The bible and abortion

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I agree that abortion should be lagal, what I don't agree with is the promotion of a casual attitude tword it.

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Several things...1) I challenge you to show me any major pro-choice organization which promotes a casual attitude towards abortion.2) If someone has such a casual attitude towards abortion, do you really want them raising a child?

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Maybe it's immoral in both cases, but it is more immoral to condemn a raped woman to carry the child of her attacker?

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Bud didn't you just say that abortion is wrong, "Whatever the mother feels or suffers."?It surely seems that you have no problem with a woman suffering any amount of pain as long as you deem her somehow "deserving" of it.Condoms break. Birth control (even the pill) fails. People are irresponsible and make mistakes.Did you know that most underage girls who get pregnant are knocked up by much older men?It seems to me that you are focusing a great deal on blaming the women and girls for these unwanted pregnancies and speaking not at all about the men who get the women and girls preganant.Did you know that getting an abortion is much safer to the woman's health than carrying a child to term and giving birth to it?

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At some point that moral value passes the woman's desire to avoid inconvenience,

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Inconvenience?Your repeated implication that women are interested mainly in "convenience" with regards to abortion is insulting and belittling to all the women who do not take aborting a fetus lightly and struggle with the descision to have an abortion or not.It is much more risky to a woman's health to carry a baby to term and give birth to it than it is for her to have a properly-performed abortion.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-25-2003]

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The vast majority of abortions are carried out not because of any health reason, or because of any violence towards the woman, but simply because the mother does not wish to carry the child to term, or raise a child. I call that a desire to avoid inconvenience, if you find that term insulting, perhaps you could suggest an alternative?

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I have a question for you.How many unwanted, parentless babies have you adopted?If you haven't done so, why not? If it is simply a matter of a little "inconvenience", then most of us would have adopted a couple orphans at least, right? Kind of like getting a dog from the pound.If you have, then do you consider the child an inconvenience, or a major, life-altering addition to your world which has rendered said world changed in drastic ways, forever?Also, why do you refuse to address the fact that carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth is much more dangerous to a woman's health that undergoing a properly-performed abortion?[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-26-2003]

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Secondly, they are way more people trying to adopt babies than there are babies up for adoption. Last I heard it's getting on for a seven year waiting list over here.

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Not true. There are plenty of children waiting to be adopted in the UK.I did a little research and it seems as though the reason it takes so long to adopt a child in the UK is because of beurocratic red tape and restrictive laws, not because of a lack of children in the system.Blair vows to increase number of adoptions | Health | The Guardian

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Alan Milburn, the health secretary, said: "Children stay in the care system for longer than they should. More than 28,000 children have been in care continuously for more than two years."

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"The biggest problem facing local authorities and adoption agencies is a shortage of families coming forward to adopt. These measures will make a real difference."

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Firstly, I don't like children so I'd find having to raise one inconvenient.

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Would you be happy if I changed to using 'lifestyle-choice' rather than 'inconvenience', then?

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I think changing to "permenant, drastic, major, life-altering lifestyle choice" would make me happy.It would be a great deal more accurate than calling raising a child an "inconvenience."

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I don't really see how it's an important part of the issue. I don't know of any women who make the abortion/not-abortion choice on this grounds.

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Yes you do.She told you about it on this thread.On the other hand, it's irrelevant who you know or don't know.

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I've never heard of anyone saying "well, I'd like to carry to term, but it would be better for my health if I didn't."

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Then you haven't been paying attention in the thread.I'm not saying that this is the most stated reason for having an abortion, but it is a significant factor for some women.

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And I don't see how it makes much difference in any case; A relatively mild health risk still wouldn't outway a human life, were the fetus to be considered human.

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Who are you to decide that a woman should be forced by law to be subjected to any "health risk", no matter how mild?You really don't know how hard pregnancy and birth can be on a woman's body, or how dangerous to her life it can be, do you?Attention Required! | Cloudflare

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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.

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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.

