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?

Queenmary, shouldn't you also then be campaigning for the rights of eggs and sperm? They have DNA in them too.

If all that a person is is DNA, is an egg half a person?

national truss

I'm flabbergasted too.
But supporting abortion depends on denial and obscuring the facts.
I have never met a pro "choicer" who was willing to squarely look at the reality of what abortion does to the unborn,
and only very rarely even one who is willing to admit the humanity of the unborn.

a seed is not a tree, a foetus is not a human being. To be one has to be born, a foetus is potential but not a human yet.

It's simple.

Your enthusiasm saddens me, who are you trying to save?

Have you stopped to think that we are not "denying the humanity of the unborn", rather that we don't agree with your concept of humanity? Instead of telling us what we think, how about you listen to us tell you what we think? Are you so unbearably arrogant that you keep on telling is we are lying about our real opinions.

I know precisely the process of abortion, what it entails. I am still fully pro-choice. I know my position on what is life and when it begins. It does not agree with yours. However I at least know that my opinion is just that, whereas you are deluded and meglomaniacal enough to seek to use your opinion as some kind of fact.

There are no facts about what constitutes humanity or when life begins, I can assure you that far greater minds than yours or mine have been debating that point for millenia and have never agreed, so why you've got the impression that you hold all the truths beggars belief.

"Right from the moment of conception."
So immediately upon an egg joining with a sperm? In which way does the resulting embryo differ from it previous components which makes it alive in a way that they aren't? Or are an egg and sperm also alive?

" a seed is not a tree, a foetus is not a human being. To be one has to be born, a foetus is potential but not a human yet "

.a seed is not a tree, a foetus is not a teenager.

To claim that humanity is somehow conferred when one passes through the birth canal is astounding.
It is simply wilful denial.

no, its called OPINION. Have you heard of the word before?

Hey queenmary, in IVF where many eggs are fertilised at the same time then should they all be implanted into participants (willing or not) because zygotes are people too?

For one last time:

a 5 week old foetus cannot survive, does not move, suck, feel, play the guitar, certainly isn't a teenager.

have you lost a child? How bloody dare you equate a dead child to a miscarried or aborted foetus.

Honestly, pro-lifers are nothing but busybodies. Get your own life, do whatever you want with your womb, I'm genuinely not interested.

I have to go back to work now, but just for the record, I have a 3 year old son and am pregnant. I know full well how I love this baby to be, but no way is it my child yet the way my son is.

If you can't tell the difference, you are either not intelligent enough or a liar.

cheers, bye.

there is something wrong with a society that thinks it is perfectly ok to abort a child because they will likely have a cleft palate, as happened around 3 years ago - there was a big case in the news which someone more techy than me might be able to link to. What does that say about our attitude towards kids with cleft palates? that they really ought to be aborted? is it the same for children with Down's syndrome - should they have all been aborted as well?

I find it hugely, painfully and bitterly ironic that the term 'pro-choice' actually negates any choice a child might be able to make about its own future. What life could that child have had? why was it condemned in utero because of a relatively minor physical flaw which could easily have been surgically rectified?

MsTeak
" no, its called OPINION. Have you heard of the word before? "

When it come to matters of scientific fact opinions are worthless.

You may have an opinion that the world is flat or that disease causing bacteria generate themselves from the carcasses of dead animals.

But your opinion would be irrelevant because it is contradicted by the widely established facts.
The unborn baby is
a) human
b) alive

well I think there is something wrong with a society that controls a womans body and forces them to have children that are unwanted.

A foetus can't make any choice about its own future. You know why? Because it is dependent on another being for everything, and doesn't have any form of independence, or thought process. And they are not as important as an already fully grown autonomous human being.

"But your opinion would be irrelevant because it is contradicted by the widely established facts.
The unborn baby is
a) human
b) alive"

They are not facts! They are opinion, scientific or otherwise. I could (and I am a scientist, are you?) easily state that

The unborn foetus is:
1)human as per dna, potentially human as per philosophical connotations of humanity
2) potentially alive.
"Alive" in the sense of a human generally depends on such parameters as breathing and independent, neither of which extends to a foetus.

