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Abortions - Why? [W:280, 411, 1768]

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Scrabaholic said:
And she knows that if she gets pregnant, she can abort if she so chooses. No double standard. A double standard would be saying she should have to gestate but if he gets pregnant he can abort or vice versa. Pregnancy and child support are two separate issues.
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No, they are not actually, as pregnancy and birth are part of the same dynamic. However, in one case you allow one to protect their property from "invasion" and in the other you force property theft. You WANT to make it two separate issues to make it gel with what you're trying to advocate, but the reality is different than your fantasy.
 
JayDubya said:
So what you're saying is that if your mother had killed you, as you wish she had, you would not be dead. Oh okay. Makes total sense.

Look, if you believe in reincarnation, bully for you. Whether or not you magically soul transfer over, or a level 9 druid rolls on the random table and has you come back as a kobold, or you upload your Cylon consciousness to the resurrection ship, or somehow you've bonded with the Phoenix Force and you're just chilling in the White Hot Room for awhile, or you become part of an Evangelion unit, or whatever else... THAT you would be dead. THAT body, that organism, that particular lifeform... in this case, the body you inhabit right now... would cease to be. That's all I'm saying - which is that if you were killed, as you say you wanted to be, you would be dead.

If you have some way of cheating death, whatever that might be - maybe Tina or Celes cast Life 3 on you, or maybe you just grabbed 100 gold coins while tripping on shrooms - you would still have been killed in the first place by the violent end you say you wish your mother had inflicted upon you.

If you made sense, it would be what you said - because that's what the words you said mean. I don't know why you have this bizarre hangup. But I'd appreciate it if you either made sense or stopped saying you didn't say what you plainly did say.
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Stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies.

I would still be here, just in another body. How many times does it have to be said? Now, kindly bugger off and leave me alone about this. I notice you don't mock the religious views of Christians even though you claim to not be one, so don't mock mine.
 
I still don't think you get it. To be plain, your religion is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

However you managed to get a soul / mind / whatever into in a different body, be that science fiction, fantasy, or as an article of religious faith, your old body would still be dead, you would have still been killed. That's what the words you used mean.


Believe me, I'm more tired of this than you, I just wish you'd either stand up for or reject the controversial statements you have made rather than deny you have made them when the evidence to the contrary is irrefutable.
 
choiceone said:
Clearly, in your ideal society, pro-choice women should not ever agree to have sex with men without first getting them to make written and signed statements, ideally notarized, clarifying that they are pro-choice.

I, for one, do not think a man is ever doing "the right thing" by trying to get a woman to continue a pregnancy when she does not want to. I think that's immoral.
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Lol Thats a little creepy. No in an ideal society, people would only make love when they truly were in love and wanted to have children. There would be no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy and the men would never leave the woman hanging and so the woman would never feel pressured into having an abortion. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world.
 
choiceone said:
I, for one, do not think a man is ever doing "the right thing" by trying to get a woman to continue a pregnancy when she does not want to. I think that's immoral.
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Its immoral to love your offspring?
 
OKgrannie said:
A woman who would be that dishonest and manipulative is bound to be dishonest and manipulative about other things as well, a man should have observed that. Don't have sex with dishonest and manipulative women. And keep your condoms in your pocket.
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Yes you should put every woman you date too a lie detector test. If she passes she's cool to have sex with if not time to move on. If only life where that easy.
 
choiceone said:
After re-reading all these posts, I am so glad our founding fathers were smart enough to say in the US Constitution that only persons have rights and did not define "person" as "human." I guess they knew perfectly well that embryos were human but were not persons, given that during the almost 200 years from the writing of the Constitution to the SC Roe v Wade decision, no federal court decision in cases where claims were made for fetal rights ever recognized any right, e.g., of inheritance, except as contingent on live birth. The implications are that our founding fathers were wise enough not to want to claim that embryos or fetuses had rights to continue developing in the womb.
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As someone seeking a doctorate in history I dont think any single post has made me sadder than this one. Wow.... Im lost for words.
 
nathanjames1791 said:
As someone seeking a doctorate in history I dont think any single post has made me sadder than this one. Wow.... Im lost for words.
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It's pretty repugnant.

