Why do so many people think that abortion is acceptable?

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elective doesn't mean 'out of laziness and convenience' per say that just means it wasn't medically necessary for them to have an abortion. There is a number of reasons outside of laziness and convenience that would fall under that. Lets see financial inability to endure a pregnancy, any medical treatment during that and giving birth at a hospital, Simply being unfit to be a parent and smart enough to admit that to yourself, having a lifestyle that would be harmful to the development of a cell clump into a person, having a job and not being able to take time off without being fired.

Of course to you that could be laziness or convenience but, but its clear you disregard any effects pregnancy can have on the woman and seem to think its easy to just up and make all the lifestyle changes, magically be stable enough for a baby and all that should you get pregnant by accident.

So do the non-religious, if not all humanity then at least the people around them. For the record I did not come to be anti-abortion through religious teaching.



I'm open to the idea of adoption, but this is just a diversion. You can take moral stances on murder, rape and theft without having to personally take care of victims of these crimes. How many hours a day do you spend taking care of bereaved families of murder victims, or sitting at the bedside of rape victims? Do you personally reimburse people who have been victims of theft...? If I deem you not to have done enough, can we ignore your opinion?



Read the page a bit more. The extreme examples like rape, incest and medical reasons we discussed on previous pages make up a tiny proportion of abortion. Financial inability counts as a convenience issue, as does career problems brought about by the pregnancy. Making humans is always inconvenient even to the richest, that's not a valid excuse to kill them. Accidentally getting pregnant is also inconvenient ... whenever someone says "I'm not ready to be a parent or undergo pregnancy" he or she is saying "This is inconvenient. I don't want my life to change."

You make no sense rape, murder and all that are crimes and victims of those things do get help that society attempts to provide. Abortion is not a crime, and simply prevents unwanted children who will need to go into foster care or otherwise be taken care of by society....so you're confusing separate issues. I say if people want legislation to ban abortion then they ought to be willing to pay more in taxes and have some responsibility in dealing with the consequences of that. Perhaps every married couple without a child should be forced to adopt...after all its just laziness and convenience for a married couple not to be taking care of children right?

And yeah you're right there is some level of convenience in having an abortion...but financial inability, not being able to just quit your job and still financially support yourself, not being in any way ready to be a parent or even undergo a 9 month pregnancy...and feeling you'd be unable to cope with the changes it would cause are serious things to the women having to weigh these issues. But I am glad you're the authority on what priorities women ought to have.

Why is it 'lazy' for a woman not to want a baby...and take proper action not to have one should a pregnancy occur? Seems to me an implication that women are expected to have children...thus if pregnancy occurs we're lazy if we don't drop everything and prepare for a baby rather than terminating the pregnancy.

Well if you want it that way I say guys who impregnate women but want no part in having a kid should then be required to support the woman in her pregnancy financially and help take care of the child or put it up for adoption instead of just being able to 'walk away' from that one night stand with the sloppy sex where they decided to keep it a secret their condom broke for instance.

I don't know about anyone else but I am not a baby maker, ready to go into mommy mode should a condom break or something.

The analogy isn't perfect but you do dismiss my opinions unfairly. I assume you want murder, rape and theft to remain illegal? Lets say you take a moral stance on these issues and I started saying what do you know about anything? Do you run a prison? are you a police officer? will you throw the switch on the electric chair? Are you willing to pay the cost of law enforcement in order to deter people from committing these crimes? The obvious answer is yes, what you are doing is trying to smear me as one of those "out of the womb on to the battlefield" type republicans you find in the U.S.


Perhaps I should be the authority, apparently you struggle to discern the difference between being unable to make a sacrifice and being unwilling to make one. None of these concerns raised are insurmountable, either through societal or personal effort.



The laziness I was referring to was about not using contraceptives or using them incorrectly. But actually fits quite well with other scenarios you have raised.



That's a different issue. Most of the arguments about men being able to walk away from responsibility are only valid because abortion is legal in the way it is. Once that changes it's much fairer to demand men take responsibility, and they should.

Edit: Just to clarify


I have no problems with this at all. In a world with no or very limited legal abortion, using law to force the father to support the mother at least through pregnancy if not afterwards is a good idea.

Fine forget the adoption thing...as I have no idea where you are trying to take that debate.

Also I know the differences between being unwilling and unable to make sacrifices...and as pregnancy I think I'd be both unwilling and incapable of making said 'sacrifice'. And yeah very easy for a guy to chastise women for not wanting to make the sacrifices needed for pregnancy, childbirth and than giving up or caring for said child....because they don't have to make those same sacrifices. They don't have to have a thing growing inside them for nine months that becomes a baby, horomonal and physical changes the body undergoes, or the lack of mobility and general nausea and other side effects that accompany pregnancy....let alone how painful it is to give birth.

I am not obligated to sacrifice any of my time or energy having a baby just because you think its worth the sacrifice...and an accident happens, even if it were just because I simply don't want to and I wasn't as concerned about other risks.

I think you have a skewed vision of what lazy is....its not laziness for a women who doesn't want a child to take proper action not to have one. Contraception does not always work....the lazy thing to do would be not take a morning after pill(if you know the condom broke for instance), and then not look into abortion should it be too late for the morning after pill and continue a lifestyle that is damaging to thing developing into a person and then guilt trip people to help you cause you're 'pregnant' now. The responsible thing is if you can't or won't make the commitments necessary for pregnancy and childbirth is not to have the child.

