Questions for those who are pro-life.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

If you are pro-life and think abortion should be illegal, or if you think it should be legal but still think it is wrong in some cases... I'd like to know your answers to this set of questions about when is moral for a woman to have an abortion.

• If it is from incest?
• What if it is from rape, but from her boyfriend with whom the relationship has been going downhill.
• What if it was rape by her husband?
• If it is a danger to the mother's life?
• If she isn't ready to grow up.
• If it is not a danger to the mother's life, but will result in serious life-long health consequences for her?
• If the mother has a condition that makes it unlikely that the child will be born healthy.
• If the mother is addicted to drugs and lacks impulse control.
• If the child will be a girl and she only wants a boy.
• If she faces domestic violence and fears for her life if she becomes pregnant. (A woman is mostly likely to be murdered when she is pregnant)
• If she knows now that the father is a bad bad bad person who she want to totally break ties with and the child will provide a link to let him back in.
• If she is married and the child (with red hair) once born will expose an affair and ruin her relationship and the lives of her other children.
• If she has 9 kids already and her husband used birth control ...but whops!
• If the mother's religion says giving a child for adoption is wrong, and she has no money to even care for herself.
• If she is 13 years old. (To get back on topic.)
• If she is 11 years old.
• If she is a hooker, and she knows a baby can't fit in to that lifestyle.
• If she has 8 fertilized eggs in her womb can she have some removed?
• What about if she has 2 eggs in her womb and only wants one kid? Can she have one removed?
• If she will need to drop out of college if she has a kid. Can she have an abortion?
• Are the thousands of fertilized eggs thrown away at fertility clinics morally wrong?
• What about stem cells?

The views people have on abortion are often complex. I wrote these questions for a pro-life friend but I remembered that there are a few pro-lifers here so I thought I'd ask here too. I think the questions might bring out the nuances of this contentious topic. Of course, there is a subtext to my questions: "How can you draw the line?" -- but, I'm not so naive as to think that people can't draw a line. In fact, the really interesting excercise is to see the shape that the line forms and the values that it indicates. (So, yes I will judge you by your answers, you know how judgmental Liberals are.)

If you would like to come up with a response battery of questions for the pro-choice folks to answer be my guest.

Also, on questions posts like this some people just write the answers in a list without the questions. That's impossible to follow. Please please please copypasta the questions!

Comments

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

Yes.
Agreed to all of the above.
For much the same reasons I suspect.

An overarching principle is that the woman has a life herself and if saving her life means that the fetus/baby dies as a result of preventing her life being threatened, then the 1st trimester is the way to go.

Secondly, it is her life, her beliefs and her decision . She has to live with the consequences of any decision that gets made- so morrally, she should be the one making it. Not the Church, not the State - her.

Even if the other parties come up and say "We will take over the full financial cost of raising this child ourselves, we will care for it , not just materially, but we will also meet it's emotional and spiritual needs as well" i think a pregnant woman is entitled to reply -
'Look , I see what happens to kids who get left in the care of the Church and the State. I know about the abuse of kids that goes on in institutions run by your people. None of you are capable of meeting your commitments here, your guarantees are worthless'.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I would say to refer to the Catholic guidelines. I believe the answers are this:

The only one that's morally licit is when it's a danger to the mother's life and the abortion is a secondary effect of the treatment for the mother.

I can't think of any religion that forbids giving up a child for adoption. Is there one you had in mind there?

Yes, throwing away the fertilized eggs at fertility clinics is morally wrong. Stem cells that are gotten as a result of this would also be morally wrong.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

morally licit = morally legit?

In any case, what do you think of:

# If it is not a danger to the mother's life, but will result in serious life-long health consequences for her?

Something like life-long handicaps or disfigurements.

[rainynights.livejournal.com]

I can answer all those questions with this. Abortion in any case is wrong in my honest opinion. God makes his views very clear on this. He did not say but in certain cases feel free to murder infants. I was raped and I choose to have my son and raise him because he did nothing wrong. This does not make me a hero or stronger than any one else. To me I did the right thing.

Even in the case that a doctor says if you have this baby you will die. Who are we to play God? God gives and takes life away not some doctor.

If you do not believe in the bible then none of what I am saying will make any sense to you.

I fully believe that using abortion as birth control is disgusting. I also think that adoption is the way to go instead of abortions. I just shudder when I think of how many babies are dying every day.