The Constitution says nothing about abortion. If the Founders favored abortion as she surmises, despite such a thing flying completely in the face of the Declaration of Independence, it could have been placed into the Bill of Rights.

The 10th Amendment does, however, clarify where jurisdictional authority over such things where the Constitution is silent lies.


Roe v. Wade is a disgrace that ignores the 10th and wholesale hallucinates a constitutional right, then incorporates it. The single most malignant and inexcusable bit of activism the court has ever performed, and it was inexcusable.
 
JayDubya said:
It's pretty repugnant.

The Constitution says nothing about abortion. If the Founders favored abortion as she surmises, despite such a thing flying completely in the face of the Declaration of Independence, it could have been placed into the Bill of Rights.

The 10th Amendment does, however, clarify where jurisdictional authority over such things where the Constitution is silent lies.


Roe v. Wade is a disgrace that ignores the 10th and wholesale hallucinates a constitutional right, then incorporates it. The single most malignant and inexcusable bit of activism the court has ever performed, and it was inexcusable.
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Yeah regardless of where one stands on the argument of abortion, if they say that roe v wade was constitutional they are either lieing or know knothing of what the constitution says or as you mentioned the declaration.
 
nathanjames1791 said:
Yes you should put every woman you date too a lie detector test. If she passes she's cool to have sex with if not time to move on. If only life where that easy.
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Cool to have sex with?

I just do not know how to reply to that statement.

Dating is not suppose to be to use someone for sex .... it is supposed for getting to know a person.
 
Ikari said:
No, they are not actually, as pregnancy and birth are part of the same dynamic. However, in one case you allow one to protect their property from "invasion" and in the other you force property theft. You WANT to make it two separate issues to make it gel with what you're trying to advocate, but the reality is different than your fantasy.
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Child support is not "property theft". Good grief. I actually have never said either way whether or not I agree with it, I have only said that it's about the child, not the parents and that a man knows when he sticks his weenie into a woman's vagina that he has no say in the outcome if she conceives. That is fact, he doesn't have a say.
 
JayDubya said:
I still don't think you get it. To be plain, your religion is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

However you managed to get a soul / mind / whatever into in a different body, be that science fiction, fantasy, or as an article of religious faith, your old body would still be dead, you would have still been killed. That's what the words you used mean.


Believe me, I'm more tired of this than you, I just wish you'd either stand up for or reject the controversial statements you have made rather than deny you have made them when the evidence to the contrary is irrefutable.
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Stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies. I did not say the quote you attributed to me, so stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies. And leave me alone about it.
 
nathanjames1791 said:
Lol Thats a little creepy. No in an ideal society, people would only make love when they truly were in love and wanted to have children. There would be no such thing as an unwanted pregnancy and the men would never leave the woman hanging and so the woman would never feel pressured into having an abortion. Unfortunately this is not an ideal world.
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There is nothing wrong with having sex without love. It's normal and natural and there are health benefits to having regular sex.
 
minnie616 said:
Cool to have sex with?

I just do not know how to reply to that statement.

Dating is not suppose to be to use someone for sex .... it is supposed for getting to know a person.
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It was sarcasm. I didnt actually mean that. I think I have made it pretty clear I am totally against premarital sex of any kind.
 
tryreading said:
He has a point. Couldn't abortion have been made illegal if it were an issue at that time?
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But it wasnt. There is no indication that the framers knew anything of abortion or cared. There is no mention of abortion in the constitution, and at that point in time there were alot more important things happening than abortion, becuase it was no where near as common.
 
Scrabaholic said:
Stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies. I did not say the quote you attributed to me, so stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies, stop the lies. And leave me alone about it.
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So once and for all, since you say you don't think you should have been killed, and you say you don't want to be conveying so to others, then you obviously WON'T be saying your mother should have aborted you ever again, right?

Because that's what started this "confusion" that you said you should have been killed in the first place...

Scrabaholic said:
There is nothing wrong with having sex without love. It's normal and natural and there are health benefits to having regular sex.
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Aside from risking STDs for good reason when your left hand would do just fine, and aside from possibly creating offspring you can't or won't be responsible and care for, you'd be right. Meaningless fling sex may not be immoral, but it's certainly impractical.
 
