pro-choice or pro-life???
I feel this question should not even be asked in the first place. who are we to decide if abortion should be banned?
yes, it is really bad to kill an unborn baby. personally, I wouldn't do it. at the same time, I wouldn't want to preach that to a young girl either. I still feel its the responsibility and personal choice of an individual. and what if a girl gets pregnant because she was raped. with the super slow court system, it would take yrs before everyone gets convinced that she was indeed raped, and in the meantime her child would have attained the age to date someone. its really impossible to distinguish cases and make abortion part-legal and part-illegal. GIVE the choice to the concerned people, they are better judges of their own life.
this has become a very sensitive issue.... to the extent of even deciding the next president of US!
and read this for pope's views on abortion.....
17 Comments:
From a democratic point of view, it might seem totally justified to leave the choice to people. But it is such unchecked democracy that is turning people more irresponsible and indifferent about their actions. Rape may be an exception but even in such a case, a doctor can always administer medication that prevents the formation of a foetus, even a few days after the incident. Statistics have it that 80% of abortions in the United States are by unmarried women, reflecting their lack of responsibility towards human life. 20% of them are teenagers and nearly 50% of abortions are by women <24 yrs of age. Despite common knowledge of the importance of protected sex, these women and men show total disregard for human life in callously creating and then destroying it without a second thought. Humans dont deserve this kind of a democracy or choice. Every civilized human has an animal instinct that needs to be kept in check.
This Logic(or Illogic) of control is a fallacy...who is the state to tell that I need to be restrained???...The state is to administer...it cannot come and tell me what to do???..then what prevents the state to tell people not to smoke, coz they pollute n cause cancer too, or for that matter to "Pee", coz they too pollute???....The choice, as Saranyan said, should be left to individual...yeah, this might seem to be Liberal, but that is the way to go...also, the individual has lot more intelligence than the state...if he/she doesn't want a child, let them decide it...after all it is their creation, and they would have the right to decide...
gandalf, how many girls do you think report to the authorities that they have been raped? thanks to prime-time media coverage, the ones that come forward, also back off eventually.
if killing unborn foetus is a callous and irresponsible act, then how do you justify using animals for medical trials? double standards, huh.
Krish, good point man.
pro life, big time. don't know why but only that sounds right to me
It isn't appropriate to compare abortion with smoking or peeing. Public peeing causes pollution and disease and is definitely banned in most countries. Peeing in your potty doesn't cause anyone harm, so its a frivolous comparison. Smoking causes harm and public smoking has been banned in more than 60 countries, and is increasingly being considered in the US. 4 states - CA, NY, DE & CT - have already passed laws banning smoking in public places. In any case, with abortion we're talking about killing human life, which is at a totally different plane. If there's someone smoking next to you, you could even move away and save yourself, if your state doesn't ban public smoking yet. But a human foetus has no say in its survival. And if, as you say, the individual is so much more intelligent than the state, why can't he just use contraception or morning-after pills to prevent conception? He still has a right to choose whether to have a child or not, no one is taking that right away! We're just saying, use that right before the foetus is created, instead of banging away to glory and then killing it after 8 weeks as an afterthought.
A civil society is fundamentally based on restraint, on law and order. A democracy is not a lawless state with no restraint on the individual - a major function of a democratic govt is to make laws! Even the "free and independent" US doesn't give you the choice to kill anyone, not even yourself. And in those lines, you shouldn't have the right to kill a foetus. That is the flaw that needs to be set right. If you can kill a foetus, you can kill anyone or commit suicide.
As for rape, I do agree it doesn't get highlighted. But that doesn't prevent the rape victim from going to a doctor, does it? If they can go and abort after several weeks, they could've as well done it before conception!
Using animals for medical trials is another issue that definitely needs to be looked into. But just because that isn't solved doesn't justify abortion. Let us first prevent human killing, and then move on to animals.
gandalf, good points. see, i'm against killing too, and personally I consider it a callous and irresponsible act. But, I protest vehemently when the state interferes in this issue. Its purely a personal decision, God knows what problems they have.
about banning smoking and peeing in public, I'm with you. But why not ban smoking altogether, afterall the smoker is killing himself slowly. I think Krish was trying to say the same thing.
Actually, the term Pro-Life is misleading. it should be Pro-Preaching instead :-)
I listened to the Supreme court hearings on Roe Vs Wade long ago. Its actually pretty entertaining....
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/334/reargument.mp3
Mother Teresa, whom I respect more than the Pope is also a very vocal opposer of abortion.
Saranyan, Krish - very valid pts. I am with you on this.
Well, I am personally against abortion when it involves a foetus that is more than 4 months old. But until those four months, its pretty much in a stage where it doesnt hurt to destroy it, if there is NO OTHER CHOICE.
I think a government, as democratically elected has the duty of helping people do their duties better. But when the government decides to impose restrictions on the very people it was chosen to help, it ceases to be an elected and popular choice. It becomes dictatorial. A woman, knows and understands that its the hardest thing to undergo an abortion and she wouldnt for the life of it do it, unless she had no choice. And any person or group of people who do not understand that are fools and nothing else.
Gandalf_the_gay
One note on your last comment, "Humans dont deserve this kind of a democracy or choice". IMHO, I dont think you or me or anyone for that matter is either qualified or has the right to make that statement. Who are we to decide for the rest of mankind ?
