Should abortion be banned or not?

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jmeyer3131 said:
Are you aware that there are a number of pro-life atheists? Respect for life isn’t based only on religious beliefs.
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I am aware of that. But you have to admit that it is primarily a religious issue.
 
Holly3278 said:
Of course it is already a person. The question is, when is it a person with rights?
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That is the question. Answer it. I already have.

It is a person with rights from the moment it becomes a person. :rolleyes:

By the very definition of “person” - the rights come. A person is never without personal rights.

~Liza
 
lizaanne said:
That is the question. Answer it. I already have.

It is a person with rights from the moment it becomes a person. :rolleyes:

By the very definition of “person” - the rights come. A person is never without personal rights.

~Liza
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Ok, you beat me. Abortion is wrong and should be banned. I admit it. I was wrong all along.

But what about abortion in the case where the mother’s health or life is at risk? :confused:
 
Holly3278 said:
For your first thing, I don’t see how they are mutually exclusive. I am personally pro-life in that I wish abortions did not have to occur but they do. I cannot, however, impose my own religious beliefs upon others so I am pro-choice.

As for your second thing, obviously it will not become anything but a person but that was not my point. My point was that it may become a person if allowed to grow to full term. It may not become a person if not allowed to grow to full term.
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Okay…how about a middle ground…what is “full term” in your eyes?

I’m not sure what the actual youngest surviving “preemie” is, but here is one listing of some examples:
christianliferesources.com/?library/view.php&articleid=1253
The Youngest Surviving Preemie
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By J.C. Willke, MD
**Source: **Life Issues Connector, April 2007, Reprinted with permission of Life Issues Institute
Recently there has been considerable worldwide publicity announcing the birth of “the world’s most premature baby.” Little Amillia Taylor, of Miami, Florida, was born in October, 21 weeks and 6 days after conception. In multiple press reports, we continue to hear that she is the youngest known baby worldwide to survive such an early “premature birth” and that “no baby born before twenty three weeks has survived at length.” This little miracle has gone home with her parents and is apparently healthy.
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At birth she weighed 10 ounces (284 grams) and was 9.5 inches long (24 centimeters). Further “information” given out is that this may affect the abortion debate because she was younger than the age limit on abortion, which is typically not allowed after twenty-four weeks. This continues to be repeated even though most of our readers know there is no age limit and that abortion is legal for the full nine months of pregnancy in all fifty states.
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Allow me to first join in the rejoicing that this couple has taken their little “miracle” home alive and healthy. I can’t resist however commenting about this situation. In a way, it is like Columbus discovering America long after the Vikings colonized parts of North America, for in fact; she is not the first and not the youngest. As readers of our book, Abortion Questions and Answers (Dr. and Mrs. Willke, 2003) already know, there is quite a track record of other tiny survivors. Let me elaborate.
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There are two ways of calculating age. One is “gestational” age, which is calculated from the first day of the last normal menstrual period. In a twenty-eight day month, ovulation and fertilization occurs about day 14. “Fetal” age is calculated from the date of fertilization. So a prototypical, full-term baby is delivered at gestational age of 40 weeks, but at fetal age of 38 weeks. Tiny Amillia Taylor was born at 21 weeks and 6 days after fertilization, so I will keep using this measurement below.
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One other factor is that age and weight, while usually tracking together, are sometimes dissimilar e.g., a full-term, nine-month baby sometimes weighs as little as 5 or 6 pounds or as much as 10 pounds. Two babies born at five months, while being the same age, might differ in weight by as much as a half a pound (225 gm).
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So let’s look at previous births. In my files, I have six cases born at 21 weeks. Their weights range from 16 ounces to 24 ounces (540 - 810 gm).
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I have eleven cases of survivors at 20 weeks. Their weights varied from 12 to 22 ounces (339 to 663 gm). There are two cases at 19 weeks including baby Kenya King who weighed 18 ounces (510 gm) and was 10.5 inches (26.5 cm) long. She dropped to 13 ounces (370 gm), had heart surgery, survived and went home with her mother. We have her photo from the Miami Herald in our book. Our last contact with her was when she was about five years old, at which time she was a normal, healthy little girl. (Abortion Questions and Answers, pp. 98, 99, 2003.)
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Finally, we have two cases at 18 weeks. Note: For a listing of eleven such early survivors, see the 1989 edition of Abortion Questions and Answers (Willke. Hayes Pub. Co. pp. 60, 61).
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All of the tiny babies in our listing were publicized in local newspapers or other publications, but none of them received national or international publicity.
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So happily, finally, one such early survivor has been publicized and we may all now rejoice that this conscientious (or inadvertent) boycott of such information has finally been broken through
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Would you be okay with banning abortion past 18 weeks?
 
Holly3278 said:
Ok, you beat me. Abortion is wrong and should be banned. I admit it. I was wrong all along.

But what about abortion in the case where the mother’s health or life is at risk? :confused:
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Oh…never mind…you already came to your senses. 🙂
 
Holly3278 said:
I am aware of that. But you have to admit that it is primarily a religious issue.
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It’s primarily a life issue. Many of our laws could be seen to be religious because they are things that are also against the ten commandments, but that doesn’t make them primarily religious.

Though I don’t see why it matters. We shouldn’t be allowed to harm our babies, whether it’s primarily religious or not.
 
jmeyer3131 said:
It’s primarily a life issue. Many of our laws could be seen to be religious because they are things that are also against the ten commandments, but that doesn’t make them primarily religious.

Though I don’t see why it matters. We shouldn’t be allowed to harm our babies, whether it’s primarily religious or not.
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I agree with you. 🙂 I have changed my mind about abortion. I still see it as okay when the mother’s health or life is at risk though.
 
