I am sorry you are the only one here to discuss this on the anti-abortion side as there are more pro-choice than anti.
I am a terrible one to argue semantics but you said you were "pro choice for the baby" but choice to me means there are options.
I will not argue the point of late term abortions in this point but I beg to differ. While you see a "blob" to use your words and hear a heart beat that embryo is not self-sustaining outside the mother's womb.
posted on January 26, 2001 09:52:39 PM
Well, you're right in that I don't read your posts with much attention, and perhaps this is why. You have expended no small energy here defending a child's right to have a choice in the matter of it's own abortion or birth yet you say with the same apparent earnestness that that choice should or could be taken from that child by necessity in some cases.
Where is the connection, nevermind logic, in those two distinct positions?
In the first you cough up the dogma extant, in the second you state in part the position of those you call "pro-abortionists".
If the fetus could live alone why do they suck their brains out?Well, Inside I am not talking about those very rare and very sad late term abortions. Those people must have very good reason for making that hard choice. It is not my place to query them on it. Is it yours?
posted on January 26, 2001 10:13:52 PM
The abortion issue is, and always has been, another one of those hot button issues - like gun control - that the politicians use to keep us all at each others throats and out of their hair. It is prestidigitation on a massive scale. Personally, whenever one of these issues is brought to the fore by a Presidential appointment, or comment, or action taken by congress, I have a tendency to try to watch what is being done with the other hand (other than scratching).
This is a social or societal issue that is being milked to the max by a political body which, if the truth be told, doesn't really give a crap what any of us think. Religion in the White House? Yeah, right. Let's leak gruesome 20 year old photos to some Right-To-Run-Your-Life Church group and get them to beat each other into a froth over a procedure done extremely rarely in this country and only to save the mothers life, so we can proceed unhindered to line our own pockets.
Roe V Wade does not now and never did give Carte Blanche to doctors to perform third trimester abortions. Images of 12th Century flaggelants in ecstacy while whipping the sin out of themselves and anti-choice church groups crawling around on the ground outside Family Planning Clinics to block access are one and the same.
I would like to know why, if abortion is wrong, it isn't mentioned specifically by name as such in the Bible? Every other 'sin' seems to have gotten at least a mention. Abortion is not a Twentieth Century or even a Nineteenth Century development. And don't tell me that it's because God said 'Thou Shalt Not Kill', because practically in the next breath he told the Israellites to 'Go ye down into the land, therefore, and kill every living thing.'
I'm sure the thread has gone past me and maybe some of this has already been said by now (vision here of AuctionWatchers madly typing all over the country). But, here's my three cents anyway.
posted on January 26, 2001 10:14:30 PMinside, nobody is bashing you personally. I think some of us are just trying to understand the "Pro-Life" format. Actually, I think you're pretty brave to take it all !!
I don't think anyone would want to see anyone have an abortion in the last 3 months...it's seems horrifying, but it's like that's what the anti-abortionists key on all the time...the gore of formed babies being mutilated, etc., and that Pro-Life-ers are "for" abortion. That couldn't be furthur from the truth.
We're listening to you inside, but are you listening to our points as well??
posted on January 26, 2001 10:23:04 PM
Inside - I'm guilty for not coming in to side with ya cause I feel the same way that you do. But as you can tell, our opinions don't stand a chance because I always figure when I chime in and state my opinion, there's usually a stampede to trample me down so I try for the most part not to even post much. I don't want to argue with people on here and that seems to be what usually happens ..... and then there's hard feelings between people and it's just not worth it.
Thanks, but no need for you to fight with friends. I know that there are people reading that feel as I do and I understand why they don't post to threads like this.
posted on January 26, 2001 10:31:47 PM
Inside - Of course there's a lot of readers out there and I used to see them post but they usually just bail out after awhile - I've been reading this but I didn't want you to feel like you were all alone. I don't think either side will budge either way, I suppose we all feel like we're beating our heads up against a brick wall on this issue....prolly will always be like that.
My point exactly. Your belief offers no choice so I do not understand how you can say "pro-choice" when you offer no other. That is what I am trying to understand in this point.
Yes, it is often pointed out the late term abortion every time and the gruesome details pointed to. I could on the other hand describe every gruesome detail of a rape but why?
I can understand and I can tell you that that as gruesome as the details are in a late term abortion to save the life of the mother so are the gruesome details of a rape.
Someone above mentioned that the gov't could care less that it is a political ploy. I believe that. I don't for one minute think that if President Bush, Dan Quayle (although he said otherwise) George Bush Sr. or Ronald Reagon would insist that their wife continue a pregnancy after a rape or to get pregnant at the age of 12 and if the truth be known in college or at age 55.
I've also found it interesting that anti-abortion groups that have had Presidents or speakers of their group that have had abortions so they could continue their college, marry, have children while trying to force others not to be able to do the very same thing.
posted on January 26, 2001 10:45:41 PM
Something I've never been able to figure out is why the anti-choice people seem to spend all of their time condemning abortion but also seem to be doing everything in their power to insure that the number of abortions don't go down.
How do the following help their cause in any way?
