Question:
I just recently did a pursuasive paper about abortion. I'll be the first to tell you where I stand. I believe its wrong. My beliefs(religious, and just plain morals). What does everyone believe?

Choices:
It's wrong
It is ok to do
Undecided

 

it's fine.

I'm not voting, cause there ain't no option for me!

It is totally wrong to do it because you suddenly wish you didn't "fool around." It is totally OK in some circumstances, like if a woman were raped.

My major problem is the way that it is addressed as the right to "choose" when i think its a totally inappropriate word for what it is. I mean if they would rather call it "I was too lazy and stupid to prevent getting pregnant and therefore have no responsibility and therefore should not be a parent, give me the easy way out" then I would have alot more support for it. of course that isn't always the reason, but the term "choose" does make it sound like a less important issue. My opinion of course.

I am opposed to the male-dominated government controlling women's lives. Abortion is a tough issue, however, I feel it is a woman's right to choose, not some man's choice because of how he wants to force his religious ideology on others.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trespasser,

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I feel it is a woman's right to choose, not some man's choice because of how he wants to force his religious ideology on others.

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And what about how it totally underminds the fact that half the genes it took to make the damn thing was the males? Do you feel it is at all unfair that the man has no say in it? Just a question to all.

P.S. I'm an atheist (I guess) and I don't have any real support a women's right to "choose" (see my first post), so in this case I feel it's unfair to blame it on religion.

i dont think abortion (or any issue) should have anything to do with religion. If a woman doesnt want the child, she can say no and live with that choice, or she can say yes and live with that choice.

only real problem here is that the 'creation' doesnt get a say, but hey, they'll get another chance. so there's not any real loss.

To me, with the religious beliefs, I think its wrong b/c Thou shall not commit murder. Lets just pretend I didn't care about the religious issue ON MY PART. If a teenage girl is simply having one only b/c she had sex young and doesn't want to live with the consequences, I believe its wrong. It still contridicts what the law says. Lets say a man walks down a street, minding his own business and another man comes up to him and stabs him in the chest. That man would be punished. By prison or even death. But a teen girl who had sex young gets off as a innocent free girl. Just seems very contridicting.

Once again, this is a tough issue. I believe that the fathers should be involved in the decision assuming that they have good relations with the mother (iow- he didn't rape her). However, since the embryo in the EARLY stages of pregnancy can't live outside its mother, it is truly part of HER BODY and NOT a separate individual. During this time period, a woman having an abortion is exercising property rights over her body, not killing a being separate from herself. She is the individual with rights. The embryo, at this point in time, is not an individual.

at what point does it become an "individual"? At birth?

I still think its an individual even when its in her body, and its not like its any more individual when its out (until awile when it can communicate and express itself freely.....but sometimes than never even happens)

It is my opinion that the term "abortion" is simply a way to make murder sound accepted. The baby in a woman IS a human being. It has a heartbeat and requires food to live. Like, HDK said, when is this baby actually considered human? 1 second, the baby is inside the mother and is not considered a person, and the next second when the baby comes out, he suddenly is? I really don't think it has that much to do with religion at all. It is taking the life of a human being. A defenseless, helpless infant at that.

And some people will argue, "What about rape?" Why punish the baby for the actions of someone else? Adoption is always a good option.

That's just my belief.

I do have sympathy for ppl who are raped, how can u ask someone to carry the child of someone they didn't concentualize sex with in the first place (like a 15 year old girl being forced to carry the child of a rapist or pedophile). Abortion becomes (IMO) more of an easy way out of responsibilty. I think people who are raped or have major health issues have the rights to protect themselves when pregnancy would put them at risk. But other than that I don't see it as ever a good thing.

I totally agree that having an abortion is a really bad thing, but I think it should be legal to do it, as a last resort. I'd assume most mothers would feel terrible for a long time, having to live with it.

The death penalty is legal, isn't that a more obvious murder than an abortion?

Again, NOT a separate individual, the brain has not even developed and it is not even a fetus yet. I understand the position most conservative Christians take on "life occurring at conception" and that is a good point, scientifically however, it is not a human being. Is it killing a potential human being? Yes it is. And this is where a lot of the argument on abortion stems from. I still feel it is a woman's right to choose. It's very hypocritical how many pro-life conservatives are supporting a war that is killing soldiers for unnecessary reasons. And how they overlook the psychological implications of bringing a child into a world where a lot of the time, his or her parents can barely feed it or send it to school because the government in power is spending more money on killing people than it is educating and fixing the problems in America. More than half of the women in the US that have abortions are in low-income areas, the areas of the country with the highest abortion rates per capita are rural communities in the south where conservative Christian communities are also most common. Many of these women are already mothers and report living with verbal, physical, sexual and substance abuse in their homes and do not want to subject another child to that environment. Women who choose to deliver their child are more likely to have planned and wanted their pregnancies and feel emotionally and financially capable of raising a child. Women who seek abortion cite financial concerns, worries about their relationship and their lack of readiness to assume responsibility for a child as their reasons for their decision. I believe those are sufficient reasons for having an abortion. Oh yes, but what about adoption? Research has shown that many kids who are adopted suffer psychological problems (usually identity disorders). I’m definitely not saying adoption is worse than abortion, however, it does depend on numerous circumstantial variables.

Overall, I feel that the majority of reasons why women get abortions are because of the environments imposed on them by our government and leaders who oppose abortions, yet ironically choose to neglect fixing those environments by spending more money on other things. Like killing “evildoers.” Maybe if they spent more time on trying to fix the lower class areas in the US, more women wouldn’t have to be making such psychologically impacting decisions. Is abortion murder? To an extent it is. But in many (not all) cases, it is justified. Why subject the life of a defenseless, helpless infant to surroundings that will most surely damage him or her psychologically and keep them in a cycle where they grow up in shi**y areas and have psychologically damaged kids? How is that moral?

