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Make sure to do the death penalty next

Posting in a derp thread

Yes, death penalty thread is now a must. Anyways, I'm for abortion. It's a good way to get rid of unwanted babies or accidental ons, thus preventing them from having terrible lives as lonely, miserable unwanted little sprogs.

Coat hangers at the ready gentlemen

My stance: It's your uterus. It's gonna get ruined one way or the other.

I guess I'm for abortion, though it really is a pro-choice type of thing. I'd rather there be no need for the abortion to happen and for us to have better sex Ed teaching to prevent unwanted pregnancies

I don't know.

Pro-choice, I'm not into the debate of what defines a person (is it right at birth or is it before) but I guess it's always something to think about.

Let it live, see what it does. If it dies it dies, deal with it but give it a chance.

I'm against it.
I think after fecundation it's a life, so in my book it's a murder.
There are gray areas, though, so I can't say as an absolute.

But, if a girlfriend of mine got pregnant, or if I was a girl and got stupidly pregnant, I wouldn't consider abortion.
That's the parents fault, not the baby.

For the grayer areas, like rape, Anencephaly, or whatever, I don't really know.
For Anencephaly, specially.

For rape, I'd be inclined to let the baby live.

Anencephaly -> baby without the forebrain. Tough.

Pro-choice...though the thought of abortion still makes me a hair uncomfortable.

When it comes to rape, I would abort that baby lickety-split. It's terrible pressure on the mother's life and for no reason. She'd probably resent the baby for the rest of it's life if she didn't abort, so yeah. If it was an accidental pregnancy, you're not punishing the baby or putting it at fault. It's entirely the parents' fault, yeah, but the baby isn't even in a state of self-awareness at that point.

For me, if it doesn't have even the most basic form of intelligence, there's no problem killing it for the benefit of someone who does.

Im a nurse, and Im against the abortion. As Lycan, I think that when a cell has the potential to become a person, it should be considered a person.

And I think that the reason of "preventing the baby of having a miserable life" is an stupidity (no ofense). Guys with "good parent" could have a miserable life, while a guy that grew in an adoption center could have a great life.

But, as they are many grey areas, Im not in favour of punishing it. It has to be the choise of the parents.

I agree with Lycan and Volgrand here, mainly. I think that abortion should not be allowed - of course, in the "grey area" cases (rape, risk of mother and possibly child dying, and so on) it could be, but nowadays it seems that it is used as contraception, which is very silly.

I'm all for it. Throw in contraceptives cause that's also considered as aborting to some.

Why? Because my country's at least smaller than most states in the US and we're carrying 96+ million people. A rather big portion of that population are people who have no homes (squatters) and yet they have the tendency to bear 6+ kids despite their status. That's just overpopulation in a really wrong way. Worst of which is that most of these kids end up as beggars, prostitutes, druggies or just plain old hooligans. I watched a documentary in TV before and it focused on these kids. Some of them wish they were never even born. That's how aware they are of how bad their life is.

Abortion for that case would not be the answer, just the short-term rushed down answer.
It's super easy to only say it, but the long-term one, mass education, would be much better.

While that doesn't kick in, though, there had to be done something short-term, I agree. But... abortion?
I'd rather sterilize if parents who had one child to prevent more than aborting children around...
(I don't know if sterilize is the right word in English, I mean prevent the parents from having other babies with surgery)

Of course I don't think that's a good idea either, that is against many human rights, I'm just saying what I thought would be less unjust...

EDIT:
For me, depends on the contraceptive. If only semen and ovum in ovaries was to be considered life, people would be aborting daily/monthly >_<
So, the ones that act before fecundation are OK in my eyes.

This post has been edited by Lycan: 22 January 2011 - 01:54 PM

Lycan, on 22 January 2011 - 01:47 PM, said:

The main problem with these people is that because they have nothing else to do because their life is pretty much meaningless, all they do is have sex with each other. Like rabbits. That and some of them have a severe want just to expand their namesake all in the name of pride.

As for the semen note, our CLE class (and the church to be more specific) said that masturbation is bad because it kills potential lives. Of course, I deem that to be rather extreme (because it would mean that every male is a murderer [I do not believe that any male has never masturbated/had wet dreams]). Take it as you will.

And the term you're looking for is castrated, which is the equivalent of neutering your pets.

It's another life. A human. An eventually sentient being with emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Abortion removes any possibility that they could experience life, love, friendship, and joy. It's just not right to do that in my opinion.

