quote:But no such thing exists, and the kids that are aborted would not lead good lives if they weren't aborted. Neither would their mothers.
You need to back this up, both with a definition of "good life" and with some statistics that show the percentage of abortions whose alternative was a "bad life."
Certainly, some abortions end a pregnancy whose result would be a severely abused child or some other event we recognize as very bad. But abused children end up having meaningful, "good" lives every day once the abuse ends. Is this the outcome for all of them? Certainly not. But it's presumptious to identify any event in someone's life as guaranteeing a "bad" life.
quote: quote:Dag, when you decide to be your normal inteligent logical self and actually talk to me instead of just throwing my slightly editted words back at me, I will listen to you. Stop trolling. You're better than that.
I'm not trolling. I'm demonstrating that every single argument you make can be flipped easily around. If it's not trolling for you to say it originally, it's not trolling for me to say it in response. These are things I actually believe, and it's both interesting and illuminating that the arguments on both sides are so similar.
What it suggests to me is that clearly the important questions are "When does human life/personhood/whatever begin?" and "On which side do we err in the face of uncertainty about that question?"
Dagonee
Now you're talking Ok, the thing is. As I said above. People who want to illegalize abortion make no accounting for after the baby that would have been aborted is born. They just want to make sure it doesn't get killed from when its concieved till birth from what I can tell. After that, they abandon it to what ever the heck the circumstances are it gets born into. Often it would be to an unprepared teenage mother who can in no way take care of the child. Or to the victim of rape, when the mother has plenty of reasons not to want the child of her attacker around her. And many other situations for which abortion is used. These children are not going to have good happy lives. And many may wish they were dead or commit suicide later in life. And by that time, they've often basically taken their mothers life with them. So the question is, if we illegalize abortion, are we going to take care of the kids?
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posted
Heck Dags, I was trying to thank you. I kept meaning to mention that, and now I had a chance where it might help other people see the same thing I did.
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quote: quote:But no such thing exists, and the kids that are aborted would not lead good lives if they weren't aborted. Neither would their mothers.
You need to back this up, both with a definition of "good life" and with some statistics that show the percentage of abortions whose alternative was a "bad life."
Certainly, some abortions end a pregnancy whose result would be a severely abused child or some other event we recognize as very bad. But abused children end up having meaningful, "good" lives every day once the abuse ends. Is this the outcome for all of them? Certainly not. But it's presumptious to identify any event in someone's life as guaranteeing a "bad" life.
Dagonee
I never said they had a guarantee of a "bad" life. I just said that there were many situations, were abortion illegalized, where that would be the case. Unless we have some program to take unwanted children off their mothers hands so that the mother has a chance at a good life with out having a child she can't take care of, and then place the child in a home where they are wanted or somewhere else where they will be loved and cared for and therefore give the kid a chance at having a good childhood and life, then we should leave the choice as to whether to bring the child into the world up to the mother. Becuase only the mother really has the information to know whether to kid will have a chance at a good life, and only the mother really has the right... well no not right, but responsibility to make that choice for herself and her child.
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quote:People who want to illegalize abortion make no accounting for after the baby that would have been aborted is born.
This is blatantly untrue.
quote:These children are not going to have good happy lives. And many may wish they were dead or commit suicide later in life. And by that time, they've often basically taken their mothers life with them. So the question is, if we illegalize abortion, are we going to take care of the kids?
I dealt with this a little above, but I'll expand. I generally refuse to deal with this question, because my premise is that the child is fully human. Unless you would advocate allowing an infant to be killed to avoid these outcomes, we don't have a disagreement on this point. Where we disagree is whether abortion has the same moral culpability as infanticide. If we disagree on this point, then the argument after this point is irrelevant. If we agree on this point, then you either advocate infanticide as a solution to the problem of children who are likely to lead unhappy lives or you cannot consistently use the potential unhappiness as a reason to support abortion.
