to understand why some people have a problem with abortion?

[LolaRennt]

I am pro choice first of all, just to get that out of the way.

But what confuses me is that on many threads I have seen if someone in a tiny voice dares to admit that they might have a an anti abortion view they get jumped on pretty quickly.

But surely if someone belives from a purely emotion point that abortion is the ending of a life you can't change that view simply by calling them a woman hater or abusing them? I can understand how pro choice people don't see abortion as a feminst issue or a human rights issue at all and can't get past the view that it is just ending a life.

I am a vegan and I don't wear leather or fur. I see it as murder. I know other people do it (even my friends, husband and family) but for me it will always be murder. Its a purely emotional view that go against what the vast majority of the western world see as normal. But there is nothing any of you could ever say that would make me change my mind. So maybe I can empathise better than some?

My belief is that women need safe access to abortion, no one likes the idea of abortion butit needs to be avalaible because the alternatives would be devastating. Wouldn't it make sense to approach it from that point of view to someone who is anti abortion? Accept that the idea maybe abhorent (and that they arent wrong for feeling that way) but it is a basic human right to not be forced to pregnant and that for many reasons it is the best choice for the woman?

pro abort is wrong because it is certainly not what i am. i am pro-choice in that i want women to have the choice! pro abort would imply that i want abortions to happen.

a born chil can be placed in state care if the mother cannot cope/doesn't want it/isn't well etc. an unborn child cannot be placed in any care without being removed from the uterus.

and yes, i can chose to kill myself. suicide isn't illegal.

"If pro choicers are all about real choice, why don't they campaign to make sure that abortions like these never happen?"

what would you suggest people do?

smallwhitecat
" I think it is the pro-choice side which distorts the debate more, by insisting that an early foetus is biologically "a baby", the falsity of which statement is obvious to anyone with a passing acquaintance with human biology.
I don;t say that disposes of the pro-choice argument; but let's conduct it on honest terms. The pro-choice argument depends on the assumption that something which has very few of the physical or mental attributes of a term baby has the right to be considered as equivalent to a term baby. That is an assumption which requires some justification "

I assume you mean "pro life" not "pro choice".
Actually your statement here:
" by insisting that an early foetus is biologically "a baby", the falsity of which statement is obvious to anyone with a passing acquaintance with human biology "
Is more illogical.

"Fetus" is just a latin word for baby.

To say that it's not a baby it's a fetus, is like saying " I don't live in a house I live in a Haus, or a maison"
same thing, different language.

queenie you still lecturing us mere mortals I see

boohoo
" "If pro choicers are all about real choice, why don't they campaign to make sure that abortions like these never happen?"

what would you suggest people do? "

What pro lifers have been doing for decades.
Offering real practical help (for example: emergency housing, friendship support, help with form filling and navigating the benefit maze, down to and including minutiae like babysitting and picking up children from school ) I don't see many "pro choice" organisations offering that..
Many many women have kept their babies who would otherwise have aborted them because of the support that was offered to them by pro life groups.
If you go to Marie Stopes or BPAS they only offer one kind of "help". and that is an offer to kill your baby for you.

Pro-choicers aren't able to make sure abortions never happen or indeed make somebody have one (why would they want to?) because the decision to have an abortion is down to the woman herself.

Fundamentally, if woman x wants an abortion, and she is determined to get one, then no amount of 'support' is going to stop her.

I'm sure that is infuriating to some pro-lifers but there you go.

"Pro choice is a silly word because "choice" has never existed and never will, and it wouldn't even be desirable anyway."

Please could you explain what you mean by this, queenmary as it's not clear what you mean.

SWC
Regarding the fallacious distinction between "Fetus" and "baby".
As a midwife it would never have occured to me to refer to a womans "fetus" when I was explaining my findings at an antenatal check. I think that would be highly strange.

The critical distinction is not between "baby" and "fetus" or "blastocyst" and "embryo", but between "wanted" and "unwanted".
And since
abortion is the death penalty for the unwanted
the cognitive dissonance created by that is so uncomfortable that pro aborts have to shift into different language in order to ease it.

have you ever been given advice in a marie stopes clinic queenie? i have and can tell you from experience that is not only what they offer last time i was there teh advisor we saw told my ex no one would sign me off the have an abortion as it was obvious i was not wanting this

"I think the "bundle of cells" thing is too simplistic (we're all just bundles of cells, you know"

An embryo is just a cluster of cells, and nothing more. People, on the other hand, are made up of functioning organs that allow them to think, feel, move, love, and argue with strangers on the Internet.

