If a girl is raped and pregnant, should she keep the baby?

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So what do the other 98% do it for?

The fetus'.





Is there a reason to take this thread seriously by now?

Note that my line was 20 weeks, not 16 (there's a difference of a month there), and fetal abnormality was only one reason of several for which I would be comfortable with a late-term abortion. However, 'what I am comfortable with' is not the point - the entire point is 'what the woman, and her doctor, decide.'

Also? Many women who would choose to have an abortion as early as possible end up having to delay the procedure b/c there is no provider in their area and they have to arrange time off of work, transportation, lodging, etc.

Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest, "Why Do Women Have Abortions", Family Planning Perspectives, 20 (4) Jul/Aug 1988, pp 169-176


Living on ramen for a couple of years is going to have less of a detrimental effect on an 18 year old than on a 6 year old. Living in poverty, in general, is going to have less deleterious effects on young adults than on children. One more mouth to feed is literally a mouth that takes food away from extant children, not to mention clothing and other resources.


It wasn't a question. It was what you yourself said, in almost so many words: 'you don't trust people to make the right decision for themselves.'

The reason that I would not protest too much about regulating 3rd trimester abortions is that I don't think very many people, at all, choose to have late term abortions for cavalier reasons. In other words, it would have roughly the same effect as a prohibition on people deliberately stabbing themselves in the abdomen with steak knives.


Firstly, look at the tag on that: I was addressing Inuyasha. Secondly, dear, blunnet was being sarcastic. I know it's hard to tell when one is an aspie, but generally anyone who talks about eating feti or children (or adults, for that matter, except in extreme starvation conditions like when trapped in the mountains without food) is being sarcastic or producing an elaborate hoax.

edited to fix quote tags.

Last edited by LKL on 10 Aug 2011, 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Visagrunt, I don't always agree with you, but I respect your consistently level-headed approach to the arguments you participate in.

Then you are a very lonely voice in the pro-choice crowd. I however, find it incompatible with my own views as not viable outside the womb does not mean, not alive. Most laws at the moment tend to focus on fetal pain, though that standard has flaws also.

Justice Anthony Kennedy (2003):

"States . . . have an interest in forbidding medical procedures which, in the State's reasonable determination, might cause the medical profession or society as a whole to become insensitive, even disdainful, to life, including life in the human fetus . . . A State may take measures to ensure the medical profession and its members are viewed as healers, sustained by a compassionate and rigorous ethic and cognizant of the dignity and value of human life, even life which cannot survive without the assistance of others."



This is a major reason why we as a society need to admit that we are not equipped to judge these things at all. The real question is who you give the benefit of the doubt to. I chose life you choose the mother. I think you have misjudged which is the more fundamental right.



People commit crime anyway, that is no reason not have laws or police officers.



The first two are situations where the life of others are placed at risk, the right to life is only lost in those circumstances. In the third, I am unsure of such situations. I know you can withhold life-preserving care in some circumstances... but I know of no doctor that is empowered to say no to saving a patients life (excluding triage where it is a matter of saving the most and in that situation my former point applies). I could be wrong though, please tell me if I am as I am not a medical professional. I do however, have a reasonable understanding of human rights literature.



Only in relation to the life of others, if you put that in danger you lose your own rights.



Yes its the abortion or the Irish potato famine isnt it? Your language simply does not account for the numbers, 71% of late term abortions were performed on people who misjudged their pregnancy.



Neither do you, unless you think abortion should be totally unregulated? There is a gap between what you are saying and what you hold to.

Misjudged in what sense? Are you saying that they intentionally got themselves pregnant and then changed their minds, or are you saying that when they discovered they were pregnant they initially thought they should keep it?

It would be nice to have some more information, details are sparse in these matters, what I have claimed is straight from the study I linked to. LKL's claims that late term abortion reasons are all that different from standard ones. In the study I cited, the reasons for seeking a late-term abortion were not all that different from those seeking a standard one. ("Why Do Women Have Abortions" by Aida Torres and Jacqueline Darroch Forrest Family Planning Perpectives, 20 (4) Jul/Aug 1988, pp 169-176)

I'm a male and I'm not a father or a doctor so I guess I shouldn't comment on these issues.