Now, I know you don't advocate infanticide. We disagree about the moral effect of abortion. That being the case, a discussion about post-birth care is not relevant.
quote:Becuase only the mother really has the information to know whether to kid will have a chance at a good life, and only the mother really has the right... well no not right, but responsibility to make that choice for herself and her child.
Let me be clear - I consider abortion to be the same as infanticide. You cannot possibly convince me or most pro-life advocates with this argument. That doesn't make the need for the programs you describe less pressing, but it means this is an utterly hopeless tactic of persuasion.
posted
I think individuals should have the choice of deciding whether their lives are worth living. In my opinion we first need to deal with what should be legal and illegal and then set about setting parameters and exceptions.
To me its like the death penalty argument. Discrepancies in the ratios of minorities executed doesn't mean that the death penalty itself is unjust, it just means theres something wrong with the system in which it is being used.
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posted
Dagonee, I can see your logic in characterising after-birth care as irrelevant to abortion per se.
However given you a) oppose abortion (or, in your view, pre-birth infanticide) and b) oppose post-birth infanticide does this mean there is a moral onus on you to campaign for/provide some more after-birth care?
Or, in more practical terms, would there be such an onus if you were taking practical steps to prevent abortions from occuring (whether legislative or other means)?
I am tending towards yes.
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posted
But it is, I don't advocate infantacide, becuase by the time the child is born then the mother has made her choice. The kid's been born, the mother had her chance at abortion and chose not to. Thats how infantacide is different. And whether or not we take care of the kids and the parent is not irrelevant. It's really the whole issue. Maybe this is why the two sides have so much trouble reconciling with each other, they are arguing different issues from the same basic set of beliefs. Many (notice I said many, not all, not even most, I do not pretend to speak for all pro-choice people) people who are pro-choice think exactly along the lines I have laid out. Not that the child isn't necesarily human, but rather that it is better off for both mother and child for the child to be aborted. If you create a program for taking care of the child after birth in paralell with anti-abortion laws, I bet you'll find many current pro-choice people would switch sides.
posted
I am, too. Part of that would be assistance, adoption, etc., and part of that would be enforcing more parental responsibility.
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Alcon - I'm not sure that you would find many people changing sides.
I am pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I don't view a fetus as equivalent to a human being, and as such am not comfortable with any government legislating to force women to carry to term.
That doesn't mean I would have an abortion. Or that I would counsel a friend to do so. I just think it's *our* choice, not the governments.
That wouldn't change simply because of better after-birth care of children.
***
Dagonee - I'm glad. I still don't agree with legislating against abortion but if I did, I like your view of the whole picture.
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posted
imogen, I'm not sure a lot of people would completely switch sides, but I'm pretty sure a significant chunk of pro-choice but anti-abortion people would become much less vehement about the issue.
posted
Imogen, thats why I said many (and emphasized it), which could mean as few as like 10% of people or even less. I'd actually be really interested to see a study done on this asking people if they'd be in favor on illegalizing abortion on this basis, I could be wrong, it might be 'very few' people. But you never know until you see.
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Jay, we don't trust the timeline becuase of the site its on. I don't trust those numbers. Not until I can find an unbiased site to back them up.
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quote:it is better off for both mother and child for the child to be aborted
This quote confuses me. Can you describe to me, qualitatively, how a child's life can be "better" if it is killed in the womb rather than being born?
(This seems to go to some of the same points that sndrake made in his recent review of Million Dollar Baby.)
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Or started to anyway, but I gots tired, cause all the sites I found were baised (surprise surprise, they were all pro-life ) I haven't found a good scientific summery of it yet.
quote:This quote confuses me. Can you describe to me, qualitatively, how a child's life can be "better" if it is killed in the womb rather than being born?
A short life of being abused by a single mother, who was having to resort to prostitution to feed the two of them, followed by suicide at 14.
Result: childs life is terrible and short, mothers life is utterly ruined by childs birth. Worse for both.
