Abortion

Statistical evidence please.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Coffee house Holmes. The idea is to rest from the rigors of debate and have conversation. Conversations don't normally require statisical backup. I would think that a reasonable person would not hold the view that rape, incest etc. form the majority of pregnancies that are terminated.Although I have no statistical evidence of that

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Then don't make factual statements to support your claim. It's just that easy.I don't believe rape, incest, etc form the majority of unwanted pregnancies, however the remainder need not be from "lifestyle choices". Someone within the last year posted a comprehensive study on abortion. If I remember correctly the majority ended up being married couples whose choice of birth control failed (for whatever reason), or who could no longer accept the risk of having a child.But you could go look it up. In any case, even if this is about conversation I am sure you agree that I don't get to simply make things up. Please have courtesy to do likewise.I might also ask, since you drew a line at conception, whether you realize that actually reduces birth control choices? The Pill would certainly be knocked out, as well as other abortificients.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Your take on 'lifestyle choices' may have meant using abortion in a casual manner as a form of contraception (sic). It wasn't mine. The 'majority' you referred to would be included in my understanding of 'lifestyle choices'. If you decide that kids are not a desirable result and your not prepared to abstain from the means by which they are made - then ensure that you don't have any. Reversible sterilization + rythmn method + super-strong condoms + spermicides + withdrawal etc, etc would unlikely result in pregnancy. If that's not enough and you get pregnant then tough. Don't cry over spilt...er...seed. You made the lifestyle choice, live with it...or make another lifestyle choice and don't. The above may indicate I am not making it up. Please do me the courtesy and ask what I mean before you leap in with your idea of what I mean. I don't need every ingredient in the world to make a lasagne. A few of the total possible amount will be more than suffient. If someone doesn't want to get pregnant then they don't have to. Lifestyle choice.

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Thus you equate getting pregnant after taking more than adequate precautions to not get pregnant, with someone who got pregnant after intentionally having sex without any protection. They are equal "lifestyle choices". Right.Then how is getting pregnant through rape not a lifestyle choice? If you don't want to get pregnant through rape you certainly can prevent that... 100%, just the same as with regular sex.You seem to have an inconsistent criteria for what you call a "lifestyle choice" as it impacts pregnancy. This is absolutely true, and that includes through rape.Don't get me wrong, I am a firm advocate of avoiding unwanted pregnancy through use of nonprocreative sexual acts, or heavily protected sexual acts. Masturbation, oral, anal and homosexual sex never could get anyone pregnant. So there you go.Its just when someone makes the "lifestyle choice" of protecting themselves, and an accident occurs, then I don't lump that in with their "lifestyle choice". That seems rather broad.Of course you never really did address the fact that some people could no longer risk childbirth. That means medical or economic concerns arising after the pregnancy began, which led to the abortion. Unless they were supposed include precognition or omnipotence (to reverse medical conditions) as part of their "lifestyle choice", then I am unsure what you are squawking about.If you make a claim, and you have no knowledge, then you are making it up, purely guessing. It really is that simple. I believe that is practically the definition of a guess. Isn't it?Oh yes, I'd still like a better reaction regarding the Pill. Are you for it or against it. Exactly what methods are available besides the ones you listed?This message has been edited by holmes, 08-31-2005 09:14 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Hello, iano.Everything that makes me who I am, the personality that feels and hopes and gets fustrated, is contained in my skull. I am the result of all the activity that occurs in my brain.-

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...it is worth noting that the overwhelming majority of the millions of abortions carried out each year involve people who are making lifestyle choices....

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I don't have a problem with this.