An embryo is no more alive than a sperm or an egg, which regularly get flushed down the toilet without a thought. It is a seed, which might become a person in the right conditions (i.e. in vivo). An embryo is not a person. Not in the biological sense, and not in the legal sense. Therefore, referring to abortion as the clash of the rights of two people is absurd.

You are not the only person saying this here. I replied to yours because I happened to be reading your post at the time.

"trying to understand where another person is coming from, even when we don't agree with them"

I know exactly where they are coming from - the mistaken understanding with religious roots that a fertilized egg is somehow sacred.

All this about understanding where they are coming from and all that is great, but the problem is not lack of communication and understanding.

The problem is that we don't mind what they do with their fertilized eggs, But they want to force us to carry them to term and birth unwanted babies.

I think queen mary should be deleted as her posts are intended to be intentionally offensive, in language and content.

freudianslipper

" have you ever been given advice in a marie stopes clinic queenie? i have and can tell you from experience that is not only what they offer last time i was there teh advisor we saw told my ex no one would sign me off the have an abortion as it was obvious i was not wanting this "

Acting within the law, and not performing an abortion on an unwilling woman, is hardly the same thing as offering other options and practical support to a woman who doesn't want to abort but finds herself in a crisis pregnancy and feels that she has no other option!

What other options did Marie Stopes offer you Freudian?

queenmary "Offering real practical help (for example: emergency housing, friendship support, help with form filling and navigating the benefit maze, down to and including minutiae like babysitting and picking up children from school ) "

the problem is, that having this kind of support would have made no difference at all to my reasons for wanting an abortion, which as i stated earlier on, were to do with the psychological impact on my at the time very emotionally fragile ds1.

and frankly i doubt that the reason most women choose to have an abortion is because they don't have enough help on the school run to have another child.

msTeak

" I think queen mary should be deleted as her posts are intended to be intentionally offensive, in language and content "

And isn't this precisely the point of this thread?
That pro aborts cannot hear another pov but have to shout it down, drown it out and demand that it is deleted?.

agree msteak. referring to pro choice supporters as pro aborts when she has been asked by a pro chocie supporter not to is intentionally offensive and provocative.

" the problem is, that having this kind of support would have made no difference at all to my reasons for wanting an abortion, which as i stated earlier on, were to do with the psychological impact on my at the time very emotionally fragile ds1 "

Mrsravel
I wasn't talking about you, or anyone else.
I was talking about why I don't call pro aborts "pro choice" because they are not. Abortion is all about offering women in a crisis pregnancy one choice: abort.

if you are able to help a few women who do not want an abortion by offering them practical help with their baby when it arrives, then yes of course that's great

but it's a big leap from that to saying that abortion should be illegal

you're not making any sense. abortion is about offering abortion... errr, yes it is.

and you are talking about me in that i chose to have an abortion, and i am trying to explain to you why your 'practical help' isn't necessarily a factor.

It's not a "fallacious distinction". These are the words we use in the English language and their meanings:

Embryo is what a pregnant woman is carrying the in first 8 weeks of gestation.

Fetus is from 8 weeks until the end of the pregnancy.

Baby is from newborn to 1 year old.

Toddler is between 1-2 years.

Making up new meanings for these words and slating people becausr they don't agree with your fallacious definitions like calling embryos "babies" is a particularly pathetic debating technique.

" agree msteak. referring to pro choice supporters as pro aborts when she has been asked by a pro chocie supporter not to is intentionally offensive and provocative "

That's silly.
Pro lifers prefer to be called pro lifers, but they are called "anti abortion".
Is that "intentionally offensive and provocative" too?.

It isn't just an argument of wanted vs unwanted, there are women who are advised by medical professionals for a variety of reasons to end a pregnancy for a foetus or baby that was very much wanted

but if you're a pro lifer you ARE anti abortion, so why would you be offended to be described as being anti abortion? i am properly confused.

cotedaazur
Fetus means baby.
It's a different language, but same meaning.
Did your midwife palpate your uterus and tell you how your little "fetus" was growing, what side your "fetus" was lying on?
Did she let you listen to the heartbeat of your darling little "fetus"?
Thought not.
It is a word that we use to create a psychological distance. But it still means "baby".
( and we don't call an embryo a fetus btw)

queenmary have i called you an anti abortionist? no i haven't yet when i ask you not to call me proabort you dont have the same courtesy i extend to you. if you wish to debate this (i have my doubts) then have th maturity to do it with respect to teh people you are referring to.

"That pro aborts cannot hear another pov"

Yours is not a point of view. It's a rant.

This is not even a conversation, which implies listening what others say. You have been told many times that it is pro-choice, as in, supporting the woman's right to choose. Yet, you continue to insist on your misnomer. Is that supposed to be your "pov"