is anyone more pro-life since becoming a parent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I experienced the opposite. I'm still pro-choice but I used to think the fetus was just a clump of cells for much longer. It was shocking to me when I saw my 8 week old fetus flapping its limbs.

Shocks me too since it didn't happen.

+1

+2- At 8 weeks the fetus looks like a jelly bean- I know this because I had to have an ultrasound at 8 weeks.

Pro lifers only sort of understand science. Just enough to get emotional about it.
Fwiw- I am pregnant right now and still feel very pro choice. Even after years of infertility and difficulty conceiving.

I find this comment curious.
You do realize that once you are pregnant, that “little clump of cells” grows into a human being, right?
Not an amoeba, not a reptile, not an alien.
Pro lifers understand science quite well - we understand that an abortions destroys a human life.

Comments like the above make me long for retroactive abortion. You choose for you and allow every other woman to choose for herself.

[Anonymous]

More pro-choice:

1. I desperately wanted my child, and that made me empathize with how horrible it would be to be carrying a pregnancy that was desperately unwanted.
2. My first ultrasounds didn't look like a baby, to me they looked like a clump of cells I desperately wanted to become a baby.
3. I had a very dangerous pregnancy. I was willing to do anything for a living child, and lost my uterus in the process. I can't imagine forcing a woman who didn't want her pregnancy to risk her future fertility or her life.

[Anonymous]

I was pro-choice before I got pregnant, and it was an issue I cared about a lot, though fairly abstractly. I have since had a baby and an abortion (in that order), and the issue is no longer abstract to me. I have very little sympathy for the emotional arguments that pretend to be scientific ("That clump of cells is a human being!") when those arguments' intention is to tell women how they should feel and what decisions they're allowed to make about their own bodies, their own experiences, their own family plans. The moral argument is okay, if you're applying it to your own experience and extending it to all other forms of taking lives (are you against the death penalty? are you a vegetarian? are you anti-war?). When the moral argument is not about your experience but about what you believe my experience should be, I am no longer particularly sympathetic.

[Anonymous]

Yes.

Killing babies is sometimes necessary, but mostly not good.

[Anonymous]

No. I was always pro choice and now with kids I'm somehow now even MORE pro choice.

[Anonymous]

OP, in my case, your subject line is spot on. Abortion is murder, plain and simple. I"m just sorry that it took me seeing my own kids on ultrasound at just a few weeks past conception, before I came to my senses on that point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was always pro-choice but mainly for extreme circumstances (rape, mother in danger etc) but knew you can't really separate the issue so always called myself pro choice. However since having kids I am now VERY pro choice in a way that I never would of expected. The fact is this shit is HARD and I have education, money, a supportive community, and access to good healthcare. I can't imagine how hard it is for impoverished teenagers or single parents who already have a few kids or really any un ideal circumstance. Adoption isn't perfect either and I think the "adoption bandaid" is used in theory too frequently. Now as a parent I realized that I really wouldn't want my own teenager to have to carry a pregnancy and delivery and then give up the baby...it just seems like way too much to emotionally endure as a child herself. I keep these feelings to myself because I feel they would come off as inhumane and shouldn't parenting make you more pro life? I kind of wonder if something is wrong with me. For the record I love being a parent and am happy with my life but its just a strange change of views I have experienced and was curious if anyone else has as well?

+1. Pro-choice is more important now to me than it ever was before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was always pro-choice but mainly for extreme circumstances (rape, mother in danger etc) but knew you can't really separate the issue so always called myself pro choice. However since having kids I am now VERY pro choice in a way that I never would of expected. The fact is this shit is HARD and I have education, money, a supportive community, and access to good healthcare. I can't imagine how hard it is for impoverished teenagers or single parents who already have a few kids or really any un ideal circumstance. Adoption isn't perfect either and I think the "adoption bandaid" is used in theory too frequently. Now as a parent I realized that I really wouldn't want my own teenager to have to carry a pregnancy and delivery and then give up the baby...it just seems like way too much to emotionally endure as a child herself. I keep these feelings to myself because I feel they would come off as inhumane and shouldn't parenting make you more pro life? I kind of wonder if something is wrong with me. For the record I love being a parent and am happy with my life but its just a strange change of views I have experienced and was curious if anyone else has as well?

Well, gee. Then why don't you teach her not to have sex before she's ready to be a parent?

