Abortion>
uncle herb
I think a man should be allowed to sign a document insisting upon abortion. If the woman does not agree, she can bear the child, but the man would be exempt from any obligations of support.
Saint Bob
But to be fair, the document should be done up before you have sex, and there should be an "I have read and understand" line for the woman.
Jack Daniels
well then why can the man be forced to pay for a baby he doesn't want in an envirenment where he's not welcome/.
chester cheetah
What uncle herb said.
Jack Daniels
it does seem at least closer to fair, if not right, (TO what uncle herb said.)
LA REINE
except that if you have these documents then you get into such legal rigimarole. and they'd never have any effect. if you signed it after pregnancy was discovered, most guys would refused and so absolve themselves of any responsibility. and if you signed it before sex (as if) i'm sure we'd have debates about coercion and not being properly informed and the like.
uncle herb
T'lar, please refrain from flaming when I am trying to conduct meaningful and insightful dialogue. Thank you.
john hinkley
see you dont understand im going to be a huge hit.
it will be called:
ABORT THE FETUS
and you will be forced to buy it and all subsequent releases
god im gonna be huge
shane
it's true, he's a genius of manipulation
GB
I can't really understand why there would be any debate at all for the abortion topic. Something like 44% of all women say they would get abortions even if they were illegal.
So why make it illegal? People are going to do i anyways, right? And if you make it illegal, it wiil be unsafe and will spread diseases all over communities who thought that life was all perfect and happy.
Livia
and then there are the men who are so "sensitive" that they dump the woman as soon as they find out she's pregnant
JayDee
what about the k00l ones that hang-out for a while
then hosem'-off later after they get bored bored bored
and come back to check in every once in a while and be Cool Daddy
and wreck the woman
and wreck the kids
and do this four times in one decade
yeah
Mr. Oh-So Sensitive
right...
JayDee
I remember the horror stories going-round when it was illegal
and what happened to women at the hands of the butchers...
john hinkley
im gonna use drugs and the government to make sure everyone
buys ABORT THE FETUS or MUSIC TO LOSE YOUR MUSICAL TASTE BY
oh god youll be sorry
GB
ah... nevermind... I see it's topic drift time. I understand.
shane
pissona rock
ss
uncle herb
Discussing abortion is a waste of time, anyhow. It's one of those issues where not only will neither side compromise, but neither side is even *capable* of seeing things from the point of view of the other.
huncke the junkie
Anyone see the story about the Florida woman who couldn't afford an abortion so she shot herself in the womb. The baby survived for awhile outside the womb, then died. The woman was charged with murder.
GB
what?
uncle herb
That woman should be locked up -- in an asylum.
GB
No she shouldn't. I can see the other side of the abortion (anti-choice).
It's wrong. It's a horrible thing, you're killing something. You're removing a fetus from your body. It's weird. It's unnatural. It's disgusting. It's against God's wishes. Whatever your reasons, PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS DO IT. So take the lesser of two evils yes?
What happens when abortion is legal?
The horrible things happen, just as frequently as if they were illegal, but the women who got them would be safe and wouldn't catch any horrible diseases.
What happens when abortion is illegal?
The horrible things still happen, only in bloody chop shops. Innocent women will get all sorts of horrible diseases (perhaps some you've never even heard of) and spread them around. Because after all, all kinds of women from all kinds of backrounds (even from the devout bible belt) get abortions. No women will have to revert to the older methods of abortion, i.e sticking a sewing shaft into your naval, going to a butcher, sticking a coat hanger into your uterus.
All one can really do to have fewer abortions in this country is to basically just preach how great it is to have kids and how much you'll regret having an abortion. Many women do regret having abortions, many don't. It simply CAN'T be made illegal, because simply making something illegal that you don't believe in does absolutely nothing to suppress it. Take the drug war for example, there's a perfectly useless battle.
