Points on abortion and the crutch of supporters

quote:

---

1. Rape victims.

​

Do two wrongs make a right?

---

Is it "right" to force a woman to incubate a child?Why does the fetus' rights trump those of the woman's?

quote:

---

It's horrible that you were raped and it isn't wrong fault you're pregnant but is it ok to essentially kill a baby even though you didn't put your pregnancy on yourself?

---

Is it OK to force a woman to incubate a fetus, complete with all of the health risks, including death and future infertility?Also, what about young girls who are impregnated by rapists, such as relatives? Do you feel OK with forcing them to incubate the fetus?

quote:

---

2. If it is your fault. (by unprotected sex)

​

Isn't it your responsibility to have the child and at least give it to an adoption agency? Reminder: If you don't it will die from murder.

---

Is it OK to force a woman to incubate a fetus?

quote:

---

3. If you have the baby you will die

​

This is where it is your choice to have the baby or not.

---

Why? Why is it OK to force women to become incubators in some cases, taking away her right to control her own body, but in this caase it isn't OK?

quote:

---

This reason is the crutch of pro-choice enthusiasts. This is a very rare occurence and is used to make murder look nice and the last resort type thing.

---

Can you please explain when a fertilized egg becomes human, and is therefore "murderable"?

quote:

---

I have a friend that says she is pro-choice. The only reason why she is pro-choice is because of this rare occurence. Why support something that is so much more broad than that.

---

Because it's inappropriate to dictate to individual women what should be a private matter between her, her family and her doctor.

quote:

---

If you are pro-choice you support all of these reasons, and even perhaps the more inhumane atrocities that are being committed outside of this country.

---

This does not logically follow.Just because I support every woman's right to control what happens to her own body, it does not follow that I support infantacide, for instance.

quote:

---

Although you can't get more inhumane, just more gory, to the point where you can see the baby so it makes you feel like you're are ordering murder. If they're just cells than you don't feel this way. It's not what the cells are, it's what the cells will become.

---

So, I assume then that you wish to control what happens to every single egg and every single sperm, because these are the cells that have the potential to create human life.Also, are you going to want to examine all of the menstrual fluid of women for all of the fertilized eggs that don't implant themselves in the uterus? Most fertilized eggs end up this way, but according to you, they are potential human life and should be saved, right?

quote:

---

You who support abortion are killing off future youth, maybe future geniuses who can better our world.

---

...or, we are killing a future Hitler or Ossama bin Laden.Your argument might be more powerful if there were no starving children living in poverty on this planet, but I think it's much more important to focus on making the lives of the destitute and damaged children who are already here better rather than trying to add more to the tolls.

quote:

---

But it shouldn't matter what they become either, you don't know anyway. All you know and all you need to know is that babies are dying by murder and you are partly if not all to blame.

---

So are religions and governments which make birth control and family planning services difficult to get, and also actively resist the empowerment of women to be the social and sexual equal of men.

quote:

---

They're just cells not a baby.

---

She's just an incubator, not a human being.

quote:

---

What will those cells become? What are you denying those cells and what are you denying what is the future of those cells of?

---

What will that girl/woman become? What are you denying that girl/woman and what are you denying what is the future of this girl/woman?

quote:

---

I am frustrated by how anyone can not see abortion as cold-blooded killing. If you don't see it as such please respond.

---

I have never known anyone who is pro-choice who also thinks that abortion is a wonderful, lovely thing. It is to be avoided as much as possible.Don't you think, if one wanted to avoid abortions taking place, one would focus on teaching men to keep it in their pants, and if they can't do that, perhaps teach them to use condoms?Did you know that adult men are the cause of the majority of underage girls' pregnancies? Who is on their case?The fact is, it's much easier to lay blame after the fact instead of working to prevent it in the first place.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-14-2004]

quote:

---

Are you seriously suggesting that rapes make up all abortions, or that women should be given a free ride on sexual responsibility when it is not rape?

---

Uh, no, and no. I have no idea why you would think this.I do notice, however, that most anti-choice groups focus on controling women's bodies and not men's.

quote:

---

With the extreme witchhunt mentality regarding underage sex sweeping the globe, are you seriously telling me no one is one men's cases?

---

Most anti-choice groups I have read about do not focus their efforts on the male half of the equation.

quote:

---

Frankly, I find the over "victimizing" by our culture of young girls who get pregnant, (viewing each instance as violator-victim) more harmful than helpful. More harmful in general, than the pregnancy itself.