No, no, no, not "castrated"
Wait. *researches*
Hum, castration does bear an awfully bad intensity to the word, but it does seem to express more or less what I said

I thought castration always came with the idea of cutting balls off, or something >_<
Let's talk about castration without the idea of one losing its sexual needs/wants (AKA not messing the person's testosterone/androgen, as well as any other hormones, levels)

Well, I don't agree on, guh, for lack of better words, castrating people without their consent, but there are always economical incentives for birth control.
Well, whatever, I'm just saying preventing fecundation isseems better than "correcting" it.

Also, men naturally have wet dreams, there's no way to prevent that (at least none have been researched) (but there's no need, anyways).
And, in comparison, women discard loads of eggs every month. They have the same potential in becoming life as semen does.
I think the churches' problems with masturbation lies in other things, but we'd better not derail the thread

Sperm and eggs are single celled things. I think what the topic is trying to get at is the destruction of a human fetus - something with a heart beat, built out of many, many millions of cells.

Treacher-Collins Syndrome.

Enough said.

Starwatcher, on 22 January 2011 - 05:09 PM, said:

Well, right after fecundation there's no heart beat... but I already consider it a life

i personally think its a bad idea
iam not saying i wouldn't get one if it seemed best...
but i don't think i would truly get over the thought of the child i could have had
but...
i would like to think i gave it my all and tried being a mother rather than just killing it off because i couldn't deal with the consequences

god this thread is sad

I feel abortion should be aloud for all cases, but the time limit should be reduced to 8 weeks.

When it comes down to it, I personally wouldn't have an abortion. I believe that life begins at conception. Although you can say the fetus can not feel or what have you, the fact is that there is something a part of you that has UNIQUE DNA, different from anyone else in the planet. I consider a fetus a human being, and one that deserves life.

Concerning others.. it would be ideal that abortions aren't necessary. Unfortunately that's not the case since as much as 50% of unintended pregnancies lead to abortions. People need to be more informed about sex and safe sex practices. Abstinent-only programs are outdated. It should be mentioned but I don't think it's realistic to just tell everyone that they shouldn't have sex. It's human nature. Plus, everyone has different set of beliefs, religions, etc. You can't set a standard for these kinds of things. Like many have said, there's too much of a gray area concerning abortion.

Would I have an abortion? No. But I can't stop people from having one. I feel that using abortion as a contraceptive, however, is one of the worst and most irresponsible things you can do. If abortion is made illegal everywhere, there WILL still be people having them. Making abortion illegal isn't going to stop people from having sex. That's the case in some countries. Most of my family is from the Philippines, and there are tons of documentaries about those that underwent illegal abortions, often ending up in death of both the mother and fetus. It ain't pretty. I feel abortion clinics should be made available for those reasons. The thing is, clinics these days too aren't always very helpful. Many women who have had abortions regret it since they weren't too informed about the consequences. I don't know how it is in some areas, but definitely here in the US there really needs to be some overhaul in the system. :\

This post has been edited by Aika: 22 January 2011 - 08:59 PM

I think it's wrong to kill a fetus, but it's totally okay to kill a baby. Just pop it out and give it a few weeks. If it turns out to be an asshole, then you can kill it.

getting an abortion is also called not being responsible for your actions. unless of course, you were raped.

I don't even know why I'm doing this but whatever

Look, I think a woman should have the choice to have an abortion if she wants one. It is her body and her choice on what do with her life. It's kind of simple like that, you can say whatever you want but it's really about her choice.

HOWEVER. Now we get to personal feelings. I don't know the procedures for abortion but doing it early should not be an issue. However if you get to say, the second or third trimester, why the fuck did you wait so long? Now I'm not saying that they shouldn't have the choice to, but you have to question the wisdom of doing so if the mother is healthy, there's no real reason this shouldn't have occurred earlier if it was going to happen. And of course if the mother's life is in danger then definitely do it regardless.

And uh. I think I'll refrain from being serious in these topics again.

Ace, on 23 January 2011 - 04:18 AM, said:

So you acknowledge that aborting a fetus in the second or third trimester is bad? If you hold this line, then it isn't as simple as the mothers choice anymore.

Starwatcher, on 23 January 2011 - 04:27 AM, said:

Nah it still is, you either have full choice or no choice. There really isn't a compromise.

What I mean is that the whole issue can't be boiled down to just a question of free will. If it were that simple, then obviously abortions are fine.

