Points on abortion and the crutch of supporters

quote: from schrafSo, since most "future babies" do not lead to a pregnancy and are flushed out of the body during menstruation, do you suggest colletion and examination of all menstrual fluid just in case there is a "future baby" in there?
------------------------------------------------------------------- It appears Messenjah, that you are equating a fertilized egg with a human being. Am i allowed to stand by and watch a human being die because I don't intervene to help?Are you allowed to watch a human being die because you didn't want to save them when they didn't implant?Are you not equating a fertilized egg with a human being, in which case the letting them be flushed is ok? If so is it the implanting that makes it ok?If that is the case then an IUD or (if I understand correctly) the morning after pill is ok cause the egg hasn't implanted?Which is it?added by editsorry shraf and messenjah. I didn't read carefully enough. Schraf has already asked this.[This message has been edited by NosyNed, 03-27-2004]

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Her choiced also decide, in some cases, life or death for herself, as well.

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In some cases, which I said acceptions should be made for.

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-chris

wait[This message has been edited by messenjaH of oNe, 04-08-2004]

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-chris

I'm not sure when it would become a human person. Some say at conception but I dunno. Some say because a distinct DNAcode is formed that doesn't change.Schraf can you explain why at conception it wouldn't be a human.-peace

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I'm not sure when it would become a human person. Some say at conception but I dunno. Some say because a distinct DNAcode is formed that doesn't change.
Schraf can you explain why at conception it wouldn't be a human.

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I'm not personally sure when it becomes a human.However, I AM sure that a fertilized egg or a group of cells can't think, feel physical sensation, and therefore is not an individual human.It may have homo sapiens genes but it sure isn't a person.It's for this reason that I cannot justify the disregard of the girls' or woman's personhood.

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In some cases, which I said acceptions should be made for.

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These are the shades of gray I was talking about.What exceptions should be allowed, and why?In the case of serious health risks to the mother, who decides if the risks are dire enough to allow an abortion? Should it be a legal/political or a medical descision?In the case of rape/incest, why is an abortion OK if the mother is healthy? If you think that life begins at conception and that any artificial means to end pregnancy is murder, then you are saying that murder of a fetus is sometimes OK, and that in this case, the rights of the mother DO outweigh those of the fertilized egg, group of cells, or fetus, because forcing a woman to carry the product of a rape or incest to term would be too great of an emotional hardship.So, who should be able to decide if any pregnancy is too great of an emotional hardship? Should it be a personal and medical descision, or should it be a legal/political descision?I do think that prevention of unwanted pregnancy is the most important thing to do, to make abortions rare, which is why we need los of sex education, starting very early in life, and readily available free contraceptives for anyone who wants them.

In the abortion thread I noticed that a number of people referred to the embryo/fetus in question as "a bunch of cells." Technically, each or us sitting at our computers are 'a bunch of cells.' But according to the CDC, 84% of all abortions happen at 7 weeks or later, when the embryo or fetus has a brain waves, a heartbeat, arms, legs, fingers, toes, a face, and after nine weeks, fingerprints. If you don't believe this information, listen to how some abortion providers describe their jobs.note: these quotes come from Abortion Quotes site .
A very interesting site with a lot of abortion information.

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In the book "Abortion: Debating the Issue" (New York:Enslow Publishing, Inc., 1995) Nancy Day quotes abortionist Dr. Ed Jones, who had worked at a Planned Parenthood Clinic for 4 years at the time of the interview, saying the following:

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"This can burn you out very, very quickly...not so much by the physical labor as the emotional part of what's going on. When you do an ultraound, particularly if you have children, and you see a fetus there, kicking, moving, living, doing things that your own child does, bringing it's thumb to its mouth, and things like that- it's difficult. Then, after the procedure, sometimes we have to actually look at the specimen, and you see arms and legs and things like that torn off...It does take an emotional toll."

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Describing an abortion that apparently did not prevent the child from being born alive, Dr. Haskell said this, "It came out very quickly after I put the scissors up in the cervical canal and pierced the skull and spread the scissors apart...in the previous two, I had used the suction to collapse the skull."

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--Dayton Daily News Sun Dec 10 1989

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From "Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic" by Wendy Simonds. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996 (This pro-choice author included a chapter on how clinic workers reacted to seeing aborted 'tissue.'

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"It's just- I mean it looks like a baby. It looks like a baby. And especially if you get one that comes out, that's not piecemeal. And you know, I saw this one, and it had its fingers in its mouth...it makes me really sad that that had to happen, you know, but it doesn't change my mind. It's just hard. And it makes me just sort of stop and feel sad about it, the whole necessity of it. And also....it's very warm when it comes into the sterile room because it's been in the mother's stomach. It feels like flesh, you know..."