What if we aborted the person who would have found the cure for cancer or aids? A great president? Who knows..

[napoleonofcrime.livejournal.com]

(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v422/napoleanofcrime/?action=view&current=catjesuspopcorn-1.gif)

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

If you do not believe in the bible then none of what I am saying will make any sense to you.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, I believe in the Bible yet, I still don't agree with you. But I respect your views, your choice and your courage. I am certian that your son is a beautiful person I can tell that you love him deeply. You are a complex and principled woman. I seriously hope thy caught the man who raped you and put him behind bars. They never found the ones who attacked me. Though, I did not face the challenge of being pregnant. I don't know what I would have done. I'm glad that in the country women like us have the freedom to choose and no one can tell us that we must have a child or that we must abort. I bet some people tried to pressure you didn't they?

I'm glad it was your choice, even as I'm angry that you had to make it.

I know way too many women who have been raped. Way too many.

I'll say a prayer for you. God Bless.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Of course I believe in the bible, Good god I have SEEN one!!

Do I believe it is any less fictional than say the Illiad, that is another question.

[zen-monk.livejournal.com]

I think that by saying that those who don't believe in the bible won't make your argument comprehensible them is a bit extreme and demeaning to human rationality, which is something that God has given us as supported by many Christians including the esteemable John Locke. Especially since other religions would have similar beliefs to yours and even by those who are not religious, but that's beside the point.

I do agree that the child growing in the womb is blameless and is itself not what should be condemned but how it got there that should. But I do wish to point out that your arguments presented to us are a little flimsy but they are not wrong to me.

In your example of the doctor, how is one to know that God didn't present the doctor to you to save you and that maybe the child is fated to die by the doctor's hand? It may not be a natural way to die, but there are many unnatural deaths beyond being slain by a human hand. Also, to my personal preferences, I'd rather be alive than die for someone who's life I'm not even certain for. How am I to know if the child would live after my death? What if the fetus turns out to be some abomination, and I mean that it didn't even form into a baby but is merely a lump of flesh (and the health channel has provided some very terrifying examples)? What if the kid who lives would turn into someone who causes great suffering? Innocent blood would still be on my hands regardless of whether I looked out for myself and killed my child or let myself die for them.

This then goes to your last statement of the child's potentiality. An ethics philosopher did present that argument against abortion, but it really isn't a very strong one. The future is really too uncertain about a person, much less a fetus, because the blank slate that a child has is really 50-50. There's just as much chance of the kid being a straight-laced stand-up kind of guy to the chance of him being a total douche who might cause great suffering to others. A most extreme variation on this belief would be that all manners of contraception is unethical because just by preventing a sperm and an egg to meet is denying a person's possible future.

I wouldn't say that your beliefs are wrong because there is sensibility in them, but they do run the risk of great insensitivity towards others. Especially victimized women. I do, however, commend your emotional strength because even doing the right thing could feel very awful, maybe even threaten one's very soul.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

Too chatty? Not enough substance?

:/

[mijopo.livejournal.com]

This all seems like sort of a red herring to me. The pro-life position is mostly independent of the progeny or circumstances of the fetus and has to do with whether the fetus at some point becomes a living being that has some right to life.

If you are pro-life and think abortion should be illegal, or if you think it should be legal but still think it is wrong in some cases.v

And just to be clear, I assume you understand that there are many pro-choice people who believe that abortion is morally reprehensible. One needn't be pro-life to think that abortion is wrong. I doubt that there are very many people who think abortion is always a morally neutral act, right up to the last moment before delivery.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

My stance on abortion is fairly simple; keep it legal, but you can only get one. Immediately after your first/last/only abortion, you're fixed to where you can't have kids again.

Fewer abortions, fewer kids, more thinking before fucking, pro-lifers win a little, pro-choicers win a little.

Sure, in a case of rape, or if giving birth has a decent chance of killing the mother, there would be exceptions, but like now those would be rare.

I just need to put this idea of mine into one or two words. Pro-life and Pro-choice are too catchy - and what I just typed out wouldn't fit on a bumper sticker.

[thedinglestarry.livejournal.com]

If I understand you right, what you're saying is that abortion should be restricted to one per woman, and this will be ensured by compulsory sterilisation of the woman afterwards?

Nobody wins in that kind of state. Good god.

