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

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Having the freedom to choose does not guarantee freedom from slavery. Because if a woman chooses abortion she will be a slave if she feels guilty about it.

Deciding, after the fact, that a decision we made was a wrong one for us, is /not/ slavery; it is regret. Part of being a self-governing organism is the freedom to occasionally be wrong.

It is the women's choice. So I have no opinion.

If a man and a woman choose to get into a car and joyride without seatbelts, then we should leave them to "deal with the consequences" if they end up injured on the side of the road.

Never mind that we have medical procedures available to mitigate those consequences...

(/sarcasm)

No it is essentially murdering an innocent child because you find the child to be inconveinent.



While dictionaries now try to play word games over this subject, the fact of the matter is by definition abortion is infanticide, if people want to actually be honest about this.



The responsible thing was to own up and either put the kid up for adoption or raise the kid.



Killing the kid because the kid is "incovenient" is wrong for the same reason that killing you because you are simply "inconvenient" is wrong. The child is by definition a human being, just as you are.



Killing one's own offspring is infanticide. Thus by definition since the child even when in the womb is the offspring of the parents, the act of abortion is actually infanticide regardless of the word games you are trying to play.

Darling, you can't expect to be taken seriously when you simultaneously post idiosyncratic definitions of words and try to pre-emptively stop anyone from challenging your definitions by accusing anyone who disagrees of playing "word games."

Also, as has been pointed out to you over and over and over, pregnancy and childbirth are far more significant than a mere "inconvenience."

In the case that they are mentioning though, the sex was entirely consensual; no rape took place.

Why should they be allowed to kill the child, when the child was a result of their own consensual behavior?

Abortion essentially cheapens the value of human life.

I have a Swiftian proposal: why not ditch abortion and send every unwanted kid into the arms of any scumbag willing to pay?

So? Cancer tumors are 'alive' and 'human.' a zef isn't a person, and even if it were, no person gets to use another person's body without their permission.

Personally I think that religions which convince people that there's some eternal afterlife do far more to cheapen this life than nearly anything that we can do here. Why worry about unborn zefs? According to your religion, don't they all get to experience eternal bliss in heaven?

One assumption that I see over and over by those who are anti-choice is the assumption that abortions are sought for purely selfish reasons. First I don't see a problem with that, especially in the case of a woman who is very young, older, or has special needs herself. But I've also known women who had abortions for other reasons, none of which I could argue with. I used to be against abortion choice, but after knowing a few people who'd had them and understanding their reasons, I had to change my mind.

I think that if most people who are anti-choice started really thinking things through, and knew the stories of more women who choose to terminate pregnancies they would likely stop seeing it as killing and start to see that it's an option that needs to exist.

When I see questions like, well what if she is raped several times, should she have an abortion each time - these are not well thought out questions, they're not compassionate questions, they're simply argumentative. If you're human enough to care about a human life, then care about humans already alive and how an unexpected pregnancy can affect them. Choice is not about people being promiscuous and having abortion after abortion - maybe there are extreme cases like that. But most of the time it's about a very difficult choice, one that the woman agonizes over, and one which she should make for herself, because no one else has to live her life.

Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 19 Nov 2012, 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

It involves no murdering and no innocent child. So no.

An abortion works great to deal with the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy. Having to go through a surgery is no free ride and thus shall make them re-think things up.

Does not involve killing and it does not involve an infant. If you were honest, you would have nothing to post, ever again.


What kid?

No. It's self defense. It's no more murder than shooting a would-be rapist is.

Depends on whether there is a genuine threat. Someone who understands the risks of having sex makes the choice to accept those consequences should they become a reality. Essentially, if you choose to have sex, you choose to roll the dice on getting pregnant. You HAVE a choice in terms of whether you get pregnant or not, so it isn't a good self-defense argument if no one is being threatened or ever under attack.

I don't LIKE that rape would make it a valid self-defense argument, but it is what it is and as a man it would be unjust for me to tell a woman she doesn't have freedom to do what she pleases when she never had a choice in getting pregnant in the first place.

Now, if becoming pregnant was not rape and thus a choice, I know for certain that things do happen in a pregnancy that really can be threatening to a mother's life. If you don't KNOW, then no one can rightly blame you because it is self-defense. But I do question whether the risk really is as severe as the pro-infanticide activists would have us believe. My wife experienced placenta previa in her second pregnancy, and there is no way to have a normal delivery when that happens. Survival of the infant and the mother is going to depend on how soon you can get to the hospital and just how close you can carry the pregnancy to term. In our case, we were able to get to the hospital in under an hour, the baby was delivered quickly, and she was over 4 pounds. There were a few problems like you'd expect with a 7 month premie, but a few weeks later she was strong, healthy, and you'd never have known things got so screwed up with the pregnancy. Now she's happy, she's learning to play piano, and she'll turn 4 in January. If my wife had elected to have an abortion, it would have deeply upset me, and I certainly wouldn't be enjoying a life enriched as it is by my daughter. But I value my wife's life above all other concerns. I would have learned to deal with it and somehow let it go. I feel blessed that I didn't have to.

'Someone who understands the risks of driving makes the choice to accept those consequences should they become a reality. Essentially, if you choose to have drive, you choose to roll the dice on getting into a car accident. You HAVE a choice in terms of whether you get into a car accident or not, so it isn't a good self-defense argument if no one is being threatened or ever under attack.