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"It's going to be weird now because you're going to see the sono. You're going to see the heart beating- little hearts, you know- and then, all of a sudden, you're going to put his cardiac medicine in it to make it stop- to kill it. So you're going to see the exact moment when you kill the fetus. I won't kill it, the doctor will kill it...and, I mean, it might be more humane...[if] the fetuses do feel something, why not kill it, you know, fast, [rather] than rip its leg off?"

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"You're looking between the woman's legs; you're seeing, you know, what the doctor's doing. And it's what a lot of people would call kind of, I guess, gruesome- that's not really the word because- it's identifiable. I mean, when he...takes the forceps and pulls out a foot, you can see the foot, and my reaction- because I feel so strongly that women who want to have a twenty week abortion should be able to have that- but I mean when I look and was just like, you know, my first reaction was, you know, I was pretty horrified."

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"...when you're, you know, putting a fetus's feet in over its head in a baggie, there's just this brief moment of "This could have been me," which I fundamentally believe is okay. She should have the right to choose..."

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"...it looks like a baby, That's what it looks like to me. You've never seen anything else that looks like that. The only other thing you've ever seen is a baby...You can see a face and hands, and ears and eyes and, you know...feet and toes...It bothered me real bad the first time..."

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"I hate it when people put it together to look like a baby. I hate that...I don't want to look like it when its like that because it's like a broken doll, and that grosses me out."

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"I got to where I couldn't stand to look at the little bodies anymore"

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--Dr. Beverly McMillan, when asked why she stopped performing abortions.

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Quoted in "The Ex Abortionists: They Have Confronted Reality" Washington Post April 1, 1988 p a 21

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You do realized that partial birth abortion has been outlawed in the states, right? Although it is currently being challenged, I really don't think that they will re-legalize partial birth abortion anytime soon.

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The Laminator

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Only one of the quotes was about partial birth abortion. The rest describe ordinary suction or D&Es that are perfectly legal. The PBA law only banned one type of abortion.

I'm no doctor but I don't see how you could D&E without partially delivering the fetus, thus making it a partial birth abortion.Oh, btw - congratulations on reducing the complexity of the abortion debate to cheap, maudlin emotionalism. People like you are going to "think of the children!" us all back into the Stone Age.

So, white hill, how many unwanted children have you adopted?Have you lobbied your senator and congresspeople to legalize and fund RU486? Have you urged them to provide free and readily available contraceptives for everyone who wants them, including children, without parental consent? Have you written to tell them how requiring minor girls to get parental consent before getting an abortion effectively ensures a later-term abortion than would otherwise be neccessary?Also, what have you personally done to educate our children about preventing unwanted preganancy?Lastly, do you support gun control in the US, and do you support the death penalty?[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 04-27-2004]

Whenever I read anti-abortion literature, I wonder at what point the fleshy outer casing of the fetus (sometimes referred to as the 'mother') becomes fully developed. At least the fetus "has a brain waves (sic), a heartbeat, arms, legs, fingers, toes, a face, and after nine weeks, fingerprints." According to your post, the only thing a mother has are legs, a stomach, and a cervical canal. But I guess that's all women are to you, so I shouldn't be surprised.regards,
Esteban "Fully Formed Fetus" Hambre

About adopting children. I fully intend to one day. I haven't yet. But if you oppose, say, the death penalty (which I do, btw) are you then personally responsible to house and guard all criminals? If you make a donation to a homeless shelter, are you a hypocrite if you can't take in every homeless person on the street? If you refrain from killing someone, or stop someone else from killing someone, does that make you responsible for that person? I'm the first to advocate for free daycare, foster care, affordable services, and if this meant higher taxes, I would pay them. For every baby that is aborted in the US today there are over a million couples waiting to adopt- it is very hard to adopt a baby in America today- that's why so many go overseas.As for a mother having only legs, a stomach, and a cervical canal, that is not all I see when I look in the mirror. I certainly don't think women are subordinate somehow incomplete, being that I am one. I have a great value for individual women as distinct human beings. Each woman has a right for reproductive freedom. She has a right to choose whether or not to have sex. A right to choose whether or not to use birth control, to decide which kind. A right to use a 'rape kit' to prevent pregnancy in case her right is violated. She also has a right to life. Her life should never be destroyed by anyone for any reason- not if she commits a capital crime, not if she is threatened by a criminal, not if she is in the wrong place at the wrong time- not even if she is in her mother's womb. Because the fetus in the womb is the baby outside the womb is the little girl is the teenager is the woman. They are all the same person in different stages of development.

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But if you oppose, say, the death penalty (which I do, btw) are you then personally responsible to house and guard all criminals?

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In the sense that you must pay taxes to provide for these things, well... yes.And I think we can all agree that in the case of a child's upbringing, throwing down some taxes isn't enough. The issue isn't just one of money. The child also requires a loving environment, and that's not something that can be bought.So where is that loving environment gonna come from?

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"As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"
-Holly