Is it a right to abort

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That sounds pretty cold-blooded.

In retrospect, it wasn't entirely accurate. Roe v. Wade allows for restricting abortion to fetal deformity and life/health of the mother in the 3rd trimester, IIrc, so it's not 'always.' For the rest of the cases, though, it is true; if a woman has a good relationship with the father, she will discuss her choice with him and take his desires into consideration; the final choice, however, is always hers. She's the one going through the pregnancy; she's the one to decide if she stays pregnant.

It may sound cold-blooded to you, but life sometimes forces us to make hard decisions. Making the difficult decision with foresight and careful consideration is usually better than jumping to a conclusion and hoping for the best.

I'm a well-educated, mature young woman in a stable relationship. I've always been well-versed on the risks and very responsible with contraception. Still got pregnant. Literacy will help, yes, but it doesn't always work. Three methods used correctly and safely with no hitches wasn't enough for me.




I think you'll find it's ALWAYS a last resort and NEVER taken lightly.

Ok, I'm sure there are occasions where it is, but believe me anyone who doesn't suffer through hours of torment and agony weighing up the options, sleepless nights, guilt, fear, hatred at the unfairness of it all, sorrow, heartbreak, grief, and trauma has to have a heart of coal. Because you go through all that and way, way more.

Well, it depends, in the case of rape, the father of the child should not be allowed to have an opinion on it, nor even to get close to the child if she decides to have him, then yes I agree with it. In other situations, the father of the child has his right as well, after all, it is his kid as much as hers, the ultimate decision is of the woman of course, but to take an approach of ignoring the father, when both are responsable, doesn't sound right.

If the woman wants to end the pregnancy, that should be her decision. But there is measure of injustice in the current system as the choices of men are too heavily discounted. Consider ...

There are 4 possibilities, stated in this contingency/outcome table that describe the current situation:

1) Woman wants child, father wants child: Congratulations, pregnancy continues.
2) Woman wants child, father does not want child: pregnancy continues, father on the hook economically for 18 years.
3) Woman does not want child, father does want child: father has no say, woman seeks abortion or adoption or submits to forced motherhood.
4) Woman does not want child, father does not want child: adoption, abortion or forced motherhood, depending on circumstances.

Feminists who complain that women should have an absolute choice often do not want to grant that possibility to men in contingency 2. They talk about a 16 year old girl who accidentally gets pregnant getting forced into motherhood, who is less likely to become educated, etc. etc. I agree. But in contingency 2, the tables are reversed, and it is unfair to say that men should have been more responsible, or should be willing to accept the consequences of sex. It is a transparent, sexist double standard that does .

As Scott Shuger noted: "A woman's promise to take charge of birth control and then not doing so remains the only form of monetary fraud ... that is not only not punished, but is in fact regularly rewarded." An extreme cases of this: a young boy was the victim of statutory rape by his older babysitter, who became pregnant and had the child. The law is that he must pay child support for this, in spite of the fact that legally he is the victim ... the 'rights' of the child trump the rights of the victim. This is doctrine of "Choice for women, no choice for men."

Some men complain about the 'injustice' of contingency 3 and not having a say, but I do not agree with that. If a man wants to have a child, he should be in relationship negotiated for that purpose. For a man to get a woman pregnant and then coerce her into carrying it is morally equivalent to a woman getting pregnant to trap a man into a relationship. Both men and women should have some measure of control.

This situation cannot be completely symmetrical because of the different biology between men and women. Women get a stronger veto because it is their body. But an ideal system would be more equal than the current system.

I agree, the father should have a say if he'd have a part in raising it. It's a pretty hard time for them as well, you can't forget them in amongst the drama and decision-making.

In my case he was supportive either way, but agreed with me in that he felt abortion was the best thing to do at that point in time; that we should wait a few years yet. He was more worried about me than anything else and busy making sure I was ok and helping me through the numerous panic attacks and meltdowns I was having.

I didn't mean to imply that birth control is infalliable; however, it statistically works to decrease the overall number of unwanted pregnancies in the population that uses it. I was mainly referring to 3rd-world countries where women are kept illiterate either because they are considered too worthless to waste an education on, or as a specific means of keeping them under control. Given access to birth control that reduces her risk of unplanned pregnancies, most women whose status is dependant on something other than the number of children they have will choose to have fewer children than nature would generally put them through in the absence of birth control.

It's the fact - not based on any social unfairness, but on a biological one - that women get pregnant and men do not.



Except that the pregnant babysitter spends her pregnancy in jail for statutory rape - unless the underage teen declines to press charges, which is his (and his family's) choice.