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Abortion is far safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. Death occurs in 0.4 of 100,000 abortions performed within the first eight weeks of pregnancy ? the time during which more than half of abortions occur. Death occurs in 1 of 100,000 abortions performed during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, but 88 percent of abortions occur within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Only 1.5 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks. So the risk of maternal mortality is at least seven times greater than the risk of death resulting from safe and legal abortion.

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[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-29-2003][This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-29-2003][This message has been edited by schrafinator, 09-29-2003]

It's taking me a long time and a bunch of edits to get my reply to Mr. Jack the way I want it, so you responded to something I have edited out!Anyhow, I agree completely, although it's also true that when the agencies get to pick the parents, they can be picky, too.

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Who are you to decide that a human being should be allowed by law to be killed on the grounds of a health risk to another human being, or on the basis of a major lifestyle-choice?

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What's a human being?

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How do you get to 'forced' anyway? This is (except in the case of rape, which is a rare special case) a result of the woman's choices.

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Scratch the surface of any pro-lifer (which I know you aren't, but you do share some similar attitudes) and you'll find someone who wants to punish women for their sexual behavior.

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These are the consequences of her own actions.

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Hello? Did she get pregnant all by herself? What about the person with the sperm? Why have you not said a single disparaging thing about all of the FATHERS of these unwanted pregnancies?I don't see these men lining up to be single fathers, do you?

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I advocate allowing her the choice to terminate (in my country on taxpayers money, although I believe not in the US?) in the first half of pregnancy, but not after that on the basis of the moral value of the child.

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No disagreement.

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There was one mention of a specific health issue that would make pregnancy dangerous. Specific health issues are a different matter to the health risk of a normal pregnancy.

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Didn't you read my statistics?Death from normal pregnancy is many times more likely than death from safe and legal abortion.

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I am not in agreement with this position of course, but know these people really are out there and probably make up the majority.

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It can be argued that regardless of their intent, the end result of their demands is to punish women. I'm not sure if I would agree with this argument, but it more accurate and fair than saying that punishment is their intent.

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Well, I sort of agree and sort of don't.I certainly do agree that there are plenty of anti-abortion folks who believe that life begins at conception, end of story, but you also don't ever hear those people talking about all of the fertilized eggs that never get implanted.If we take their definition of "life", and take their lead on what measures should be taken to preserve it, all menstrual fluid from all fertile women should be preserved and examined for those fertilized eggs.So, ultimately, it is not "life" as they define it, that they are primarily interested in. What they are interested in is controlling women's bodies as incubators regardless of the women's desire to be an incubator. They have raised the rights of the fertilized egg or zygote or fetus above those of the woman.The vast majority of "life begins at conception" folks are fundamentalist Christians, whom do not have a history of smiling upon anyone, least of all women, who have sex outside of marriage. Certainly, they point to sexual activity outside of marriage as the main reason abortion happens. Therefore I don't really think it's too much of a stretch to conclude that they want to blame women for having sex.The pro-lifers never have much to say about the males.

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To my mind it is a lot like regular germans in Nazi germany. When one wants to talk in high ideals all the time, it is easy to forget or ignore the ugly stuff that goes along with it. Many good people with honestly good intentions get swallowed up in that mindset so easily.

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I remember wathing a really, really good (PBS?) documentary on the abortion debate. They made a great effort to get mostly rational, reasonable women on both sides of the issue. The film was a series of interviews of women over a pretty long time span...I'll say a year. I am thinking that they were all part of a group that wanted to sit down with each other and attempt to calmly discuss the issue.Anyway, although I'm probably remembering things incorrectly, I do remember one really kind-seeming anti-abortion woman, at the end of the film, breaking down in tears and obvious anguish, because due to her experiences in the group and the people she spoke to and the stories she heard, realized that some abortions really were necessary.She was the only one, though.

Jezz, no!I NEVER SCREAM!!!

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First off, it's not a personal decision. It's a decision to terminate the life of another human being. Individuals do not have the right to make that decision.

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But didn't you already say that in the case of rape that a woman's DOES have the right to make the personal descision to terminate the pregnancy?I fail to see why there is any difference if your main consideration is the life of the fetus.

