. You combine these variables together and you have a person who sees abortion as nothing other than a medical procedure. So the choice is between a medical procedure vs. consequences of pregnancy*.

The consequences of pregancy vary from individual to individual. Perhaps she's a teenager who's parents are going to throw her on the street when they find out. Perhaps she is poor and has no health insurance and the pregnacy is already affecting her health and ability to keep her minimum wage job. Or perhaps she is a wealthy married woman who already has older kids and was looking forward to an early retirement with her husband travelling the world and a pregancy will inconvenience her. I believe that even the most shallow reasons to choose abortion, like the last one, can be made to look less attractive than carrying the baby to term. For example, if the image of pregnacy were improved so that even the wealthy socialite didn't feel like a fat slob in a bathing suit, she might decide its better to go on her cruise pregnant than risk her health for the medical procedure (assuming that's how she views abortion, which she probably does if she considers having one for such a reason). Again, there's no single answer and some solutions will be more effective (by the numbers) than others.

There is a lot that can be done and I believe it could be very effective.

*I just wanted to add that the "choice" aspect of abortion is the choice not to remain pregnant, not whether or not to have a child. One can carry the pregnancy to term and give up the child for adoption and remain childless. Pregnancy is a temporary condition and it is a women's issue. Though the fetus may have 50% of the father's DNA, it is the mother who is pregnant. I'm not saying this to be cold, but to try to focus on the issues that influence women to have abortions (terminate pregnancies) in the first place.

from the story:
Thank goodness the baby was found alive instead of in the garbage dump, DEAD, behind an abortion butcher's office, huh? At least we can give the mother KUDOs for not killing it.

But what about the baby's (future adult) choice?

Yes, I know.
infanticide is not new <~~~ link to wiki.

I choose not to be in favor of infanticide.

If you read this link, scroll down where different cultures are discussed.

It says:

"Christianity rejected infanticide."

Yes, I know I am not going to take a Chinese approach to infanticide:

"China:
Marco Polo, the famed explorer, saw newborns exposed in Manzi. China's society promoted gendercide. Philosopher Han Fei Tzu, a member of the ruling aristocracy of the 3rd century BCE, who developed a school of law, wrote: "As to children, a father and mother when they produce a boy congratulate one another, but when they produce a girl they put it to death." Among the Hakka people, and in Yunnan, Anhwei, Szechwan, Jiangxi and Fukien a method of killing the baby was to put her into a bucket of cold water, which was called "baby water"."

I agree. Just as the Germans once believed that murdering Jews was not "murder" but a duty to mankind to rid the world of subhuman pests. However, perspective is not truth. We are not talking about individual perspectives, but about TRUTH. And the truth is that abortion is murder. The truth is that killing Jews is murder. Killing a human being is murder.

Even so, if everyone has a right to their own PERSPECTIVE and there are no moral absolutes, as you assert, then those of us who say it is murder, based on a universal moral absolute are just as legitimate as those who disagree, no?

I would also add that one does not have to believe in God to know right from wrong. I know atheists who know right from wrong.


Exactly. It is a choice to KILL a human being. But no one is telling a woman what to do with her body. She is the one who got pregnant. The issue is the BABY'S BODY.

But if one advocates true CHOICE, they would want to give that "choice" to the one whose life is up for grabs. Let him/her decide their own fate. It is disingenuous to say you are for "choice" and then deny that same option to the unborn.

Yes, you were once a parasite in your mother's womb. As we all were. So what?

Because people's ethics and behavior are according to their perspective. Perhaps abortion being murder is the truth. There are many who believe otherwise. Enough that they choose abortion, even under circumstances which risk their own lives. Using this argument against them is pointless as they have their own beliefs. However, these same people, if presented with better options, will be less likely to choose abortion. It won't eliminate abortions but it will reduce their frequency.

And there are also cultures that believe female genital mutilation is right and you can't convince them otherwise from a moral perspective because their beliefs are so much different from ours. You have to look to their direct individual needs.

But if the woman doesn't believe the fetus is a viable human, she isn't choosing to kill. If people don't have this belief, whether or not it's the truth, they are not choosing to kill but choosing to not be pregnant.

The key is making this the better choice for as many as possible, regardless of religious, cultural or moral background.

I also want to go back to this statement:
This is a related issue, but not the same issue. I firmly believe we need much better and more thorough sex education. Children, boys and girls, should go into puberty knowing everything there is to know about sex, pregnancy, STDs, birth control and yes, even abortion. They should be comfortable enough to ask questions and have discussions with their parents. We don't hesitate to teach our kids to look both ways before crossing the street, yet we keep them in the dark about the very serious risks surrounding sexual activity until in most cases, they've learned things from school mates and it is hard to know how accurate their information is.

Also regarding that statement is another underlying issue. It's so knee jerk to condemn the woman for getting pregnant but she didn't do it herself. Where is the father? At least these days there are DNA tests to prove who he is but in the past it wasn't so. If an unmarried women got pregnant, she bore the consequences on her own. At least this is one thing that is changing.