Moniquill
Consent to sex=/=Consent to sperm in the uterus. Consent to sperm in the uterus=/=Consent to conception. Consent to conception=/=consent to implantation. Consent to implantation=/= consent to pregnancy. Consent to pregnancy=/= consent to carry to term. Consent, by its nature, must be EXPRESS and ONGOING. It can be withdrawn, and unless it's directly spelled out, it cannot be assumed.
At no point does consent strip a woman of her bodily domain and her right to withdraw consent.
If a woman consents to sex, and at some point during the sex withdraws her consent, and her partner does not immediately stop, from that point on the partner's actions constitute rape.
Ditto on pregnancy.
Gorrific
Okay, yet again I'm saying this.
Given the mindset that "ABORTION IS MURDER"
Miscarriage is manslaughter
A pregnant woman is at the whim of her doctor or else she can be charged with neglect.
She can be FORCED [strapped down] into having a c-section.
Birth control is endangerment
If the child is born with any abnormalities, again, it's the mother's fault.
The woman basically becomes a vessel. Which is ridiculous. Think about what you're really saying when you imply that fetus is a person. It means a whole lot more than "ABORTION IS MURDER"
Look up Personhood USA, you'll be shocked.
Glory of Sekhmet
Fancy Jazmine
When people get pregnant most of them abort. WTF For? Abortion doesn't fix a problem if there's not a problem to fix. Why does the baby-not fetus, baby- have to pay the price for the parents stupidity? The baby is a person. It has rights.
Tell me what your thoughts are on abortion.
Tell me what your thoughts are on abortion.
1.
Quote:
When people get pregnant most of them abort.
Most? What source are you basing this on?
Quote:
WTF For?
Lets see -
don't want to have a baby,m can't afford a child, don't have a lifestyle in which they could have a child,
are not willing to undergo all of the physical problems, damage and risk that are attendant on even a normal SUCCESSFUL pregnancy and delivery?
Don't want to risk all of the horrible problems and risks arising from even relatively common complications?
Isn't willing to risk DYING giving birth to a baby she doesn't even WANT?
has genetic or mental problems which are likely to be passed on?
Is personally or morally opposed to having a child?
There are people out there who have as much of an anti-maternal instinct as other women have a maternal drive and desire to have children. These people are COMPLETELY repelled by the concept of having a genetic descendant of theirs out there in any way.
And an entire other constellation of reasons.
2.
Quote:
Abortion doesn't fix a problem if there's not a problem to fix
3.
Quote:
Why does the baby-not fetus, baby-
Can you prove this?
You may want to call it a 'baby' but fetus is a more correct term. Again, do not presume to speak for anyone else.
4.
Quote:
have to pay the price for the parents stupidity?
It is not about the fetus paying a price. It is about the fact that to exist it must use the body of an actual PERSON as a HOST, and that person has the final say in whether or not it gets to stay there.
If that person go there by stupidity, that does not mean that they loose their own physical autonomy and control over their own body.
Also this whole 'stupidity' argument really annoys me, it seems a bit of a straw man - it is a way of characterizing all people who have abortions as being just too stupid and lazy to use birth control, as a way of neatly avoiding the problem of birth control failure.
Do you have ANY idea what the rate of failure is for condoms and hormonal methods of birth control?
Are you aware that it is even possible for a TUBAL LIGATION (sterilization) TO FAIL? (There is a rate of failure for even PROPERLY DONE STERILIZATION SURGERY!!!!!!!
And speaking as a woman with a family history of major health problems, if I were to use hormonal birth control, I would be a risk of serious disease and even death. I would also (as most other women) be at serious risk of disease and risk in pregnancy and labor.
Even a celibate woman could be sexually assaulted and be at the same risk of death in childbirth if she did not abort.
THEREFORE - People who don't think women should have the right to abort are essentially saying that NO WOMAN has the right to refuse to be pregnant (again, even the celibate could be raped, and even tubal ligations can fail), and that NO WOMAN has the right to put her own health first, protect herself and refuse to risk dying while give birth!!!!!!!!!!!!
5.
Quote:
The baby is a person. It has rights.
This is your opinion. Not mine.
Any zygote or fetus which is in MY body is little more than a parasite in my system and will be dealt with accordingly.
Where do you think these 'rights' come from?
Please provide proof.
Also, even IF a fetus was a *person*, NO PERSON HAS THE RIGHT TO THE USE OF ANOTHER PERSON'S Body - EVEN if the first person would DIE without it.