Livia
and when abortion is illegal, more unwanted children are born and neglected/abused
we all know how much effort the "pro-life" types put into working on that problem
Francesca Fiori
According to pro-aborts, though, that Florida woman really didn't do anything wrong. Just another form of abortion, eh? If she had enough money to have her child killed professionally, she wouldn't be on trial ...
GB
I don't know about the unwanted children thing. Many anti-choicers have admitted that, "Yes, we WOULD take those unwanted children, if it meant that they wouldn't be aborted."
They should be put on some sort of list and sent a bunch of kids that women could give them if they were unwanted.
Francesca Fiori
Murder is illegal, yet people still do it. Does that mean we
should make it legal?
ShadowStalker
that's a pretty old, tired out circular argument fran - you've got to have something better than that.
Spur
when abortion is illegal, less abortions happen. from the point of view: abortion=murder, thats less murders happening.
dont pretend you can see the other sides pov if you cant, foolish wadsucker
Francesca Fiori
SS -- but that's exactly the arguments the pro-aborts use. Yes, I admit
it is pretty pathetic. :)
ShadowStalker
gee fran, it sure looked like your typical anti-choice argument to me.
assume that the minority got their way and abortion became illegal again - what then? what do you propose be done with all the unwanted children that result from it?
john hinkley
GB> everything is a perfectly useless battle, when you get down
to it. name one that isnt.
huncke the junkie
Francesca, it wasn't clear but the article implied that Florida woman was put on trial because the baby lived for a time after the shooting, then died. Apparently, under Fla. law, life begins when the fetus can survive outside the womb. So, since the fetus did survive (temporarily) outside the womb, it was deemed a person and the mother was arrested for murder.
uncle herb
I maintain that she should have been locked up -- in an asylum.
Francesca Fiori
There are many around this country who wish to adopt yet can't. No child
, IMHO, is "unwanted." God has created every one of them for a purpose,
and to destroy them simply because they might be "unwanted" approaches
Nazi-ism. There are many "unwanted" adults in this world, as well, but each
human, born and unborn, has a right to life.
ShadowStalker
pardon the language, but bullshit. the market demand is for healthy, white babies - and yes, there are plenty of couples/singles out there that would like to adopt these kids, but not the vast majority of other "unwanted" children out there.
what purpose does your god have for these children? to grow up in an unhealthy environment (whether it be psychological and/or physically unhealthy) and possibly (and statistically probably) add to the burden on welfare and criminal justice systems? humans have enough of that going on with children that have actually been planned and welcomed by their parents.
approaching nazism? i would think that you would welcome a swing in that direction with your traditional religious right-winged views (remember that "nazism," or as it's more appropriately called, facism, is way on the right side of the political scale...)
Francesca Fiori
How can you automatically assume that every child that is not "planned"
will be unwanted? You assume that these children, if born, will lead
terrible, poverty-filled lives. What about the "wanted" children who
are born into conditions such as these? Should we let only the affluent
procreate?
Marked Card
It's not even approaching nazi-ism. Any time you ask yourself whether or not the government should be giving people a choice about actions not involving hurting someone else the answer should immediately and irrevocably be yes. Anything _other_ than that is approaching nazi-ism. It takes serious doubts of one's own intelligence to approve of the government making ANY choice for the people. As a matter of fact, as a general rule, anytime anyone says they're restricting a choice for the people's own good and are allowed by the people to do so, get out of that society FAST. It's doomed.
Marked Card
Sometimes you've got to go the Stainless Steel Rat way. "What rules?"
"Oh, you must mean the 11th commandment." Soon we will have anarchy. Be able to take care of yourself and caveat emptor, nothing else you can do.
Torch Song
Marked Card--bingo...it's the getting out that's the complicated part...
Blain Nelson
You can find fascism at any extreme of political views. It may be comforting to think that it's all on the conservative extreme, but it simply isn't true.
Torch Song
yup, I'm rather fond of the 11th commandment myself...
Lilith
How do you know what god thinks. maybe he wants people to have abortions. maybe those lives aren't meant to happen yet. besides, a person can't expect everyone in the world to change themselves to fit their own persongious beliefs. christians are a minority in this world...