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Secondly, I fail to see how you can consider an abortion a better result for the child than being born and living their life.

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Bud didn't you already say that terminating fetuses with birth defects of genetic disease would be a "better result" than "being born and living their life?"

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Schrafinator, children can be aborted in China after they're born.

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I don't think this is correct from a legal standpoint, but even if it were, how does this relate to the discussion here?

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Anyway, I'm very much against it all myself. The abortion lobby is very much set against anyone influencing the woman's choice, which means that nothing anti-abortion can be told them. How could they make an informed choice if they don't know all the information?

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You are assuming that women are incapable of finding out information all on their own.Besides that, at least in the US women are given lots of information.

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We know that women who abort babies have a high risk of depression - even suicide.

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They do? Care to document this assertion?

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They're also more likely to get breast cancer, probably because in the absence of a birth the breast cells (which have been growing to enlarge the breast) fail to get a signal to stop growing.

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This is a myth that has been repeated by anti-choice people even though the science suggests no correlatiopn between induced abortion and breast cancer:Attention Required! | CloudflareWhile researchers do not know what causes breast cancer, reproductive factors have been associated with risk for the disease since the 17th century, when breast cancer was noted to be more prevalent among nuns. It is known that having a full-term pregnancy early in a woman's childbearing years is protective against breast cancer, and some studies have also indicated that breastfeeding, especially in women who are young when they give birth, may reduce a woman's risk of developing the disease. A woman's age at menarche and menopause also influence her risk for breast cancer, with earlier onset of regular menstrual cycles and later age at menopause associated with higher risk (Kelsey & Gammon, 1991). However, the best available evidence ? from large population-based cohort studies ? shows no net effect that induced abortion places women at increased risk for developing breast cancer (Bartholomew & Grimes, 1998).

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If the abortion lobby is pro-choice, why can't women be given all the information they need to make a choice?

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They do.

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Basically, the abortion business tries to remove anything that might damage its image. Here in New Zealand, pamphlets mentioning the links between abortion and breast cancer have been withdrawn.

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That's because the science doesn't show a link.

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Even if you don't believe children are human before they're born (why not? Are not elephants elephants before they're born? Are not monkeys monkeys? Why not humans?)

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I am not sure at which a fertilized egg, collection of cells, zygote, becomes human.Do you believe that fertilized eggs are human? If so, dod you know that most fertilized eggs are flushed out of the women's system becayse they failed to implant?

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then think of all the potential future lives that will be wiped out because their owners will never be born. Before abortion there used to be an alternative for accidental babies - adoption.

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Abortion has probably been around just as long as adoption, maybe longer. Women have been using herbs and other dangerous methods to induce abortion for thousands and thousands of years.In fact, abortion was legal and fairly common in the US until the late 1800's, when laws started to be passed against it.

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So couples who can't have children are losing out as well.

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Excuse me? Are you actually trying to tell me that there are NO children waiting to be adopted in your country?!

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Apparently abortion has killed nearly half the current generation in America - it makes World War II look like a mere serial killing by comparison - and these babies don't have any memorials.

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Um, where are you getting your information? It is very inaccurate. I suggest not just swallowing what people with a religious agenda feed you when it comes to facts you can look up.CDC - Page Not FoundThe abortion ratio for 1999 is the lowest reported since 1975.
The ratio was 256 legal induced abortions per 1,000 live births, compared to 264 in 1998.Lower abortion rates, and we still have thousands and thousands of hungry children and unwanted children in foster care.

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It has to be stopped.

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Nobody likes abortion, defender.However, the people who want to make it illegal are the same people who do everything in their power to keep sex education out of schools, who oppose condom distribution in schools, etc.They say they want to protect all the unborn babies, but refuse to take realistic measures to prevent their creation in the first place.Finally, I'd like to know if you advocate making abortion illegal.

Mice eat their own young.

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IIRC rabbits can go one better - the does can actually absorb a developing foetus back into their own tissues.

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So can lots of other mammals, including humans.