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I don't disagree with his position and I agree that many anti-abortion people tend to view women as baby factories, I'm just saying that "Don't like abortion, don't have one" is an immature and illogical argument that actually works against us.
Oh, and Carlin's still not funny.
Well, actually, men SHOULDN'T have too much input on abortion, since they are not the ones that are going to be carrying the child, having the labor, etc. Unless, of course, they are the ones that are going to have to PAY to raise that child...and don't want to. Then abortion is feasible, and almost a duty.
I read this whole thread and I have to say this is the most civilized, intellectual discussion of abortion I have ever seen. It is extremely difficult to keep religion and/or emotion out of this debate. Kudos to all who posted here.
In response to the original question, unborn children should be protected when pregnancy is detected. Someone else mentioned people can legally be prosecuted if they cause a mother to lose her unborn child through some act of force. What make an aborted baby any less of a human just because the mother decides he/she is unwanted? At 6 weeks gestation the heart starts to beat. The baby's brain starts working at about 9 weeks gestation. At 10 weeks baby has the ability to move his/her tiny arms and legs. This is a child. This is a human being. The potential of this human is the same as all other humans. Therefore, these humans are entitled to basic human rights afforded to all other "birthed" humans. The government has a responsibility to protect them.
I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "my body, my choice" argument. Yes, the mother is the host for the baby, but the baby is a separate entity within the mother. Just like bacteria living within a body is separate in and of itself, so is the child (bad analogy I know). At no point after conception does the bodily fluids of the mother interact with the baby. The baby is completely contained within the amniotic sac. Yes, the baby depends on the mother for food, shelter, and warmth, but the same can be said for a "birthed" child up to the age of 18. Is the journey down the birth canal the defining moment in a human's life that magically bestows upon them basic human rights? I've had three babies and not once did they come out of there carrying their certificate of humanness. So yes, the government should protect children once pregnancy is detected.
I think that life starts at conception; in that second when life is created the DNA of the mother and father fuse together and create a completely new genetic code unique to that person, never to be created again.
When I was 8 weeks pregnant with my daughter I saw an ultrasound of her heart beating; when I was 15 weeks I routinely felt her moving around. During the ultrasound of her at 20 weeks I was able to watch her on the screen for almost an hour...at 20 months old now she still clasps her hands above her head as she did frequently during that ultrasound (she does it when she's nervous).
I believe the Constitution does protect a child in the womb at all times; as evidenced by laws that punish those who commit crimes against pregnant women and injure or kill the baby. Oh, but this is only if the mother wants the baby. Perhaps if she did not want the baby she would thank the person? I fail to see how it is a mother's constitutional right to kill her child if someone else would be punished for it...
America is still a much more moral society than Europe I think; in England they have an issue with parents aborting children because they're the wrong sex or have a clubbed foot. I was born with clubbed feet, I wore special braces on my ankles and special shoes until I was 2...I'm fine now.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that between 1996 and 2004, 20 babies were aborted after 20 weeks because they had a club foot.
In 2004 it emerged a baby was aborted at 28 weeks after scans showed it had a cleft palate.
As posted somewhere earlier in the thread, if you follow this to its logical end then parents would be able to kill their children after birth when the baby is still dependent on the parent. So, if you don't catch a disability in the womb, or one appears later (such as autism) it is still the parent's child...an extension of the cells and DNA of the parent.
Of course everyone would think that argument to be silly...so why is it so ridiculous to many that such rights should apply to those in the womb?
momlady530, you conclude with a statement that compels these 2 questions:
1. Which government should do the protecting?
2. Which children shoud be protected when the children are the pregnant mothers?
Though it's rare, I've read of human females who are fertile as early as 8 years of age. Most can conceive around age 13, so what can you say about how these young girls' hearts beat and brains work when they find themselves flooded with the hormones generated by their fertilized eggs?
What were you having to deal with when your three children were conceived?
I wonder what anyone knows what happens to babies who are concieved by immature females (and I'll expand this group to include all adult women who are too impaired by immaturity to be competent mothers, regardless of age).