And leaving aside the terrifyingly draconian implications of that, I assume from what you've said that it would be the woman who would be penalised by having her ability to have children taken away, not the man who had an equal hand in the pregnancy - or would the man be "fixed too"? And btw, vasectomy for a man is nowhere as invasive and major a procedure as female sterilisation is.

So, to reiterate... your position is that abortion should be restricted to one per woman, and this will be ensured by compulsory sterilisation of the woman and possibly the man afterwards?

Do tell me if I'm misunderstanding the meaning of "you're fixed to where you can't have kids again."

Christ on a bike. Nobody wins in that kind of state. Sorry for the repetition ; I am utterly flabbergasted.

Restriction-of-abortion as a punishment for sex, taken to the extreme. Ugh.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

I am pro life. There are too many people in the world and that works against life. To say one is 'pro life' as in 'against abortion' is akin to saying that one is pro the long lingering death and suffering of humanity.

That is why I believe abortion should be the default position. As soon as it is determined that a woman is pregnant an abortion should be scheduled unless she opts out of it in writing. Further, abortion and contraception should be free and funded by my tax dollars.

Let's count how many times that opinion ever gets aired in the 'liberal' media.

[cory-nickolatos.livejournal.com]

Hahaha.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

There is a fundamental, categorical, question that has to be decided. This isn't an issue of pragmatism.

That question is, "under what circumstances can we ethically end the life of another human being?"

It seems to me that the answer to that question is, "only in defense of ourselves or another's life or as an unintended consequence of the same."

So, applying this rule, we see that:

If it is a danger to the mother's life?

Yes. Killing the human fetus is an unfortunate result of treating the mother's medical condition.

If it is not a danger to the mother's life, but will result in serious life-long health consequences for her?

Yes, depending on the severity of the health consequences.

If the mother has a condition that makes it unlikely that the child will be born healthy.

I can't imagine what this would be, but it really depends on what you mean by "not healthy." Downs Syndrome people are rapidly becoming extinct. Since I know a few Downs people I find this very sad.

If she is 13 years old. (To get back on topic.)
If she is 11 years old.
If she has 8 fertilized eggs in her womb can she have some removed?

These likely fall under the health of the mother rubric.

What about stem cells?

It depends on how they are derived. If we are creating human life simply to destroy it in order to harvest a specific part of the tissue, that is very wrong. I mean, if we found out that the pineal glands of 12 year old red heads cured cancer, would we be breeding the Irish so we can grind up their brains?

In all the other cases we find that aborting a fetus is ending a human life simply as a way to make our lives more convenient. It would have been convenient for me to end any number of human lives over the course of my life. My parents, for example, are getting older, both are into their 80's. Soon I will have to care for them and potentially use up a lot of my inheritance in order to do so. This will no doubt be depressing and painful for me, and not incidentally for them, also. I might even have to forgo doing things I really want or need to do in order to care for them and organize their final years. Obviously, it would make my life easier if they were shuffled off this mortal coil cleanly and with dispatch. And I could console myself with the belief that what life they have left would be one of discomfort and perhaps distress, one that from my perspective wouldn't be worth living.

That will not be happening, of course, because that would be wrong.

[futurebird.livejournal.com]

Why do all people have an easy time seeing that killing gingers is wrong, but a whole lot of people can't "see" the wrongness that you see in abortion?

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

At the point you've determined the fetus to be alive, no matter how much you feel justified, terminating it would be murder at its base ethos. You can try and justify it but most people would be aghast to justify murder for most reasons. Rape, incest, fitness of mother are all akin at that point to murdering someone because of something they did not do.

When life begins is the real question. I find the capricious nature of saying at birth to be silly and more a legal statement than one of bioethics. I think that after a few months from conception you're treading into very morally murky waters saying it's not alive.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

wich is essentially my position,

Abortion is the taking a human life, but does not mean it can't be justified.

Whether or not to kill the baby is a serious descision and should be treated as such.

[reflaxion.livejournal.com]

I'm not really pro-life or pro-choice, but I'll answer these, because I like participating.

Let me preface that I think abortion of any sort is okay up until the nervous system is formed, six weeks into the pregnancy. Any "no" answer I give should be read as "not after six weeks" - I just don't want to type it out. In cases where I feel more strongly in favor of early abortion, but I feel the situation warrants an immediate (1-4 weeks) examination/decision, I will append "timing" to my answer.

