Abortion
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@majorrage said in Abortion:
I'll never understand anti abortionists.
I remember in 3rd form English we had to do a presentation about something we were passionate about and a bible bashing girl at school did abortion. I had a massive argument with her about it (we were encouraged to debate), she ended up hysterical and in tears as my points were strong.
Anywho I got kicked out of the class, her parents tried to get me suspended and i had to apologize. Ironically, my English teacher who I couldn't stand and never got on with sided strongly with me.
I'd be interested to hear your points in favour of abortion. I can see strong arguments on both sides of the debate, so don't really see it as a clear-cut issue. People often mention rape, but those cases make up an absolutely tiny minority of reasons for abortions in the real world.
One question I saw asked to people that were pro-choice went along the lines of: "if your partner was 3 months pregnant with your child which you both wanted to keep, and someone kicked her in the stomach repeatedly killing the baby inside, would you want them to be charged with assault or murder?".
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@antipodean yep. It's not really a man's call.
But it's bloody complicated for involved men too
20 odd years ago a women I was dating fell pregnant and aborted. I paid (wjoop de do) and offered to go with her. She was genuinely impressed.
The situation suited us both.20 years later me and my dear wife can't have kids
Life is seldom like what we're fed or what we see on tv.
Life's full of triumph and disaster usually in equal measure
Personal choices in life in a manner where people don't get too hurt has to be the objective with complicated matters.
Finally, the woman gets the final say amd all involved must support that and be responsible for that- in my opinion
Yeah, I guess it will always come down to the female as at the end of the day it's her body. But I'd much rather the debate wasn't framed as a "men vs women" thing (not that you were doing that). It's far more complicated than that. I knew a bloke that desperately wanted kids, his partner got pregnant and then went and aborted without telling him - that affected him really badly and he never ended up having kids as a result.
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Statements that it is a women's choice and that men cannot have a say is one sided simplistic rubbish.
Saying it is a womens choice is an argument, one I completely disagree with. But is it is only one side of an argument, not a full stop
I used to be pro choice, but have changed to pro life in recent years,
I think life begins at conception, I think that form that point on a human will be created. Any act to stop that creation is murder. Just because I am a male does not give me the right to ignore what I consider is murder.
When do others think that a human is created? It is a fundamental question in abortion, and one that must be answered if you are to have to have a credible opinion. -
@no-quarter said in Abortion:
@majorrage said in Abortion:
I'll never understand anti abortionists.
I remember in 3rd form English we had to do a presentation about something we were passionate about and a bible bashing girl at school did abortion. I had a massive argument with her about it (we were encouraged to debate), she ended up hysterical and in tears as my points were strong.
Anywho I got kicked out of the class, her parents tried to get me suspended and i had to apologize. Ironically, my English teacher who I couldn't stand and never got on with sided strongly with me.
We had a cretin like that at school , she gave a speech at assembly talking about doctors ripping babies limbs apart inside the womb. A girl who had recently had an abortion left the assembly in tears.
The speech makers physical appearance and personality would have been pretty effective protection against an unwanted pregnancy imho.The cretin wasn't wrong though, they do have to rip the baby apart in the womb to get it out.
Of course they do, do people think sucking a baby out with a vacuum is not horrific? If you are going to end a human life, you should be able to deal with all the details of ending that life. Fucking bizarre that talking about a baby getting ripped apart and its life ended, is worse than the a baby actually being ripped apart and its life ended.
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Never had to experience a choice regarding abortion but the mrs and I did suffer a miscarriage the first time she fell pregnant, twin boys. Blew us away, panic and amazement all at the same time
Unfortunately we discovered we were carrying (well my wife was) monoamniotic twins, meaning they were sharing the same amniotic sac. Pretty rare and high risk of not surviving.
Well at a 16 week scam our worse fears were realised when during the scan they couldn’t find any heartbeats. Both had passed away, likely due to being tangled in each other’s umbilical cord.
Because my wife was so far along we had to birth them out, basically we suffered through the worse 2 days of our lives. Afterwards i got to view them, North Shore hospital was amazing. They were placed in a nice near basket.
They were tiny but they looked like little people, features and limbs were easy to make out
All I can say now it’s up to the person carrying their baby, im all for choice ( they will have to live with the decision for the rest of their life) but they have to realise at 12+ weeks and beyond that what they are carrying is not some little pea shaped formless life. -
And btw I do not think abortion should be made illegal. Only because it wont work. It is impractical. I wish it could be enforced, but it wont be, you would just get back street abortions.