Livia
christians should approve of abortion
that way all those little fetuses get to go straight to heaven
Prick
cannot find dead soul
Virus
Hehehehehhheehheheheheheheeee!!! Gooden, Liv.
Prick
yeah its the christians fault that abortions are going to hell
LA REINE
and then again, maybe we should kill all the unborn children in whom we are able to detect signs of mental retardation or blindness or midding limbs or who aren't going to turn into joe average jock. and maybe we should stick al the female babies in the river. you can take it to both extremes. it's a question of where you want to draw the line.
Spur
cannot find shanes brain
Livia
i'm not assuming that EVERY unplanned child will be unwanted
but it's quite obvious that an unplanned child has a much better chance of being unwanted than a planned child does
poverty isn't the issue. neglect and abuse occur at every socioeconomic level. likewise, it isn't a matter of LETTING any particular group procreate, it's a matter of not FORCING anyone to procreate
Prick
thats a shame
Prick
you also get to enter my brain
Prick
and shoot it
Lilith
what i don't get is why these so-called pro-lifers can sit and tell us abortion is murder and that every life is precious, and then turn around and murder doctors. so, murder is ok if it furthers your cause?
no one should have the right, or think they have the right to tell another human being what they can or cannot do. if someone wants to have an abortion, let them. if you don't like it then you don't have to have an abortion!
LA REINE
the arguement, lilith, is that by killing one doctor they are thereby preventing hoards of unborn whatevers from being killed, thus the justification.
Megamol
all i have to say on the subject is one of these days all of those activists will find out that it wasn't up to them to judge and boy oh boy will the Spam hit the fan then......
Spur
gotta draw the line somewhere still. youre absolutely right, its just a matter of where you draw the line, pre conception, conception, pregnancy, brith, post birth.
Livia
so the other side could just as well argue that by killing one rabid anti-abortionist they are thereby preventing hordes of doctors from being killed
but you don't see it happening
JayDee
yeah
one of these days
any excuse to rabble-rouse, namecall, fight, etc.
but, a waste of perfectly-good Spam...
meanwhile, the peoples' freedoms of choice are being lobbied and legislated
away...
uncle herb
I recommend that all of us write our congressmen and demand nuclear war now. A purging, total nuclear holocaust is the only way to settle this mess once and for all.
Saint Bob
I'm into that. I'll even write it on Central Intelligence Agency propaganda. Or would you prefer FBI/DOJ? I've got samples of each.
Blain Nelson
Well, as soon as we have an anti-abortionist who has killed as many abortion doctors as the number of abortions performed by any abortion doctor they could use that claim, Livia.
We would have a civil war long before that happened, though.
uncle herb
Bob, where did you get CIA/FBI/DOJ propaganda?
Saint Bob
I meant letterhead. Propaganda on their letterhead. I got it from my FOIA requests.
JayDee
we already have civil war, if you haven't noticed, already
it is just that the causes are many, and usually rather vaguely defined...
GB
Rebutting that old, rehashed "Well, people would be murdered anyway even if that's illegal, so does that make murder right?" argument.
Well, there are cases where murder is necessary, such as in self defense, or to protect a greater amount of people from dieing (that seems to be the generally accepted human ideology, there may be some exceptions to this too).
The same goes for abortion. There will be cases of it that will seem wrong. But there are cases of it where there is really no other choice.
You must also remember that not all religions consider abortion a mortal sin such as Christianity.
The Jews believe the child is not truly alive and considered a human until it has left its mother. GODDAMN JEWS (I'm Jewish) is what a lot of anti-choicers have to say to that.
The Buddhists (I'm actually a Buddhist, I meant Jew by race) believe that abortion is horrible, but cannot be stopped, and having it legal would be the lesser of two evils. This is at least what the Dalai Lama said when addressed with the abortion question, so I assume that's what a great deal of Buddhists in the East assume as well.
doctor doom
I also maintain that if women are entitled to choice in whether or not to have a child, so are men.
