Abortions

I'm 100% against abortion, but your facts are skewed and simply not true. Truth wins and exaggerated numbers just fuels the other side to see you as untrustworthy. The 4,000 a day is not factual.

Do you have adopted children?

It's tragic, 3especially when so many loving couples are waiting to adopt.

When they talk about a womans right to choose about her own body, what happened to consequences of actions. Why are we willing to murder, albeit calling it by a different name, to cover our decision to have sex. That is when your choice over your body happens. I could see if they said in cases of rape or incest, but not as a means of birth control. If you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex.

I am pro choice. A woman has the right to chose and she has to know that she will have to deal with the consequences of her actions.

I agree Lisa!

I know that the rhetoric has to calm down before we can deal with this problem. Calling someone a murderer just fans the flames and makes the person more adamant than ever to fight against you. I think adoption is very good, but it is easier for a couple to adopt a baby, or child, from a foreign country than it is here. It is also cheaper to adopt a child from a foreign country than here. The USA has few well funded homes for Orphans, but the right to life crowd never (NEVER!!!) talk about this and I find that very hypocritical. They'd rather care for a sperm cell than a real living breathing human being!!!

You have some good points. I am generally not for abortion. I do believe there are some instances when it should be 'okay." Having said that, I am in no position to chose when it's "okay" for a woman to make that decision.

I think for whatever reason a woman decides to or not to have an abortion is not an easy one. There are so many things to consider and weigh. Even if she has a good reason to terminate that pregnancy I do believe it is extremely hard on her emotionally, physically, etc.

There are fewer abortions in the U.S. this year than most. I'm old fashioned and believe life begins at birth though I'm opposed to any intervention after five months. I think it should still be an issue between a woman and her doc.

Claude,

Please define the term "person" for me and then show how that definition fits a fetus.

My fingernail is "human" because it is part of a human body. But my fingernail is not a person. It is not murder for me to trim my fingernails.

I suggest to you that murder is illegal killing of a person. By my definition of a person, a fetus is not a person.

If you answer my questions above I will attempt to suggest some implications of your definition.

Thanks.

Point of fact, unless you do some extraordinary science, that has not been perfected yet, your fingernail will NEVER become a human life. A baby is an entity within the protection of its mother. IT is not just being TRIMMED as unnecessary. I don't think these people want to commit murder, but I believe it is none the less. There is a potential for a life if allowed to grow naturally. Show me a fingernail that eventually becomes its own seperate life sustaining organism.

I totally agree with you!

On two points:

It would be presumptuous to judge others.
There needs to be a lot more education about human reproduction.

Hopefully, you will seek that education through science and medicine instead of religion and rhetoric.

Lisa,

If I had suggested tonsils rather than a fingernail? I wanted to pick something that in no way could be considered a being or an organism as an extreme case but something which we could all agree was "human."

I don't know what you mean by "entity." If you mean a self aware person I will agree that it is possible that you are right about a baby shortly before birth. But I don't consider a three month fetus to be a baby at all.

If you are following developments in biology you will find that someday soon we may be able to take stem cells from almost anyone and, with the proper (or improper if you like) treatment bring a fully human being into existence. I note that we can convert them into the undifferentiated type now.

Sandy,

If you like you may certainly delete any comments of mine on your posts which you find offensive. I will attempt to avoid your posts but I may forget so please forgive me if I slip up.

Quite a bit of judgement and redundant rhetoric on this topic. Personally, I'd like to see a lot less yapping and alot more adoptions. Claude, have you any adopted children?

My wife always asks the same question, "How many children have you adopted?"

It's very simple to take the moral high ground on any question. Just cover your ears and chant "It's wrong, it's wrong, it's wrong..." It's harder to look at the multiplicity of situations that happen in real life.

Abortion is a heinous thing and we as a society are now just beginning to see the consequences. A society that doesn't value life and allows the wholesale destruction of the most innocent is a society in decadence.

