Arguments for pro choice?

I’m male. I don’t have a frigging clue how to answer this. I can’t make the call for someone else. I have an incredible 22 month old nephew. His mother had the appointment scheduled to abort him but she couldn’t do it. He’s been the best thing for our entire family. On the other hand I’ve seen children brought into the world that probably shouldn’t have been. Another family memeber was advised to abort a badly damaged fetus. She refused. It nearly destroyed their family.

Tell them you’ll give up abortions if they give up hunting and guns.

If the “thing with a heartbeat” cannot survive outside of a host thing with a heartbeat (the mother) then it isn’t a individual life. It is the mother’s life flowing through the fetus that gives the fetus life. It seems a logical line would be drawn at the point when the fetus can potentially survive on its own without requiring the mother’s life to give it life. Some halakic scholars believe that a fetus is not a full fledged life until the head has emerged and the child has taken its first breath.

@rosehips I would guess the mirror test would be the best arguement either way. If you can make the choice, one way or another, and then get up in the morning the next few days, look in the mirror, and say “I made the right choice” then it’s okay.

I abhor abortion. It’s a total horror that women may choose to undergo, and it has costs to one’s psyche that last for decades – probably for life (if my life is any guide).

However, on pragmatic grounds I regretfully support the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy if she so chooses. The alternative, forced motherhood seems an even more terrible outcome.

And I would support public financing of abortion if the woman who chooses it would also volunteer to undergo sterilization at the same time.

I find that anybody who wishes to argue the abortion issue generally is not seeking actual discussion, but rather either seeking grounds to demonize those who disagree, or respects dissenting viewpoints enough that no argument is necessary. Accordingly, I stopped making arguments and prefer to save my breath for more productive things.

It’s an alien in there. It is colonizing your body. It has its own life and yet it is taking everything from you. Now most women want that alien, because it represents their immortality. But some aliens are not wanted. Maybe the woman feels she can not take care of it. Maybe it is sucking the life out of her. Maybe the baby was an accident; unintended. Maybe the baby is killing her.

Does it matter why? It’s the woman’s body. If she doesn’t want it colonized, should she be forced to allow it to be colonized for nine months?

Maybe she will love the baby when it is born, but if she can’t keep it, then she must give it away, and not know how it is being cared for. She has provided all this sustenance for the baby, but for nothing.

In the past, many babies were killed at birth. Even today, that happens a lot. If you don’t want the baby, doesn’t it make more sense to abort it as soon as possible rather than killing it when it is born? Sure, you could give it away, but that is really unacceptable, too.

It’s not a person. It’s only a potential person at this point. It can’t talk or walk or do anything at this point. It is useless as it is. It’s only use is its potential to grow into a worthy individual. But if it isn’t wanted, it is more likely to grow into an individual that feels worthless. Babies given up for adoption feel even worse, knowing all their lives they were so bad they were thrown away at birth.

Abortion is the best course when a child isn’t wanted. Children must be wanted, or lots of problems ensue. People who insist on no abortions totally deny these problems or don’t understand their significance. They probably can’t even begin to understand what it feels like not to be wanted; what that does to you. So they deny the problem.

Children should be wanted. They must be wanted. I want a future where all children are wanted. I don’t like abortion. I fought too hard to have kids to ever be able to think of abortion, but my kids are wanted. I can’t imagine what the alternative is like, except I do know what it is like to feel unwanted and unwantable. When I feel like that, I want to be dead. I wish I had never been born.

If abortion is legal, people have an option that makes sense. Without abortion, all kinds of problems get visited on the women forced to host the aliens, and also on the rest of us.

There are people unfit to parent everywhere. Do we really care about a child’s life if we’ll let them be raised by just anyone that can pop one out regardless of their mental and financial status? Or is that blind ideology getting in the way?

How about the hundreds of thousands of orphans already born?

We all know they common sense answer, of course: Why show your ignorance and totalitarian tendencies by admitting you want to control the bodies and lives of women?

The last reason should be enough.

Kids can be a fucking pain.

Freedom.

@SuperMouse told the whole story succinctly and honestly. I have nothing to add.

Murder is a term that is reserved for humans, and a fetus is not a human. Calling it murder is an attempt to make it sound worse than it actually is, just like animal rights activists call eating meat murder, but it is not. The argument is based on an exaggeration, and therefore is totally invalid.

There are too many orphans in the world already and for that reason, whilst I respect anyone that chooses to carry the baby full term and then put it up for adoption, I will always be pro choice.

Making abortion illegal will not stop it, it will only make it more dangerous for women that still go ahead with it (and I believe, out of desperation, plenty will).

