Yes I believe abortion is wrong. No it should not be against the law.
Do You Believe Abortion Is Wrong? Should It Be Against The Law?
by minimus 140 Replies latest jw friends
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Dagney
This subject I have struggled with. Glad to read the posts, still trying to sort my way through.
The one thing I feel certain of is my right to choose.
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minimus
Thanks for your points of view,
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Razziel
The answers are all scientifically available, it all depends on how you frame the question as to if you get the answer you want to hear. If it is simply living cells, then every person alive forms an unbroken chain back to the first replicating cell. If it's the point where two seperate DNA meet and combine to form another, you get another answer. If you define it in terms of a stage that "has" to happen to work, such as implantation, you get another answer. If it's where the clump of cells can respond to external stimulii, you get a different answer. If it's when that clump of cells begins to develop features we recognize you get another answer. If it's when memories begin to form you get another answer. If it's when it can survive outside the womb, it's another answer that changes depending on current technology. It all depends on how you frame the question. And how you frame the question depends on what your bias is.
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Qcmbr
This debate has veered onto when life starts and has illogically mixed the purely legal concept of 'rights' with the emotional response to death. Nature needs death to allow life (even conception requires millions of cells to 'die' to allow one cell pair to comingle genetic information.)
Abortion is a natural process. Nature affords no rights beyond one chance to live. Mankind has learnt to respect that process and has shown that respect by deciding (with caveats) when humans die (we build hospitals and bombs.) When resources are scare life is valued less and when resources are plentiful life is valued more. By projecting our personal desire to avoid death onto others we forget , as Razz. brilliantly pointed out, that our value to society is weighed and measured and found to be valued in a few dollars. Your life is worth less, to society, than a basic tv. The debate about abortion is simply part of the wider debate that sees billions die from lack of food, water and medical supplies - the famine starved child is selected for death just as surely as the second trimester unborn child.
We are animals. Animals kill their young when needed. Nature is ammoral. We may legislate against murder but it is merely a facade to pretend we aren't animals - we are all murderers with respect to those that die that we may eat at McDonalds and wear diamond wedding rings. Abortion shows respect for our true nature (we show a mercy that nature would do at the hands of a predator or natural abortion by killing the malformed unborn , we show resource judgement by terminating another life in a resource low household, we show mercy by murdering the unborn offspring of parents who are not committed to each other and/or are parents through violent rape.)
Abortion is such a harrowing event- regardless of whether it is through nature or choice - that it is not made lightly. This debate is the woman's alone, should she choose to share it with a partner, family or friends is her choice. She bears the entire cost of the process physically. Her body is endowed by nature to start and stop life every month and each stage of that process considers life (at the cellular level) as purely a resource and terminates all cells involved until conditions are exactly right and implantation is allowed. even at this stage the body views natural abortion as a viable process (therefore from a scientific pov it is moral) to either remove malformed cells or abort the fetus in times of trauma(famine, extreme fight/flight experience, violent damage, infection, poison from such things as alcohol.) Nature (or god for the magically inclined) cares not about pain or viability as a non-parasitic human and will abort life according to circumstance either through misfortune (e.g. cord strangling), need (e.g. many animals eat their offspring when hungry) or genetics (my wife for example cannot carry boys and so we chose to keep having children in the knowledge that she would gentically abort any sons.)
It is perfectly scientifically moral to allow elective abortion to help natural abortion do its job of maximising the overall fitness and potential of each species to pass on its genetic material. Nature is the main user of abortion.
As soon as a child is independent from the mother some enlightened societies (normally those that have already entrusted women with other important legal rights) also afford it society rights (a recognition that the responsibility for that person is now shared between mother and society whereas before that person was entirely the mother's responsibility.) At this point laws designed to protect society are valid (for example - no murder - oddly enough this rule is NOT to protect the individual!) since that child is now a productive member of society (whereas before the unborn child is not.)
So abortion is absolutely moral.
Itshould be enshrined along with other rights for women in law.
The religious need not fear since not only is their magic person an abortionist but their legal right to self determination are re-inforced by the above. Should they wish to take away the right of another person to decide what happens to their body then they have given away the moral argument for society to protect their religious rights and open the door to a society where abortion could become a legally required procedure (if overcrowding was an issue for example) which should scare the cr*p out of them. Taking away self determination rights is a very bad idea.
imo.
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NewChapter
Q!
Uhm
WOW!
Thank you so much!
I have been struggling to coherently express my thoughts on this matter for-----well----years!
Seriously---I am moved. You reached into my brain, and without emotion, said it all for me.
Thank you.
And now I will print this out, so that I always have my thoughts organized.
This is not the first time you have done this for me----however this has been the most powerful.
NC
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tec
LOL. And now I'm going to disagree ;)
Not that I disagree that it should be legal. Woman's body/woman's responsibility. Once that child is capable of surviving outside the womb without the mother, then that child is the responsibility of society as well. So I agree with that part of your post, Q.
However, I do not agree that just becasue the body naturally aborts (for survival reasons or genetic reasons or whatever), we also have the right to abort zygotes, fetuses, what-have-you. Just like we don't have the right to go ahead and kill the elderly once they become a burden or drain on society just because nature is going to kill them from old age or disease or whatever.
The e x istence of natural death and/or abortion does not e x cuse or give us the right to cause death and/or abortion to others, ourselves. So it is not off-topic to discuss when life begins, imo, because most of us seem to understand that we have no right to take the life of someone else.
We are physical creatures, yes... but we are capable of more than animals. So we have greater responsibility as well.
Peace,
Tammy
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mrsjones5
I have to agree with NC, that was very impressive Q.
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drewcoul
Seriously? Read up on the history of birth control and abortion. Rich women have had it available to them for eons. Do you not understand the difference between civilization and barbarism?
The above was posted by Beks on the thread about Obama tweaking his stance on contraception and the Catholic Church. The topic steered into abortion.
Beks and others who agree with her: Does this not seem barbaric to you, or is it civilized.
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drewcoul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBZ2Q0mY7g
maybe this will work better.