Letters to the Editor
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Wouldn't you be mad if you were aborted?
"If you think abortion is morally acceptable, would it have been morally acceptable for your mother to abort you? I guess we will find out who the real hypocrites are now."
I've always though this was a ridiculous question. If my mother had aborted me, it wouldn't bother me at all. BECAUSE I WOULDN'T EXIST.
So morally acceptable, yes, but I think the reason people ask this question is to say "wouldn't you be mad if you were aborted?"
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Here's another thing...
no pro-choice person I know (certainly including myself) thinks that abortion is "fun" or "something everyone ought to do". It's a hard decision that impacts your life forever.
However, we as a society DO have a choice about one thing: abortion can either be a safe medical procedure or a fatal do-it-yourself project. I was 2 when Roe v Wade was decided, but I've read about life before it. About women trying to help other women with a medical procedure that neither were trained to do. About women going it alone with knitting needles, coathangers, bleach, etc. Women dying from the attempt. Women living, but destroying their reproductive systems.
It scares me to think we're headed in that direction. So for all of you who think abortion is a bad thing--I agree. So should every woman who is determined to not carry a pregnancy to term have to DIE over it? Doesn't sound very "pro-life" a position to me.
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OSAers need to get on a plane to Africa
Although I don’t agree with OSAer’s anti-abortion stance, I can understand it, even sympathize with it. However, their mindset concerning contraception and reproductive education is insular in the extreme. We can look at Africa and see the disastrous effects of a lack of contraception and reproductive education, coupled with an inhospitable environment. And the inhospitable environment is important to note in all of this because life in an increasingly inhospitable environment is going to be in our distant or near future.
Some poster below said a child is more important than trees. This is indicative of a mindset that cannot see the larger connections between things. With the desertification of large portions of the planet, a consequent rise of tropical diseases in formerly temperate areas, depleted resources, lack of clean water and overcrowding, life becomes insupportable. When life becomes insupportable, life becomes curbed. It can be curbed intelligently or nature will do it for us. When nature starts reducing life, mercilessly and indifferently, religious arguments that go counter to intelligently curbing life begin to look ridiculous and are eventually abandoned. I believe environmental catastrophe will eventually render the debate over contraception, if not abortion, moot. I would like to see OSAers reconcile their anti-contraception mindset in a place like Niger.
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"These people are not Christian at all..."
Oh yes, they are most definitely Christians. Its time to stop deferring and backing down from this repugnant crowd. Bigotry, hatred...that IS what Christianity is in its heart. Don't be fooled. These people are evil.
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Equal Rights for Men
Bodily rights. A traditional pro-abortion/choice argument is that of bodily integrity, that a human fetus does not have a natural right to live in his/her mother's womb, or in other words, to control her body. Question: do abortion/choice supporters believe that bodily rights should also be extended to a man? Scenario: A man and a woman engage in coitus and she becomes pregnant. If a man signs a sworn affidavit that he used a condom and that he has offered to pay for the abortion of the child, and the woman does not abort, should not he be free from paying child support for the 18 years until the child crosses the legal line into adulthood? After all, it is his body that must labor and sweat for the 18 years to support a child he did not want.
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abortion in MS
The pro-legal abortion supporters should get more creative in their marketing efforts to protect legal, accessible and affordable abortion and birth control. Imagine the scene: A bunch of big-bellied hard hats getting off work of a Friday night. They’re yakking about how much fun their going to have with a night on the town. Bubba hangs back and says, “You go on, fellas, I got to go to work.”
"What?" The others ask in horror. Bubba says, “Well, you know that honey I was running around with last year? I assumed she was on the pill. She wasn’t, and she got herself pregnant. Yeah, it’s mine. I failed two paternity tests. She wanted an abortion but the nearest abortion clinic is 200 miles away. And you know, what with all those protestors, we didn’t want to be identified. We had to keep going back to avoid them, and then there are all those waiting times because they think you’re too stupid to know that you don’t want no baby with some barfly. It started to run into big money - well, it got too late. And don’t even try to get an abortion anywhere in the South past the third month. So, I’m on the hook for child support for the next 18 years.
“It chaps my butt that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, and Ralph Reed would screw a donut and be angry that it gave them a hard time. But let the little guy have some fun, and he’s in hock for 18 years. And you know, I want to get a vasectomy, but the religious nuts are harassing the hospitals about that, too. Boys, my tackle is locked away until I can get snipped. By the way, can you drop me off at Mickey D’s? My shift starts in 30 minutes, and the state took my truck for child support.”
Announcer: Think abortion is just a woman’s issue? Think again.
You know, it might just work.
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Questions to pro-lifers
The first questions I ask to die-hard pro-lifers are: "Do you think abortion is morally OK to save the health of the mother? What about in cases of incest or rape? What about if the fetus is diagnosed with having major birth defects that will likely cause an early and painful death?" I think most would answer Yes to the first, fewer to the second and fewer to the third. These are exceptions that many pro-lifers that I know of make exceptions to.
If the answer is no to these questions, then I believe that the person is cruel and heartless.
The next question is (to those pro-lifers who think that at least one of the above situations is OK): why is abortion morally redeemable in these (extreme) cases when it is still "killing a child"? If a fetus is a child, then it would be morally equivalent to kill a young child if the child is a product of rape or incest.
Personally, I (like many pro-choicers out there) do not think abortion is a good thing, or even morally neutral in many situations. However, I do believe that it is *sometimes* the best choice. It is only the mother (who has access to good information) who can make that decision.
My point is that there must be a middle ground in that abortions must not be encouraged, but they must be available.
Maybe there is a flaw in my logic, and so I welcome comments on it.