I do not believe that a fetus, unable to survive outside of the womb, should have more rights than any fully developed human.

I guess the question to you, @Leanne1986, is “Should the fetus have the same rights as any fully developed human?”

Essentially, that’s the question that everyone has to answer. Not whether the fetus deserves more rights – I don’t think anyone makes a sane argument for that – but does it deserve the same rights?

@Adirondackwannabe I respect your answer. It was honest. As to the second answer we aren’t talking about the individual. Rather the legalization. But I can see your point. You do have to live with your own decision.
@Imadethisupwithnoforethought Too funny. Didn’t you know animals don’t have souls?!
@SuperMouse I have never heard an argument phrased that way. It is eloquent.
@wundayatta Are you sure you aren’t a woman. Most creative and descriptive answer.
@CWOTUS Indeed is an evil but appears to be a necessary one. However doctors have the right to refuse to sterlize a women if they think her too young or if she has not had children or whatever random reason, even if she requests it.
@jerv It is a heated and loaded topic isn’t it.
@Blackberry I agree, unfit or being incapable of raising one but having it because of some morality issue… is quite an uneven scale… You potentially ruin 3 lives for the price of “saving one”
@bob_ I have a friend who thinks animals and pet owners are more responsible/better behaved then kids and their parents in general… Children are a huge responsibilty.
@ragingloli Freedom is never free.. That rings especially true in this case.
@rooeytoo We both agree.
@poisonedantidote Guilt and blowing things above scale to inflect some sort of morality on the topic does seem to be the method of choice for shaming pro choice women.
@Leanne1986 It was a terrible predicament not long ago. Bad to admit you were raped even if you were. If you were not but got pregnant you were tainted and as the child. But abortions were illegal and dangerous.
@CWOTUS good question.

@rosehips I first read an argument in that vein in The Choices we Made, a wonderful book full of stories by people who have been involved in terminating a pregnancy.

Arguments for being Pro-Choice? As most of you know, I’m a liberal Republican Catholic in the heartland of America, so this is always difficult for me.

It is our body, which leads me to believe it is our choice.

Who will look at a 10 yr old girl and tell her she has to have her daddy’s baby?

Who will look at a rape victim and tell them they have to have their rapists baby?

Who will tell a woman she has to give up her life to have her baby against her will?

Although I’m strongly against abortion for myself and my family, believe a fetus can feel pain based on research, and that I have seen rape victims go through many many emotional and mental struggles after an abortion, I don’t feel like it’s anyone’s right to force another person to have or destroy a part of THEIR body.

That being said, I have a friend who is a rape baby, and he is a wonderful person and contributes to society and his family and children love him.

I am a bastard, which means my father was not married to my mother, and he tried to force her into an abortion, she refused and bravely raised me alone, causing a lot of strain on her in many ways. Am I worth it? She says yes, so I’ll go with that.

Not many people alive and mentally healthy today would say they wish they were dead imo, so that leaves the impression that abortion is still murder, in my heart anyway. Thou shall not kill is one of God’s commandments as well.

@CWOTUS I don’t think I could be pro choice if I thought that a foetus should have equal rights as the person carrying it, could I?!

@SuperMouse Thank you, I am afraid my reading list is getting dreadfully long but I absolutely think it worth adding.
@KNOWITALL Thank you for your well thought out and reasoned approach. I don’t feel you took offense I just don’t think I made this clear in my last post. That I don’t believe all solutions or circumstances apply universally. That we have to have to have the right to make the difficult decision because no one knows our circumstances like we do. And of course a person regardless of their birth can be positive thing to the world.

I wanted to bring up the discussion that made me ask and this question and state my arguments. I am able to handle to objections or different theory because this is not over so much a personal topic for me.

He brought this when the lady called to talk about whether or not union’s should or should not be legal. She was rational and able to talk about it. So he railroaded her by asking her if he could ask just one question. Whether or not she believed in pro choice. Now how he chose to draw that as a parallel is beyond reason and astonishing in my opinion. But I understand he wanted to talk to her about something she wasn’t prepared for and throughly rankled her before coming back to the subject of unions.

But any way he chose to say that wrap it up in the end that by believing in unions where there is no option of being an independent worker is removing free will that she states she believes in using to justify abortion for she is inconsistent and there fore irrational. I would have simply said at that point that since he had the exact opposite view in each situation based on his own argument he was equally inconsistent.

