New SD banning abortion..

[Sylvester McBean]

It could be worse!

that's not the response I expect to see from someone who 'prays for world peace'. I thought you'd expect better, given your faith.

 

[TNKBELL]

that's not the response I expect to see from someone who 'prays for world peace'. I thought you'd expect better, given your faith.

Of course it should be better, but the reality is that we are here. That is something to be thankful for...is it not?

 

[Sylvester McBean]

thankful for or just aware of? do you think a fetus is aware it is alive at any stage?

 

[AnaheimGirl]

The only person it has affected is, indeed, the person who would today have been 18 years old. Who knows what they could have accomplished with their lives; they weren’t given a chance.

Why so sure this person would have accomplished anything worthwhile? Who knows? He might have committed terrible crimes as well. It's likely a wash, with those who would have done something good in life being balanced out by those who would have done something bad. Not a good reason (IMO) to outlaw abortion.

Why don’t you keep them from getting in the situation in the first place? Or is it easier to deal with the consequences after the fact?

Maybe because they aren't her(him? sorry, don't remember now to whom you're responding)? One person cannot "keep" someone else from getting into a situation, short of locking them up in isolation or a chastity belt. You can do your best to instill your values in your children and teach them how to avoid such situations, but at some point, they will be making their own decisions. Or, they may be raped, or drink something stronger than they expected and lose a little good judgement temporarily. Heck, who cares? It's really no one else's business how a woman gets pregnant, the point is that sometimes things don't go as planned, even in the "best" of families.

 

[AnaheimGirl]

So if your mother or father brother, sister, cousin, ect is making life inconvenient should they be put to death as well? Come on people, one step leads to another, don't tell me that a fetus is not a person, it is unfortunate that our society lacks respect for life period. How about infanticide, is this justifiable? What is? Where does it end? If we don't nip murder in the bud now..what will our future hold?

Why on earth would abortion lead to the justification of murder? I have never heard of such a thing, even from the most zealous pro-choice leaders!

The big difference between killing an annoying relative and having an abortion is that there are other ways a person can rid themselves of a born person without killing them. The primary goal in an abortion isn't to "kill" the embryo/fetus, it's to get it out of the woman's body. There is no way at this time to do so without killing it, so that is what happens. I do think that an embryo/fetus is a life, and I don't think abortion should be taken lightly. But I think the rights of the born, breathing woman supercede those of the unborn life inside of her, and I don't think anyone should have the right to live inside another human being against her wishes.

So all unwanted children should be killed by abortion??

No, no one has ever said this, either. The whole point of being pro-choice is to give women the chance to decide for themselves. No true pro-choicer would ever suggest that all unwanted pregnancies be aborted. Believe it or not, many of us think of abortion as more a necessary evil, than a utopian ideal.

 

[VSL]

So if your mother or father brother, sister, cousin, ect is making life inconvenient should they be put to death as well?

You're comparing a rape/sexual abuse victim wanting to terminate a pregnancy because she would not be able to face
- carrying her rapists/abusers child
- giving birth to and caring for her rapists/abusers child
- her rapist/abuser returning to claim visiting rights with the child
to killing someone who is annoying?

Yeah, great comparison

I also agree with the fact that the study you quoted is seriously flawed because
- it was voluntary (I'm sure rape victims have enough on their plate without filling in pretty meaningless - to them - surveys)
- victims of rape who did answer may have lied because they felt ashamed

 

[momo3hods]

It will only make it more dangerous for mother and child.[/QUOTE]

How much more dangerous can it be for a child????

 

[chobie]

The actual percentages of pregnancy due to rape and incest would be less than 1%...this is the crutch and platform to legalize murder. One crime such as sexual abuse does not justify another, homicide. Very Sad. So if your mother or father brother, sister, cousin, ect is making life inconvenient should they be put to death as well? Come on people, one step leads to another, don't tell me that a fetus is not a person, it is unfortunate that our society lacks respect for life period. How about infanticide, is this justifiable? What is? Where does it end? If we don't nip murder in the bud now..what will our future hold? And as another posted on the flip side stated...I will fight this with my every breath!!

Legalized murder? Like the death penalty and war?

And yes, I will tell you:

A FETUS IS NOT A PERSON!

 

[chobie]

Why don’t you keep them from getting in the situation in the first place? Or is it easier to deal with the consequences after the fact?

Well, duh. Of course I would prefer it if they did not get pregnant before they were ready, but if they should accidently get pregnant, or be raped or have health issues that would require an abortion to protect their health, the we will deal with the consequences of having an abortion. If that means flying to Canada or some other country so then so be it.

In the meantime, since your so concerned with children, there are thousands of them dying in this world from hunger and disease, at this very moment.

 

[chobie]

As for South Dakota, maybe instead of worrying about the 800 blastocysts that don't come to fruition in that state each year, they should worry about the 27,000 children living in poverty in South Dakota and the18,000 that have no health insurance.

