The British government will today publicly defy the United States by giving money for safe abortion services in developing countries to organisations that have been cut off from American funding.
The “global gag” rule, as it has become known, was imposed by President George Bush in 2001. It requires any organisation applying for US funds to sign an undertaking not to counsel women on abortion – other than advising against it – or provide abortion services.
The UK will today become the founder donor of a fund set up specifically to attempt to replace the lost dollars and increase safe abortion services.
Right on.
it is clear that some in this post cannot distinguish between the hate filled vitriol of sweeping extremist stereotypes and a logical and intelligible belief grounded in some modicum of fact.
grouping all anti-abortionists into some ludicrous fundamentalist right-wing conspiracy is pure nonsense. you don’t have a meanigful intellectual basis for your belief so you mask it behind the hate and bitternees that drives your logic.
this is issue is clearly a matter of defining life. nothing else matters. it doesn’t matter what you “think” will happen when all these unborn babies are allowed to live. it doesn’t matter whether you “think” those who support an end to abortion should have to support the unborn babies allowed to live.
All of those arguments have nothing to do with the real issue: Is an unborn baby alive? is its life worth saving? all other discussions deal only with “what ifs”… not with scientific evidence and truth. society should never make decisions about saving or killing a life based on a supposition or a fear of the future.
if a mother and her newborn were trapped in a car sinking in the river, and a rescue diver only has time to save one, are we okay with a society that determines that the diver should always save the mother? what if the mother says, “save me, i want you to let my baby die, my life is more important? should the diver comply? b/c the mother decides her life is more important? is the value of a baby’s life really dependent on the mother as long as the baby is dependent on the mother? (ian)… if so, why is it illegal for mother’s to murder their newborns? if they left them to fend for themselves, they would die in a matter of hours.
In short, dependence is not a measure of the value of human life? so what is? science? medicine? they both support the fact that a an unborn child is alive…. so what makes the life of the “embryo” less worth saving than the mother’s life? b/c it’s younger? b/c it looks less like a person? because……. it is the only way to justify a murder of convenience?
be honest with yourself. and you will realize your value of science and fact has to be compromised to allow for support of abortion.
If you’re against murder don’t commit one. If you’re against rape, don’t commit one. If you’re against cocaine, don’t use it. If you’re against slavery, don’t have one.
Comment by AB CD — 2/7/2006 @ 5:30 am
AB CD
Very good argument, this one I gotta hand to you.
What about, if you don’t want me to tell you what to do with your body, don’t tell me what I might do with mine? Or, if you are against choice, don’t choose.
So far I don’t think anyone is cheering for abortions. What I and most others are in favor of is letting the person who’s body it is decide what they might want to do with their body. That is called “Freedom”.
Now I’ve noticed in our little corner of the Bible Belt, if a young woman becomes pregnant, she is hit on until she decides to keep the child. They offer to pray for her and counsel her on what a horror it is to abort the fetus. Then when becomes too late to abort the fetus, she is ostracized. Those same self righteous hypocrites now deem she is a slut. She is pressured not to attend school. Often her family is encouraged to send her away by their church. There is no or little help for her to raise the child. There is, however, pressure for her to give up the child, preferably to some loving Christian family that can not have their own children.
These self same Christian hypocrites make big headlines because they goto China to adopt young children. What self righteous pricks. They don’t care that there are thousands of American orphans waiting to be adopted. Only these children are Black, Hispanic, or American Indian, not your ideal choice if you are a lily white Christian person made in God’s image.
PK
Yes, your point in #27 is well taken. My meaning of when life LEGALLY begins is when the baby may live outside the womb. That would mean the baby would need functioning heart, lungs, brain, and all the attached and required organs to feed, breathe, and live.
The lungs are the last organ to develop in the womb and is the reason so many premature babies have such a difficult time breathing. By putting the babies into an incubator and hooked to a breathing machine is just putting them in an artificial womb. This almost like Dr. Frankenstein creating life. Which is why most of these babies have life long problems.
This is not playing God. It is making biological decisions. God didn’t make the child. The two human parents combining their sperm cell with an egg cell started it. Strictly biological.
I noticed several times in post #27 that you refer to the fetus / child as IT.
…If something grows it’s alive. So the question is not when life begins (conception) since it’s alive, but rather WHAT is alive. Some people take the view that, just because a certain stage of development hasn’t been reached, it cannot constitute a human. …Lets hope the drugs killed it first so you don’t have to go through the unpleasantness of killing it when it comes out. …
This seems to very common among those that believe this is a person. If you have so little respect for human life, how can you argue about how precious the child is? (Not you personally, PK, anti-choice in general)
These “right-to-lifers” are MEN who wish to KEEP women SUBJUGATED to them. It is NOT about protecting life. IT IS ABOUT MEN CONTROLLING WOMEN.
You see these “men” who want to protect fetuses by banning abortion is their way to RULE OVER WOMEN. They are SELFISH men.
The way life works is this way:
MEN CREATE LIFE.
WOMEN NURTURE LIFE.
The only time Men are allowed CHOICE BY GOD is to either impregnate women or not. BUT “right-to-lifers” want to GO AGAINST GOD’s EQUATION. Men only CREATE life. THAT IS THEIR ONLY GOD-GIVEN CHOICE. GOD GAVE THE CHOICE TO NURTURE TO WOMEN. If a woman decides NOT TO NURTURE then her viable means to this choice is ABORTION. A MAN HAS NO RIGHT TO THE CHOICE OF NURTURING. THIS BALANCES OUT POWER BETWEEN THE SEXES. THIS GIVES EQUAL POWER TO BOTH MEN AND WOMEN. But those that say they want to ban abortion are really saying that they want TO PLAY A WOMAN’S ROLE because they want to make a woman’s decision. These “right-to-lifer” men are of three types: (1) Men who wish to over-power women (the leaders of the movement, (2) Men and women who are followers (sheep that cannot think for themselves) and (3) Men with HIDDEN homosexual tendancies who are in internal conflict with themselves but manifest this by trying to make choices that only the FEMININE of the human species have to make. In this case Nurturing or as the debate trys to make it out: abortion.