But what he said inbetween was awful and I mean he asked good questions. It is a hard desicion and there is no right answer except that it should be legal because more harm would come until it isn’t. Or they find a way to raise children from early pregnancy and then have a method of caring for these children. Better birth control might help as well as educating the children before they have sex, since pharmisicts don’t seem to believe in always giving birth control this is another issue.. but he’s probably against that too.

But I would compare it too soldiers boys commiting “murder” guns for hire. Fighting other people’s wars. It is just as hot and morally iffy issue, that they usually defend. And yes I am stereotyping but this was a right wing talk show host so I feel pretty comfortable doing that in this case.

I enjoyed hearing people’s points of views and as always learned something thank you.

Well then, the Union really screwed my husband and I over when he was hurt on a job for them. :) Thanks rosehips.

Oh lol I wasn’t addressing all of my rant to you just the top part… :)

But I am sorry to hear that… And I have no idea how I feel about unions….. Seems like people get screwed regardless.. Would you like to have one arm twisted or the other? But then I haven’t researched it so that is just my general observation.

Just seems a little wrong that if you disagree with some one that you get abortion issues thrown in your face. Like: well I don’t like this one thing about you and your beliefs so therefore all of your beliefs are invalid…

My only problem with abortion is taxes. The government uses tax money to fund organizations such as Healthcare for the Homeless, Planned Parenthood, “free” clinics that provide abortions. Obama care guarantees this now. If abortionists want to surgically kill their babies, they should be the one’s paying for it. It’s their body, their choice, their financial problem. The same goes for any psychological damage or health problems they face after aborting. It’s all on them.

If abortionists want freedom of choice, then tax payers have the freedom to not pay for their abortions/health problems.

Also, abortionists who are welfare recipients should be given an ultimatum which will prevent abortion situations and also prevent welfare recipients from popping out more and more children for more and more welfare. If they want a welfare check, they must agree to being sterilized, or no check. Problem solved.

This too isn’t a complete solution since the existence of welfare is anti-freedom of choice, which means the real answer is to allow nature to run its course with abortionists and the problem will resolve itself. Perhaps some charity sucker will bite and help them out.

I am not pro abortion, I can see though why some do it. I just wish the person would be more “careful” to start with and not fall pregnant. Using abortion as a contraceptive method is abhorrent to me. But I can see why for e.g. rape victims would opt for it. But both kill an unborn child. It’s a difficult question.

@emilianate
I have the exact opposite idea. Since people in the west apparently do not have enough children anymore, the unemployed could be used for that. Require them to undergo parenthood training, paedagogy, etc, and then use them as government employed, regularly inspected, professional child breeders. If they are single, assign them a partner. If they are sterile, kill them, use them to raise orphans.

Actually, @emilianate the logical extension of your argument is that we should not use taxpayer funds to treat any medical care. Everyone should be on their own. Insurance should be outlawed. There’s no reason why we should help each other out. And if you are going to leave out any form of medical care, then logically, you must be opposed to the entire concept of health insurance.

Your position is inhumane. You do not get to pick and choose what health care you will insure for and what health care you won’t. Not in a public program. I hope you reconsider your position.

Tax payers shouldn’t pay for someone else’s treatment. As the argument goes, if it’s their body and their choice, then it’s their problem. The logic is fine. You have the freedom to purchase health insurance or not. You have the freedom to give charity (help out) or not. It’s all voluntary. If you force any of this, like we do now with welfare & obama care, then freedom of choice is gone.

If someone is going to claim that it’s their body, and their choice, then the problems that go along with their body and their choices, is their problem, not tax payers.

Anything other would be saying that it’s their body, their choice, but your problem, not theirs, which is insane.

Yet the most efficient health insurance is that with the largest number of insureds in the risk pool. I.e., health care costs the least when everyone is in the same risk pool.

You don’t seem to believe in health insurance because you want to only insure for certain things, which inevitably drives up costs. I just don’t get the logic behind that. It seems like ideology is more important than efficiency. But if you drive public policy on the basis of ideology, instead of science, you fracture the system and can not build a consensus. It’s like poking your own eye out.

The most efficient health insurance is when the government doesn’t intervene with it. The rise of Health care costs is a direct result of government intervention. That isn’t ideology, it’s data.

If you allow freedom of choice, it’s not up to me, it’s up to individuals to decide what is efficient, what is expensive, what is cheap, what is quality, what is garbage, etc.. We call this supply and demand. I think insurance is shit, so I won’t be purchasing it and will be dealing directly with the doctor. Someone else will think otherwise. The mechanics of supply and demand eventually lead to equilibriums in prices, in services, it everything.

The problem, of course is that the government has never and most likely will never allow this but that doesn’t mean I and other true capitalists wouldn’t keep trying to push it. When you remove freedom of choice, it’s no longer real capitalism.

