[Discussion] Thoughts on Abortion

Maternity mortality rates, at least in the Western world, is mostly at around the lower double and single digits per 100,000. The fact that pregnancy is the number one killer of women, as you say, speaks volumes to the advancement of humanity as a civilization. If pregnancy is dangerous it is only because we have made other mortal threats less dangerous, what with disease and policing.

For reference's sake, here is a passage from the CDC's website for reproductive health:

Sadly, about 650 women die each year in the United States as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.

Click to expand...

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/Pregnancy-relatedMortality.htm

Your argument is very post-human - how far does that go? Pregnancy and its risks are natural and they've always been around. You describe it as damage and a killer - but the reality as it has been for hundreds of millions of years is offspring emerging from a female's orifice. Sure it is painful and there is a risk, but should we desire such a separation from nature? and is it realistic? Personally, I don't think it's desirable to race towards a separation of humanity from its physical limits and sensations, I'm of the opinion that it is part of what makes us human.

Should the man involved be compelled to provide for a child's rearing? My inner justice says yes. But in the land of freedom and liberties probably only the most conservative of folks would advocate such a policy. How would one enforce such a policy? Should a man be compelled to provide DNA (I'd imagine some form of evidence would be required)? Should he have the right to refuse? I'm not too confident on the aspect of compelling a person to give up evidence on suspicion alone.

Not to mention, all of the babies that will be flooding into the foster care system. Our foster care is already bursting at the seams. It'll only get worse. Who is going to take care of these children? Who is going to feed them? Give them an education? Most importantly: raise them to be functioning members of society? No one.

Click to expand...

I'd imagine before saying "no one", we would imagine that the parents responsible for the baby will step up to the responsibility of taking care of it. Again, the assumption here seems to be that because the baby is unwanted to the parents, they're already out of the whole equation. Any discussion that follows is bound to be fruitless if proposing that the biological parents take responsibility is a non-starter.

I advocate for abortions, but out of safety - if a woman wants to have abortion and she sees to it, nobody is going to stop her, so it is imperative she has a safe way out. Abortion isn't the most virtuous of decisions most of the time for me though. I don't support it out of principle, but as a pragmatic solution to reduce suffering.

We're talking about people who want abortions, so yeah... Most people who want abortions have unwanted pregnancies. Your assumption that the majority of parents will just "step up" is based on what exactly?

If a woman in your world has to take care of every baby she gets pregnant with, why wouldn't it be fair that every man has to as well? You suddenly think it'll infringe upon the man's freedom? But it's okay to infringe on women's rights? Women have the right to freedom too.

Abortion, as I see it, is like this.
You sign up to audition for a play, get a lead role, then drop it, because you can't handle the responsibility. If you know you can't make it to practices, etc, don't sign up.

Plus, the option of adoption is there.

That's just my two cents.

Sandshrew4 said:

Abortion, as I see it, is like this.
You sign up to audition for a play, get a lead role, then drop it, because you can't handle the responsibility. If you know you can't make it to practices, etc, don't sign up.

Plus, the option of adoption is there.

That's just my two cents.

Click to expand...

You know what? At 15, I thought the exact same way. Things change when you get some experience in the real world and realize that not having sex is easier said than done.

I'm perfectly fine with abortion in the first trimester. Once you get into the second and third trimesters things start to become a little murky.

On the other hand, I think if someone is capable of making the decision to have sex, they should face the consequences that come with it.

Click to expand...

When we lived in caves and hunted deer and gathered berries all day, some thousands of years ago, sex was probably for reproduction yes. Males and females alike wanted to have a good time, because evolution has made it so that sex feels good to us just so that we have some kind of drive to reproduce.

Nowadays, we want to have half that. Sex for fun and pleasure, but not always (most often not, I think) the kid that could be the consequence of it. So we invent strategies like pills and condoms to help with that, but sometimes they don't help and sometimes women get raped or otherwise pregnant against their will. In these cases, I don't see anything wrong with abortion. It's a different thing if you decided to try and get a child and then midway decided that no, we're not ready, we changed our minds. That's just stupid. But abortion when the pregnancy was a mistake, is totally fine.