Legally, a foetus is not a human being. In UK law, you cannot be charged with murder of a foetus, because it has no legal status. Morally, well, you're back to opinion again.

Your arrogance doesn't allow for opinion though does it? Do you always have such a need to be right all the time?

metalelephant

How very dare you say that a fetus is not human.

I have lost a child.
A daughter.
Her name is Olivia.
She was stillborn at 35 weeks and 6 days on the 18th september 2007.

Goodbye.

"Hey queenmary, in IVF where many eggs are fertilised at the same time then should they all be implanted into participants (willing or not) because zygotes are people too?"

I'd be interested in hearing the answer to this.

queenmary I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. But as you think that life begins at conception and you compare an embryo with a baby - would you expect me to feel the same loss after losing a 5 week old embryo as you did? I would never be so crass as to compare my loss with a stillbirth/cot death/loss of an older child. In the same way you can't compare the 'murder' of an embryo/early foetus with that of a baby or child.

NationalTruss = " What the pro-choicers won't address is why it's ok to end another human life

What the pro-lifers won't address is why it's ok to make a woman endure a pregnancy of a baby she doesn't want.

This is what queenmary said here, regarding a 9yr old rape victim

^The little girl in question has been raped by her stepfather since she was six years old apparently............... That said, could I suffer to see my 9 year old going through a pregnancy that her little body could hardly bear? I have to acknowledge that this would be an excruciatingly difficult decision for me. To arrange for my grandchild, or grandchildren, to be killed in order to spare my daughter this suffering? Just agonising. I would want to explore all the possibilities. Could a child be delivered at say, 23 weeks, giving the babies at least a fighting chance?
A child that has been raped consistently since the age of six must be utterly traumatised and damaged. Is the act of killing new life going to help heal, or compound and worsen, the violence that has been done to her? All I can say is that I certainly could not blame the family of this child for taking the decision they did.But that doesn't change the fact that abortion remains murder, whatever the circumstances^

I take that as a No, she wouldn't be happy for a minor to have a termination, and as seen above, not even in the case of rape.

Not fully caught up on the thread yet but just wanted to ask those who are referring to embryos - do you only support abortions while the baby is at the embryo stage ie. only before 8 weeks?

Queen
You would even consider forcing a 9 yo to go on with a pregnancy?

Sorry, but that is deranged. And cruel.

23 weekers don't have a fighting chance! You must know that in your line of work queenmary surely?

Did you say you were a midwife or a SCUBU nurse?

winnybella it's the logical conclusion when people - often due to religion - but not always stick rigidly to their beliefs regardless of the circumstance. The self-imposed rules themselves come to be more important than the reason they made the rules in the first place. And cruel things can be easily dismissed.

if the mothers life being in danger was a genuine argument then why does the baby have to be killed before it is born? Why can't it just be born early and take it's chances?

So queenmary, you don't agree with abortion, but you would happily let a pregnancy be induced early & let the baby 'takes it chances' (i.e. fight the battle between life & death)? Or as I pasted from another thread, let a child be born at 23 weeks, when it can't even do the one thing it's needs to sustain it's own life & breath unsupported.

So what if it dies then, after being born early? Is that OK, because no one has 'killed it'? Only you have, haven't you. You played God. YOU made a woman have a baby she doesn't want, made her give birth to it, just for it to die? I think that is far far worse than termination.

You are taking a life, an actual life. Not some cells that have the potential to be a life. Only you don't see it like that, as the only reason the baby died, was because it was forced to be born early!

"every child deserves to be wanted 100% by both its parents. if this is not the case then how abortion is the right thing to do. "

How ridiculous - I can't believe Boo agreed with this. Are you seriously saying that if a partner/husband/one night stand doesn't want the baby the woman should have an abortion?

TBH I find it quite awful that a father has no say over the future of his child of the woman decides to have an abortion. That is seriously flawed.