---

Are you saying that a 13 year old girl with no sexual experience who agrees to have sex with a sexually experienced 21 year old hasn't likely been manipulated and coerced? The same goes with a young boy and an adult woman. Was it OK for that female teacher to have an affair with her 13 year old student? I don't think so.Yes, humans do human things. Some of those "human things" that we do involve the sexual manipulation of and power trips over young children and need to be discouraged.

quote:

---

They care about women's rights, they just also believe in an embryo's rights too (as equals)

---

I disagree that they care about women's rights.

quote:

---

Yeah, let's work on castrating all men now! That way we don't have to blame MEN later.

---

You certainly have made a habit out of reponding to your twisted version of my position instead of my actual position, holmes.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-15-2004]

quote:

---

Does anyone have statistics comparing the occurance of teenage pregnancy (or underage sex) between those with significant age differences and those without?

---

Viasat Internet Service Providers Near MeThe fathers of babies born to teenage mothers are likely to be older than the women: About 1 in 5 infants born to unmarried minors are fathered by men 5 or more years older than the mother."While 93% of teenage women report that their first intercourse was voluntary, one-quarter of these young women report that it was unwanted. The younger women are when they first have intercourse, the more likely they are to have had unwanted or nonvoluntary first sex--7 in 10 of those who had sex before age 13, for example. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of sexually active 15-17-year-old women have partners who are within two years of their age; 29% have sexual partners who are 3-5 years older, and 7% have partners who are six or more years older. Most sexually active young men have female partners close to their age: 76% of the partners of 19-year-old men are either 17 (33%) or 18 (43%); 13% are 16, and 11% are aged 13-15."

quote:

---

That pretty much takes care of your entire argument.

---

Hardly! You didn't answer a single one of my specific questions! You have a very black and white notion of this issue and that is typical of someone your age. However, I have also presented you with some of the gray areas and thorny issues which you apparently do not wish to address. I think it's actually you who hasn't really thought through the implications of your position. I have repeated the bits of my message that you ignored.

quote:

---

I think you should cool down now.

---

I'm not upset, just arguing forcefully.

quote:

---

Oh, and are you by any chance part of the feminist movement?

---

Of course..."Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

quote:

---

Is it "right" to force a woman to incubate a child?

​

Why does the fetus' rights trump those of the woman's?

​

Is it OK to force a woman to incubate a fetus, complete with all of the health risks, including death and future infertility?

​

Also, what about young girls who are impregnated by rapists, such as relatives? Do you feel OK with forcing them to incubate the fetus?

---

quote:

---

3. If you have the baby you will die
This is where it is your choice to have the baby or not.

---

quote:

---

Why? Why is it OK to force women to become incubators in some cases, taking away her right to control her own body, but in this caase it isn't OK?

​

Can you please explain when a fertilized egg becomes human, and is therefore "murderable"?

​

Because it's inappropriate to dictate to individual women what should be a private matter between her, her family and her doctor.

---

quote:

---

If you are pro-choice you support all of these reasons, and even perhaps the more inhumane atrocities that are being committed outside of this country.

---

quote:

---

This does not logically follow.

​

Just because I support every woman's right to control what happens to her own body, it does not follow that I support infantacide, for instance.

---

quote:

---

Although you can't get more inhumane, just more gory, to the point where you can see the baby so it makes you feel like you're are ordering murder. If they're just cells than you don't feel this way. It's not what the cells are, it's what the cells will become.

---

quote:

---

So, I assume then that you wish to control what happens to every single egg and every single sperm, because these are the cells that have the potential to create human life.

​

Also, are you going to want to examine all of the menstrual fluid of women for all of the fertilized eggs that don't implant themselves in the uterus? Most fertilized eggs end up this way, but according to you, they are potential human life and should be saved, right?

---

quote:

---

You who support abortion are killing off future youth, maybe future geniuses who can better our world.

---

quote:

---

...or, we are killing a future Hitler or Ossama bin Laden.

​

Your argument might be more powerful if there were no starving children living in poverty on this planet, but I think it's much more important to focus on making the lives of the destitute and damaged children who are already here better rather than trying to add more to the tolls.

---

quote:

---

But it shouldn't matter what they become either, you don't know anyway. All you know and all you need to know is that babies are dying by murder and you are partly if not all to blame.

---

quote:

---

So are religions and governments which make birth control and family planning services difficult to get, and also actively resist the empowerment of women to be the social and sexual equal of men.

---

quote:

---

They're just cells not a baby.

---

quote:

---

She's just an incubator, not a human being.

---

quote:

---

What will those cells become? What are you denying those cells and what are you denying what is the future of those cells of?

---

quote:

---

What will that girl/woman become? What are you denying that girl/woman and what are you denying what is the future of this girl/woman?

---

quote:

---

I am frustrated by how anyone can not see abortion as cold-blooded killing. If you don't see it as such please respond.