So many people die every day, some naturally, others in cold blood in conflicts and others in starvation or catastrophies. Etc etc. In the end, a child that is not yet born has not lived a life yet and taking away that "life" is not the end of the world. Some of you might think I'm extreme, but idk I'm just scientific or something. I wouldn't think of what life this potential child could potentially have lived because it's not happened and is never going to happen if abortion is made so why worry about it. Save those who are alive instead of bringing more unwanted (sounds harsh but) humans into the overpopulated world.

On some level, I want to agree with Dominic; it's a bit stupid to have sex if you aren't prepared for the consequences. It is about reproduction when it all comes down to it biologically, after all. But in our modern world it's become so much more. It probably has been in other times in history too. Because it feels so good, it's a fact. We're just spoiled with our condoms and pills now. And I know I wouldn't want to stop having sex just because I don't want a kid right now :x

Now, don't start hatin' :]

Something that feels implied and is not being said in this thread--let me stress that no one has openly said this--is the idea that women who don't want children should just not have sex. It's okay for men to enjoy sex, but not women. It's not anyone's fault because society teaches everyone this. The reality is that women should be allowed to enjoy sex just as much as men do. Sex is not just for reproduction and those who argue that it is... I'm heavily inclined to believe they've never had it because that **** feels amazing.

Personally, I don't like the idea of abortion.

Well, maybe this was already stated already...but I think abortion might be an option if, and only if, the mother became pregnant because of rape. Its just not right to make a woman and a child suffer just because of an 'unfortunate event'. It just depends on the woman.
BUT
Abortion should NOT be an option if the woman willingly engaged into sex. It just feels not right to say that you engaged into it just because of fun. well, you wanna have fun? there's a lot of fun things you can do other than sex. The people who engage in this activity must, and most likely know, what its circumstances are, especially the woman.
Well, there's also some circumstances where these people used contraceptives, but still produced a fetus/baby. I say, they should be more disciplined. Its not like you'll have 100% protection when using those things, duh.

Well, that's just my opinion...but every one has a choice, a decision to make. It depends on you where you'll take your life. Whether on the right path, or the hard path. That's all. I rest my case.

Nobody is required by law to surrender use of their body to another person under any circumstances, so I don't see why we need an exception for abortion.

And as for my hypothetical if the baby is alive then we'd just have to c-section it but anyways.

Psycho Yuffie said:

Something that feels implied and is not being said in this thread--let me stress that no one has openly said this--is the idea that women who don't want children should just not have sex. It's okay for men to enjoy sex, but not women. It's not anyone's fault because society teaches everyone this. The reality is that women should be allowed to enjoy sex just as much as men do. Sex is not just for reproduction and those who argue that it is... I'm heavily inclined to believe they've never had it because that **** feels amazing.

Click to expand...

o.O I think men who don't want to end up with baby mamas kinda sorta shouldn't? have sex, or rather have sex safely and keep that under control. Because it goes both ways, I don't know why it logically wouldn't... You seem to be implying that the sensation of sex is somehow more significant than the responsibility of bearing a child, which is leading down a dangerous path, in my opinion. The fact that it feels good doesn't present an excuse for not abstaining, it always comes down to willpower. I don't even know why, sex isn't addictive (okay possibly, but it's not a drug at any rate). I can sympathize with a drug addict if he used that language to rationalize his predicament. If it's about sex though, I don't see how I could take him seriously.

I think the point Psycho Yuffie was trying to make is that why should we have to abstain from sex just because we MIGHT get pregnant? Of course, if someone is struggling financially they should not put themselves in a position to get pregnant, but, in general, why do people insist that we shouldn't have sex because of the consequences? I don't want children at the moment, and maybe not ever, but that's not really going to stop me from having sex. Obviously practicing safer sex will reduce the chance of getting pregnant, but even then...I believe that people have the right to have sex and the right to deal with those consequences as they see fit for their situation, no matter how the pregnancy happened to come about. Sex isn't just for reproduction in this day and age.