Blain Nelson
GB -- so does that mean that maybe there would be cases where abortion would be wrong enough to make those cases illegal, without banning it wholesale?
Saint Bob
As long as that's ironed out before conception, Doom, I agree wholeheartedly.
uncle herb
Well, why should a man's choice have to be ironed out before conception? A woman's isn't.
chester cheetah
Besides, there aren't that many men who can sit and tell some gal that it's her responsibility, or they're not going to have sex.
Saint Bob
It should be discussed before. Otherwise, she's stuck with 9 months of slavery to a being within or an expensive and unfriendly scrape-and-suck session and he still has the option of whether he "wants to be a father" or not. Completely unfair. Of course, legalizing the "morning after" pill would make this dilemma a bit more stomachable.
chester cheetah
there's no doubt that there should be legal and safe "morning-after" medtech available.
I think that the question should be, what are the responsibilities of a man who believed that he was entereing into a single-night relationship wih a female who represented herself as being "protected"? Should a woman be able to sleep with a man for one night, make him pay child support, and not be required to let him share equally in the actual rearing o the hild should he so desire? shouldn't there be some implicit (if tacit) assumption that if he's not advised that he may be held acountable, that he shouldn'd be held accountable? Or will we Always go on he unspoken assumption that all women who conceive have the inalienable right to get a man to father a child and make him pay?
GB
Perhaps there would be cases where the abortion would seem illegal. This could certainly be a compromise. Perhaps if it is her third abortion? Or perhaps if it is 8 months into the pregnancy?
There may be some criteria where it would be just to have certain abortions be illegal. The point I'm trying to make is, it really doesn't matter what laws you come up with, a woman who wants an abortion will get one.
But seeing that America is a big tossed salad, instead of just preaching my leftist oppinion, I will try and think of a solution that the right could agree with. Could that be possible? Or is everyone who disagrees with it here totally stuck on the "No abortions. Period." dogma?
uncle herb
No, I'm not saying that the man should be able to require the woman to get an abortion. However: If he gets her knocked up, and he expresses a wish that the child be given up for adoption or aborted, and the woman decides to keep it, HE should not be subject to HER choice.
In other words, if under circumstances like this, he wishes to walk, he should be allowed to free of future obligations.
And to say "if a man doesn't want to have kids, he should get sterilized" or "he shouldn't have sex" sounds suspicously like the anti-choice arguments advanced against women.
pro-choice for women, pro-choice for men. To have it otherwise is glaring hypocrisy.
Lady Godiva
Abortions actually are illegal in the third trimester which is 7-8-9 month period. It is relatively rare to find a doctor willing to perform a 2nd trimester abortion that doesn't threaten the mother so things aren't as bad as some would make them seem.
Mary Stark
if you haven't made up your mind by the third trimester, then you are pretty indecisive. it's kind of a bad idea.
Lady Non Sequitur
having had two sisters with eight kids between them (thankfully, none of my own), I think you are not understanding how difficult it is for women to give up something that is growing inside them. Adoption or abortion - even if they are the right choice on occasion, they are not easy choices, and some women's moral/ethical beliefs just don't allow for them. What you suggest says simply that if the man doesn't want to support what he helped create, he can just walk away. I'd say he has a right to have a say in what happens, but that doesn't give him the right to abrogate all responsibility. They're equally responsible for creating the fetus, and his life isn't the one that's going to be utterly disrupted, either by nine months of pregnancy or by a surgical procedure.
Blain Nelson
GB -- Good idea. Coming down off the poles of the position is a good step. Thanks for joining me there.
And I think you could find a lot of support among the right in restricting late term abortion and repeat abortions after some number. Of course there will be some wanting to make it a camel's nose, but sometimes that's the price of a compromise.