And even IF one were to call a fetus a PERSON (and I do not believe that it is, either), this does not give it the right to use a woman's body against her will. NO person has the right to the use of another person's body - even if the first person will die without it. This has been established in the case of Mcfall v Shimp*
http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~ras2777/judpol/mcfall.html
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/lawmcfall.html
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/lawmcfall1.html
http://www.trinity.edu/departments/philosophy/sluper/Chapter8guidetoethics.htm
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n8_v111/ai_14900058/
http://books.google.com/books?id=gbksH8TpdG8C&pg=PA212&lpg=PA212&dq=shimp+mcfall+wiki&source=bl&ots=duYh6mD6DT&sig=RCLaNONTNlzGum6UCnpxKE-LyDw&hl=en&ei=ZARSSu3vM4-Xtget_sytBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6
from another site - put better than I ever could:
Quote:
pro-lifer: Just because a fetus doesn't have the same brain development as a human being doesn't mean it's not a full human! Darwin & his followers used to argue that WOMEN didn't have the same brain development as MEN and therefore weren't full humans with rights.
pro-choicer: I don't care if a fetus has the same amount of brain development as THREE human beings PUT TOGETHER. It doesn't have a right to use my body without my consent. No one does.
pro-lifer: so you ADMIT it's a full human baby?
pro-choicer: No. I'm saying it doesn't matter, so long as you believe WOMEN are full human beings. Of course, the pro-life movement appears to be on the alleged side of Darwin etc. on that question.
......
pro-lifer: you must show that the unborn aren't fully human, or else the pro-choice position crumbles.
pro-choicer: didn't we have this discussion above? Where I pointed out it's not about whether the fetus is human or not, but about whether a woman has the right to say no to another person's use of her body?
pro-lifer: you would be so SELFISH as to kill a child??
pro-choicer: you think it's SELFISH to deny someone else the free use of your body? You must be real popular with the neighborhood boys...
pro-choicer: I don't care if a fetus has the same amount of brain development as THREE human beings PUT TOGETHER. It doesn't have a right to use my body without my consent. No one does.
pro-lifer: so you ADMIT it's a full human baby?
pro-choicer: No. I'm saying it doesn't matter, so long as you believe WOMEN are full human beings. Of course, the pro-life movement appears to be on the alleged side of Darwin etc. on that question.
......
pro-lifer: you must show that the unborn aren't fully human, or else the pro-choice position crumbles.
pro-choicer: didn't we have this discussion above? Where I pointed out it's not about whether the fetus is human or not, but about whether a woman has the right to say no to another person's use of her body?
pro-lifer: you would be so SELFISH as to kill a child??
pro-choicer: you think it's SELFISH to deny someone else the free use of your body? You must be real popular with the neighborhood boys...
Seranaiko
http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/fetusperson.html
Quote:
Can a Fetus Be a Legal Person with Rights?
Anti-choicers like to demand legal rights for fetuses. Significantly, there is no support for fetuses as legal persons in international human rights codes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Virtually all national constitutions do not treat fetuses as persons or citizens. American citizenship is limited to those "born or naturalized in the United States" (as per the 14th Amendment) and the word "Everyone" in the Canadian constitution has been deemed by the courts not to include fetuses12.
Declaring fetuses to be legal persons with rights would generate countless legal and social dilemmas. Fetuses would have to become dependents for tax and estate purposes, be counted in official census-taking, and be subject to many other laws affecting persons. Wouldn't every zygote have to have a Social Security Number, as well as a Certificate of Conception? The sheer absurdity of this proposal reveals that society does not think of fetuses as persons in the normal sense at all, and would have great difficulty trying to treat them as such.
Anti-choicers might argue that special laws or legal exceptions could be written for fetuses to accommodate their unique characteristics, but the very fact that exceptional laws for fetuses would have to be created proves that they are incapable of having the same legal status as real persons.
If anti-choicers want fetuses to share the same human rights as the rest of us, this means they should enjoy the constitutional freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and other basic freedoms. Since fetuses are physically incapable of believing, speaking, or assembling, they cannot have or exercise any constitutional rights. This puts them in a totally different category than regular human beings. To give another example, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that "Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada." Fetuses obviously cannot qualify for such a right on their own. Ironically, the Charter also says "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned"— if fetuses did have rights, this would outlaw forced pregnancy!
The biggest challenge in giving legal rights to embryos arises when trying to decide whose rights would take precedence when they conflict—the woman's or her zygote's. The idea that a grown woman's value and status can be equated with, or overridden by, a cluster of undifferentiated cells the size of the period at the end of this sentence is not only bizarre, it's insulting. We are treading on dangerous moral and legal grounds when we exchange a woman’s actual rights in favour of an embryo's theoretical rights.