Doubt occurs because killing (?) fetuses might be bad.

Can't provide for the baby, but don't want to kill it? Third option: give your baby up for adoption. Although that might not work in some countries, unless they opened adoption to prospective parents from other countries.

SkylineFaux said:

I looked up the comparable statistics for U.S. states. The land area of the Philippines is roughly equal to that of Arizona, the 6th largest U.S. state, so not actually as small as you think. The population density of the Philippines is comparable to Massachusetts, the 3rd most densely populated U.S. state.

Lyucs said:

That is the right word, yes.

Although for 'fecundation', we typically use the word 'conception'.

If and when any of us happen spontaneously to grow uteri, we'll have valid opinions on this subject.

Don't think of it as a tiny person: think of it as a vagina-destroying parasite.

I find the pattern of how much people care about an individual's life relative to their age funny. That is of course, if you are completely pro choice. I'm not saying I'm anti abortion, but It's just funny. It's impossible to determine a point in the development of a human a say 'this is when they become a human/living thing/whatever you want to say' and justify it on any moral or scientific grounds. Once again, we're also limited by semantics, and by our limited understanding of biology.

Pro-choice, unlike the pro-retards picketing in front of clinics

'conception', of course. I'm so dumb.
Thanks, Mr. wacko.

Ace, on 23 January 2011 - 04:18 AM, said:

Well, that really depends on what do you think of the fetus. If you take for 100% certain (I'm not saying it is, its just to argument) that after conception, it is a life, that's not really a choice the mother has to do with her life only anymore.
Sure, it's her body, but aborting would affect other 'person''s life.

I don't think people should be forced to have babies, donate their organs, give blood, nothing.

This body is mine, dammit. It doesn't matter if someone else needs it. I have no responsibility to others unless I choose to. If I choose to have a baby, I will have a responsibility to it and will be held responsible.

I have to be thorough and reply to all of these srs threads, after all.

I picked for abortion for several reasons:

1) I am not religious...so I don't have any spiritual feeling towards the existence of human life although there are attributes that are very important about humans that separate us from animals.

2) This is my body. I don't foresee myself making a decision that would cause me to want an abortion, I have a real problem with any policy that tells me what to do with my body.

3)What if...in rare situations (although I really don't know the stats behind this occurrence) I couldn't help the pregnancy. For example..what if I was raped and I got pregnant from it.

4) I had a friend that got pregnant at 16...although she knew she made a really bad mistake and she made a really responsible decision to give the baby to a willing family (yes...kinda of like Juno). However...how often does a situation like this happen versus a situation where maybe the baby is kept in a family that isn't prepared and not provided for properly?


Although I am pro abortion, I certainly don't think it should be taken lightly...because I can also see where it just gets out of hand and abortions happen left and right with people having a mind set of " oh lets just have unprotected sex...if I get pregnant I'll just get an abortion!" But...if we keep making contraceptives and protection more readily available...this theoretically shouldn't be a problem. Some methods of protection maybe don't feel as good as others, but there are advances to make sex feel better with protection too.

Yeah, it would be perfect if it wasn't ever needed. Perhaps that's what we should be working towards. Good post, Iris.

I like how people get all "We should take it seriously because if we don't people will have abortions left and right!"

Yes because abortions are totally pleasant. I'm pretty confident nobody goes around gloating about about many times a child was ripped out of them. There's even been some studies where people who face a successful abortion have a chance of suffering through some emotional scarring. They get depressed.

Abortion is NOT nice. It's SERIOUS in its own right. Which is why I think the worry about it becoming commonplace and "tee hee i liek gettin it" is stupid. It's not pleasant, it can be painful, it can have complications, but people should have the right to do it if they don't want to raise a child. Just because they have the right doesn't mean the world is suddenly gonna take full advantage and it'll become normal.

I mean I have basically come to the conclusion that if Souppy knocks me up at this point in time (hoping not, considering I'm protected with DA PILL), I WILL abort. It's a case where he just casually thinks that. But it's not like i'm looking forward to whenever that might happen! I certainly hope it NEVER happens and that I get pregnant when I'm good and ready for it. But the choice is at least there, I can at least be comforted with the idea that I will not be forced to raise a child I don't want. It's really my body. There's many things people do that I don't think is right, but I let them do it because it's their right. And I don't want to take that option away from them.