Well, Trespasser said a lot of what I wanted to, still there are a few things to add.
Accidents do happen. People are going to have sex, and once you've lost your virginity and are with a girl who you're going to have sex with many a time the concern of knocking her up isn't going to out weigh your concern about getting laid that particular night. Also, nothing is full/foolproof. Condoms break, women can forget to take the pill one day, whatever. Accidents happen. In all honestly, I believe you're at a higher risk to damage the child by bringing it in to the world when neither of the parents are ready.
Abortion and partial birth abortion. The law, or something like it, says a person is a person when they take their first breath. Partial birth abortions are done in the later stages of pregnacy where the fetus is much closer to a real child. I don't remember all the details, but pretty much what they do is suffocate the fetus/baby before it can take it's first breath, technically falling into abortion rather than murder. That is the one part of abortion I am against. Just for the shear cruelity of, "Welcome to the world little buddy, just kidding! Nah nah nah nah."
What about adoption then? Well why not? It would've been a keen idea if all you (maybe not you personally, still I'm sure there's a number of you who would've voted against) morons that banned gay marriage. Gay marriage would've been a great solution to an adoption problem. Here you've got a whole genus of people who pretty much have to adopt if they want children and you're going to deny them that when you'd rather have everyone adopt than abort? It'd be much easier for a married gay couple to adopt than a non-married couple. It'd would've pushed the social norm to be more accepting of them in general, helping their chances for adoption.
So now here is where we stand: We live in a country where people would rather spend thousands of dollars and fertility drugs and such than adopt a child. The people who don't want to parent get constant **** for it and sometimes would rather give their child up for adoption out of social pressure from the same closed-minded bigots who won't allow a good portion of the adopting parents to adopt.
And all of that was for you people who, for whatever reason, believe that this world isn't an overpopulated hellhole and that adding more human beings to the mix isn't the real crime.

elliott.

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Originally posted by Trespasser:
It's very hypocritical how many pro-life conservatives are supporting a war that is killing soldiers for unnecessary reasons.

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First of all, the war has nothing to do with abortion. 2nd, the soldiers who are in the war are there because THEY choose to be there. THEIR choice. The unborn baby will never have a decision like that. Because the mother and/or father made it for them.

Overall, I feel that the majority of reasons why women get abortions are because of the environments imposed on them by our government and leaders who oppose abortions, yet ironically choose to neglect fixing those environments by spending more money on other things. Like killing “evildoers.” Maybe if they spent more time on trying to fix the lower class areas in the US, more women wouldn’t have to be making such psychologically impacting decisions. [/QUOTE]

I found some statisitics:

52% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 19%.

Two-thirds of all abortions are among never-married women.

More than 60% of abortions are among women who have had one or more children.

On average, women give at least three reasons for choosing abortion: three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school, or other responsibilities; about two-thirds say they cannot afford a child; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

filmmakerfromwv,

I know the war and abortion are seperate issues, I was simply pointing out the hypocrisy in the Bush administration, how they want to impose their pro-life choices on us while simultaneously sending people off to war based on a lie. To an extent, you're right that the soldiers chose to be there, however, not all of them who are in the war are there because they had a choice (uninfluenced by surrounding factors). In many low income areas, joining the war is the only option to pay for school/other education. Maybe if the Bush administration hadn't lost millions of jobs and weakened our economy, the young people would have other options than to join the army. The research I did showed that in those poor southern areas, the proportion among married women getting abortions is higher than never-married women. It is simply a proportion from that demographic so I won't argue with the statistics you've presented. I'm a bit confused on those percentages you presented on why women choose abortion because they don't add up to 100%. But think about those 66% that are unable to support a child because of their financial situation. They're in that position because of the same people in office who oppose abortion. I find it an interesting, ironic cycle.

Abortion: good idea, should exist, and unless it's your baby you should mind your own damn business and leave the decision to the ones responsible for the conception. Screw all th' god-fearing "thou shalt not kill" stuff: there is a psychological difference between the mind of a malicious murderer and a scared teenage girl choosing to prematurely end a pregnancy, look at the brain patterns that you can see in any book on the human brain-- and I know if there's one thing that the folks in charge can do well, it's reading a book and taking the whole damn thing to heart. In a perfect world, there wouldn't even be a debate: it'd be an unalienable right and that'd be the end of it.

quote:

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Lets say a man walks down a street, minding his own business and another man comes up to him and stabs him in the chest. That man would be punished. By prison or even death. But a teen girl who had sex young gets off as a innocent free girl.
-Originally posted by: filmmakerfromwv

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Ooh, I'm gonna have fun with this. So you're saying that every young girl who decides to-- god forbid-- have sex before marriage should be sent to prison or get executed? Or, better yet, even if she didn't choose to have sex and was raped? Wow, what a great idea: a young girl gets raped in a back alley at the age of 15 and is forced by her government to bear, raise, and nurture the offspring of the man who caused the single most traumatic event in her life! Also, that man who happened to get stabbed to death in your little scenario had a life and a sense of consciousness. A fetus, until proven otherwise which is unlikely, is not aware of anything. Since punishable murder is the intentional extinguishing of human life, and a fetus in its early stages does not have or show those positive aspects of nature and character regarded as distinguishing humans from animals, it is not murder. And if you claim it is akin to then murdering an animal, let me ask when was the last time you had scrambled eggs (no, I'm not a rabid vegetarian, I love hamburgers). When was the last time a farmer went to jail for preemptively aborting the life of a chicken?

Trespasser: you rock, man.