Is it a right to abort

Post Reply New Topic

If she gets "screwed" during a rape, I dont see why this would put any responsability on her shoulders. To be a rape victim is already horrible enough, to force her to give birth to a child that will always remember her of the tragedy is not exactly humane IMO.

And what if the girl "gets screwed" and uses protection, but the protection fails? Remember that both contraception pill and condom are not 100% safe, they may be like 97% or 98% safe but this still means about 1 or 2 out of 100 girls can get pregnant despite clearly taking their responsability. So if it was clearly a matter of bad luck, how would this lay any responsability on her shoulders?

I wonder what those pro-life activists would say if it was their 14 year old daughter who got raped or who had the bad luck her condom ripped. Are you going to force your daughter to throw away what remains of her youth?? That in my opinion is a lot less moral than to abort an unborn child (unborn = not a living person yet). And what I find most hypocrite of all are those saying abortion is wrong because life is sacred, but meanwhile support the death penalty. To me executing a criminal (= a fully conscious living person) is a lot worse than aborting a child whose life has not even begun yet.

Too bad your mother neglected her duty to abort you.

Perhaps so. But every cloud has a silver lining, such as my ability to tell other people to abort their children.

Actions have consequences. If the condom rips and there enters a voter into the booth, tough titty said the kitty. The cookie crumbles thusly. There's no need to destroy an innocent rape-baby, for the baby itself committed no crime. I say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Sexual morality is useful. As the prevention of the mind that rapes in the first place. Go after the root cause and not the symptom.

Rape, teenage pregnancy, prostitution, all these things are symptomatic of much bigger problems.

If Dr. Hans Asperger had been clawed out of his mother as a fetus and thrown in a trash barrel, where would we all be now?

You can make an exception in the case of rape, but such pregnancies are a tiny fraction of those aborted, so it's largely irrelevant to this discussion.


Not everyone agrees with that assertion, which is why this debate exists.


Some people are opposed to both. Others can consistently hold the position you claim is hypocritical because the criminal has done something bad to forfeit their right to life, whereas an unborn child has harmed no one yet.


But others disagree, so you need to be able to justify that opinion somehow or else others can just ignore you.

Sorry, if my wife or daughter gets raped and becomes pregnant, neither will carry the rapist's child to term. No one in my family has had an abortion to the best of my knowledge - we have discussed this and do not think that abortion is something to be done lightly. But you have staked out an extreme position that infringes upon the right of a woman not to be victimized a second time for nine whole months.

What about the unborn child? How can that innocence be weighed against the innocence of a rape victim?

Destroying the rapist's child to spite the rapist accomplishes nothing to undo the initial trauma. Unless, of course, it's a black man's baby.

The unborn child is no living person yet in my opinion, and thus has no rights whatsoever. Human rights including the right to live, begins upon birth, just like life begins when you are born and not earlier (again, just my opinion). So to those who support abortion, you are not terminating an innocent life when abortion occurs, you just prevent a birth but the "person" you are aborting is not a living person yet so I can really not classify this as murder by any means.

This is also why I think a woman has the right to abort without being asked why. It is her body, her choice. The unborn is no fully developped life yet, so hence there is no talk about murder IMO.

Orwell: I did specify why I think capital punishment is wrong while I am pro abortion, I do think it is wrong to kill, but I do not consider an unborn baby a real living person yet. I realise this is just my opinion and thus debatable. But knowing what my opinion is (weither you agree or not), I do think I explained my opinion clearly: capital punishment is terminating the life of a fully developped living person and thus I see this as murder, while the unborn is not a living person yet in my definition and thus abortion is not murder. This is why, criminal or no criminal, I consider an execution a violation of human rights while I consider abortion to be perfectly acceptable.

CP: Fair enough, but it still seems a bit exaggerated to accuse others of hypocrisy because they have different opinions from yours.

Nothing society does can undo the trauma from the rape. Forcing a woman to carry and deliver the rapist's child compounds the trauma - the society that you envision affirms the helplessness of the woman and reduces her to a uterus. It creates an incentive for rape.

Who said anything about black men? Your attempt to turn the argument on race is underhanded and desperate.

I dont think I did that. I respect pro-life opinions even when I strongly disagree with these opinions myself.

WHat I do consider hypocrite is not being anti abortion, but being against abortion and pro death penalty. I mean, you either oppose murder and consider every life sacred, or you dont? If someone says abortion is wrong because all forms of life are sacred, I accept that this person has this opinion and respect that, however how can someone first say this and then suddenly say that sacred life is suddenly not sacred when the person has committed a crime? THAT is a bit hypocrite IMO, being against abortion is just an opinion other than mine but I respect this opinion nonetheless.

^Because, as I already said, it is possible to consistently be pro-life and pro-capital punishment. I know plenty of people who regard your combination of views (pro-choice and anti-capital punishment) as being just as absurd and hypocritical as you consider the reverse.

Right!

Definitely not on Wrongplanet.

Pro-abortions shouldn't be that because they could have been aborted? I don't see how this could be relevant.

if she gets raped, then she gets raped with responsability?



I think I would opt for my daughter to abort if she was raped (if I had one), of course if she wanted to have the child then that would be fine, but if she doesn't want to have the baby, then she shouldn't have to.

Last edited by greenblue on 09 Sep 2008, 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It's a tough question and one I don't think can ever be answered.

However, I believe a woman has a right to do whatever she likes with her body. That extends to continuing a pregnancy or not, so yes, I think you could say it's her right to abort if she wants to.

I was that 1 out of a 100 (no rips or anything either - complete surprise), and as I said in the other thread, I chose to abort. You still feel responsible though! And it may be bad luck, but it doesn't make it an easy decision. I've gone into all that on the other abortion thread though so won't repeat myself on here.

Basically, the way I see it is that there are already far too many unwanted children in the world to warrant bringing any more in purely because some people believe they have a right to that life, without considering what kind of a life it would be. There are a lot of things to take into consideration - finances, circumstances, family life, parental age and stage, etc etc.

For that reason I don't feel you can make any kind of a sweeping generalisation. Every person is different and every situation is different - you can't really say everybody should keep their baby because it simply isn't true. People are too different.

I feel strongly though that there needs to be a cutoff point - 14 or 16 weeks I feel would be suitable personally as by that point you can have time to find out, make a decision, and abort if you want to. Children these days can, very rarely, survive being born at 23 weeks or so (albeit with brain damage and organ damage usually), and it doesn't look like it'll ever get much lower than that. So 16 weeks is sufficient time to cover any debate over viability etc.