If it is from incest? - Yes, because of medical issues.
What if it is from rape, but from her boyfriend with whom the relationship has been going downhill. - No, timing.
What if it was rape by her husband? - No, timing.
If it is a danger to the mother's life? - Yes. The mother's life should be top priority.
If she isn't ready to grow up. - No.
If it is not a danger to the mother's life, but will result in serious life-long health consequences for her? - Yes.
If the mother has a condition that makes it unlikely that the child will be born healthy. - Tough one - I'd say it depends on what the health issues are, and how likely it is.
If the mother is addicted to drugs and lacks impulse control. - No, timing, but the baby should definitely be put up for adoption.
If the child will be a girl and she only wants a boy. - No.
If she faces domestic violence and fears for her life if she becomes pregnant. (A woman is mostly likely to be murdered when she is pregnant) - No, she should seek help in leaving the harmful relationship instead. Giving up the baby isn't going to make her partner any less of a menace to her.
If she knows now that the father is a bad bad bad person who she want to totally break ties with and the child will provide a link to let him back in. - No, it's possible (and frequently happens today) to have the child while minimizing interaction with the other parent. Some of my own family members do this.
If she is married and the child (with red hair) once born will expose an affair and ruin her relationship and the lives of her other children. - No; her actions, her consequences.
If she has 9 kids already and her husband used birth control ...but whops! - No.
If the mother's religion says giving a child for adoption is wrong, and she has no money to even care for herself. - No, maybe more because of my opinions on letting religion control one's actions than anything. Are there religions that do this?
If she is 13 years old. (To get back on topic.) - Not unless it presents a danger to the mother's well-being; timing.
If she is 11 years old. - Same as above.
If she is a hooker, and she knows a baby can't fit in to that lifestyle. - No.
If she has 8 fertilized eggs in her womb can she have some removed? - No, timing. I imagine this would likely be before six weeks anyway.
What about if she has 2 eggs in her womb and only wants one kid? Can she have one removed? - Same as above.
If she will need to drop out of college if she has a kid. Can she have an abortion? - No, timing.
Are the thousands of fertilized eggs thrown away at fertility clinics morally wrong? - No.
What about stem cells? - No.

[cory-nickolatos.livejournal.com]

You know that it's not possible to get the traditional form of abortion until 5 weeks, right? And even then, a woman is advised to wait another week or two.

[retrofire.livejournal.com]

The mother decides and it is no one else's business. One can only answer those questions for themselves. People who declare what is right and wrong for everyone according to their god's rules are especially distasteful to me.

[anewcliche.livejournal.com]

THIS.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

I'm pro any choice of therapeutic abortion up until the 18th week of pregnancy.

I'm pro any choice of elective abortion up until the first trimester.

I'm not against any removal of stem cells and fertilized eggs.

[kawaiimamimi.livejournal.com]

I'm pro-choice always, no matter what, but I came here to see what others were saying.

Pro-Choice before conception

[russj.livejournal.com]

I'm pro-choice before conception.
I'm pro-life afterwards.

[ofbg.livejournal.com]

My view will answer many if not most of your questions.

I believe if a woman makes a free choice(I'm pro-choice in this respect) to engage in sex, knowing full well the possible consequences, she has a responsibility to see those consequences through to a successful conclusion, not to including killing the baby. It's not his or her fault so capital punishment should not apply.

Incest, if consensual, should not be considered a good excuse but should be prosecuted.

The health of the mother, if not an immediate life threat, the same. Women know the risk. But they do have a right to protect their own lives even at the loss of the baby.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Women know the risk

You do realize that the majority of "women" (teens) who are actually in the unfortunate situation do not have fully developed frontal lobes and therefore will demonstrate poor awareness of future consequences. Its called being a teenager - science has proven teen brains haven't fully developed.

[emptysilentlife.livejournal.com]

I think it is fine for a woman to have an abortion for any reason at any time during the pregnancy.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

especially if its a fetish for the woman.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

how about if she's a slut and too stupid and lazy to use contraceptives, and probably has a frequent abortion miles on her membership.

[lordtwinkie.livejournal.com]

i have a question.

If you are pro-choice(pro-murder) are you also pro-death penalty
and vice versa if you are pro-life(anti-women's right to choose) are you anti-death penalty?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

(pro-murder)

When is abortion murder? From inception?