The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade, tried to balance the rights of women and fetuses by allowing states to restrict abortion in the third trimester, except to protect the life or health of the woman. But this balancing act was a sham—women's right to choose would not be infringed in practice, because Roe v. Wade only prohibited the mythical "casual" late-term abortion invented by anti-choicers. In the real world, healthy pregnant women with healthy 8½ month fetuses do not casually demand abortions, and doctors do not casually agree to do them. To suggest otherwise is an insult to both women and doctors. Unfortunately, because of its faulty assumption that fetuses need to be protected from women's irresponsible decision-making, Roe v. Wade opened the door to the passage of many laws making it harder to access abortions, as well as a weakening of the decision itself by later Supreme Court rulings. Women’s liberty and bodily integrity have been violated accordingly.
I agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that the state has an interest in protecting fetal life, but this should be done through guaranteed access to pre-natal care, health care, and education for pregnant women, not by restricting abortion. Pitting the rights of women against their fetuses harms them both—for example, women will avoid pre-natal care entirely if they fear being arrested for endangering their fetus by drug abuse. Canadian courts have wisely backed away from trying to give any protections to fetuses in such circumstances, because they realize it might infringe on women's established human rights. As a result, pregnant women in Canada enjoy exclusive rights over their bodies. To turn the tables and demand legal rights for fetuses is a direct call for the legalized oppression of women, by stripping them of their constitutional rights and personhood. This loss of rights and identity would occur not just during a nine-month pregnancy, but would, by logical necessity, reach to some extent into women's lifelong role as mothers and mothers-to-be.
Ironically, anti-choicers are trapped in a fatal contradiction here—women are undeniably human beings; yet anti-choicers are quite willing to sacrifice the human rights of women in favour of fetuses, whose status as human beings is highly questionable. If they can’t even respect the lives and rights of born human beings, why should we trust their alleged concern for fetuses as human beings?
Anti-choicers like to demand legal rights for fetuses. Significantly, there is no support for fetuses as legal persons in international human rights codes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Virtually all national constitutions do not treat fetuses as persons or citizens. American citizenship is limited to those "born or naturalized in the United States" (as per the 14th Amendment) and the word "Everyone" in the Canadian constitution has been deemed by the courts not to include fetuses12.
Declaring fetuses to be legal persons with rights would generate countless legal and social dilemmas. Fetuses would have to become dependents for tax and estate purposes, be counted in official census-taking, and be subject to many other laws affecting persons. Wouldn't every zygote have to have a Social Security Number, as well as a Certificate of Conception? The sheer absurdity of this proposal reveals that society does not think of fetuses as persons in the normal sense at all, and would have great difficulty trying to treat them as such.
Anti-choicers might argue that special laws or legal exceptions could be written for fetuses to accommodate their unique characteristics, but the very fact that exceptional laws for fetuses would have to be created proves that they are incapable of having the same legal status as real persons.
If anti-choicers want fetuses to share the same human rights as the rest of us, this means they should enjoy the constitutional freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, and other basic freedoms. Since fetuses are physically incapable of believing, speaking, or assembling, they cannot have or exercise any constitutional rights. This puts them in a totally different category than regular human beings. To give another example, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that "Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada." Fetuses obviously cannot qualify for such a right on their own. Ironically, the Charter also says "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned"— if fetuses did have rights, this would outlaw forced pregnancy!
The biggest challenge in giving legal rights to embryos arises when trying to decide whose rights would take precedence when they conflict—the woman's or her zygote's. The idea that a grown woman's value and status can be equated with, or overridden by, a cluster of undifferentiated cells the size of the period at the end of this sentence is not only bizarre, it's insulting. We are treading on dangerous moral and legal grounds when we exchange a woman’s actual rights in favour of an embryo's theoretical rights.
The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Roe v. Wade, tried to balance the rights of women and fetuses by allowing states to restrict abortion in the third trimester, except to protect the life or health of the woman. But this balancing act was a sham—women's right to choose would not be infringed in practice, because Roe v. Wade only prohibited the mythical "casual" late-term abortion invented by anti-choicers. In the real world, healthy pregnant women with healthy 8½ month fetuses do not casually demand abortions, and doctors do not casually agree to do them. To suggest otherwise is an insult to both women and doctors. Unfortunately, because of its faulty assumption that fetuses need to be protected from women's irresponsible decision-making, Roe v. Wade opened the door to the passage of many laws making it harder to access abortions, as well as a weakening of the decision itself by later Supreme Court rulings. Women’s liberty and bodily integrity have been violated accordingly.
I agree with the U.S. Supreme Court that the state has an interest in protecting fetal life, but this should be done through guaranteed access to pre-natal care, health care, and education for pregnant women, not by restricting abortion. Pitting the rights of women against their fetuses harms them both—for example, women will avoid pre-natal care entirely if they fear being arrested for endangering their fetus by drug abuse. Canadian courts have wisely backed away from trying to give any protections to fetuses in such circumstances, because they realize it might infringe on women's established human rights. As a result, pregnant women in Canada enjoy exclusive rights over their bodies. To turn the tables and demand legal rights for fetuses is a direct call for the legalized oppression of women, by stripping them of their constitutional rights and personhood. This loss of rights and identity would occur not just during a nine-month pregnancy, but would, by logical necessity, reach to some extent into women's lifelong role as mothers and mothers-to-be.
