Monday, February 8, 2010

Abortion- the core issue is not choice at all

I am a member of some pregnancy/parenting message boards. I wondered into the "off topic" forum, and they were debated abortion! I made this post...

"I am getting physically ill reading this & almost had to stop. I am shaking. I think I am TOO sheltered. lol. I will TRY to be calm, Smile but this is something I feel strongly about.

Abortion is the ending of a life. Just bc a baby is inside of the mother's body does not mean that it is a part of the mother's body. It is its own body. As for when it becomes a human, every line anyone could ever draw on that would be subjective, & they wouldn't be able to explain why. Is having a heart beat more important than being able to breathe air? Why? Is being able to survive w/o mom more important than being able to feel pain? Why? The ONLY objective line you can draw is conception. BC at that point, if left alone, it WILL develop into an adult eventually. And while we're drawing objective lines, if you draw it at birth, why not draw it at age 2, or age 22? Just bc it would die w/o the mother does not make it any less human. So yes, women have the right to choose what happens to their own body, but not to someone else's (the baby's).

If my 13 yr old daughter were raped, we would have the baby & give it up for adoption. It is horrible that she would have to go through that, but you don't commit a worse crime to stop some suffering in your own life. I think that would be a great lesson for my daughter- we don't murder someone just bc we have to have some discomfort (as hard as it would be.) To ask her to live with the guilt & horror of having her little one diced to pieces would be worse for her IMO. I don't understand why adoption is so often overlooked as the solution if u find yourself in an unplanned preg.

(In the case of the mother's life being in danger, that is completely diff, bc if mom dies, baby dies.)

As for the "it's wrong for me, but I can't decide for others" argument, I don't understand. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Would you say that you personally would never kill someone, but if someone else did, that's their business. I don't think you would. & I don't think any of us have a prob w/ the govt stepping in on that. We spend pages telling other moms it's wrong to let LO CIO but won't tell them that if they want to dice LO up just a few months prior. That breaks my heart.

Quote:
what is taken as pain is an instinctual movement.


This makes me want to cry my eyes out. I understand what ur saying; it just breaks my heart.

As for hormonal BC, I don't use it anymore either f/ the reasons others posted, as well as the fact that it's really bad f/ ur body.

"If you believe in a woman's right to choose, you are against the abortion of any female fetus. Bc you have to let her choose whether or not to take her 1st breath." -my pastor

"Everyone who is pro choice is only that way bc they were allowed to live." -someone

That being said, if you've had an abortion, I feel f/ u & don't think u r a horrible person. We all make mistakes. There is forgiveness & healing.

If you are reading this & thinking about having an abortion, please PM me. I will do everything I can to help you. If I can't find you help, I myself will pay your medical bills. I would even adopt ur baby if I had to.

I hope I didn't change the tone of this thread too much. I respect all of you as people, just not the action of abortion. "

People replied & kept on talking about extreme examples like rape and also about when birth control fails. "No woman should be asked to carry around a piece of her rapist for 9 months." They talked about how outlawing abortion wouldn't stop it but would take it to back road dirty clinics. The basis for all their arguments were that they wouldn't get an abortion but it should be available to those who do, bc women should have a choice of what to do with their own bodies, to which I replied...

"The last time I saw a pic of fetus, it didn't look like any woman's body I ever saw."

To get posters off all these tangents and back to the main issue, I made this post...

"We are all really missing the point, & that's why we keep arguing in circles. LOL If we all saw an unborn baby the same way we do one that's born, we wouldn't be arguing any of this. The difference is, we don't. I think we all agree that it's wrong to kill a child (after birth). It doesn't matter if you had the child bc of rape or irresponsibility or you're too poor or it has down's syndrome. It's always wrong, right? None of you would say, "you can't expect a woman who's raped to look at that child ev. day of her life, do you?" No, it's wrong.

So see, it's not about a woman's choice. If it were, you wouldn't have a problem with a woman choosing to kill her born child. It's about when life starts. Even though some of you are saying you believe it starts at 22 weeks & some are saying you believe it starts at implantation, that doesn't really matter, bc you say if someone else wants it to start at a diff time than what you think, that's ok. So what matters is when should life officially begin for everyone? When can I start expecting everyone else not to end their child's life? The answer is "after birth". That is the definite line where we would take our convictions & start applying them to everyone else, right? Therefore, it's not about, "what's wrong for me might be right for someone else.", bc there is a point where we would say it's wrong for everyone- at birth.

So this is where my argument comes in. Say a baby is born at 32 wks. It has a good chance of surviving. But another one is aborted at 33 wks. If we're going by the above, the first one is definitely a human & it's wrong to kill it. The second one it's ok to kill (maybe not for YOU, but it might be ok for someone else, depending on their circumstances.) What I'm saying is, that makes no sense. If it's a human at 32 wks, it's automatically a human at 33, logically. So you might concede the point that at 22 wks should be the new cutoff, bc that's when they can survive outside mom. What about when we get new technology, and they can live at 21 wks? What then? Do we move the line? If we do, we are moving the definition of a human, and that doesn't make sense. What about 20 yrs ago, would the line have been drawn at 30 wks (or whenever most babies survived)? That is what I am saying when I say ANY line you can pick is subjective, even the line of birth, bc babies are born at diff times.

So you have to take it all the way back & say, "ok, when does it go from being nothing to being something?" Sperm are not human. Billions die everyday, and it would be impossible to save them all even if you believed you should & wanted to. Same with eggs. Left alone, they won't become human. U have to DO something w/ those Smile. I think we all agree that sperm & eggs are not humans. As a pp said, they don't contain the complete genetic makeup of a human. A zygote does though. If left to itself & it doesn't naturally die, it will become an adult. It has this in common with a 2-yr-old. That is why life starts at conception." 

The debate goes on, and they are already off topics again. No one could respond to my last post. But hopefully I made some ppl think, probably those who weren't posting. 

Out of curiosity, I started a poll; 82 people answered. Here are the results:

Abortion is always wrong except in extreme circumstances (like a high chance both mom & baby will die)
20%
 20% 
Abortion is wrong w/ exceptions (rape, danger to mom's health, baby will prob die anyway)
21%
 21% 
Abortion should be left completely up to each woman (but i don't like the idea of it f/ BC)
34%
 34% 
People should be able to do whatever they want in terms of abortion.
23%
 23% 
Abortion is good bc it helps cut down on unwanted kids & overpopulation of the earth.
0%
 0% 

 It's a scary place we're headed to, folks!