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nathanjames1791 said:
But it wasnt. There is no indication that the framers knew anything of abortion or cared. There is no mention of abortion in the constitution, and at that point in time there were alot more important things happening than abortion, becuase it was no where near as common.
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Doesn't mention rape either. Point being: if you are going by the standard of what is (and isn't) in the Constitution, you have a weak standard. :shrug:
 
nathanjames1791 said:
But it wasnt. There is no indication that the framers knew anything of abortion or cared. There is no mention of abortion in the constitution, and at that point in time there were alot more important things happening than abortion, becuase it was no where near as common.
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Please post a link concerning the commonness of abortion in the 18th century. This well-researched book indicates that abortion was quite common at that time.

When Abortion Was a Crime

Once quickening occurred, women recognized a moral obligation to carry the fetus to term. This age-old idea underpinned the practice of abortion in America. The legal acceptance of induced miscarriages before quickening tacitly assumed that women had a basic right to bodily integrity.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the most common means of inducing abortion -- by taking drugs was commercialized. The availability of abortifacients was so well-known that a common euphemism described their use. When Sarah Grosvenor, a Connecticut farm girl, confided to her sister in 1742 that she was "taking the trade," her sister understood. That Grosvenor successfully conveyed her meaning to her sister in three metaphoric words tells us a great deal about the world of mid-eighteenth-century New England. Many New Englanders, including these sisters, knew of the possibility of inducing an abortion by purchasing and ingesting drugs. The need for a euphemism tells of the difficulty of speaking openly about sex and reproductive control and of the need for secrecy. Yet it reveals an awareness that women could and did regulate their own fertility through abortion. Furthermore, abortifacients had become a profitable product sold by doctors, apothecaries, and other healers.
 
Scrabaholic said:
Ok, but if they were married and are divorcing, then he has been supporting her all along (that is, if she wasn't working outside the home), so it's just asking him to continue to do so.
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Good, but you can go further. If he has been supporting her, it is usually because she has been working as the homemaker and mother who has been doing the main work of child care for any kids they have already had, and that is, in fact, work. It isn't as though she has not been supporting herself by this work. When a woman stays home and does this domestic and maternal work, she is out of the public work force, and doing this negatively impacts her ability to obtain employment, and especially good-paying employment, when she wants to rejoin the public work force. Furthermore, having children already negatively impacts her marketability for future marriage to another man. All and all, she has made considerable sacrifices by making the choice to work as the homemaker, mother, and primary child care worker in a marriage.
 
zgoldsmith23 said:
Doesn't mention rape either. Point being: if you are going by the standard of what is (and isn't) in the Constitution, you have a weak standard. :shrug:
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Lol you missed the conversation obviously. choiceone mentioned that our forefathers had not put personhood in the constitution specifically to protect abortion rights which is the single most rediculous claim I have ever heard. That was why I was pointing out it isnt the constitution.
 
Ikari said:
No, they are not actually, as pregnancy and birth are part of the same dynamic. However, in one case you allow one to protect their property from "invasion" and in the other you force property theft. You WANT to make it two separate issues to make it gel with what you're trying to advocate, but the reality is different than your fantasy.
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Pregnancy and birth impose bodily and career damage on women, which is why it was traditionally common to require men who got married, by law, to provide economic support and security for women and not vice versa. It was acknowledged then that only a long-term economic security agreement could even come close to equaling what the woman did for the man. One weakness of the anti-abortion position today is the extent to which it treats getting pregnant and giving birth as though it involved no sacrifice and no damage on women, as if women exist solely to meet the sexual needs and parental desires of men.

If you want women to agree to have sex with you, continue pregnancies, and give birth to your children, you have to offer something of comparable worth in return. As I look back to my youth and across my life and consider the situation of women and how it has changed, I see that, populationally, some men have become far less respectful and considerate of women who do those things for them over the last forty-odd years.