Ironically, anti-choicers are trapped in a fatal contradiction here—women are undeniably human beings; yet anti-choicers are quite willing to sacrifice the human rights of women in favour of fetuses, whose status as human beings is highly questionable. If they can’t even respect the lives and rights of born human beings, why should we trust their alleged concern for fetuses as human beings?
Lightly_Amorous
Sorry, but I don't understand how having an abortion isn't taking responsibility for your actions. People act as if deciding to have an abortion is the easiest decision you can ever make and that women will sleep around constantly and have them every other day.
The pregnancy is a problem. You take care of it the best way you possibly can. If you're like me with phobias of both pregnancy and childbirth, not to mention no funds to raise a child and know that it probably wouldn't be adopted and would go from foster home to foster home for its entire childhood (if you can call it that) then abortion would be the option. That doesn't make it an easy choice. It's never an easy choice, so please stop painting it that way.
Now, I know you'll say "Well, you shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place!" Well, let's say I did. It's too late to go back and make a better choice, or even to prevent birth control from failing (which is why most abortions take place, because sex ed is so bad that kids will try to be responsible and use protection, but use it incorrectly or even just have it fail). So now I have my options before me, not behind me. I can only make one choice, and I had better hope it's the right one.
Now go ahead and tell me that having an abortion is not responsible. Being responsible means taking care of a situation the best possible way you know how, and for some women, that's abortion. Get over it.
The pregnancy is a problem. You take care of it the best way you possibly can. If you're like me with phobias of both pregnancy and childbirth, not to mention no funds to raise a child and know that it probably wouldn't be adopted and would go from foster home to foster home for its entire childhood (if you can call it that) then abortion would be the option. That doesn't make it an easy choice. It's never an easy choice, so please stop painting it that way.
Now, I know you'll say "Well, you shouldn't have gotten pregnant in the first place!" Well, let's say I did. It's too late to go back and make a better choice, or even to prevent birth control from failing (which is why most abortions take place, because sex ed is so bad that kids will try to be responsible and use protection, but use it incorrectly or even just have it fail). So now I have my options before me, not behind me. I can only make one choice, and I had better hope it's the right one.
Now go ahead and tell me that having an abortion is not responsible. Being responsible means taking care of a situation the best possible way you know how, and for some women, that's abortion. Get over it.
CondomAtTheCrimeScene
Not every abortion is selfish.
Sometimes the parent actually beliefs it would be better if the child were not born. They aren't necessarily just thinking of themselves.
What about those pacts of 16 year old girls that decide to get pregnant and lie to men about birth control, because they think a baby would make them feel more loved? Is that any more selfish than the other 16 year old girl, who knew she made a mistake and didn't want to put a child through that?
But besides that, selfishness is not a bad thing. I'm tired of that being brought up.
EVERYONE is selfish in one sense or another. Survival of the fittest, baby. We want to live our lives a certain way, uphold certain morals, and do certain things with our SELFS. We go to extents to reach our goals and have our fun. We decide our feelings are more important than being hurt by friends. Etc.
Being selfish doesn't automatically make you a monster that doesn't care about anyone or anything. I'll willingly admit I am very selfish. I don't see that as bad, I need to be selfish and care about myself because I can't expect anyone else to. I think deep down, even when I do things for people, it secretly fulfills a need I have anyways. I LIKE being nice. I LIKE helping out. It makes ME feel good. Does it change the impact it has? Probably not. I don't see the big deal.
Sometimes the parent actually beliefs it would be better if the child were not born. They aren't necessarily just thinking of themselves.
What about those pacts of 16 year old girls that decide to get pregnant and lie to men about birth control, because they think a baby would make them feel more loved? Is that any more selfish than the other 16 year old girl, who knew she made a mistake and didn't want to put a child through that?
But besides that, selfishness is not a bad thing. I'm tired of that being brought up.
EVERYONE is selfish in one sense or another. Survival of the fittest, baby. We want to live our lives a certain way, uphold certain morals, and do certain things with our SELFS. We go to extents to reach our goals and have our fun. We decide our feelings are more important than being hurt by friends. Etc.
Being selfish doesn't automatically make you a monster that doesn't care about anyone or anything. I'll willingly admit I am very selfish. I don't see that as bad, I need to be selfish and care about myself because I can't expect anyone else to. I think deep down, even when I do things for people, it secretly fulfills a need I have anyways. I LIKE being nice. I LIKE helping out. It makes ME feel good. Does it change the impact it has? Probably not. I don't see the big deal.