No one has the right to destroy another human life...no one. You call it what it is mass slaughter. Plain and simple. I don't need to adopt...I raised 6 children.

This is not judging...it is identifying a clear criminal and immoral act.

Everyone knows life begins at conception...the rest is bullshit.

Great article, Claude, you'll have the immoral abortionist bitching at you to no end. Good luck trying to talk any sense to them. Oh, don't judge me...yada, yada, yada.

thanks for sharing

Ok, from this website, here are the statistics and some information I bet many of us didn't know:


Do You Know? That the taking of a human life by abortion is legal in the USA at any time throughout the entire nine months of pregnancy... FOR ANY REASON!
Do You Know? At 18 days after conception, a baby has a heartbeat.
Do You Know? At 6 weeks following conception, the babies brain waves can be measured. At 8 weeks after conception, the stomach, liver, and kidneys of the baby are functioning, and fingerprints have formed. At 9 weeks, the unborn child can feel pain.
Do You Know? That 700,000 abortions are performed each year in America after 9 weeks into the pregnancy.
Do You Know? The overwhelming majority of all abortions, (95%), are done as a means of birth control. Only 1% are performed because of rape or incest; 1% because of fetal abnormalities; 3% due to the mother's health problems.
Do You Know? For every two babies born another baby dies in an abortion.

That's 1.5 million babies each year;
That's 4,000 babies every day;
That's 1 baby every 20 seconds;
That's Approximately 40 million babies since 1973;
And that's just here in America.

"There needs to be a lot more education about human reproduction"
It is human responsibility that is lacking. No one teaches that because ?
Your guess is as good as mine. Of course it starts with education but consequence for one's action is never taught. Selfishness over selflessness is preferred. It leaves our society empty and void of integrity.

"This is not judging...it is identifying a clear criminal and immoral act." Wrong.

Everyone knows life begins at conception...the rest is bullshit. And wronger.

Thanks for the replies, everybody!

This is an important issue and for those who'd like to know one source of where the 4,000 abortions per day came from, one source (among others) that present such numbers is The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform but there are too many to list.

Some other conservative numbers talk about 700 abortions a day.

In both cases, it's a bloodshed...

"In 1981, a US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on the very question before us here: When does human life begin? Speaking on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally known geneticists and biologists who had the same story to tell, namely, that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.

Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.

"The Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence. Human life began at conception "

Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."

Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind."

Professor Eugene Diamond: "...either the justices were fed a backwoods biology or they were pretending ignorance about a scientific certainty."

In Steinberg v. Brown (1970) a three-judge federal district court upheld an anti-abortion statute, stating that privacy rights "must inevitably fall in conflict with express provisions of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."

After relating the biological facts of fetal development, the court stated "those decisions which strike down state abortion statutes by equating contraception and abortion pay no attention to the facts of biology."

"Once new life has commenced," the court wrote, "the constitutional protections found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments impose upon the state the duty of safeguarding it."

Pro-Choice Advocates Agree that Abortion Kills Humans.
http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html#S4

Many abortion advocates have agreed that abortion kills human life: A 1963 Planned Parenthood brochure says that life begins at conception: This is a direct quote "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun."

Former Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton admits that the preborn are alive in her 1986 book:

"There are many sperm cells in the [seminal] fluid. If one of them meets an egg cell inside the mother, new life can begin to grow... If one of your friends is pregnant, ask her to let your child 'feel the baby move.' ... A baby grows in a special place inside the mother, called the uterus -- not in her stomach. In nine months it is born."

Similarly, Dr. Mary Calderone, former director of Planned Parenthood has stated that "abortion is the taking of a human life" and Dr. Alan Guttmacher, former president of Planned Parenthood and founder of the Guttmacher Institute, the research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, has stated "fertilization has then taken place; a baby has been conceived." While many abortion defenders readily concede that abortion kills human life, it is necessary to expound on this point because examining the nature of the unborn human being at the point of conception shows the inherent dignity that we all share from our biologic beginnings that are hidden from eyes of the world."

http://mhgintn.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_archive.html

Even John Kerry and Joe Biden believe that life begins at conception, but, there are those that are still in the woods on something so self-evident.

Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive...It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception."

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo clinic: "By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."

Ashley Montague, Geneticist and Professor at Harvard and Rutgers, who is unsympathetic to the pro-life cause, said clear, "The basic fact is simple" Life begins not at birth, but conception."

Dr. Landrum Shettles served twenty-seven years as attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility and is internationally famous for discovering male-and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of pre-born children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states, "I oppose abortion...because I accept what is biologically manifest--that human life commences at the time of conception--and...because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic and humanitarian."

Dr. Bradley M. Patten's textbook, Human Embryology, states, " It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatazoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that...marks the initiation of the life of a new individual."

Dr. Louis Fridhandler in the medical textbook Biology of Gestation, refers to fertilization as "that wondrous moment that marks the beginning of life for a new individual."

Time and Rand McNally's Atlas of the Body states, "In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilized single cell, the zygote, whch is the start of a new individual."

Encyclopedia Britannica, says, "A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg."

So all of you pro-lifers should have more say in what I do with my body than I do? That's what I think is bullshit.

So having 1,500,000 a year ("And that's just here in America") unwanted children going homeless, hungry and sick, living with desperate, mostly drug-addicted, uneducated, unthinking women, leading to innumerable years of misery and poverty is better than preventing their birth in the first place. Add them to an already overpopulated planet to hasten the dessication of Spaceship Earth, and you've got a great recipe for global destruction. Of course, we can always throw a few more wars to kill off the adults, instead of destroying some zygotes...that works, too.

You can do with your' body what you please it's the baby I'm worried about. I know you think it's all about you, but, it isn't...there is another human being involved in the equation...who unfortunately got someone like you as a parent.

Worried about over-population? Go take a long walk on a short pier.

I'm squishy pro choice though I think abortion is wrong simply because I think all individuals should have the freedom to do what they will with the bodies and lives. It may sound like a contradiction but its the place I find myself in.

Thank you, Sandy A.

Thanks for digging up the facts, Felix R.!

We portray ourselves as an evolved society but as long as abortions aren't better explained to all those who plan to make use of it for the wrong reasons, we'll miss the mark towards greatness.

Kids are our future.

We need to act like this primary "human race survival directive" actually means something for us, individually and as a society.

Felix R wrote: "You can do with your' body what you please it's the baby I'm worried about. "

That's the crux of the argument isn't it. A long time ago, I remember reading the comments of a guy who was arrested for beating his wife. Incredulous, he yelled: "You mean I can't beat my own wife?!" To him, it was a private matter.

for all those who feel abortion is illegal....what should the punishment be...this was VERY interesting...



What happens if abortion is made illegal?

This question was posed to anti-choice demonstrators in Libertyville, Illinois, who obviously hadn't considered what banning abortion would mean for women:

(cut and paste this video)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD97OVJ4PNw

SO - If abortion is made illegal, women will be criminalized.

Behind the anti-choice propaganda lie the real life consequences of making abortion illegal. It is not about morality speeches and grotesque pictures, but about criminalizing abortion, jeopardizing the health and safety of women and their families.

Not just someone you know, but someone you love may be forced to choose between seeking an illegal, dangerous abortion and carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. It could be your mother, your daughter, your sister, your best friend. Someone you love may have to face the harmful consequences of criminalizing abortion.

If good doctors are not there for women, who will be?

There are those that want to criminalize doctors for performing abortions. If abortion is made illegal, doctors will also face difficult choices. They will have to choose to continue to provide safe, quality abortion care and risk criminal prosecution, or turn women away when they need them the most.

Criminalizing abortion will not make abortions rare, just very dangerous.
It will force women and doctors into impossible, perilous, and criminal situations and put the health and safety of women at risk.

It is wrong to treat women like criminals for making a difficult, personal decision.

(Let alone the prisons that are going to have to be built to house them)