I am against the morals of it, it's a human life we are talking about... it is like killing another human being except it is legal because they don't look human enough yet to be classified as one. If a person cannot take care of the baby... adoption. I am also against having people give sex changes to children before they are born so they get the gender they want, I do not think we can play GOD like that it just isn't right and the thing is large parties/groups of people do not need to worry about that because they are a faceless mass of people not just one person so it makes it okay for things like this to happen.

P.S. I am 100% okay with people owning guns, Automatic Rifles to Handguns (logic huh)

If a person cannot take care of the baby... adoption.

Click to expand...

What if they don't want to be pregnant and give birth? It's not like waiting 9 months and then it's all over, being pregnant and giving birth can be extremely hard and the biggest injustice in life is that men will never have to face that. I stand fast in my opinion that men and women alike should be allowed to have sex without wanting a child to be born, because we have ways to prevent that. If those ways fail for any reason, we have abortion as another way.

Arguing that an unborn human being should be "saved" against its parents' wishes while saying that owning weapons with which you can hurt or kill a human being who is already alive is okay, that sounds really strange to me.

EDIT: what is the point of D&D threads? :p To convince others and reach some sort of consensus or to just debate for a while for the heck of it and to see what opinions others have? Because I can agree to disagree, haha.

The way I see it, if you're pregnant and it's because of your own doings, be it a mistake or otherwise, you owe it to the child to give birth to them or you're wasting a whole human life - that child could never have hopes, dreams, love, or any form of life, just because one or two people made a mistake. I'm aware the experience is traumatic for the woman and it will encompass the pains of giving birth, and perhaps I'm being naive here, but I don't believe that any amount of temporary pain or discomfort over the 9 months is a justified reason to terminate a potential life. I'm not saying they should have to look after the child though, especially if they never wanted it in the first place or it'll never be a loving bond between them, but 9 months is ample time to find an adoptive carer.

The only time I would disregard this situation is in the case of rape. If a woman is raped and becomes pregnant as a result then I don't believe she should be made to go through with the pregnancy. She had no choice in what happened and, although it's still awful to end the unborn baby's chance at having a life, if carrying and birthing the child ruins her life from the trauma of the rape then she should be allowed to abort it. In a situation where having a child would stop a woman achieving in school or similar then I think the right thing to do is to still give birth to the child as the woman had a choice, the baby didn't, and her life can still be lived afterwards, but in the case of rape or any other situation in which the woman had no choice about it (being drunk does not count) then I believe it should be the woman's choice.

AlexOzzyCake said:

(being drunk does not count)

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if more drunk women are raped than sober women?

What about being drunk whilst having sex, and not noticing the man has removed the condom?


The problem with saying "abortion shouldn't be allowed" is the diversity of reasons for abortion. Pregnancy can bring about disease, both physical and mental, as well as financially burden a woman - especially if she survives off her own income, which she could potentially lose if pregnant.

Women shouldn't be punished just because they made a choice to have sex. I think Yuffie summed up the general male attitude with this:

It's okay for men to enjoy sex, but not women. It's not anyone's fault because society teaches everyone this.

Click to expand...

Men shun responsibility of a pregnancy. They cannot fathom the pain and emotional burden of carrying a child you don't want or can't support. The father of the child isn't liable, and will not be affected by a pregnancy of a one-night stand. Hell, even getting money after a baby is born is difficult.

Abortion should always be legal. People suggest a limit, but I think that would just add to the moral difficulties. Maybe a solution is being suggested sterilisation (to either the man or woman) to avoid further accidents, but again that is a whole other can of worms.

Magic Fox said:

I wouldn't be surprised if more drunk women are raped than sober women?

What about being drunk whilst having sex, and not noticing the man has removed the condom?

Click to expand...

