As someone who got pregnant unexpectedly in her 20s at the beginning of a relationship: I think abortion is morally wrong but shouldn't be illegal. Kind of like cheating/affairs. And realistically, there's no real way to enforce it. If you make it illegal except in cases of rape or incest, everyone will just claim they were raped (which will open up a whole other set of problems).

I also think if people want to stop abortion, they need to focus on providing support for women who find themselves pregnant with little support. People were happy to shame and judge me, but not willing to help out. There are very little resources for women who need it. Anyone who feels strongly pro-life needs to be donating money, diapers, baby items, etc for women and babies who need them.

Anonymous wrote:If people want to be pro choice that is their right. But abortion is the choice to kill a baby.

This argument always strikes me as stupid. A baby is a specific stage of human life. A kid isn't a baby, an adult isn't a baby, etc.

There are reasonable arguments to be had about when a developing human obtains full personhood, but calling a blastocyst a baby is just dumb.

The point of this thread is meaningless. We live in hell. Human beings rape, murder, abuse, neglect, abandon one another. They get drunk and do drugs and drive while intoxicated. And they kill their babies. If babies had a choice they would choose to live. Even animals don't want to be killed for food. They are terrified and would fight for survival. The entire circle of life is pain and torture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

I am pro-choice BECAUSE I think all children deserve to be wanted. I have never doubted my parent's love, attention or care. I thought about my baby before she was born and picked a good father for her and a good job for me.

I had to go through miscarriages and IVF for my baby though. I do know how precious life is.

Yeah for you! I was an unwanted, unloved baby but I think I deserve to be here.

It's not like if you were never born your feelings would be hurt. You would not exist.

Anonymous wrote:The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

It would be irrelevant. We wouldn't be here. So... that is a dumb (and has always been) a dumb argument to me.
What will be will be.
A full term pregnancy doesn't guaruntee a long life.
Let people live and be held accountable for their lives.
If you regulate the uterus, what is next? How many children you can have? Whether you can provide medicine in utero? Fining women who drink wine?

Love,
- A mother whose baby died in her arms after choosing not to abort when given the choice

Anonymous wrote:The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

I am pro-choice BECAUSE I think all children deserve to be wanted. I have never doubted my parent's love, attention or care. I thought about my baby before she was born and picked a good father for her and a good job for me.

I had to go through miscarriages and IVF for my baby though. I do know how precious life is.

Anonymous wrote:The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

My mom was 19 when I was born. She married my father because that was what she was expected to do. Their relationship was not good. Little love. She didn't go to college until she was 30, and he'd left, and it was really hard. I love being alive, but if I'd been my mom's best friend, yes, I would've supported her having an abortion, breaking up with that jerk, and going to college.

I'm 100% serious.

Anonymous wrote:The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

You do realize that if I'd been aborted, I would never have been born and therefore couldn't have feelings about my abortion?

I don't have any narcissistic complexes to think that the world wouldn't turn without my existence. My parents would have had another kid. that kid might have gone into the world and done so many more things than I ever did. We don't lament that non-person's life that never occurred.

Again, this is just another excuse to shame women for having sex.

Anonymous wrote:If men had the ability to get pregnant, we wouldn't even debate this topic. It would be a given that abortion is a right of the individual.

Denying women the right to an abortion is a way of controlling women.

I've never understood how Republicans can be anti- pro-choice. They want less government in all other areas of life, but in this one instance which pertains to a woman and her body they think it's okay to tell her what to do.

+1. They think government has no business "getting involved" in coal regulations because if people don't want to die of asthma, the free market would stop buying coal (?).

But yet again, it demonstrates that this is all about shaming women for daring to have sex.

The only reason you pro choice people can be on this thread is because you weren't aborted. How many of you would be ok with it if your parent had decided to abort you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Help me understand.

I am a middle class 30 year old married woman. I am pro-life but believe in abortion for extreme circumstances such as rape, health of the mother being in danger and possibly fetus abnormalities. I pray and wish to never have to make this horrible decision in my life.

As such, I do not understand why this is such a widespread issue. For most everyday people...they will not have to hopefully deal with it. We don;t all want to abort as a plan B now do we?

Its actually the most common surgical procedure women have. you think you don't know a woman who has had one but I think its around 1/4th of all women have it. Its also about general control of ones own body and life. Historically women have been property of men in all ways. Controlling womens reproductive rights is another way that manifests itself.

So the way women protect themselves from men is to turn around and kill their babies.

This is the kind of irrational conversation I was talking about up thread! You don't change minds or make people think about their decisions with this kind of attitude. Period. There are a lot of people explaining their perspectives thoughtfully on this thread and your response is about women "killing their babies." How do we talk to you? Why do you bother commenting at all?

Calling it for what it is- is not being irrational.

I do not believe that the 8 week pregnancy I ended was killing a baby. I think you are wrong and I think that your belief that your beliefs are more valid than mine is selfish and the policies that get made in the name of those beliefs are cruel and misogynist.

Anonymous wrote:If people want to be pro choice that is their right. But abortion is the choice to kill a baby.

And to be pro life in a world where you have legislated it is to have the blood of dead women on your hands. Ones who died in childbirth and ones who died attempting illegal abortions. It is to have poverty stricken children's hunger on your hands. Unwanted children's tears on your hands.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can the government force me to give a blood transfusion to save someone else? Nope. And that's a real live born person.

Then the government cannot force me to incubate a pregnancy.

"But the fetus is there because of your irresponsible choices!"

Doesn't matter. If the government can't force me to give up my bodily autonomy to save another, then that's sacrosanct. When you bring in "but your choices!" at that point you are legislating pregnancy and childbirth as punishment for having sex that you don't want me to have.

It has zero to do with saving a life, or you'd be pushing for laws to require people to donate organs or blood.

An analogy even more fitting since it adds in a culpability element, if you drive drunk and smash into a person and they require multiple blood transfusions and you are a match would you like the government to forcibly take your blood? Even if doing so risks your own life because you suffered injuries as well?

How about if you're not drunk you just got distracted and its the same scenario?

Of course the answer is no, because we don't ask one human to risk their life unwillingly to save another human. It just isn't how the world works.

To up the example, the government doesn't require that doctors insert a scope into the lungs of all smokers to show them the damage they are doing to themselves. Because that would be crazy and solely for purposes of shaming the smoking. But the government mandates a vaginal ultrasound for abortions -- a procedure whose sole purpose is to shame the patient, and has no medical purpose.

If men had the ability to get pregnant, we wouldn't even debate this topic. It would be a given that abortion is a right of the individual.

Denying women the right to an abortion is a way of controlling women.

I've never understood how Republicans can be anti- pro-choice. They want less government in all other areas of life, but in this one instance which pertains to a woman and her body they think it's okay to tell her what to do.