A govt that restricts people from making personal choices is dictatorial. A govt that restrains your choices in education, vocation, choice of sexual orientation, freedom to move, freedom to pursue happiness - any such PERSONAL choice - may be deemed dictatorial. But would you call a govt that stops you from killing human life as dictatorial? When I said "Humans dont deserve this kind of a democracy or choice", I wasn't referring to personal choices, but the choice in killing defenceless human life. If I instead said "Humans dont have the right to take the lives of other human lives of age >= 4 months" would I then be qualified to make that statement for the rest of mankind? The brain and nervous system start developing as early as 3-4 weeks of conception. Now what qualification does anyone have, to decide when it "hurts" to abort and when it doesn't hurt to kill it? Life is still life.
From the views expressed here, it appears there is a more basic question - whether or not to respect a human foetus as human life. The question to be addressed is whether an unborn child has the same fundamental right to survive, as a born human.
@Gandalf_the_gay:U have valid points...I agree that peeing n abortion cannot be compared...but the cruz of the matter is this: U cannot impose restrictions on people...U can only educate them...BTW, we cannot argue that foetus is a human...it is yet to be born...it doesn't have any right...coz it doesn't really understand things..or so I assume..but holding the foetus as human is no different than holding plants(proven to have life) as equilvalent...say for argument sake, we all agree the theory of evolution??..then it follows that all of us evolved from a single cell being??then how different are we from other animals..then who gave us the right to kill them n eat them too??...if we can protest against cannibalism, why don't we protest against meat eating??/why shouldnt governmen ban eating meat...how different is that life from humans??/..here u reason out that animals are lesser beings???...then how can a foetus yet to be born hold any right???Foetus in itself is not a life untill it is born into the world...till then it doesnt have any right on its own...perse, I am against abortion...I wouldnt advice anyone to do it..but Iam against state interferring into my matters and telling me what to do and what not to...
Makes me wonder what people could feel about sex determination and female foeticide. Well, a choice of having a child or aborting it is as good as having a girl or aborting it, its a foetus after all in either case. But you do have a valid point in saying that the line could be drawn at different levels, and is a matter of personal opinion.
PRO CHOICE - PERIOD
I don't think that the line can be drawn at any level. It is a pure case of one's own personal choice no matter when. It all boils down to one simple equation ... we are compromising the life of a current life(woman carrying the child) for the sake of a future life(foetus). It is all good and comfortable for us as outsiders to say it is not okay to abort or it is okay to abort until 4 months etc but end of the day whose blood and oxygen is feeding the foetus? not us outsiders but the mothers and if she is forced to do that for lack of a choice then we are at an extent compromising the life of someone under the pretext of protecting a future life. I do say that it is future life because until the umbillical chord is cut, for all practical social discussions, I'm inclned to say that it is a future life. I agree with Krish above, if I'm a woman, I will be totally frustrated if some John Doe or Dubya or the Attorney General is forcing me to feed my own blood and oxygen to a life I do not want in the first place. Now I will be living the rest of my life with that nagging thought that I did not choose to have this kid in the first place, does anyone think that is healthy?
There is a point about responsibility among teenagers and young people, I think the responsibility is more towards protected/unprotected sex and not human life. If anything forced pregancies only degrade quality of human life. Going by teenage pregnancies, now we will have 17-18 year old moms whose first inclination will be to disown their kids. The solution will then go towards safe/unsafe sex which I say is the actual solution. We will have a much healthier society and quality of life with people having safer sex with choice of abortion rather than foster homes filled with kids just because their moms did not have a choice.
I'm not saying this just as a liberal but even as an unbiased person. We need to approach the whole issue with a logical approach and not be influenced by emotional leanings, especially when emotions here are not for the welfare of people but are more towards maintaining a "code of conduct" that someone had written in some religious script 1000s of years back. That being said it makes me laugh when I see "pro-life" protestors .... if you are really pro-life think about the life of the woman in question and the life of people in general.
I worked in a Children's hospital lab in my second year as grad student. Its the largest children's hospital (we have 3) in cincinnati. I had to file reports on some kind of neonatal thing.
Most of the reports involved girls and some of them as young as 13. Yes, THIRTEEN.
Heres a snippet from the oral re-argument...
JUSTICE WHITE: Well, if you're correct that the fetus is a person, then I don't suppose you'd have-the State would have great trouble permitting an abortion, would it?
MR. FLOWERS: Yes, sir.
JUSTICE WHITE: In any circumstances?
MR. FLOWERS: It would, yes, sir.
JUSTICE WHITE: To save the life of a mother, or her health, or anything
else?
MR. FLOWERS: Well, there would be the balancing of the two lives, and I think that
JUSTICE WHITE: Well, what would you choose? Would you choose to kill the innocent one, or what?MR. FLOWERS: Well, in our statute, the State did choose that way, Your
Honor.
JUSTICE THURGOOD MARSHALL: Well-
MR. FLOWERS: The protection of the mother.
JUSTICE MARSHALL: Well, did the State of Texas say that if it is for the benefit of the health of the wife to kill the husband
MR. FLOWERS: I'm sorry, I didn't understand your question.
JUSTICE MARSHALL: Could Texas say, if it confronts the situation, for the benefit of the health of the wife, that the husband has to die? Could they kill him?
MR. FLOWERS: I wouldn't think so, sir.
Good points Arun. thats my feeling too. its a bigger evil to have a homeless or an orphaned kid than to give that choice to its mother.
and moreover people don't consider abortion as an interesting hobby. rather they go through immense emotional stress while doing so. I'm sure they would never even think of doing the same things that led them to pregnancy.
I can clearly see where all this "moral arguments" are coming from. thats what happens when you mix religion with law.
Question to Justice Marshall ...
Is the wife feeding blood and oxygen to her husband through an umbillical chord? If that is the case and if the husband endangers her life through medical/physical/emotional distress then yeah, it makes perfect sense to kill him.
Since that is NOT the case, husband and foetus are two absolutely different entities and it is like comparing apples and oranges.
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