It would be interesting to know if any studies have been attempted that track the lives of mothers with similar handicaps, for comparison of how the mothers develop after their babies are born and kept vs. born and given up for adoption, vs. aborted before birth.
And of those babies who are born, how the babies fare under adoptive environments vs. those provided by their mothers.
My intuition tells me that few immature mothers that go through with the birth of a child are suddenly vested with the maturity required to give their babies away to adoptive parents who can give the requisite care they can't give.
The result is a perpetuation of the mothers' dysfunctions, the abuse of the children and the population of humans who are INCAPABLE of rising to their full potential is increased. Over time, the increase is exponential - as we're beginning to see now in our country (according to the stats bandied about in our culture's information channels).
To me, it's not enough to protect unborn children from being killed by a mother who decides she cannot, for whatever reason, give her child what she believes the child will need to live through her loving care, not barely exist in her depressing apathy.
Are you perhaps projecting upon these "pro-choice" mothers your own emotional attachments to your own children?
As to which government, are you comfortable with having the federal government being the Big Brother that's going to police the citizens of our 50 states? What's the point of even having separate states?
Please, think about what the floundering mothers are going through with their unwanted pregnancies today, even with the legal option to abort as currently guaranteed to them under Roe v. Wade.
Then, think about what you're nation's founding fathers went through to make sure no federal encroachment on their and our individual liberties would happen in 1787, the year they signed their US Constitution.
You are a sensitive intelligent human, expressing appreciation for civilized discourse. I'd love to know how open your mind is to the exploration of creative alternatives to the draconian policing your "protection" would require.
MamaBee, you argue that "the Constitution does protect a child in the womb at all times; as evidenced by laws that punish those who commit crimes against pregnant women and injure or kill the baby."
You are speaking of the US Constitution, aren't you?
My recent posts (2) on this thread contain my views that the US Constitution does NOT protect unborn children any more than it protects the children once they're born, any more than it protects humans between birth and death. For that matter, it doesn't protect unborn children any more or less than it protects a person's dog, cat, animal or plant.
The 5th and 14th amendment is where you'll find the protections afforded to a person's life, liberty or property - that neither of these shall be deprived without "due process of law." The "due process of law" is left to the states to figure out, provided they don't trespass on the US Constitution's minimum protections.
Some states killed adults under the "due process of law" for crimes they say are deserving of the death penalty. Around the time of Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court decided ALL death penalties were violations of the US Constitution's minimum protection against "cruel and unusual" punishment. Before Roe v. Wade, most states' "due process of law" protected the unborn by making abortion illegal.
I've read the Constitution, but not Roe v. Wade. Have you read either? Would you care to discuss this topic after you do? I'm going to read Roe v. Wade later today, and I'll come back in hopes of seeing if you have any interest in discussing this in light of what's currently the legal status of the US Constitution's protection of unborn children.
The laws you speak of as protecting the unborn children by making it a separate crime if someone else hurts or kills a woman's fetus or embryo are not federal laws, to my knowledge. If you know of any that are, please let me know - I won't bother to look because I'm pretty sure they're not. If so, they don't prove these life forms are protected by the US Constitution.
As state laws, they prove what I think the founding fathers intended with regard to how far they were willing to let the federal government go toward "protecting" the citizens of the Union's states.
In my home state, I can tell you of a horror story that revealed to me the incredibly INSANE law that did the opposite of what you cited as proof of Constitutional protection.
The civil law was interpreted by the Texas Supreme Court that a baby was not a "person" under the Texas wrongful death statute, if it died before or during childbirth.
This meant that neither the infant's estate nor its survivors (the parents) could recover damages from whoever caused the death through acts of negligence or intentional wrongdoing.
A couple I knew lost their son during his descent through the placenta and into the birth canal, by cord strangulation, and the doctors/nurses had failed to respond to the fetal monitor's distress signals in time to c-section and save his life.
The supreme court's case law interpreted that the stillborn infant was not a "person" because he had not drawn his first breath. He was "DOA" from the c-sectioned mother - so there was no case of wrongful death for which a civil action could be brought.