I’m not sure why you’re changing the subject to the efficiencies of health insurance when we’re talking about freedom of choice, particularly with abortionists.

What is your response to what I have said in regards to that? It seems your argument is that
it is their body, their choice, but my problem, not theirs. In-other-words, you want freedom of choice when it suits you and remove it when you got problems. How convenient, but you cannot have it both ways. If you demand freedom, then except full responsibility and allow everyone to share the same freedoms, not selective rights.

You said you didn’t want to pay your tax dollars for abortions. And I’m saying that’s a health insurance issue.

Competition in health insurance raises costs. That’s due to the nature of insurance. The most efficient insurance has a single risk pool. Everyone is in it. You’d need a single administrator, too. Most likely the government, but it could be Blue Cross or anyone. You could let out that contract. But still, you want everyone in the same risk pool.

You, by insisting on competing insurers, are stating opposition to efficiency. There can only be ideological reasons for this. You want an insurance product that only pays for health care you approve of, and that doesn’t include abortions. For you, that is worth the much higher cost.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who are willing to pay more for ideological points of view. You are collectively costing the rest of us a lot of money. Our health system is probably ten to fifteen percent less efficient than it would be under a single payer system. That amounts to hundreds of billions of wasted dollars. All because of people who are ideologically opposed to efficiency, due to fixations on things like abortions and birth control and other issues where their judgments are more important than the benefit of society.

No, not at all. Competition lowers insurance prices, its just that the silly government with it’s “fairness” restricts competition with regulations. Regulations ruin the mechanics of how insurance companies operate. They take the hit, and put it back on to the consumer. This is why we have high costs. The opposite of efficiency. If they were allowed to run like car and home insurance, you would have cost problems.

I don’t want healthcare at all. Any insurance problem is the abortionists problem, not mine.
You might want healthcare to cover your abortions, someone might want their car insurance to cover their oil changes, doesn’t mean its going to happen. It’s up to you to negotiate a deal with them. They have the right to refuse you if you’re sick, and they have the right to charge you a higher premium if you’re a higher risk, or if you want these extras like birth control pills or oil changes.

The problem is they’re regulated and are not allowed to do these things, hence the costs.

@emilianate what about the fact that if we don’t use tax dollars to pay to terminate the pregnancy we’ll be using tax dollars for at least eighteen years to support the mother and the child she can’t afford?

@emilianate Try to be logical. A single risk pool is the most efficient. You can not get lower prices by breaking up the risk pool into competing groups, unless you allow caregivers to turn away patients. That’e illegal right now. There is no possible way insurance competition can compete with a single risk pool. You’re just not making logical sense. You keep on spouting ideology. What you wish to be true, without looking at facts. I can’t keep repeating this.

@SuperMouse,

The abortionists argue its their body and their choice. Why would we fund their abortions or why would we help them if they follow through with the pregnancy? If it’s their body, their choice, then any problem is their problem, not societies. No welfare for abortion, not welfare for her and her kid. If she wants help, someone may volunteer to help (charity organizations).

There are millions of irresponsible people in this country, so we need to take care of everyone’s problems? It’s her body, her choice, her problem, nor societies.

@wundayatta,

Do you own car insurance? When I was in my early twenties, I paid ten times then what my parents paid. Why? I was an inexperienced, risky driver who drove a better class car.

My parents were experienced and drove a simple car, hence they paid less. If I crash my car, my parents don’t have to see their premium raised. The premium is raised on me.

If you’re sick and you want insurance, you’re a drain on the insurance. A major drain. It’s not even worth it for them to take your money and you won’t have much money left since you’re too sick to work. You either don’t get to have insurance or the insurance company has you charge you a much higher premium. You have to pay much much more than someone who is healthy and lives a non-risky lifestyle.

The cost shouldn’t and doesn’t get transferred to the healthy guy.

@emilianate it becomes society’s problem when a parent brings an unwanted child into the world then does nothing to take care of the child much less give it some life skills. Where does that leave an unloved, unwanted, unskilled person? it could quite easily leave the person a criminal who is not only a threat to society but a cost to society when we have to try them for their crimes then pay for their incarceration. This mom who is irresponsible enough to have one unplanned pregnancy is likely to have another, then another, now we are supporting four irresponsible people. It seems as though you are taking a fairly short-sided view. It is also rather inhumane, but that is a different discussion.

It’s inhumane to abort, it’s inhumane to have children you cannot feed, it’s inhumane to force people to pay for something they do not consent to.