Holly3278 said:
I would say it is a human or a person but not necessarily one with rights. Why should it have rights when it is basically a parasite to the mother? :confused:
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How independent must a person be to have rights? I was a parasite to my family at a pretty grown-up age for a while there, though I didn’t want to be. A child is helpless. A mother, father, grandparent or in-law has no right to order the execution of an innocent and helpless person for parasitism. Families are supposed to support their dependents. They aren’t allowed to kill them, morally. If you were to wake up with a baby in your arms and a note explaining that the baby needed a mother immediately, and you didn’t want the baby, even if finding someone else to take over might take a year, you would have no right to dismember the child. You would be in a hard situation, but that little kid would be unable to do anything about needing you. You could certainly work at finding another home for the baby, but until then, you would have no right to kill him/her just for being dependent. That is why abortion is hard, why no one likes abortion and everyone wants it to be rare. Because it’s wrong.
Some things are wrong enough to be crimes. some things are sins but private, not government business. I believe birth control is a sin but not a crime. Abortion, however, is infanticide and is a crime. I’ve had one. I’ve confessed and been absolved. To me, the painful and life-threatening condition I was in afterward and my psychological torment for years, my possible permanent physical damage, and my grief all my life, along with later efforts to stop abortion, are my sentence and I have served much of it already. If the abortion had been my own idea or if I had agreed to it readily, having more independence at the time, maybe a different penalty would make sense, maybe not, I don’t know. I’m not the judge. God is. But if abortion had been illegal and homes for expectant unwed mothers with medical care had been available to me and I had known it, I wouldn’t have had an abortion. A lot of women, I think, are tipped one way or another on the “choice” by the legality of aborting and by the words people use.
If it were banned, I would like to see clemency toward women who are impaired, pressured by people who have power over them, very young, or ignorant and penniless e.g. And I wouldn’t like to see the privacy of suffering women invaded by investigators of miscarriages. But when sucking a baby into a vacuum machine is called “ending the pregnancy” and is legal and presented in pastels and soft melodies, while motherhood is presented as a punishment and drudgery, what does that tell children? Women? Children becoming women? Everyone? That our society’s images of life and death are backward.
 
rlg94086 said:
Okay…how about a middle ground…what is “full term” in your eyes?

I’m not sure what the actual youngest surviving “preemie” is, but here is one listing of some examples:
christianliferesources.com/?library/view.php&articleid=1253

Would you be okay with banning abortion past 18 weeks?
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I do not know about abortion, although I am somewhat sympathetic to the “partial-birth abortion” ban…

Do you think mifepristone should be banned?
 
ribozyme said:
I do not know about abortion, although I am somewhat sympathetic to the “partial-birth abortion” ban…

Do you think mifepristone should be banned?
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Yes, because I can’t pronounce it. 😃

Seriously, yes, because it is an abortificant, and therefore its purpose is to kill an unborn human being.
 
Holly3278 said:
Should abortion be banned or not?

I personally do not think it should be banned. I support a woman’s right to choose. I am, however, pro-life. What do you think? :confused:
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I think your statement made no sense.

And I 100% desire abortion to be banned as soon as possible.

One by One by One

We will be remembering this period of our history for a very long time.
 
hasikelee said:
I think your statement made no sense.

And I 100% desire abortion to be banned as soon as possible.

One by One by One

We will be remembering this period of our history for a very long time.
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You’re right, my statement didn’t make much sense. I have since changed my position on abortion in case you didn’t notice. My arguments were defeated.
 
Holly3278 said:
But what about abortion in the case where the mother’s health or life is at risk? :confused:
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When you ask this question, what do you have in mind? For example, can you cite any cases from medical journals where doctors and/or scientists found it necessary to kill the child to save the mother? Were these conclusive studies, or simply the attending’s opinion?

For late-term complications, abortion from a procedural standpoint would appear to further endanger the woman’s life. How is a late-term abortion any less stressful/dangerous than delivery? Besides which, many late-term abortions still require delivery of the child as removal of the body part by part would be quite a long process.

If you have in mind situations such as very progressive or aggressive cancers where the mother will die without treatment, it has already been noted that treating the mother is not an abortion, but rather a necessity to save the mother with side effects that might kill the child. This is called the principle of double effect.
 
hasikelee said:
When you ask this question, what do you have in mind? For example, can you cite any cases from medical journals where doctors and/or scientists found it necessary to kill the child to save the mother? Were these conclusive studies, or simply the attending’s opinion?

For late-term complications, abortion from a procedural standpoint would appear to further endanger the woman’s life. How is a late-term abortion any less stressful/dangerous than delivery? Besides which, many late-term abortions still require delivery of the child as removal of the body part by part would be quite a long process.

If you have in mind situations such as very progressive or aggressive cancers where the mother will die without treatment, it has already been noted that treating the mother is not an abortion, but rather a necessity to save the mother with side effects that might kill the child. This is called the principle of double effect.
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Well, one example that immediately comes to mind is that of ectopic pregnancies. They can truly endanger a woman’s life and the baby has absolutely no chance of living either. Surely an abortion would be justified in such a case.

Anyway, here is a page with some abortion statistics on it:

guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

I honestly think I would have to remain pro-choice or at least allow all abortions before 18 weeks gestation.
 
Hmmm, for some reason the spacing is all messed up in my previous post and I don’t know how to fix it. There’s supposed to be a blank line in between each link.
 
You mentioned eptopic pregnancies. I replied to this in your other post, but as I mentioned there, it is again the double effect. If the mom dies, so does the baby, which is inevitable if the fallopian tube is not removed. Therefore, the tube is removed, which inevitably contains the fetus, so the baby dies, but it is not an abortion. It is the removal of the tube. Yes, this cannot be helped, but it is not intrinsically evil either, like an abortion. It is a necessary operation to save the life of the mother.
 
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