Given that one of the most costly specialties at that time (in terms of the premiums paid for medical malpractice insurance) was obstetrics, do you think it was lost on the attending doctors and nurses that when this blue baby presented itself into their hands, they faced a huge financial loss IF they recussitated the infant but it did NOT make a full recovery (e.g., it was left with permanent brain damage requiring lifetime care)?
Or that if they did NOT revive it, there would be absolutely NO LIABIILTY because it had not yet drawn its first breath?
It was fairly obvious that the efforts to revive were less than enthusiastic - but this was only witnessed by the mother who saw token efforts as the baby was taken into neo-natal ICU under the pretense of "trying everything to save it."
Texas was, at the time, under the governorship of our current abomination some call "Mr. President."
People talk about the mythological "baby factories" who frequent abortion clinics as regularly as they frequent car dealerships, just llike they held up "welfare mothers" as the poster-women for the abuses of that sorry system which perpetuated the poverty of mind body and spirit for all who were in it.
But all these women taken together, if any really existed, could NEVER begin to compare to the immense harm done by the legions of mean and nasty self-righteous men that run our lives from their yachts and their country club golf courses, through instilling in the minds of good people like you and me the irrational belief that it's only wrong to kill unborn children when it's done by their unprepared, unloved, uneducated, underpaid mothers. When unborn children are killed, along with their mothers, fathers, sibilings, grandparents and extended families, by the bombs these mean and nasty self-righteous men drop on impoverished third-world countries whose oil they covet, well, that's just the price of "freedom," and it's "O-K," let's support our troops as they die to protect the unborn children who will someday grow up to be uneducated, unprepared, underpaid and unloved by all except that new family welcoming them to join the Army of One.
Do you see how the plan works?
All because we've let the mean and nasty self-righteous men get away with violating the US Constitution which forbids the wars we've been waging since WWII!
Write On!
Carloco
Last edited by carloco; 03-05-2008 at 09:20 AM..
Reason: correct typos mispelling and refine argument
And the truth of the matter is the vast majority of women that have abortions go on to regret it for the rest of their lives.
Correction: The vast majority of women who have abortions simply return to the lives they were leading at the time an unwanted pregnancy interposed itself. This of course often includes the bearing of subsequent wanted children whose lives would have been snuffed out had the woman originally been forced to carry to term.
There are of course outliers at the extremes to argue from on either side. Some few women who elect abortion do come to grief over it. Suicide is not unknown. Some few women who elect to carry to term also come to grief over it. Suicide and infanticide are not unknown. These rather few but still horribly tragic cases only serve to underscore the importance of allowing and assuring that a woman is able to come to the choice that she honestly believes to be the best under whatever circumstances are involved -- circumstances that she alone is in the best position to understand and evaluate. The grossly unwarranted intervention of even well-meaning outsiders serves only to increase the likelihood that these worst-case sorts of scenarios will be the ones that actually come to fruition. Compelling a woman in either direction is an immoral act of violence and inhumanity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RedWingsFan
Even the woman in the original Roe vs. Wade case regrets it to this day. I read an article on that back months ago.
Let's try sticking to the facts. The decision in Roe v. Wade came more than three years after the case was filed. Most I'm sure are familiar with the fact that the human gestation period is 273 days. Under existing Texas law, Norma McCorvey was forced to carry her pregnancy to term. She bore a daughter whom she put up for adoption. It is very unlikely that she later came to regret having an abortion that she did not in fact have.
MamaBee, you argue that "the Constitution does protect a child in the womb at all times; as evidenced by laws that punish those who commit crimes against pregnant women and injure or kill the baby."
You are speaking of the US Constitution, aren't you?
My recent posts (2) on this thread contain my views that the US Constitution does NOT protect unborn children any more than it protects the children once they're born, and more than it protects humans between birth and death. For that matter, it doesn't protect unborn children any more or less than it protects a person's dog, cat, animal or plant.
The 5th and 14th amendment is where you'll find the protections afforded to a person's life, liberty or property - that neither of these shall be deprived without "due process of law."
The laws you speak of, which protect the unborn children by making it a separate crime if someone else hurts or kills a woman's fetus or embryo, do NOT prove these life forms are protected by the US Constitution!