Adoption isn't "perfect" either? So that's your easy out? Depends on which party you ask, I suppose. For the to-be-murdered fetus, it probably looks pretty damned perfect, compared to the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was always pro-choice but mainly for extreme circumstances (rape, mother in danger etc) but knew you can't really separate the issue so always called myself pro choice. However since having kids I am now VERY pro choice in a way that I never would of expected. The fact is this shit is HARD and I have education, money, a supportive community, and access to good healthcare. I can't imagine how hard it is for impoverished teenagers or single parents who already have a few kids or really any un ideal circumstance. Adoption isn't perfect either and I think the "adoption bandaid" is used in theory too frequently. Now as a parent I realized that I really wouldn't want my own teenager to have to carry a pregnancy and delivery and then give up the baby...it just seems like way too much to emotionally endure as a child herself. I keep these feelings to myself because I feel they would come off as inhumane and shouldn't parenting make you more pro life? I kind of wonder if something is wrong with me. For the record I love being a parent and am happy with my life but its just a strange change of views I have experienced and was curious if anyone else has as well?

Well, gee. Then why don't you teach her not to have sex before she's ready to be a parent?

Adoption isn't "perfect" either? So that's your easy out? Depends on which party you ask, I suppose. For the to-be-murdered fetus, it probably looks pretty damned perfect, compared to the alternative.

that's the point though. A fetus has no self

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was always pro-choice but mainly for extreme circumstances (rape, mother in danger etc) but knew you can't really separate the issue so always called myself pro choice. However since having kids I am now VERY pro choice in a way that I never would of expected. The fact is this shit is HARD and I have education, money, a supportive community, and access to good healthcare. I can't imagine how hard it is for impoverished teenagers or single parents who already have a few kids or really any un ideal circumstance. Adoption isn't perfect either and I think the "adoption bandaid" is used in theory too frequently. Now as a parent I realized that I really wouldn't want my own teenager to have to carry a pregnancy and delivery and then give up the baby...it just seems like way too much to emotionally endure as a child herself. I keep these feelings to myself because I feel they would come off as inhumane and shouldn't parenting make you more pro life? I kind of wonder if something is wrong with me. For the record I love being a parent and am happy with my life but its just a strange change of views I have experienced and was curious if anyone else has as well?

Well, gee. Then why don't you teach her not to have sex before she's ready to be a parent?

Adoption isn't "perfect" either? So that's your easy out? Depends on which party you ask, I suppose. For the to-be-murdered fetus, it probably looks pretty damned perfect, compared to the alternative.

that's the point though. A fetus has no self

a fetus has no self awareness, no sense of future, anticipation of pain or pleasure, no thought process at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was always pro-choice but mainly for extreme circumstances (rape, mother in danger etc) but knew you can't really separate the issue so always called myself pro choice. However since having kids I am now VERY pro choice in a way that I never would of expected. The fact is this shit is HARD and I have education, money, a supportive community, and access to good healthcare. I can't imagine how hard it is for impoverished teenagers or single parents who already have a few kids or really any un ideal circumstance. Adoption isn't perfect either and I think the "adoption bandaid" is used in theory too frequently. Now as a parent I realized that I really wouldn't want my own teenager to have to carry a pregnancy and delivery and then give up the baby...it just seems like way too much to emotionally endure as a child herself. I keep these feelings to myself because I feel they would come off as inhumane and shouldn't parenting make you more pro life? I kind of wonder if something is wrong with me. For the record I love being a parent and am happy with my life but its just a strange change of views I have experienced and was curious if anyone else has as well?

Well, gee. Then why don't you teach her not to have sex before she's ready to be a parent?

Adoption isn't "perfect" either? So that's your easy out? Depends on which party you ask, I suppose. For the to-be-murdered fetus, it probably looks pretty damned perfect, compared to the alternative.

Actually, many people who were adopted wished they had been aborted instead. It's in the literature and it also has been said here.

[Anonymous]

I could never have an abortion now that I have a child of my own. However, I am still pro choice after reading Freakonomics. Fewer criminals and people on welfare and all that.

[Anonymous]

Now that I have a child and am raising him, I am 10000% more pro choice than I ever could have been before. No one who doesn't want this should have to go through it. It benefits no one to create unwanted people.

[Anonymous]

I'm a PP who said I was more pro-choice after pregnancy. Pregnancy underscored for me the need for a woman to have control over her own body at all times. Nobody should be allowed to use another person's body without permission. Ever. And an unwanted pregnancy is using a woman's body without permission. Unfortunately here's nothing you can do but end the pregnancy, which is death for the fetus. We as a society don't go far enough to help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, so the abortion rate is unnecessarily high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I could never have an abortion now that I have a child of my own. However, I am still pro choice after reading Freakonomics. Fewer criminals and people on welfare and all that.

+1

Now that I've had kids I don't think I'd have one myself, but I do feel stronger that it takes a lot of resources to properly raise a child. Why put a child in a horrible situation?

And I don't get into the "fetus"/"baby" label debate - so stupid.