Of that's right, its only potential children they are concerned about -- not actual ones.

 

[chobie]

Why so sure this person would have accomplished anything worthwhile? Who knows? He might have committed terrible crimes as well. It's likely a wash, with those who would have done something good in life being balanced out by those who would have done something bad. Not a good reason (IMO) to outlaw abortion.

Actually, there are statistics that show that the crime rate went down starting 20 years after abortion became legal.

 

[ncbyrne]

it's an individual right to decide whether that form of life is allowed to live, not one left to be decided by elected officials.

Prior to Roe vs. Wade in the 1970's, abortions were illegal. An unborn child was indeed a legal life and no one was legally allowed to kill a fetus. Was it not "elected officials" that made abortion a legal right in the first place? Makes me ill to think that a person's life could hang in the balance between the aisles of "justice" in Wash DC! This whole topic makes me squeamish - there are such passionate opinions, and good arguments, on both sides. It will never be resolved satisfactorily to a majority.

 

[eyeoreismyhero]

Legalized murder? Like the death penalty and war?

And yes, I will tell you:

A FETUS IS NOT A PERSON!

Opinions are like ***holes, eveyone has them and thinks there's doesn't stink. Your is no more revelant than anyone elses! Sorry to burst your bubble!

 

[mickeyfan2]

Actually, there are statistics that show that the crime rate went down starting 20 years after abortion became legal.

Crime is primarily committed by 15-25 year old males. Less of them means less crime. I would not condone abortions as a solution to crime. Many males don't do these things and eventually become good husbands and fathers.

 

[chobie]

Prior to Roe vs. Wade in the 1970's, abortions were illegal. An unborn child was indeed a legal life and no one was legally allowed to kill a fetus. Was it not "elected officials" that made abortion a legal right in the first place? Makes me ill to think that a person's life could hang in the balance between the aisles of "justice" in Wash DC! This whole topic makes me squeamish - there are such passionate opinions, and good arguments, on both sides. It will never be resolved satisfactorily to a majority.

Prior to abortion being made illegal in the early part of last century, it was legal until the time of quickening, which is about the 4th month. Some politicians decided to make it illegal and then doctors advocated to make it legal again because of the horrors of back alley abortions.

Your right that it is sickening that the politicians should be making these decisions --it should be the choice of the woman.

 

[chobie]

Crime is primarily committed by 15-25 year old males. Less of them means less crime. I would not condone abortions as a solution to crime. Many males don't do these things and eventually become good husbands and fathers.

The statistics were the percentage of crimes committed based on population.
Not numbers of crimes committed overall.

And I'm not pointing this out to condone reducing the crime rate by not bringing unwanted children into the world. I'm bringing it up to point out the speciousness of the "an aborted child could have grown up to be another Picasso". Sure and it also could grow up to be another Hitler.

 

[VSL]

Well, duh. Of course I would prefer it if they did not get pregnant before they were ready, but if they should accidently get pregnant, or be raped or have health issues that would require an abortion to protect their health, the we will deal with the consequences of having an abortion. If that means flying to Canada or some other country so then so be it.

This is a good point (highlighting mine).

I'd like to know how pro-lifers feel about abortions that arise from
- rape
- health issues that could kill mother/both mother and child

Is it all cut and dry 'pro-life', no matter what?
What if it was you in one of those situations? Would you risk dying and losing your baby rather than getting an abortion?

I think the truth is that pro-choice people are pro-choice because there are circumstances where abortion is the best choice for the individual through no fault of their own, and I'm sure that the vast majority of pro-choicers agree with the pro-lifers in that, where applicable (ie, not in cases of rape/incest/serious health complications, etc.), people need to take more responsibility when it comes to sex, etc.

The major difference is that pro-choice believes
- women should have the right to decide what happens to their own body
- women should not suffer further trauma after sex attacks
- women's health should be put before the unborn
while pro-life believes
- baby carried to full-term no matter what (because you can't be pro-life and support the womans right to have an abortion should the situation call for it, can you.. because that's 'murder' in pro-life eyes?)

 

[AnaheimGirl]

Crime is primarily committed by 15-25 year old males. Less of them means less crime.

Actually, Chobie said the crime rate went down, not the number of crimes. A "rate" is usually expressed as a percentage of population, so less people wouldn't mean a lower crime rate. Even if it did, I'm pretty sure that the U.S. population has continued to increase, despite abortion.

I would not condone abortions as a solution to crime.

No one has. This was in response to my response to another poster who asked what the aborted fetus might have accomplished, as if it would have only been good. I agree. I don't think that abortions are a solution to crime any more than I think banning abortions are a solution to finding the next Jonas Salk or Martin Luther King.

(ETA: oops, guess I should refresh when I walk away from the 'puter mid-post. Sorry to repeat exactly what you said, Chobie.)