These are ALL state laws - and in my home state, I can tell you that it was an incredibly INSANE law that held a baby that died during childbirth did not qualify as a "person" under the wrongful death statutes (a civil law giving the dead person's estate and survivors (parents and children only) an action against whoever caused the death through acts of negligence or intentional wrongdoing.
I knew of a couple whose son died during his descent through the placenta and into the birth canal, by cord strangulation, and the doctors/nurses had failed to respond to the fetal monitor's distress signals in time to c-section and save his life.
The law at that time said that because he had not drawn his first breath - he was "DOA" from the c-sectioned mother - there was no case of wrongful death for which a civil action could be brought.
Given that one of the most costly specialties at that time (in terms of the premiums paid for medical malpractice insurance) was obstetrics, do you think it was lost on the attending doctors and nurses that when this blue baby presented itself into their hands, what they faced IF they successfully recussitated the infant and it did NOT make a full recovery?
Versus the guaranty that if they did NOT revive it, there would be NO LIABIILTY?
It was fairly obvious that the efforts to revive were less than enthusiastic - but only to the mother who was able to perceive the non-efforts before the baby was whisked into neo-natal under the pretense of "trying everything."
The state I'm from, Texas, was at the time under the governorship of our current abomination some call "Mr. President."
You can talk about the mythological "baby factories" who frequent abortion clinics as regularly as they frequent a car dealership, just llike the "welfare mothers" became poster-women for the end of that sorry system that perpetuated the poverty of mind body and spirit. But all these women taken together, if any exist, can compare to the harm done by the mean and nasty white men that run our lives from their yachts and country clubs who instill in good people like you the irrational belief that it's only wrong when it's the mothers who kill their unborn children. When killed by bombs dropped on countries whose oil they wish to take, well, that's the collateral damage that's part of the price of "freedom."
Write On!
Carloco
You are correct, there are no Federal laws to my knowledge that protect the unborn from crimes...and thus it is in the States not at the Federal level this should be decided. Unfortunately the Supreme Court decided to take this case on and change the law throughout the country. When States such as South Dakota have voters approve a ban only to have it overturned by the Federal system that is just as wrong as if a state like California voted to allow abortion but the Federal government overturned it and made abortion illegal.
The Constitution really only protects one from the government. So I would argue that it does protect the unborn from things such as forced abortion (as they have in China), and would protect the mother and child from types of medical testing, vaccinations, etc.
Great points. Yes, I do welcome civilized discourse on this issue. I learn much more this way than fanatical rants. Also, with your differing viewpoint so eloquently expressed, it makes me question my own in a way that is not insulting to my positions. Now to the questions.
I found myself pregnant with my first at 19. I was unmarried, though future hubby and I were pretty serious. Unmarried pregnant females in the military are frowned upon. I was young, somewhat wild, somewhat stupid, but I had enough sense to know that no matter what precautions you take, sometimes those little swimmers are so determined they find their prey. I made sure I chose partners that I could see myself dealing with for at least 18 years (I guess that's just me though). Hubby was on a really short list.
Immature females having babies- My MIL found herself pregnant with my SIL at age 15. That situation ended well. I know, I'm making sweeping generalizations. But I don't think you can argue that abortion will somehow end child abuse, neglect, and depression.
Yes, I probably am projecting my attachments to my children on others.
Sorry, I have somewhere I need to be. Will finish addressing you later.
There is no possible way for the government to protect the unborn in this country unless the government bans abortion and then require it to be a law that all pregnant women must be electronically monitored 24 hours a day, so when one starts showing signs of seeking an abortion it can be stopped, perhaps going so far as to imprison the woman until she has her baby. Grounds for arresting a pregnant would be, for instance, if she was detected looking up on the Internet how one uses a coat hanger or other object to induce an abortion. But I bet most women in this country aren't interested in seeing such a law passed.
I always considered it to be a baby from the time I knew I was pregnant. I would say the goverment should protect the fetus especially from late term abortions. There are so many variables that go into this topic, I don't know if we could cover them all in this thread. Great topic though and a very emotional one for both sides.
Sassy
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