David;
You are using the Bible, which is an extremely sexist book, to claim that men are trying to control women.
Oh, the irony.
It’s funny; no one here has answered my rhetorical question:
Have any of you actually spoken to a woman who’s had an abortion? Do you have a woman in your family that’s had one? Have you had conversations with women who have had abortions?
Apparently no one has. I’m not “special” because I have, but I can guarantee you that every one I’ve spoken to has regretted it 100%. There are ramifications of having an abortion that mere men such as myself and probably all of the rest of you can never begin to understand.
So go on, continue to believe it’s a “choice” or a “right.” Whether it is or isn’t by law or your own personal feelings is irrelevant.
Speak to a woman who’s had one. If you’re open-minded enough to have such a conversation, anyway.
Then get back to me and tell me if you’re still “pro-‘choice'” after a conversation with a mother who’s aborted her baby.
Save for those women who’ve aborted a fetus due to rape, I’d bet that you won’t find one who deep down is 100% happy she went through with the procedure.
We have no idea what it’s like.
The government does not fund abortions in the US. Wouldn’t it be hypocritical to then fund them outside the US?
How long would it take before Farakhan or somesuch declaims “This whitey government won’t provide abortions here in the US, but they are all too eager to help kill poor black kids in Africa. For shame!”.
bauer — realize that most will consider your rhetorical questions as irrelevent as your rhetoric. Not especially worth answering.
After all the years since Roe v. Wade, most folks know someone who’s had an abortion. That individual usually considers it a private matter and isn’t especially looking forward to dropping it in the lap of some egregious campaigner.
edbaur brings up an important point about the emotional consequences of having an abortion. On the other hand, bringing a baby to term and then giving it up for adoption (or even keeping it) does not usually lead to emotional bliss. The movie “Happy Endings” has an interesting side story on this issue and the consequences thereof (it also has a unique storytelling style, and is quite good. 2 thumbs up.)
I don’t think either side does enough to address the real issue: getting pregnant has enormous emotional and life consequences no matter what decision is made. Both sides should be going out of the way to Very Justifiably Scare the Hell out of their Children. Having Sex can Create another Human Being, and if it’s unwanted, no matter which of the 3 options one chooses, you’re going to feel bad, or wonder how your life might have been different.
Whether it’s “Follow your instinct (poor animal), but use a condom,” OR “Just don’t do it. La la la.” neither side really uses the FEAR of ruining your life.
TC
#39 is a very good post. As for the last line, I pertly disagree. Here in our corner of the Bible Belt, pregnant teens are threatened with eternal damnation and worse if they have an abortion. I think that sure puts a bit of fear into them. But because the fathers are not treated the same, I think your point perfectly applies with them.
edbauer,
No shit! Of course, a woman would have regret in regards to the decision. It’s natural to have regret for any decision where there aren’t any known good outcomes. It’s no different than having regret for say making a decision to put your sick mother into a nursing home. So to say that 100% of women you know have regret is naturally unsurprising and normal. Having said that, I do know women who have terminated a pregnancy and they feel as though they made an intelligent and responsible decision and are emotionally stable with it because they put a lot of thought and rational logic into it as opposed to examining it on only an emotional level. The fact is that pregnancy isn’t a choice. It’s something that either happens or it doesn’t so while you can argue that an abortion could be the result of irresponsibility, it’s definitely not the fault of the woman because it occurs without consent. Thus, putting an end to the “process” after discovery does not need to necessarily illicit guilty feelings even though there is a sense of regret. I’ll argue that most women only feel guilty about abortion either due to others contemptuous and scornful attacks and accusations or due to the “lottery” effect where the person convinces themselves that that particular fetus would have developed into some amazing individual if they had only taken the risk. The point is that they can never know if this is true and they allow themselves and/or religious extremists to convince them that they made the wrong decision and that somehow the “life-in-process” was somehow more important than their own.
BTW, it doesn’t matter when “life begins” in this argument because this argument is not about living cells, it’s about living people. Human cells are born and die everyday on your body… so does that make you a killer when you go to the beach for a sun tan? Thus, you can’t even argue “murder” until their is a complete central nervous system where the fetus would begin to develop an “acknowledgement” of life (or in other words a soul).
> Then get back to me and tell me if
> you’re still “pro-’choice’” after a
> conversation with a mother who’s aborted her baby.
Actually, yes I have met a woman that had an abortion and have talked at length with her about it. My wife, who was pregnant with twins at the time, had an abortion many years before I met her. Did she regret it? Every now and again, she gets emotional and wonders if it was the right decision. Yet, in that moment, she remembers clearly the reasons she made the decision she did and her regret disappears. She realizes that having a child with the person with which she was engaged at the age she got pregnant would have been a mistake. She was not ready financially nor emotionally to raise children. Her keen insight was proven later when she discovered that her financee at the time was cheating on her quite regularly in addition to stealing from her and her family. So, given her experience I’m more “pro-choice” than I ever was. Women need the right make that choice for themselves. That does not mean that making the choice will not be difficult, but they have to be given the freedom to make it. They are the ones that need to decide whether they are prepared along with their partner if there is one to handle the responsibility that goes with raising a child. The more children that are born because the parent(s) want the child the better. Conversely, the fewer children born that are not wanted, the better. It’s better for the parents and it’s far better for the children.