Only abstinence should be talked about in the schools. Some don't want sex education at all in public schools.
Take away funding for family planning clinics.
As stated earlier, very few in the public light seem to have adopted children themselves and I don't remember any anti-choice officeholders offering up bills to promote and encourage adoption.
If these people are really as anti-choice as they want people to believe why not do something about the problem?
Taking away a woman's choice won't solve anything, in my opinion.
posted on January 26, 2001 10:52:19 PM
I think there should be sex education in school and at home - and the more condoms they can get passed out, the better. And I think that there should be funding for counseling at these clinics.
posted on January 26, 2001 10:55:50 PM
Ok inside, let's say we do it your way.....when we can't even afford to feed the children we have now, who will be paying for all these children??? The "Pro-Life-ers"???
posted on January 26, 2001 11:04:26 PM
I'd much rather my tax dollars go to food stamps and medicaid for the babies rather than killing them. At least give these precious little lives a chance at the world.
I was about to say that I would not discuss this anymore that I would just agree to disagree with you but you have asked this question several times and If I give you one you will only say that it happens rarely and won't convince you in the least but I will give you one but there are several and I am sure those that have worked in the medical field or have experience it have many more real experiences and a choice has had to be made.
A woman finds out she has advance cancer and the only thing that will save her is Chemo, and requires pro-longed treatment.
The mother has the option to live or die. If she lives she takes the Chemo. The child will not live and has to make the terrible decision as to whether to die or not.
I'll give you a second.
The mother has been in an accident. She is bleeding extensively and must have immediate brain surgery. The baby is in great distress from the accident and can not survive IF the mother has the surgery. Choice being: save the mother or save the baby.
Yes, there are cases that can be cited I am sure that it has been done. There are many more that it is not an option. Which one are you, your husband, your dr going to choose?
If, I am sure to die then I will go for the baby. If not, I will go for the mother.
"Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire? Why did the knees receive me? Or the breasts, that I should suck? For then I should have lain down and been quiet; I should have slept; then I should have been at rest, with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves, or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver. Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth, as infants that never see the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest."
I would rather do that too but I don't think our gov't is going to do that and even if they do how do we know that the child gets that food and who is going to care for the children if the parents don't?
That is what I would do but that is not a demand that I will insist on for every female. How I live my life is not something I would impose or even want to on every other female.
posted on January 26, 2001 11:30:04 PM
Well, it's after 1:00 a.m. here and actually I dunno what I think right now - I'm about to fall over on the keyboard. See you guys later.......
posted on January 26, 2001 11:42:32 PMbunnicula: I was replying to bobbi355 and the suggestion why not give these 'precious little lives a chance at the world'. Why indeed? Especially if you have all the tribulations Job escaped to look forward to? Please read my previous post, as well. The suggestion that life is everything, and you will be thankful, or else seems to be the currency of the anti-choice realm. Pleasure in being alive is relative to circumstances and I contend that assuming everybody will one day be thankful is ludicrous.
I have already given you that sometimes an abortion is neccessary to save a woman's life. But if the child is not viable then why the need to mutilate it inside her body? Why not just take it out? Does the child feel less pain because it's face is not showing? Are you talking merciful killing of the child? Or is it because there is a chance the will to live might be to strong and the child might live?
posted on January 27, 2001 07:57:35 AM
When our government, the "system", finally begins to protect the children that are brought into this world from these situations - then I will be far more likely to believe the rhetoric of the "Pro-Life" movement.
Two cases - both perfectly healthy children as long as the foster care system did their job and protected them from the parents who brought them into this world. Two races represented, one of them Anglo-American.
Read the links provided on these pages, if you can stand it.
And these are only two cases, just from the past month in the news, from just one newspaper.
I cannot, by any stretch of my imagination, believe that these children are (or were) better off being brought into this world.
inside - so many of us have read what you had to say, and asked you questions to clarify where you are coming from. You choose each time to respond with more rhetoric and accusations of how we are "pro-abortion". We have tried to see your side of the coin, to see and understand why you believe what you believe, but you refuse to afford us the same courtesy. Each questions is rebutted by more of the same rhetoric. If you believe that they feel pain in the first trimester of pregnancy (which is when most abortions are performed) - for God's sake, can't you see the pain they endure after being tortured and beat to death by the very people who gave them LIFE? How is that preferable to being aborted?
And while I addressed that to inside, I am aware there are others reading here who have not had the guts to step up and speak. If anyone can answer that question for me, I'll listen. I may not ever agree with you, but I will never shut you off and not at least try to see where you are coming from.
UBB
[ edited by maddienicks on Jan 27, 2001 08:03 AM ]
And again, for errant smiley (which does not belong) and to fix a link. Going for more coffee NOW....
[ edited by maddienicks on Jan 27, 2001 08:05 AM ]
posted on January 27, 2001 08:02:10 AM
I will repeat here that partial-birth abortion is not the issue I am discussing here. I am pro-choice, but I will not discuss a procedure as rare as that is, because I don't know the particular instances in which it is performed. I do, as I've stated before, have a problem with abortion once the child is viable outside the womb, but realize it is necessary at times for a variety of reasons.
!!