What needs to happen is that it needs to up fornt and centre about what is involved, ALL the gruesome details, we need to bring abortion right into the mainstream, including what is involved in explicit and graphic detail and educate society and harsh level.
You going to pay someone else to extinguish a human life, you should at least have the decency to have full knowledge of what you are paying to someone else to do to a human life.If you could create some sort of alternate reality where that babies adult self gets a chance to beg for its life.... how many abortions would happen? ZERO.
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@baron-silas-greenback said in Abortion:
And btw I do not think abortion should be made illegal. Only because it wont work. It is impractical. I wish it could be enforced, but it wont be, you would just get back street abortions.
What needs to happen is that it needs to up fornt and centre about what is involved, ALL the gruesome details, we need to bring abortion right into the mainstream, including what is involved in explicit and graphic detail and educate society and harsh level.
You going to pay someone else to extinguish a human life, you should at least have the decency to have full knowledge of what you are paying to someone else to do to a human life.Correct about the warts and all discussions.
So many issues need this.
The 3rd world deals with tragedies and realism far better because the issues aren't sanitized like in the west:::
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Yeah once you read what actually goes down in an abortion and what a babies development is it is very hard to support the usual pro choice arguments. It is absolutely horrific to hear about and I worry that pregnant women aren't fully informed about what actually happens because those pushing and supporting it sure do not want to say it. Imagine finding it out after the fact? My friends who have had abortions still cannot talk about it without completely breaking down, I think its underestimated just how much psychological damage it does.
I understand that women have the final say but I don't buy an argument that just because i have different shaped genitalia I can't have thoughts on the subject. It also is a real cop out of responsibility for blokes that is totally unfair, and I say that knowing full well a younger me would take the cop-out no worries at all.
It genuinely concerns me the amount of women who support it right up until birth and think of it as some sort of womens liberation. In my mind if the baby is of an age when it can realistically live outside of the womb then killing it is absolutely murder against the most vulnerable. That is where I currently draw my line, morally its not great but I also genuinely believe an unwanted child can cause great damage to society as well. I think it was the original freakenomics book which made a case for abortion drastically reducing violent crime.
Crowder has done a couple of 'Change my mind' videos about it.
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I've always been generally against abortion but I wonder what I would have done had I been in my teens or early 20s and knocked up a onenight stand or someone I had no real feelings for. Obviously my more mature self would say that I had to take responsibility and that I only had myself to blame. But there and then? I'm pretty sure I would have taken the "easy" option or advised her to. One thing's for sure, with 2 kids now I reckon it would be impossible not to think about the kid I had aborted. At the end of the day and regardless of inconvenience, effect on lifestyle/career etc. you're still terminating a life. That's the reality. I don't oppose a woman's right to choose and obviously there are some instances in which abortion may be the best option, but the consequences should not be understated.
A good friend of mine just had his third kid. It was totally unplanned and has placed a huge strain on him both financially and in terms of looking after his 2 other very young children. The easy option would have been to abort and move on. But then the beautiful little boy I held the other day would not even exist. It's difficult to justify how you can terminate a life in that situation.
Obviously it can be a complex topic and certainly one that is far more nuanced than "it's my body" vs "any form of abortion is a sin".
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Finally, the woman gets the final say amd all involved must support that and be responsible for that- in my opinion
Agreed. There's absolutely no reason why a pregnancy conceived in a mutually consenting act can't be discussed between the parties involved, but ultimately the person biologically tasked with carrying the pregnancy to term must get the final say what happens to their body. Anything else is the domain of toxic value systems replicated across the world in shitholes where women are worth less than cattle.
I certainly can't stand the moralising arseholes who want to tell others what decisions they should make or how they should live their lives. A simple application of the golden rule applies.
@baron-silas-greenback said in Abortion:
If you could create some sort of alternate reality where that babies adult self gets a chance to beg for its life.... how many abortions would happen? ZERO.
Next up: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong get to argue why they shouldn't be aborted.
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@antipodean yep final say is the woman's. Everything else is just posturing leading to the woman concerned deciding.
Would anyone take the wishes of a boyfriend over their daughter's?
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@baron-silas-greenback said in Abortion:
When do others think that a human is created? It is a fundamental question in abortion, and one that must be answered if you are to have to have a credible opinion.
My mind'snot made up but if we say a human is a person upon birth then we can simplify the ethics and legalities.