Lifestyle choice excluded rape and child abuse victims because choice is missing in them.So looking at the rest. The majority. Lifestyle choices the whole way down the line. Having sex is a choice. It is not like breathing which is automatic and without which we, as individuals die. And those married couples you referred to presumably know what the potential conseqences of that choice are. If they don't fancy the consequences at all then they may abstain from the choice that can result in what they don't want. It's not like abstention is something that we don't do all the time as a matter of choice elsewhere - so why not here? When someone makes the choice of protecting themselves using a method of protection that is known not to offer 100% protection - then surprise is not the attitude that should be taken when it does indeed fail. Ignorance is no defence. They know what can happen (babies) they need to know that their choice of contraception is 100% sure (no babies). Their lifestyle choice was to take a risk -even if it was felt at the time to be small. As it is my lifestyle choice to ride a motorcycle knowing that my chances of death/serious injury in an accident are 17 times that of a car driver. I've plenty of experience riding every day in all weathers. The risk is small. It is there. And I know it. Lifestyle choice - and a risk incidently I am prepared to live with. If I wasn't prepared to live with it I shouldn't be on a motorcycle.Diverting this off into rape, incest, medical complication cases etc doesn't affect the fact (according to your post) that the majority of abortions are down to the above description of lifestyle choice in one form or another. The position w.r.t. abortion under any circumstances is a different discussion and that had to do with when does a person become a person (and thus have rights). It's trickier and more difficult. Besides the ones I listed? How many do you need!! Add these together and you'd have a pretty impregnable (sic) contraceptive. Like I said if someone doesn't want the heat then they should stay out of the kitchen so you could add abstention until such time as you wanted kids to the list. I'm not an expert in contraception so I presume there may be other non-abortion related methods aroundI'm not an expert on the pill either but if they work to destroy anything after conception then they are an arbitary line drawn between person and non-person - given that we haven't decided absolutely what a person is to decide where a line can be drawn.

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Until I got thinking about it I would have thought so too ... until I realised that this is probably one of those First Cause, Abiogenesis type issues which turn out to have mystery at the end of all the scientific discovery that gets us to them.You don't mind if your statement then is taken as a philosophical one for the present. Thus lines drawn between person and non-person is an arbitary one based on this philosophy.Which is fine. Except that we should all realise that our philosophies are prone to error as we do not know. In which case, given who seriousness of what we are dealing with, we should err on the side of caution and terminate terminally terminating something which may well be a someone.(well in lifestyle cases anyway) Woman getting an ultrasound scan: "Whaddya mean its a girl, I wanted a boy. Book me in for an abortion"Hmmm. (sound of CP's stock falling )

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

I'm sorry, but if anything less than 100% prevention is regarded as culpable and so choice a part of the decision, then getting pregnant through rape (adult, not child) is just as much a lifestyle choice as any other pregnancy.After all if you don't want to get pregnant through rape, you can choose to be sterilized, or abstain from all human contact where rape is a greater than 0% possibility.I guess this is to say that when accidents occur, it seems to me that choice is missing from those incidents as well. So does that make you culpable if people planted a bomb on your motorcycle, or set traps on a road, or sabotaged your brakes in a way you could not have known beforehand?There are normal risks, and then there are the risks you could not foresee. And some have impacts beyond yourself.As it is, you motorcycle analogy is all bluster. If you crash I am pretty certain you will avail yourself to modern medicine to save yourself. The same goes for people that get pregnant. And before you reply with something about your crash not requiring surgery that would kill someone else, you need to imagine a much larger scenario.To risk one's life in a pregnancy which has become medically challenging is to risk more than just one's own well being. The loss of your own life could impact your family. In that case you must make decisions which are fateful.If you were involved in a crash with your family and saving an unborn "child" would mean risking the mother, would that choice be as obvious? Heck, sometimes one is forced to choose (based on time available and nature of wounds) between saving a living child and a parent.You can go into a pregnancy understanding the risks and "accepting" them. But "accepting" those risks, more often than not means if things go bad the unborn child will be sacrificed to save the parent and so not affect the family as it currently stands. Most versions of the pill, among other methods, will prevent a fertilized egg from successfully becoming/staying implanted. Thus if your line is conception, the pill may very well destroy "persons".