FWIW -- I think you'll find relatively few "No abortions. Period." or even "All abortion illegal" folks out there. You can find a lot who think that abortion is a bad thing, and a lot who think that some abortions at least ought to be legal. Few of them get beyond the question of pro-choice vs. pro-life because nobody asks them past that.
Blain Nelson
And "morning-after" technology exists. It can be used, but the medicines necessary can not be prescribed for that purpose because they haven't been approved for that purpose by the FDA.
And I'm not talking about RU486.
At least, this is according to an article I read in a women's magazine a little over a year ago.
John
I'm for abortion reduction strategies. Only the kookiest people don't support those.
chester cheetah
No his life is going to be disrupted by eighteen years of child support. So I think that the old standby should be considered implicit: "I'll pay for an abortion, and any immediate ancillary costs, but if you have it, it's yours. and yours alone."
GB
There seems to be a rather large grass roots anti-abortion crusade going out there. Weren't there doctors suspected of practicing abortions murdered somewhere in the Bible Belt? Those radicals who do think it's some kind of holy crusade do give the abortion doctors a scare, but I think it benefits the pro-choicers more, because it makes the entire anti-choice movement look like a clan of terrorists.
Lady Non Sequitur
and I wasn't advocating that he be responsible for 18 years of child support. But he doesn't have the right to force beliefs on her, either to have an abortion or face the results of their sex alone ... saying if she doesn't agree with his options, then she's on her own is not right, and as bad as the time when men could force the women to have the children with no say in the matter (not so long ago, I have a friend who was forced to have a child because the man refused to give permission for an abortion). What you are proposing boils down tohas the potential to strip a woman of her choices as much as the right-to-lifers would like...
I'd propose a middle ground where the man would be responsible for some of the costs of the pregnancy (it is half his fault that she's pregnant, after all), plus some support for the woman while she is in the hospital and unable to bring in money to support herself and her child. After that, it should be up to the woman to support the child she chose to have, but if the man doesn't want to support the child, then he should have no legal say over any matter concerning the child, nor any chance to try for custody of the child later in life -- in all aspects, he would have no more say than any stranger on the street.
uncle herb
No, they are *not* equally responsible for the pregnancy, and it is *not* half the male's fault that the woman is pregnant, *if* you truly believe that the woman alone has sole right over what do do with her body (i.e. abortion.) In that case, the decision is 100% hers -- and the consequences hers too -- unless it can be shown that the man consciously tried to get her pregnant, or was aware that no birth control methods were in use (the use of birth control being a tacit acknowledgement by both parties that a pregnancy is unwanted), or had promised support beforehand.
I think your middle ground, however, is very reasonable, and I do agree that once the man makes the decision not to support the child, he should have no further rights concerning that child.
As for women who engage in sex with men whom its not clear wish to support a child, if the woman intends to handle a pregnancy by going through with it and keeping the child, it would be smart of her to get some kind of written agreement from him beforehand. Considering that even the most effective birth control methods have effectiveness ratings of around 99% -- riskier than it seems at first glance when you consider that this means 1 out of 100 times in trials a pregnancy resulted -- people should spend a lot more time thinking about this stuff beforehand than they now do.
Blain Nelson
GB -- There have been something in the neighborhood of 4 people killed by anti-abortion radicals -- two doctors and one or two others -- as I recall. Those radicals also scare me.
There has also been a case of a man shooting at anti-abortion protesters recently.
I wasn't kidding when I said this would be a civil war. The shooting has started, and it's escalating. Coming off the poles as you have showed a willingness to do will help slow the escalation. We just need more people to do it -- lots of them.
No Means No
Just a note about the percentile effectiveness ratings...I don't want to side with either side of this argument and make enemies at the moment. The percentile ratings are NOT as was stated in the last message. If whatever method of birth control is stated to have an %85 effectiveness it means in trials that over an ENTIRE YEAR %15 percent of the couples involved in the trial became pregnant. Not 15% of the USAGES but an expected rate of 15 out of 100 couples getting pregnant yearly. This is an important note.
Abortion> _