We've got plenty of baby murders and atrocities without stuffing abortion in the same pigeon hole
It would still be an assault on a woman's right if somebody willfully aborted a foetus against the woman's will then we could deal with that as a separate offence
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@antipodean said in Abortion:
Finally, the woman gets the final say amd all involved must support that and be responsible for that- in my opinion
Agreed. There's absolutely no reason why a pregnancy conceived in a mutually consenting act can't be discussed between the parties involved, but ultimately the person biologically tasked with carrying the pregnancy to term must get the final say what happens to their body. Anything else is the domain of toxic value systems replicated across the world in shitholes where women are worth less than cattle.
I certainly can't stand the moralising arseholes who want to tell others what decisions they should make or how they should live their lives. A simple application of the golden rule applies.
@baron-silas-greenback said in Abortion:
If you could create some sort of alternate reality where that babies adult self gets a chance to beg for its life.... how many abortions would happen? ZERO.
Next up: Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong get to argue why they shouldn't be aborted.
It doesn't end with carrying the child, the responsibility (in theory at least) never ends for the lifetime of that child
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@baron-silas-greenback said in Abortion:
When do others think that a human is created? It is a fundamental question in abortion, and one that must be answered if you are to have to have a credible opinion.
My mind'snot made up but if we say a human is a person upon birth then we can simplify the ethics and legalities.
We've got plenty of baby murders and atrocities without stuffing abortion in the same pigeon hole
It would still be an assault on a woman's right if somebody willfully aborted a foetus against the woman's will then we could deal with that as a separate offence
It would simplify the legalities, but not the ethics. Ethically the argument that makes most sense is that life begins at conception, but that would rule out abortion altogether.
I'm not completely comfortable with either of those arguments. Aborting a baby at 8-9 months is nuts, and trying to make abortion completely illegal is impractical. So then you're left trying to draw some arbitrary line to determine when it is still "OK". Which is impossible.
Technically it's illegal in NZ, but you can get access to an abortion with consent from a Doctor (I believe). I think some form of consent from a doctor or psychologist is a good idea, not to try and restrict a woman's rights, but to ensure she and the father have all of the support required for what is a horrific ordeal.
There's no easy answer, and I don't think just saying "its a woman's choice" is much of an answer at all.
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@no-quarter Are there restrictions on late term abortion? An abortion at 8-9 months is basically birth and I can't imagine that any doctor would do that. Funny how posters don't want opinions to be based on political leanings but this thread is in the politics section....
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The laws in Australia are State based and hence have quite some variance. In NSW and QLD it's still technically a criminal offence, but with the usual exemptions.
According to Wiki: Full-term abortions on demand are legal in the ACT as there are no gestational limits. In the NT it's illegal after 24 weeks unless needed to save the woman's life. Other States look to vary between those.
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@antipodean Full term abortions? That must be a massive hippocratic dilemma for the doctors asked to perform a procedure like that. The mother would have to have a pretty damn good reason to have carried most of the term only to terminate. Most mums know they are pregnant inside 3 months. My personal opinion is that in most cases termination should be done inside the first 15-16 weeks (assuming someone discovered they were pregnant at 3 months they would have 1 month to get the procedure done), and any case that is later in the pregnancy should be held to a higher standard.
Speaking as someone who works in healthcare, we have to be very careful from a medicolegal standpoint.
Patients are fully informed of the nature of a procedure, the risks, benefits, potential complications etc. Just because it is ultimately the woman's choice does not mean that each case should and would receive a great deal of counselling before having such a procedure done. With regard to keeping babies and putting them up for adoption, is it still widespread practice in NZ? (honest question, I have no idea) There are lots of people that can't have children that would love to adopt I'd imagine -
@canefan Only my conjecture, but I can't imagine it happens often. If at all. Certainly not something I could wrap my head around.
But the ACT is among the most liberal of electorates. It is after all a government town. We have a rainbow roundabout.
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I just don't consider a fertilised egg to be a human being. I don't consider destroying a fetilised egg to be murder. Murder is wrong because you take away an individual's right to experience life further. If choosing to have an abortion is wrong because you are taking away a zygote's right to exist, I don't see the difference between that and choosing not to have a baby at all.
If you choose to have a baby, you are bringing a life into the world. If you have an abortion you are choosing to not bring that life into the world. If you choose not to get pregnant in the first place, you are also choosing not to bring that potential life into the world, it just isn't a specific life at that point.
Obviously this all changes at what ever point you consider the zygote to be a human. Personally, I like the way abortion is administered in New Zealand.