A question for the pro-life members of MN

[SemperIdem]

The biggest argument always boils down to “taking a life away, acting like God”.

So - how does IVF sit with you? Are you anti it, because it is “acting like God”. Are you for it because acting like God to create a life is somehow fine whereas taking one away is not?

Do you understand that many IVF pregnancies are high risk and may ultimately require medical management aka abortions?

I’m firmly pro science and think access to both abortions and IVF is a wonderful thing, for avoidance of doubt.

One never sees protests outside fertility clinics and I wondered why.

I also posted a couple of pages ago that women need to be supported in accessing services early on, so they can make an informed choice

@ReneBumsWombats Yes, I don't want to go back to the days when our grandmothers threw themselves down the stairs. Even so, do you feel the benefits to your grandmother would have been worth none of you existing? My mother achieved a lot fighting for racial justice, I have worked hard to help young homeless people and others in poverty. I think my children will touch others lives and make a contribution as well.

Even so, do you feel the benefits to your grandmother would have been worth none of you existing?

Yes. But even if I didn't, it was her womb and her life and not for some non-existent potential future person to make the decision.

@ReneBumsWombats Ah, OK, that sounds very definite. I can't say, in my case, whether the benefit to my grandmother would have outweighed the value of other lives lived. It was certainly hell for her for quite a few years, though her life improved and she came to love my mother. I appreciate that's not at all the case for everyone.

I don't understand your point.

So if I had murdered my abuser rather than aborting the baby he got me pregnant with that would have been better than aborting the baby?

I guess if I had done that he wouldn't have continued abusing me and gotten me pregnant again! But I'd probably still be in prison, my family would most likely have disowned me and I wouldn't have gone on to have the 2 amazing babies I had.

So your grandmother lived 40 more years and saw how it turned out and been glad she kept the pregnancy. That's obviously a good thing.

But she could have lived 40 more years and seen wreck and ruin and lost opportunity and bitterly regretted it.

Who knows what will happen? Nobody. We make decisions based on the point we are at in time and the information we have then. We don't ask unconceived future generations what they think about an individual living woman's body.

@ReneBumsWombats Yes, you are right. Still, I can't call my existence or that of my loved ones a mistake, or agree it would have been better if we had never been born because my grandmother wanted an abortion at one point. It's actually quite a painful and conflicted position, though I continue to support the necessity for legal, safe abortion.

Honestly, the whataboutery on this thread gets more and more bizarre and far fetched.

If my female ancestors had aborted, I wouldn’t be here. The positives and negatives I have brought to the world would be unknown, unseen, unfelt. I would have never been. It wouldn’t matter. I don’t kid myself that my impact on the planet is so great that I would leave a huge hole by never existing, my ego simply is not that great.

Plus of course, the flip side of your argument is that the ‘missing generations’ would also include some whose net contributions to society are negative; the abusers, the bullies, those who prey on the innocent and vulnerable, the rapists, the murderers.

You don't have to. It wasn't your decision.

Had the abortion taken place, it wouldn't have been because your grandmother thought about what grandchildren she'd have and decided they didn't deserve to live.

@ReneBumsWombats I'm feeling upset somehow, I'm not even sure why, but I will leave this thread for now. Thank you for engaging.

I think it's a view from a position of privelege though, to be able to wonder and get upset by this though. Fundamentally, there is real suffering which is alleviated by safe abortion being an option.

I'm sorry the thread has upset you

Well, I'm sorry if the discussion upset you, but we are all here by a crazy, long term series of chances. You wouldn't be here if a different sperm had fertilised your mother's egg, or indeed any egg from any of your female ancestors. I have an ancestor who had a religious epiphany when a tree fell and missed him by inches. A whole lot of us wouldn't be here if he had been standing slightly to the left.

Life is fragile and almost incomprehensively unlikely. Grab it and enjoy it.