Oh I agree Taeshi, and honestly the reason I brought up that possibility is because some people may not view it that way. Certainly, there are people like you out there as well who know the extreme downfalls to abortion. I suppose it's a matter of education. All bases of sex and having a baby and decision therein should be covered.

It all depends on the definition of when life begins.

Humans live in society, so we have to obey society's rules.
If society (meaning government, that should be representing us) agrees as that life begins after the baby is born, go ahead, take it out. I still have my right to be against it, but I can't do anything except go against the government.
Now, if society says that life begins at conception, technically mothers-to-be can't abort "because it's their own body", it's the baby's life as well. And that's pretty much it, just as that's it when society deems that underage are people less than X years old. (yeah, bringing that other discussion back! )

And of course it's not pleasant, but people are stupid and continue to do the same mistake over and over again.

Taeshi, on 23 January 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Why does it even matter if people have abortions left and right? I mean, if abortions were totally pleasant and cost pennies, would we have to add some kind of punishment to it? I wouldn't think so.

Lycan, on 23 January 2011 - 05:51 PM, said:

It doesn't matter if we consider the baby to already be a fully realized living person. The baby has no right to the woman's body just like she would have no right to her child's body if she grew ill and needed an organ transplant (such as part of a liver that isn't supposed to be fatal to the donor).

This post has been edited by Kav: 23 January 2011 - 08:39 PM

I don't think that line of reasoning works. Assert that the baby has no right to the womans body, and assert that the baby is a "fully realized living person". Does the mother have a right to the baby's body, by killing it? That's even worse than the organ donor example, because with probability 1 the baby will die.

You have a point, Starwatcher, and that might lead us somewhere troublesome like having to try and provide some artificial means of maturing an embryo without using the woman's body.

That makes it important for us to painstakingly define human life (adults, children, babies), potential human life (children, babies, fetuses), and past life (irreparable brain damage, corpses).

Which is a bit ugh. As I recall, the main distinction usually made is that babies can possibly survive and mature on their own, while a fetus cannot. That leads some people to conclude that a fetus isn't quite a potential life.

I remember one stupid ethics example meant to tug on your heartstrings where we're told a hospital is burning down and we can make one trip inside to save someone. Do we head to the nursery and grab a newborn baby, or try and grab a bunch of those artificially inseminated eggs they were planning to put in women with impotent husbands and what not. Of course you're supposed to say the newborn and then the challenge is to explain why the newborn's more important.

The newborn is (presumably) already viable. One cannot necessarily say the same about fertilized eggs, because they don't always "take" when implanted in the mother's womb. Which brings to mind the adage of not counting your chickens before they hatch.

Kav: I just noticed that seems to be the stupid logic people have when they're against abortion. Because then people will do it "all the time"

And I think that's really bullshit.

@Mr. Kav
"It doesn't matter if we consider the baby to already be a fully realized living person. The baby has no right to the woman's body just like she would have no right to her child's body if she grew ill and needed an organ transplant (such as part of a liver that isn't supposed to be fatal to the donor). "

Although it has been answered by Mr. Starwatcher... Whaaat? The baby has no right to the woman's body??? I mean, it was totally his mistake to be there, not the mother's.

@Taeshi-san
"Kav: I just noticed that seems to be the stupid logic people have when they're against abortion. Because then people will do it "all the time"
And I think that's really bullshit. "

(Sorry for the crappy quotes)
That's not THE logic, but A logic. One of them (that, really, is only a hasty assumption).

We all know that the slippery-slope argument doesn't work. That's nothing new.

To me this is a problem with no solution: it seems to be a choice between a mother's freedom and a child's right to live. None of the arguments I've read have convinced me that a fetus is "far enough away" from a child to allow us to dismiss the possible harm it does to kill him / her.

So completely dismissing the harm aborting does to the child won't work either.

Now I'm stuck choosing the option that causes the least amount of harm. And, to be honest, I think that there are too many scenarios to decide this in general. What about rape? A child with a SEVERE and CERTAIN physical or mental handicap? And what of the harm that it causes to the mother, both psychological and physical?

I'm stuck, and I haven't read anything that convinces me that:

1) Abortion is just fine and completely morally acceptable.

2) Abortion is utterly immoral and shouldn't ever be allowed.

Is there no middle ground? Is it possible (without contradiction) to adopt a stance of tolerance for the extreme cases, while leaving room to consider the "everyday" (?) "average" (?) accidental pregnancy abortions immoral?

Can someone help me out here?