Admittedly, an extreme example, but thats one where I think never being born might be better. Its certainly better for the mother.
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posted
That's a scenario in which the child's life without being aborted SUCKS. But there is still no explanation of why, exactly, not-being-born is BETTER than the life you described. Have you ever not-been-born? If so, what was it like?
quote: A short life of being abused by a single mother, who was having to resort to prostitution to feed the two of them, followed by suicide at 14.
Even then the child should still be allowed to make the determination as whether or not their life is worth living, we shouldn't be making this determination for them.
I also thought of the MDB argument.
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posted
Alcon, I see what you're saying. I was just pointing out that if you're going to claim that when abortions are done that the fetus is simply a mass of undifferentiated cells then you need to do your research. I was surprised when I read what you had posted, simply because you didn't seem to understand the timing, etc. in discovering that a pregnancy exists. It weakens the pro-choice arguement when incorrect facts or assumptions are thrown out there.
Though I can give facts, such as all major body organs and systems in a fetus are formed by the second month, I don't know when "humanhood" begins. I don't know that I'll ever know that.
That said, I completely understand your concerns about care for both mother and child. I wish there was an easy answer for that. I think we as a society are doing better about sex education to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but I think we can still do better. I know also that there are some anti-abortion groups out there (CareNet) in particular, that actually support a woman during the entire pregnancy and afterwards. They help teens tell their families, help find shelter if needed, provide baby clothes and furniture, etc. But there needs to be more groups like this.
However, even those these groups may help during rhe pregnancy or even for the first few years, a child is for a lifetime, and those groups aren't around forever. Maybe then more emphasis should be put on sex education instead of after-care - I don't really know. It seems that no matter what kind of facts are out there about birth control or life with a baby, people still have unprotected sex, or sex at a time in their lives when they aren't capable of caring for a child.
I just don't know. But I do know that conversations such as this, between pro-choice and pro-life people, and all the conversations in between, are what we need to be doing, and keep doing. Like Imogen, I'm pro-choice, not pro-abortion, and it would make me a happy woman indeed if we could find a solution to the abortion problem.
posted
In this thread people keep talking about teenage pregnancy, rape and incest pregnancy, etc. Does anyone have any statistics on who really gets abortions? I've heard it's mainly middle-class women who do, butr I don't know if that's true, and I'm not as skilled at searching for info as some of you here.
My point is, are we arguing in favor of abortion based on tough cases, when the reality is that abortion is used for other situations-- not so much "My life will be ruined" as "I just don't feel like this is the right time for a baby" scenarios.
As a person who used to be strongly pro-choice, I've slowly come around to a reluctantly pro-choice opinion and am really at this point becoming pro-life. One of the things that started the change for me was when a single friend became pregnant and chose to have the baby. Many of my "pro-choice" friends were appalled that she did not choose to abort. Yes her life has been a struggle, and it's been tough, but I sure don't think her daughter would have been better off never born.
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quote: People who want to illegalize abortion make no accounting for after the baby that would have been aborted is born.
Please quit over-generalizing. There are many organizations that lend support to women in these situations. As my son has outgrown things, most of it has gone to the Beta Center here in Orlando. They work towards making sure a mother and child don't have a "bad" life.
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Ok, the thing is. As I said above. People who want to illegalize abortion make no accounting for after the baby that would have been aborted is born. They just want to make sure it doesn't get killed from when its concieved till birth from what I can tell. After that, they abandon it to what ever the heck the circumstances are it gets born into. Often it would be to an unprepared teenage mother who can in no way take care of the child. Or to the victim of rape, when the mother has plenty of reasons not to want the child of her attacker around her. And many other situations for which abortion is used. These children are not going to have good happy lives. And many may wish they were dead or commit suicide later in life. And by that time, they've often basically taken their mothers life with them. So the question is, if we illegalize abortion, are we going to take care of the kids?
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) I haven't found a good scientific summery of it yet.