Now, if getting into a car accident was not due to drunk driving and thus a choice, I know for certain that things do happen in car accidents that really can be threatening to a driver's life. If you don't KNOW, then no one can rightly blame you because it is self-defense. But I do question whether the risk really is as severe as the pro-medical treatment activists would have us believe. My wife experienced a ruptured spleen during her second car accident, and there is no way to have a normal day when that happens. Survival of the driver is going to depend on how soon you can get to the hospital and just how soon you can remove the spleen. In our case, we were able to get to the hospital in under an hour, the spleen was removed quickly, and she lost 4 units of blood. There were a few problems like you'd expect with a ruptured spleen, but a few weeks later she was strong, healthy, and you'd never have known things got so screwed up with the auto collision. Now she's happy, she's learning to play piano, and she'll be 4 years post operative in January.'

A colleague of mine experienced a placental abruption a few years ago. It was her third child, with no history of difficulties and no expectation of anything other than a normal delivery. They rushed her to the OR and did an emergency hysterectomy, but even though she was literally five minutes from the surgery suite, she still ended up taking 4 units of blood. If she had tried to give birth at home, she would have died; instead, she and the baby were both fine. Glad your daugher is fine, Angel Rho.

That was a planned hospital birth; we also get lots of people who have attempted home-births and have had things go wrong - sometimes, very, very wrong. Aside from death, the worst I've ever seen was a woman with permanent brain damage from full-on ecclampsia that lead to seiszures, that lead to cardiac arrest, 2 hours out from the nearest hospital. The paramedic did chest compressions on her for an hour on the way to the hospital; if you've ever done chest compressions on anyone (much less a pregnant woman), you know how physically echausting that would have been and you would understand why she had brain damage from lack of oxygen to the brain for so long.
These are not just things that I hear about second-hand; these are things that I have /seen/ myself.

medically speaking you have even less.

defintions exist for a reason, blatantly ignoring them nakes you othing but dishonest.

I see your point, but this just seems like apples/oranges to me. Yes there are known risks to driving a car. But driving a car is a privilege reserved for those who demonstrate that they can handle a vehicle. It is a privilege that can be taken away if someone makes poor choices. By your car-accident refutation analogy, we should also sex classes, certify/license successful completion of the class, and have police do "routine checks" to make sure everyone is following the rules and fine those who, say, aren't on birth control and/or don't use condoms. There would have to be special restrictions on who would be allowed to suspend b.c. and prophylactics for procreation purposes, but not really anything you couldn't fill out some paperwork for and wait for approval. That doesn't mean there aren't still risks, but at worst the majority of women, i.e. those not preparing for conception, would be at risk for STDs if any of them were raped. Think of it as being the same as having seat belts, airbags, and maybe even roll bars. There are known risks, but we're doing everything we can to minimize those risks.

But in reality, we treat sex as a right, not a privilege to be earned and that can be taken away if we fail to follow the rules. We really only take away freedom from mostly violent criminals who are a known danger to women.


Thanks.

We've wanted to do home-birth, but because of placenta previa with our second child, a "normal" childbirth is impossible for us. She was miserable throughout that pregnancy and afterwards. But she breezed through our third pregnancy. She didn't need nearly as much pain meds in recovery and was ready to go home in 3 days. They wouldn't actually LET her go home, of course, but in all likelihood she probably would have been fine (no, I don't believe in pushing our luck. But we did wonder if making her stay an extra day wasn't due to the hospital getting a little more Medicaid money out of us. I prefer to think the doctor was just doing the whole "better safe..." routine).

I don't object to home birth. You just can't find a midwife within a 300 mile radius of where we live. With Hannah, we had our emergency plan in place as soon as we knew what was going on. The night Hannah was born, my wife had just made a routine visit to the W.C. when everything, um, came loose. It looked like murder scene in there. Home births are great when everything goes smooth like clockwork. What my wife went through would not have been survivable outside a hospital and without a good doctor.

Am I to understand your eclampsia patient had attempted a home birth??? Had no one noticed any signs like abnormal blood pressure, unusual swelling? Nothing unusual in urine tests? She wasn't on bed rest when she went in to labor, assuming she went into labor? Didn't have her OB on speed dial? With our third child, we were able to have a planned section. We already knew she wasn't dilated enough, so we waited a few hours to make sure the contractions were regular and not just Braxton-Hicks. That started mid-morning and she toughed it out until after lunch, and I told her "You're going home, we're packing, and we're getting out of here!" I stayed with her through the night, went home early the next morning to relieve the babysitter and get the kids to daycare, and I hadn't made it halfway home before her doctor came on call and told her the baby was coming. Nothing I could do about it then, but I did manage to take care of my other kids and drive 40 minutes BACK to the hospital as soon as I was done. And it was STILL a few hours after I got back before we got prepped. And I can honestly say my wife is beautiful "inside AND out."

Yeah, I'm one of THOSE guys who thinks guts are cool. What's up with wussies who pass out at the sight of blood and entrails? I dunno...

But it's mind-blowing to me that someone should have known that they couldn't do a home birth without near-certainty that it would be fatal, like if my wife had tried home birth there's the possibility that a womb previously weakened from previous surgery wouldn't have the strength to push the baby out, and that's IF it didn't rupture. That's why we have a plan BEFORE she even goes into labor. How on earth did your eclampsia patient manage to have that happen? Even if the hospital is two hours away, at the first signs of labor she could have made it easily with significantly minimized risk. I mean, I know "stuff happens," but wow...