---

quote:

---

I have never known anyone who is pro-choice who also thinks that abortion is a wonderful, lovely thing. It is to be avoided as much as possible.

​

The truth is, it's much easier to lay blame after the fact instead of working to prevent it in the first place.

---

quote:

---

His comment regarding schraf's being in the feminist movement is obviously a ref to her rather feminist fundie lingo. She clearly has a bias as to who is "guilty" in pregnancy, despite the actual findings in the studies she presented.

---

See, this is why I should pretty much not reply to you holmes, because you like to misrepresent my position to be something it isn't (but apparently wish it was) because then you can rail against it.I do not believe that men are always "at fault" in every case of unwanted pregnancy.My "keeping it in their pants" comment was probably ill advised, but my point was not that men SHOULD keep it in their pants, or that unwanted pregnancy was alway's men's fault. My point was that very few of the anti-choice organizations focus any of their energy on men's equal role in preventing unwanted pregnancy.I am very wary of continuing this conversation with you because of your tendency to misrepresent. I am not interested in spending all of my time correcting your misrepresentations of what I said, and it looks like things are headed that way again.

quote:

---

I am sorry But if you have sex of your free will you Know darn well there is a chance of getting pregnant!

---

Because many communities resist (for religious reasons) putting effective sex education into the public schools, many teenagers do not really understand how to practice safe sex, particularly in poor school districts.You assume that the parents or the schools are teaching the kids, but many get nothing, or very little.

quote:

---

Women deserve equal rights.
They have the power of giving life-

​

with great power comes great responsibility-"Spiderman"

---

So what are you going to do to prevent unwanted pregnancies in your community?Sex education, comdom distribution, teaching respect for women and girls...These would be good start towards PREVENTION, right?

quote:

---

No matter her intended implication, she was explicitly stating that if antiAbortion groups were actually interested in ending abortion, they should focus on men's decisions to have sex.

---

Nope, didn't say that.You misrepresented what I said.

quote:

---

However, when one says to properly end unwanted pregnancies, one needs to control the sexual behavior of men, then one is giving women a free ride on the sexual responsibility of not getting pregnant in the first place. That is what schraf was expressed (intentionally or not), and that is what I addressed.

---

Nope, never said that.You misrepresented what I said.Now, tell me again why I should converse with you?[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-20-2004]

Thanks, Frog, for stating perfectly what I wanted to convey.You undoubtedly did it much more succinctly that I would have.

quote:

---

Thus... just like with Percy... everyone seems to be circling their wagons on who meant what when they said X, rather than just focusing on factual disputes.

---

The thing is, holmes, you do, absolutely, have a problem with misinterpreting, in the worst possible light, what other people say.It is very unpleasant and boring to have to restate half of what I write when you have finished twisting and spinning what I say. The tough thing is that you don't do this ALL the time, and a lot of what you say is interesting and challenging.It seems to me that you are not at all interested in what I said or what I think. Instead, you definitely tend to want to argue against what you'd like my position to be instead of what it actually is.Perhaps it's a failing on my part, but when that happens, I am inclined to not want to argue "facts" with you at all, because I don't trust you to represent my arguments fairly and accurately. It feels very much like I will never, ever be able to get a fair hearing.You are probably right that I sometimes overstate things, and sometimes shoot my mouth off, and sometimes might even make some anti-male statements.However, for you to wildly extrapolate that into me believing that women should not bear any responsibility AT ALL for the prevention of unwanted pregnancy is simply silly.When something like that happens, I simply can't trust you any more.

quote:

---

Hypocritical?

---

Substantive?

This is a misunderstanding of my own intentions. I am much more interested in facts supporting a position, than debates surrounding whether I got your position on a specific statement right or not.

quote:

---

All it takes is a quick correction on your part, if you believe I got it wrong. I might defend my interpretation as a valid one, but as I said I do not believe intentions can be debated. Thus I HAVE to assume whatever you tell me your true intent or position was, was in fact your position.

---

Well, that's just it, isn't it?I think your perspctive of yourself might be a little inaccurate.I have, in fact, had to correct you many times because your tendency can sometimes be to misinterpret in the worst light possible.It's not so easy to dissuade you from your interpretation, in my experience. So this is why I and some others have had frustrations with you. We end up doing exactly what you say you don't want to do; arguing what we said/meant instead of arguing facts.

quote:

---

That's why in each of my posts I try to move beyond that issue. I generally accept what anyone says their true intent/position was.

---

See, that's not the experience I have had. Not with every point and not in every post, but it happens enough.

quote:

---

Facts, arguments, and positions are three totally separate things. People can get any combination of those three right and wrong.