To solve your dilemma, you have something called ball chain gangs. Prisoners we will forced to work for free, thus returning back whatever tax care they get in prison. It pays for itself.

Not everyone resorts to criminal activity. They leave the country or if you look at Africa, most of the kids die out and some survive. Hence why the mother keeps getting pregnant in hopes that out of the 20 that come out, 1–2 survives.

@wundayatta,

Also, an example with home insurance. If you build a simple house next to a volcano or a beach head, you will pay a much higher premium then someone who builds a more sturdy house and away from known dangers. You want to be protected from floods, then you have to pay a lot more.

@emilianate You analogies show me where your thinking is coming from, and it is understandable that if you believe health is no different from cars and houses, you would structure health insurance markets that way. Unfortunately, health is very different, and for a number of structural reasons, a market in health insurance does not make sense.

We don’t know who will be sick. Maybe if we do gene scans we can know, but mostly, we don’t. And we don’t want to put people with bad genes in different risk pools. That would be nuts. That would destroy the point of insurance. Health insurance is a special case and your competition model doesn’t work there. If you studied it, you’d know. Your analogies are completely off base.

If you have a history of cancer, heart disease, etc.. your premiums go up. There is much you can genetically test for.

No, the problem is you only see fairness and no economics. Nothing a liberal ever presents works out economically and defeats the goal of fairness. It always ends in self-defeat.

I always point to California where liberals achieved every single policy they every wanted on the state level and as you can see, it’s the worst state in the country. Study it because that is what you want on a nationally level.

@SuperMouse I take issue with your statement “it becomes society’s problem when a parent brings an unwanted child into the world then does nothing to take care of the child much less give it some life skills.”

First of all, you assume the child has no sense of personal responsiblity as they mature, which is incorrect.

Second of all, even without life skills, such as a mentally retarded child, they can still love and be loved, it’s cruel to say they are society’s problem. I know you didn’t say that specifically but it could be applicable.

Lastly, as a woman who was raised a bastard because my father is an a$$hole, and a mom who had to ask the state for help when I was 12 or so, it’s a difficult situation. Would I rather be dead or broke? Of course not.

Why would you assume some of us would be in prison because we weren’t aborted? Isn’t it just as possible the aborted child would be President or the next Einstein?

@emilianate Once again, you fail to look at the data. What is the most populace state in the union? What state has an economy bigger than all but a handful of nations in the world? What state is the place where a huge proportion of the innovation in the economy comes from?

The answer to all those questions is California. California is where everyone wants to go. Indeed, is was conservatives that totally fucked over the state with prop 13, but that may get fixed soon. I think you’re living in an Alice in Wonderland world. You’re looking in a mirror that reverses everything and turns it upside down. I can’t explain your views, otherwise.

Okay, lets look at the data. 55 Reasons Why California Is The Worst State In America And The Entire State Is Rapidly Becoming A Bright, Shining Example Of Everything That Is Wrong With America

Then compare all the data of California to Texas which has a similar population and attempts to put opposing policies.

I’m sorry. That site was unreadable. Pop-up ads all over the place. Also looks to me like that title was misnamed. Should be 55 reasons why California is the best state in America. Mostly that looks like the whining of some lame conservative.

You have a funny idea of data, too. That wasn’t data. That was opinion.

You better watch out. I might grow to like you despite your antidiluvian opinions. You certainly demonstrate a lot of energy and enthusiasm.

I figured you would say something like “pop-up” ads. I’ll help you out though.

Information comes from the census bureau, bureau of labor statistics, and cal.gov. It’s data, not an opinion piece.

The results of liberal policies in California…

Highest poverty rate.
Highest unemployment
Highest debt in the country.
Highest cost of of living.
Highest and most amount of taxes
Massive decline in revenue.
Highest small business failure rate.
Worst state to do business for the past 8 years.
Worst state in new business creation.
Highest amount of regulations.
Highest paid union teachers yet students are ranked last place in math and reading.
Lowest bond rating.
Ranked Worst Judicial system.
Highest crime rate
100,000 more people moved out of the state of California in 2011 than moved into it.

Here, i’ll get you started and you can look up the rest.

Some compared results of conservative v.s liberal policies.

Texas unemployment rate 6.6% – Bureau of labor Statistics Octorber 2012
Poverty Rate – 16.5% – Census Bureau 2012
Cost-of-living index is 91.37 – Council for Community and Economic Research

California unemployment rate 10.1% – Bureau of Labor Statistics October 2012
Poverty Rate – 23.5% – Census Bureau 2012
Cost-of-living index – 129.07 – Council for Community and Economic Research