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

See that's where I knew you'd end up. That was in direct reference to lifestyle choice. To equate the above, with someone who sincerely tried not to get pregnant, and an accident occured, and on top of that a medical risk later became evident... your definition is just too damn broad.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I can see why the Sherlock part is missing - so I'll spell it out Lifestyle choice number 1: choose to insert penis into vagina which chooses to be inserted into and freely choose to initate reciprocating action. Choose not to utilise the multitude of contraception products available which is used in tandem will almost certainly prevent that which you choose not to want. Having made this choice a rather pleasurable warning arrives that something which you can't choose is about to happen. Choose to carefully withdraw penis (even though one (or both) have previously chosen to undergo a minor enough medical procedure which would make much of the above 99% unnecessary). Turn over, light a cigarette. RelaxEvery action above is related directly to the issue involved. Avoiding unwanted pregnancy. That's the boundary - and not a particularily onerous one at that - if not getting pregnant was something you considered important to you.If you find the option of abortion to be an acceptable contraceptive then you may start pulling back the above methods to suit your own particular lifestyle choice. Because it's all lifestyle choiceRape doesn't involve choice directed at unwanted pregancy within any boundary short of committing suicide in order to prevent it. Your being a little bit disingenuous in trying to tie the two together like this. Oil and water don't mix - neither will these Anybody with even a passing interest in the topic would know that no single contraceptive claims to be..er.. bullet-proof. They warn quite clearly to the contrary. Thus the onus is on the protagonists to evaluate what the risks are, offset them as best they can, and if they still want to take the slight risk which remains.. then do so and live with the consequences. Just like everywhere else in life... Precisely...it doesn't. I wear good protective clothes, keep the bike well maintained, treat all other driveres as if they are out to kill me. If I get paralysed I'll blame no one. The risk is there, I take it. If we get to that issue then fine. At the moment it's lifestyle choice abortion. Rape, incest, medical emergency are but a drop in the ocean compared to the others. Lets worry about saving millions of lives before we worry about saving thousands shall we? Fair enough. There's one contraceptive device from the list. I see the stock market for Durex ...er....rising. I wonder are there any pills which kill sperm for instance or prevent the egg being fertilised. Call them "GoddidntdoitZ" maybe

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

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Except that we should all realise that our philosophies are prone to error as we do not know.

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This sounds like a prescription of paralysis in all aspects of life. But in real life we must weigh the likelihood of these "unknown" consequences against the consequences that are definitely known, and go on with our lives. I just don't see much of a possibility that an abortion kills an actual person; therefore, the well being of the woman takes precedence.-

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Woman getting an ultrasound scan: "Whaddya mean its a girl, I wanted a boy. Book me in for an abortion"

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Just so that I know what I'm supposed to argue against, what is the problem here?

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Rape, incest, medical emergency are but a drop in the ocean compared to the others.

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But let's discuss them anyway - would you support an abortion if there was a 50/50% chance that the baby would kill the mother if carried to full-term?

Have a look at the arguement re: lifestyle choice abortion to Holmes in the last two posts. "Not much of a possibility" means the same as a small possibility. Should the woman who really wants a boy instead of a girl as a lifestyle choice, be permitted to allow her welfare to supercede the small (your philosophy) chances that it's a person she is killing?

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

I believe this to be true.However, I would argue that these are EXACTLY the sort of people we don't want to be parents. Their children are going to grow up to be just as irresponsible as they were.There's a great book out now called "Freakanomics". It takes statistical analysis and applies it to everything from the economics of dealing crack to whether or not Sumo wrestlers cheat. It's a really great read and I recommend it to everyone.One whole chapter of the book is called "Where have all the criminals gone" and it discusses the sudden and totally unexpected drop off in crime in the mid-ninties. Many people have suggested many causes, by the authors pretty much prove the cause and effect - Crime rates dropped because abortion became legal 15-20 years earlier.The majority of aborted pregnancies involve people not ready or suited for parenthood.While I whole heartedly agree that an ounce of prevention could have prevented the necessity for the abortion in the first place, I'm not ready to have a million more children born into bad situations every year. And 18 years down the line, when those kids are an army of criminals, our society is simply not prepared to handle them