Bodily damage and career interruption are forms of property damage. They are inconvenient, often painful and disruptive, and potentially dangerous, and they also negatively affect the range of possible future benefits, both economically and in the currency of career prestige and satisfaction, of that those who suffer them. Men seem to have thought that, once women had more effective forms of birth control other than abortion, men had the right to endless sexual pleasure and decision-making over women's bodies without any economic consequences to themselves on the grounds that women have no right to make decisions over whether or not to have children, and that they have to have children only when men decide.

But women like having the safety net of abortion whether they use it or not because agreeing to have sex with men can have consequences, and choosing abortion is far less punitive a consequence for women than continuing a pregnancy and giving birth in an array of circumstances. I never got pregnant, but I would not have been willing to give birth in the case of an unwanted pregnancy for millions of dollars, because that would not be enough economic damages for the damages that I would have experienced. Millions of women make the same assessment. If you would agree to have your body mutilated, your health and career negatively impacted in precisely the same degree, then we can talk reasonably. Otherwise, you are not being reasonable. A woman can give herself an orgasm on her own if that's all she wants. And so can you.
 
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OKgrannie said:
Please post a link concerning the commonness of abortion in the 18th century. This well-researched book indicates that abortion was quite common at that time.

When Abortion Was a Crime

Once quickening occurred, women recognized a moral obligation to carry the fetus to term. This age-old idea underpinned the practice of abortion in America. The legal acceptance of induced miscarriages before quickening tacitly assumed that women had a basic right to bodily integrity.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the most common means of inducing abortion -- by taking drugs was commercialized. The availability of abortifacients was so well-known that a common euphemism described their use. When Sarah Grosvenor, a Connecticut farm girl, confided to her sister in 1742 that she was "taking the trade," her sister understood. That Grosvenor successfully conveyed her meaning to her sister in three metaphoric words tells us a great deal about the world of mid-eighteenth-century New England. Many New Englanders, including these sisters, knew of the possibility of inducing an abortion by purchasing and ingesting drugs. The need for a euphemism tells of the difficulty of speaking openly about sex and reproductive control and of the need for secrecy. Yet it reveals an awareness that women could and did regulate their own fertility through abortion. Furthermore, abortifacients had become a profitable product sold by doctors, apothecaries, and other healers.
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The very way society was back then kept abortion from ever being very popular till much more modern times. Now during the 18th century abortion probly was beginning to rise for the pure reason that parents where not setting up marriages at young ages as much anymore so there was alot more courting by young men and sexual escapades outside of marriage. It was still highly looked down upon for a woman too have a child out of wedlock so there would be young woman to seek an abortion for that reason. However for a number of reasons it was not as popular as it is now. For one there was no such thing as a pregnancy test. Sometimes it was just to late for an abortion by the time woman realized they were pregnant. Another thing is woman where still largely measured on there ability to have reproduce. If you couldnt have a baby that was a huge discrace, not as bad as it had once been but still not good. Also abortive products did not always work becuase well medicine is alot better now. Also when abortions where done they were very hush hush. The abortions that were happening would have been completely unknown to most men. The congressional delegates wouldnt have known anything of these abortions.
 
nathanjames1791 said:
The very way society was back then kept abortion from ever being very popular till much more modern times. Now during the 18th century abortion probly was beginning to rise for the pure reason that parents where not setting up marriages at young ages as much anymore so there was alot more courting by young men and sexual escapades outside of marriage. It was still highly looked down upon for a woman too have a child out of wedlock so there would be young woman to seek an abortion for that reason. However for a number of reasons it was not as popular as it is now. For one there was no such thing as a pregnancy test. Sometimes it was just to late for an abortion by the time woman realized they were pregnant. Another thing is woman where still largely measured on there ability to have reproduce. If you couldnt have a baby that was a huge discrace, not as bad as it had once been but still not good. Also abortive products did not always work becuase well medicine is alot better now. Also when abortions where done they were very hush hush. The abortions that were happening would have been completely unknown to most men. The congressional delegates wouldnt have known anything of these abortions.
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A pregnancy incurred by any woman is only known to her...period. For that reason alone...if a woman is determined to terminate her pregnancy...regardless of existing laws...the chances are she'll do just that knowing that there are risk of causing self-injury or possibly death.

In the end, a pregnancy will be terminated. The world will have no knowledge of that termination...and the world keeps right on going.
 
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