I, like millions of others, wouldn't have been born if it weren't for world war 2. There's a decent chance my grandfather's conception was a result of rape, and my mum probably would never have been born if my grandmother hadn't been forced to give up her sister for adoption. Doesn't mean any of these are good things.

@LynneBenfield well it does wash if the couple undergoing IVF choose to do so in a manner where there are not multiple embryos being created and destroyed - many couples choose to carry out IVF in this manner. It's longer and more expensive but life is not being destroyed in the process.

It is not possible to have IVF where no embryos are being destroyed / "life is not being destroyed"

It is very common for a blastocyst produced in vitro to have such low viability that it will not realistically lead to a pregnancy. No clinic is going to implant this into a woman, it's completely unethical.

I think if it is never going to survive there’s no need to transfer it back to the mother to die.

I know someone who only managed to get one fertilised egg to transplant, no life destroyed. Not planned but it happened.

Sorry, I thought the no was disagreeing with me and saying no trauma we just need this.

I wish my covid brain fog would go away, four months of pain, pneumonia, broken ribs, exhaustion and a non functioning brain is getting me down although it does give me some laughs when I misread things as sometimes my interpretation is quite bizarre. I'm being taken out to lunch as a treat by friends today and I'm sitting here not getting ready and just wanting to go to bed.

Well, I'm feeling better now, thanks for your replies. I do believe that even those who say it makes no difference to the world whether they were born or not are wrong. Even if you never consciously did a helpful thing in your life, you probably did inadvertently. I have met suicidal people who say a kind word from a cashier in a supermarket helped them. I don't believe we exist in isolation, or that life is meaningless, or even that one person is much the same as another. I believe we exist in an interconnected web, where we all uniquely affect each other and outcomes constantly. I think safe and legal abortion is obviously necessary, for pragmatic reasons mainly - that it's preferable to unsafe and illegal methods. Even so, I wonder where are the men. Women don't get pregnant on their own, yet they are the ones who accept all the consequences. Why are we not looking at why women get pregnant when they do not want a child? Abuse and rape are obviously part of this, so that needs addressing. If contraception is inadequate, we need to campaign for improvements. How many women get pregnant because contraception failed? How often is it because young women/men are not sufficiently educated to avoid unwanted pregnancy? The trouble with focusing on abortion is it continues to make pregnancy the woman's sole responsibility and problem. Nice for the men. We continue offering sex and then they get to walk away and leave women to deal with the obvious consequences. Personally, while I will support access to abortion, I intend to look at the other factors that lead to the necessity for it, and see if there is any work to contribute on that issue.

I do believe that even those who say it makes no difference to the world whether they were born or not are wrong.

I don't think anybody said that born people make no difference. They said it wasn't relevant to the decision of a vulnerable woman in whether to terminate her unborn, unformed foetus. You can't make that choice based on things that don't exist and haven't happened. You make your decisions in the time point that you are at.

@ReneBumsWombats 'I would have never been. It wouldn’t matter.' I think that was LynneBenfield, not you.

Well, in the sense that something that doesn't exist never comes to exist, I think she's right. It doesn't mean that she's worthless now that she's here.

I suppose an embryo does exist though? So, hypothetically, if she had been aborted as an embryo the existence of something would have been ended. More complex to say how much of that existing embryo contained the building blocks of the existing adult she is today. I suppose the existence of that embryo/foetus was essential to the existence of LynneBenfield...

Yes but the question is whether it was something of such significance, as it was, that it overrode whatever the living, formed woman's wishes were, especially considering the risks and impact to her body, life and health. Was she obliged to ruin her life for it?

That's a different issue, isn't it, @ReneBumsWombats ? You are talking about the morality of abortion. I don't take a moral view on it. I think it's one of those awful times in life where there are no easy, right choices. One can only do the thing which causes least harm. If a woman faces ruin from unplanned pregnancy, it would be wise to make the practical choice of abortion, and that should be available. My point was that I don't believe that the lives of anyone don't matter. I don't think it's true that if you were an accident, or unwanted, that you should have been erased and that it would make no difference if you had been.