​

I'm not sure why being wrong on one should cause debate on the others to come to a screeching halt. You may feel like you will not get a fair hearing, but you should be able to judge whether you are or not based on what I have said about the facts, or the arguments, separate from what I said about your position.

​

Its kind of a guilt by association to link all three.

---

Well, I do judge whether or not I am right or wrong based upon facts, but whether or not I am willing to continue to spend time in discussion with a particular debater is determined by how interesting they are to debate with and if they debate in good faith.Like I said, you don't do this all the time. It seems to happen when emotional hot buttion issues are discussed. (Mind you, I am not trying to portray myself as some kind of flawless debater here.) [quote]"Are you seriously suggesting that rapes make up all abortions, or that women should be given a free ride on sexual responsibility when it is not rape?"

quote:

---

As you can see I never said that's what you actually thought, just pointed out that is how it reads. That is the explicit (intended or not) message of the statement.

---

...if you interpret what I said in the worst possible (and silly) light.Nobody else in this thread seems to have come to the same interpretation you did, not even close.I told you that I did not believe this at all, and did not understand why you woult think that I did, yet you repeated it in a later post.

quote:

---

You should also note that was only a small point made within a larger body of criticism regarding your injecting feminist jargon/arguments into the abortion debate, including the bizarre suggestion they do not go after men as being reponsible for pregnancies.

---

That's true, but when you make these worst-possible interpretations to argue against, it makes me less inclined to listen to what you have to say.

quote:

---

You could also note I started the post by agreeing with the rest of what you had said, and at the end of my own hyperbolic attack on your use of feminist arguments said...

​

"But I guess that's my two cents, which may be just as alienating to others as yours.

​

Which should indicate my message was about use of language that alienates readers, rather than what your actual agenda/position was.

​

Given the above I feel that particular post of mine has turned out rather prophetic. Not only was I right that you appeared like a feminist fundie to an antiAbortionist, but I managed to alienate you from the actual message of my own post.

---

Well, that is certainly what happened.

quote:

---

You can choose to draw the line wherever you want. But personally I separate misreads of statements from errors of fact or logic and treat them separately.

---

So do I, except when the misreads of statements are not so easily corrected and I am forced to correct misstatements repeatedly.

quote:

---

Its only when a person consistently dodges facts and arguments that I no longer trust them. If its just simple errors in figuring out my intent/positionwas, then its no biggie, I just say what I meant.

---

I understand, but I feel like it isn't so easy to get you to change your misinterpretation.

quote:

---

However, if a person keeps editing my text so as to try and make my position appear different in their quotes, and refuses to accept my statements of true intent, I don't lose trust, I just get pissed off. BTW, I'm not saying you do this, just saying this is when I get pissed off regarding misreads of my position.

---

Well, you were pissing me off, too.

quote:

---

Maybe, but what you are condemning another about, sounds awfully familar of what, when you wrongfully accused me of stating, I let slide. Now this isn't about me, I am of course in no way perfect, but you should know this of holmes, yourself.

​

(Abortion Article of long ago.)

---

I have no idea what you are talking about.Perhaps a link or thred and message number?

Messinjah, please explain where along in gesteation fertilized egg becomes a person.Or, do you equate fertilized eggs with persons?

quote:

---

So the woman is allowed to be Death?

---

So the government is allowed to force a woman to incubate a fetus?Remember, childbirth is not some kind of walk in the park. Women and girls die from pregnancy and birth complications every year, and many more are left infirile or otherwise injured. Medically, it's much safer for even a healthy woman or girl to have an abortion or take the morning after pill.Attention Required! | Cloudflare'A government study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and released in 1999, found that the maternal mortality rate is still problematic. The national rate is 7.7 per every 100,000 women: the death of one woman for every 12,987 who give birth. That's more than twice the goal set by the federal government under its Healthy People 2000 initiative (3.3 deaths per 100,000 women). And big disparities also exist; among African-American women in New York, for example, the study found that 28.7 of these women die for every 100,000 pregnancies.And those numbers simply reflect maternal mortality the number of women who died in pregnancy or 42 days after giving birth. That's not counting the number of women who survived the various serious complications that can occur during and after pregnancy. Dr. Jeffrey C. King, head of the Maternal Mortality Task Force of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, reported that for every maternal death there were an estimated 3,100 hospitalizations for pregnancy-related complications.Patricia Schroeder, the former Democratic Congress member from Colorado, once voiced these concerns about the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth. She did so both as a lawmaker and as a woman who had nearly died in childbirth. As Ms. Schroeder remarked, "There is a myth that pregnancy is no problem and that the only reason someone would want to end it is for something trivial or selfish."

quote:

---

I'm saying an abortion is performed when their is a future baby inside a woman right?

---

So, 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?Also, do you object to IUD's?