All right I'm not here to debate pro-life versus pro-choice (though I'm pro-choice actually) but I think really the only people who have the right to debate on abortion are womens, parents of unborn babies and doctors. It's not a religious issue and it isn't a political one. It's at the basis just a medical procedure that should be decided by a women after discussion with the father of the baby (the mom has the final say, but the dad opinion should be consider) and after objective advicing from a gynecologist/obstetrician.

OK, well the same study you've all been referencing gives some other statistics.

That 21% have an abortion because they are not ready for the responsibility, 21% because they cannot afford to raise a child, and 11% because they are not mature enough or too young to raise a child.

I think that all three of these are the same reason, and really what this says is that more than half of all abortions occur because the prospective mother deems herself incompetent to have a child.

And i think that's a compelling argument for not having one. Not that i personally would make the choice to kill it.

It also goes back to the same point i've been making - apparently a large number of pregnant women cannot fathom, for one reason or another, giving it up for adoption.

^^^^

FYI, Those statistics cant be added like. People stated multiple reasons.

Yes, I find this strange also.

wrt. late-term abortions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-term_abortion

(bolding mine)
who are you to tell these women that their reasons are not sufficient or valid? 48% would have aborted earlier if abortion were more readily available. I don't think that a woman should be forced to give birth just because there's no provider in her county, and she has to arrange time off two months in advance or lose her job. I personally know enough and have enough options that I would not choose a late-term abortion, but it's not my place to tell another woman what she can and can't do with her body at any stage.

91, You keep on telling me that we're the same wrt. late-term abortions, but I do not see it: while I agree that late term abortions should be avoided, I am not willing to impose my will on other people in this. You, by your own statements, are. The reason, as I have said, that I would not so strongly fight laws that place life/health/abnormality restrictions on late-term abortions (by which I mean 3rd trimester, not 16 weeks as you have previously mentioned) is simply that it wouldn't affect that many women because such a low percentage of abortions take place that late. I would still vote against such a law, but I probably wouldn't donate money in order to fight it.

I still want to hear whether or not you are willing to donate a kidney, which you don't really need, to save the life of some other deserving person.

duplicate deleted

Why would you vote against a law like that?



Family, certainly.

Again another strawman argument, cause a child in the womb is only in the womb for a matter of months, it isn't a permanent situation like removing organs.


How can you say that someone is not a human being one minute but a few weeks later they are. So if they someday say that children under age 12 are nothing more than property, I guess you would be okay with that too.

If what you call a "fetus" which is in reality a child, is somehow in your view not a human being, what makes a toddler anything more that property, or for that matter what makes you anything more than property, because you happen to be autistic so you aren't "really human."

Get it through your head, what you are advocating is dehumanizing human beings that never committed any crime towards anyone, for no other reason than it might make someone feel better, having them killed.

Is rape something that is extremely horrible, yes, should the rapist be locked up for the rest of his/her life, yes. However, why should we condone the murder of an innocent child, simply cause it may make the rape victim feel better. Two wrongs do not make a right!

Alright, i hadn't paid enough attention to the math. Maybe we can get Jake to make a pretty graphic. I haven't the knowhow.

As for the other, I do not understand why the pro-life movement does not focus more effort on the problem of adoption. It's possible that many pregnant women simply don't know how adoption works and have real or imagined reasons they fear dealing with government. Perhaps they simply have a phobia of bureaucracy.

If people feel strongly enough about preventing abortion, why can't they step up and say "I will make this easy for you. I will explain exactly how this works, and i will support you both financially and logistically to get that baby born and into the waiting arms of qualified parents"?

You can blame Government on this too actually... There are so many legal hoops you have to jump through to adopt an infant in the United States, it's quite frankly ridiculous.