Also I think both the male and female should be able to walk away from an unwanted pregnancy....and morning after pills and/or abortion is conductive to allowing that.

But its clear there is only disagreement to be had, no point going in circles anymore.

Indeed, there will always be disagreement unless someone answers my challenge from a few posts ago. That challenge being to come up with a logically consistent definition of when life begins. That is the starting point for any debate here. I said:
and I stand uncorrected, waiting.

If you pretend we have been talking about abortions occuring around the 8 month mark or even the day before the due date suddenly I seem like less of a lunatic no? It's not that your concerns aren't real, or that your problems with pregnancy are irrelevant, it's that they pale in comparison if abortion is in fact, the unjust killing of a human.

It is plain that you are unaware that 1 in 2 fertilized eggs do not implant and instead get flushed out with the next period. Half of your "persons" as you define them self abort or are rejected. And even once an egg implants another 1 in 4 fails to thrive, as it's called, and self-aborts or is rejected.

Clearly, God loves abortion. Look at those numbers - substantially more zygotes don't make it than do.



Please stop telling women what their view is ("Women...do not see it as such"). Just stop. There are plenty of women who do want the eventual child that may develop, and yet understand the biology involved and do not imbue the cells with personhood or a "soul", as it does not yet qualify and they do not Believe. You have no right to speak for them.

Basically, this whole argument comes down to this: define, "personhood". So stop arguing about "life". Single celled algae are alive. Bacteria are alive. The lettuce in your sandwich is alive, until you digest it. But they are not a "person". Cut through the rhetoric and false equivalencies, define "personhood" as you see it and the argument will be much cleaner.

Plain is it? You missed or ignored my response to your original post:



As soon as circumstances arise where a child will be born, medical complications aside, that human child deserves protection at any stage of development.



Fair enough.



The challenge is yours to meet, it is your side trying to define these things to justify abortion. Life, personhood (something I don't think anyone inside a womb, at any stage can have really), whatever terms you wish to use, the problem is the same. At what stage in prenatal development does the embryo/fetus/collection of cells/parasitic worm/baby have the right to some protection? For me, until I am convinced otherwise, the deserve protection from day 1.

I agree with this a lot. I can talk only about my own pregnancy: I went into it knowing that the first trimester is a hit-and-miss affair. A lot of women abort during this period, and this comes as a huge shock to many. I wish it was more commonly known that a lot of fertilized eggs and even foetuses are not capable of life. A more realistic attitude about this fact would be useful for a lot of people, instead of making a huge affair out of something so uncertain. A few more abortions during this period really doesn't make a big difference.

The second trimester is when the foetus starts developing into what will become a baby. At 18 weeks, it's like a mini baby - the basic body structure is done, it starts moving, and developing features. That's more or less when a woman starts developing a relationship with her baby-to-be. I can imagine the horror of going through pregnancy with an unwanted baby - I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. Men do not understand the intimacy of sharing one's internal organs with another person. It's not something a woman knows if she hasn't gone through it, but women are forced to think about it - because it could become real!

I really think that among others religious institutions deliberately misinform people about pregnancy, because the payoff is so huge, as in being able to control their female members through fear.

Thank you for making so much sense in a thread so full of BS. It really is all a power trip for certain types of dudes because they cannot possibly understand the intimacy of pregnancy and I think it's a source of their hatred for us.

Enemy of women now am I? I still await a consistent definition of life/personhood whatever you want to call it that justifies terminating a pregnancy for no good reason. Without that this thread will go nowhere, best just to let it rest otherwise.

according to you, and only to you. but here goes anyway. let's use the definition the supreme court uses. legally, life begins at viability.

if you think people don't have good reason for terminating pregnancies, you haven't been reading the responses to this thread, or you just aren't an empathetic sort.

Viability has never really been put forward in such a way. At first it was an attempt to reconcile the place where the procedure stopped being abortion and started being early induced birth i.e. late term abortions that try to remove the baby/fetus intact. Every now and then one could be removed from the womb still wriggling, and the doctor would then terminate outside the womb. For obvious reasons... people were quite upset with that idea, but in a masterful display of dissonance they had no problem if the doctor killed the baby inside the womb (see the U.S. Partial birth abortion act).

Viability is not a logically consistent definition of life/personhood that would work inside or outside the womb. It does not try to answer what makes a human a human and when that occurs. The ability to be ripped from the womb doesn't seem to be a good measure to me. It's more akin to a trial of survival - what are the chances of this thing surviving an attempt to kill it - sorry "remove it from the uterus"? Even if the answer is 0% it does not mean it's therefore acceptable to do such a thing.

The viability excuse can be summed up as: "It's ok to do this because we think it will DEFINITELY DIE in the process". It makes no attempt to answer whether we should.

A person is a person, no matter how small. A person's personhood also shouldn't be determined by whether or they're disabled or not. Every life is worth living and everybody has something to offer to this world. There is also no perfect race.

So, I'll ask again; when does your definition of personhood start, please? And please stop conflating personhood with life. As I pointed out before, plant cells and single cell organisms are also alive.

I don't have a definitive definition of personhood, I'm not even sure there is one. Fortunately I do not need one for my position. Be careful before you argue yourself into an abhorrent stance.

The legal definition of person in US law:

"An entity recognized by the law as separate and independent, with legal rights and existence including the ability to sue and be sued, to sign contracts, to receive gifts, to appear in court either by themselves or by lawyer and, generally, other powers incidental to the full expression of the entity in law. "

Not a lawyer but that sounds like anyone up until they become an adult is not a person.