The first scenario is still rape so she would be entitled to an abortion still - when I said "being drunk doesn't count as a reason" I meant if they're drunk at a party and end up in a consenting one night stand because of it haha. As for the man removing his condom without her knowing, that should be a case where the woman would be allowed to abort the child but it'd be one hell of a difficult scenario to prove. In an ideal world (ignoring that this wouldn't happen in the first place in an ideal world) that would be a situation in which the woman would be allowed to abort, yes. It all just comes down to her having had a choice and having agreed to have sex whilst knowing the risk of getting pregnant.

Magic Fox said:

Women shouldn't be punished just because they made a choice to have sex. I think Yuffie summed up the general male attitude with this:

Click to expand...

Is a natural 'punishment' that countless women choose to go through really worth ending a human's life? To me it's akin to stabbing your own son to death or choosing to go through pregnancy, which is not a situation that should ever result in the child being stabbed to death. (I know that's quite a drastic example, I was only trying to hint that child's stage of development doesn't matter and stabbing came to mind... I'm a sick person. 8D) If a man was able to go through pregnancy then I would say the exact same about them, but they can't - that's not a man's fault. It's a lucky break as regards the issue, but it's not saying that men have the right to enjoy sex whilst women don't. They should of course be there for the woman and child as much as they possibly can be.

I think, personally, that abortion should definitely be a choice... but the RIGHT choice. Like, you should think about all of the other options and their pro's and con's, as well as think "Gee, do I have the resources and DRIVE to take care of this child?" If the answer is no, then you shouldn't have a child at all, and whether you want to have an abortion or put the child up for adoption is up to you. So all-in-all I just think you should think about things before jumping straight to the abortion choice.

And this is probably going to open up an even bigger can of worms but.. I think that if the father is present and willing to put in the effort to raise a child.. you should tell him your plans to have an abortion. I don't care if it's the woman's body and her right.. he also contributed and if he isn't some scumbag who would up and leave when you tell him you're pregnant, (or he already has) then he should have a right to know.. although in the end even if he is opposed to it you could still have an abortion, but I think he should know rather than be kept in the dark.

I think there's been a paradigm shift in how a pregnant baby is perceived. I'd imagine back in the day people were more prepared to weather the burden, but now we're more quick to end it. People are more self-centered and individualistic nowadays, we don't talk about owning up to having "drive" and motivating yourself, but to take the negative emotion from the burden as a given and a constant.

BlahISuck said:

I think there's been a paradigm shift in how a pregnant baby is perceived. I'd imagine back in the day people were more prepared to weather the burden, but now we're more quick to end it. People are more self-centered and individualistic nowadays, we don't talk about owning up to having "drive" and motivating yourself, but to take the negative emotion from the burden as a given and a constant.

Click to expand...

I beg to differ. The imbalance is in the fact that, in the past, it was a womans' sole job to give birth to a child. Men didn't want their women doing anything else. They now have options.

It's definitely not a shift in personality making women today 'self-centered'. It is a shift in freedom.

That's just another way of saying the same thing, right? These women aren't making use of their newfound freedom for the sake of benefiting the collective, are they? I suppose what I said wasn't the most politically correct sounding statement because we'd all envision ourselves to be selfless altruists but the fact of the matter is that there is more focus on the woman as an individual, and so whatever sentiments there were for the fetus as a life has been pushed away for a woman's options. Women were once, in a sense, expected to make that kind of self-sacrifice and now that expectation is being overturned, so it's definitely a cultural shift, too.

And this is probably going to open up an even bigger can of worms but.. I think that if the father is present and willing to put in the effort to raise a child.. you should tell him your plans to have an abortion. I don't care if it's the woman's body and her right.. he also contributed and if he isn't some scumbag who would up and leave when you tell him you're pregnant, (or he already has) then he should have a right to know.. although in the end even if he is opposed to it you could still have an abortion, but I think he should know rather than be kept in the dark.

Click to expand...

In principle and in the perfect world I'd imagine the decision to have an abortion to be between both parties, but those that go through with it are hardly a family anyways so there's no reason to expect that kind of decision-making to happen. The rights of a woman's body probably win over in this kind of conundrum, when it comes down to the yes or no.

I don't think there's a right to sex. You have the right to liberty, but to call it a "right to have sex" is really trivializing human rights talk.