Agreed, but that isn't all there is to it. IIrc, it's possible for a woman to release a child at birth to be adopted by the father, and she need have no further contact with him any more than she would with a stranger adopting the child. I don't know if that's an option for men as well.



To a certain extent I agree, but I also think that there are a lot more options than what is commonly known and used.

As for the father: this is a very tough nut to crack legally. His feelings are involved just as much. If the mother aborts his child and he did want it, it will feel like a loss and a void that can never be filled again. If she decides not to abort while he does not want the child, then he is living with the idea that somewhere a child of his is walking around even if he never sees it (I for one could not cope with that knowledge if I were in the situation)

I dont know how to legally solve situations like this. I guess the woman should have the final word. If she chooses to not abort while the father does not want the child AND can prove that the contraceptives were used but failed (= he can prove he did take responsability and it wasnt just a case of unprotected sex) then I do think law should allow the mother to keep the child although without any financial or practical aid of the father who should not be obliged to even meet the child if he wishes not to. However, such drastical ruling should only apply if the mother chooses to keep the child while the father doesnt want it AND father can explicitly prove he did use protection which failed somewhat. If it is a case of unprotected sex, then the father is not in a position to just let the woman raise the child without any help, so the father being effectively freed from any financial or practical duties should only occur when he can somehow prove that he did take actions to avoid the pregnancy.

I have to say that I disagree to some extent; I don't think that there's a way to 'prove' birth control one way or another, for one, and also a father shouldn't just decide after the child is born that he doesn't want to be a father. If he makes his decision early on in the pregnancy (first trimester), then yes: make his financial burden limited to half the cost of an abortion, whether the mother chooses to have one or not, and he signs off all responsibility and all rights to the child. If he changes his mind later and wants contact, he'll owe back child support.

It would, of course, make more mothers choose an abortion if they knew for sure that they would have no support whatsoever from their partners, and that no change of mind would ensue during the course of the pregnancy.

Well said. I've generally found that people who wildly claim that the legalization of abortions will make people do away with safe sex and take abortions lightly are people who never had, or never will have, an abortion.

To answer the original question, if a parent or two parents cannot take care of a child who has a problem that will require much more money, time and expertise than they were prepared for, especially if they weren't prepared for a child at all, it is responsible more than anything to not have that child. Especially when the chances of that kid getting adopted are next to nil. Really, all those people out there who want to adopt or who can't have kids? They're not looking for kids with disabilities. They're looking for cute little cherubic angels like the ones in movies and photographs. So who's gonna line up and take care of all the blind, deaf, wheelchair-bound, autistic, mentally ret*d and otherwise "diseased" children out there? Who's going to pay for their medical expenses, the extra care that they're going to need, and make sure they don't have their trauma compounded by an uncaring world? Unless you're willing to take that upon yourself, even without the 9 months of pregnancy and how many days/hours of pain the mom had to deal with, please step down for the sake of consistency.

And please don't bring up the whole "well, what if you had been one of those kids?" Man, I have/had a screwed up digestive system, a cleft lip and palate, a rare skin condition that left me with only six teeth, a brain tumor and who knows how many freaking mental issues. I know very well how close I was to the chopping block. The fact is twofold. Part one, if they had, how would I know? I wouldn't be aware, my existence wouldn't even register with me, let alone mean anything to me. Part two is - they didn't. There will always be parents who will not do all the checks to make sure their baby is "perfect," and my parents happened to be some of them, so what's done is done. The logic breaks down when you ask someone if they would've been okay with having been aborted, because by the time they get to the point of arguing with you over political and philosophical issues, it is impossible for them to truly and accurately put themselves in the mindset (or lack thereof) of a fetus facing abortion. It simply does not make sense.

If the day comes when society or the state mandates that children with conditions be aborted across the board, then I'll oppose that. That's eugenics, and it takes the choice out of the matter regardless of individual circumstances or competencies. Until that point, when it's simply people making decisions about their own lives and the lives of those they love or will/would have come to love based on the best of their knowledge, I can't say that they're not making the best possible decision. Taking that option away is as bad as enforcing it to be so. The choice of sentient, rational beings directly involved in a situation should always overwhelm the theoretical choice of tentative people who can only be anthropomorphized for the political and ideological purposes of others, no matter what side one is on.

Sometimes I really hate people who base their opinions of others on silly, arbitrary criteria irrelevant to their worth as human beings like the organs between their legs.

Wait... sometimes? Make that always!

I said SOMETIMES.

Ahh right, sorry. In that case I concur!

Still, isn't it better just to judge people on what they say and do rather on inconsequential things like parts of their bodies that happen to be different from your own?

Not inconsequential, not in the least. You're squeamish about the whole man/woman thing, aren't you?