 

[chobie]

The Rights of the Born
by Anne Lamott

Everything was going swimmingly on the panel. The subject was politics and faith, and I was on stage with two clergymen with progressive spiritual leanings, and a moderator who is liberal and Catholic. We were having a discussion with the audience of 1,300 people in Washington about many of the social justice topics on which we agree — the immorality of the federal budget, the wrongness of the president's war in Iraq. Then an older man came to the mike and raised the issue of abortion, and everyone just lost his or her mind.
Or, at any rate, I did.

Maybe it was the way in which the man couched the question, which was about how we should reconcile our progressive stances on peace and justice with the "murder of a million babies every year in America." The man who asked the question was soft-spoken, neatly and casually dressed.

First Richard, a Franciscan priest, answered that this is indeed a painful issue but that it is not the only "pro-life" issue that progressives — even Catholics — should concern themselves with during elections. There are also the matters of capital punishment and the war in Iraq, and of HIV. Then Jim, an evangelical, spoke about the need to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and the need to diffuse abortion as a political issue, by welcoming pro-choice and pro-life supporters to the discussion, with equal respect for their positions. He spoke gently about how "morally ambiguous" the issue is.

I sat there simmering, like a samovar; nice Jesusy me. The moderator turned to me and asked quietly if I would like to respond. I did: I wanted to respond by pushing over our table.

Instead, I shook my head. I love and respect the Franciscan and the evangelical, and agree with them 90-plus percent of the time. So I did not say anything, at first.

Then, when I was asked to answer the next question, I paused, and returned to the topic of abortion. There was a loud buzzing in my head, the voice of reason that says, "You have the right to remain silent," but the voice of my conscience was insistent. I wanted to express calmly, eloquently, that pro-choice people understand that there are two lives involved in an abortion — one born (the pregnant woman) and one not (the fetus) — but that the born person must be allowed to decide what is right.

Also, I wanted to wave a gun around, to show what a real murder looks like. This tipped me off that I should hold my tongue, until further notice. And I tried.

But then I announced that I needed to speak out on behalf of the many women present in the crowd, including myself, who had had abortions, and the women whose daughters might need one in the not-too-distant future — people who must know that teenage girls will have abortions, whether in clinics or dirty backrooms. Women whose lives had been righted and redeemed by Roe vs. Wade. My answer was met with some applause but mostly a shocked silence.

Pall is a good word. And it did not feel good to be the cause of that pall. I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it's all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.

But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor — but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.

I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's ******* business. This got their attention.

A cloud of misery fell over the room, and the stage. Finally, Jim said something unifying enough for us to proceed — that liberals must not treat people with opposing opinions on abortion with contempt and exclusion, partly because it's tough material, and partly because it is so critical that we win these next big elections.

It was not until the reception that I finally realized part of the problem — no one had told me that the crowd was made up largely of Catholics.

I had flown in at dawn on a red-eye, and, in my exhaustion, had somehow missed this one tiny bit of information. I was mortified: I had to eat my body weight in chocolate just to calm myself.

But then I asked myself: Would I, should I, have given a calmer answer? Wouldn't it have been more useful and harder to dismiss me if I had sounded more reasonable, less — what is the word — spewy?

Maybe I could have presented my position in a less strident, divisive manner. But the questioner's use of the words "murder" and "babies" had put me on the defensive. Plus I am so confused about why we are still having to argue with patriarchal sentimentality about teeny weenie so-called babies — some microscopic, some no bigger than the sea monkeys we used to send away for — when real, live, already born women, many of them desperately poor, get such short shrift from the current administration.

Most women like me would much rather use our time and energy fighting to make the world safe and just and fair for the children we do have, and do love — and for the children of New Orleans and the children of Darfur. I am old and tired and menopausal and would mostly like to be left alone: I have had my abortions, and I have had a child.

But as a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that: It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society.

During the reception, an old woman came up to me, and said, "If you hadn't spoken out, I would have spit," and then she raised her fist in the power salute. We huddled together for awhile, and ate M&Ms to give us strength. It was a kind of communion, for those of us who still believe that civil rights and equality and even common sense will somehow be sovereign, some day.

Anne Lamott is a novelist and essayist. Her most recent book is "Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith" (Riverhead, 2005).

© 2006 The Los Angeles Times

 

[cardaway]

As for South Dakota, maybe instead of worrying about the 800 blastocysts that don't come to fruition in that state each year, they should worry about the 27,000 children living in poverty in South Dakota and the18,000 that have no health insurance.

Of that's right, its only potential children they are concerned about -- not actual ones.

And it would be more if people wanted to live there.

I'm sorry people don't like to hear it, but the majority of people who call themselves "pro-life" vote down programs and funding that help children in poverty the majority of the time. Too much socialism, but a government controlled by religion, no problem.

Even worse are the "pro-lifers" who would still allow them for rape victims, like that life is worth any less than the ones that came from consentual sex.

"Pro-life" indeed.