(Confused about abortion.) What am I? What should I be? What should I do?

Question

I was raised Catholic in a very "pro-life" family. I myself don't really have any real opinions about abortion. I don't really think it's wrong nor do I really think it's right.
I was raised believing it's wrong, but just because people told me it's wrong, doesn't mean it is...
Now that i'm 19, I just recently stepped into my own world and am no longer a child, and am wondering what I am or what i should be?
Am I pro-life? Am I pro-choice?
Which one should I be?

Tell me your opinions and give me facts... help me make my decision about what I am and INFORM me.

my parents never gave me sexual education nor did i learn it in school, and my parents never even really talked about abortion, so i don't know what to think.

I'm an agnostic because I dont believe everything my parents believe despite being raised "catholic". I have a mind of my own, and my own opinions!

so...help me out.....

Pro choice? Pro life?

Dont be mean.

I KNOW what an abortion is. Actually, I have probably visited every site on the internet which mentions abortion. I'm just stuck with my opinions, views, and my decision. I thought it would be nice to hear other peoples' opinions about abortion.

I know it's not a big deal, but it's been bothering me lately. I just want to be on a side (pro choice or pro life).

I want to know who I really am, and abortion is a BIG issue.

don't criticise!

Answer 1

No offense, but if you've "got a mind of your own", aren't you capable of determining what you are, or what you want to be?

You obviously know what abortion is, So ask yourself these questions:

-Would I ever get an abortion?
-If I got pregnant, and didn't want an abortion, would I abort, or give up for adoption?
-Would I feel guilty if I got an abortion?
-Who's more important? Me or the fetus?

You should be pro-choice. Pro-lifers are crazy.


For the pro-life idiots:

Pregnancy should be a choice. How can somebody force a woman to carry an unwanted child? That is abuse. NOBODY can and/or should be forced to physically do something they don't approve of. Carrying a child for 9 months requires alot of PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL energy and strength. Being pregnant is not as easy or as pleasant as some may think. Being pregnant means being EMOTIONALLY and FINANCIALLY ready to have a child. Why would somebody even think about having a child when they are on the verge of going bankrupt, living on the streets, and not being able to support themselves? How can you expect them to support a living, breathing child emotionally and physically? Why would you introduce a child to such a miserable life? They are better off dead. Poverty sticken people have the right to have sexual pleasure and sometimes, even if protection is used, mistakes happen; That does NOT mean that they should be bringing a child into this world.
Abortion is also an option for the more financially secure people. Accidents ALWAYS happen; Condoms can break, Birth control is not 100% effective, and sometimes people just forget to use protection or don't have protection at the time. That does NOT mean that they should have an unwanted child. Something else which has happened many times is RAPE. Many girls have been raped in the past and were forced to carry a child. That is the stupidest thing ever! How does that make any sense? Why should somebody be forced to carry a child which is the product of RAPE? Why would somebody even want to mother a criminal's child which is only alive because of a TRAUMATIZING experience? That's insane! Abortion is not wrong. Anybody who says "Abortion is murder" is an ignorant fool who should use their brain and THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BIBLE. Abortion is not murder. [ MURDER- Noun. The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice. ] THIS IS COMMON SENSE: How can abortion be considered "murder" when the fetus was never even born? If the "baby" is not breathing and living on its own, without the the help of the mother's body, It can not be "murdered". Somebody can not be murdered untill they are born! It just does not make sense to call it "murder".
Most pregnancies are terminated before the fetus is even visible. How can it be considered murder when the fetus is almost invisible? The fetus can not feel a thing therefore nobody can say it is "wrong". Even if the fetus is already visible, "living", and breathing, it is not a REAL life. Think about it this way: If you took a 4 month old fetus out of the body of a woman, it would NOT be able to survive on its own. It is only a REAL life when the baby is viable; when it can survive on its own without the help of the mother's body...Otherwise, it is just a potential at life and NOTHING ELSE.
Even I admit that abortion during the third trimester is WRONG. For example: If you took a 7 1/2 or 8 month old baby out of a mother's body, as opposed to a four month old fetus (as I mentioned above), it is more than just a potential at life, it IS life. That 7-8 month old fetus has the chance of surviving outside of the mother's body at that early of an "age" (with medical assistance, of course) while the four month old fetus has NO chance at survival no matter how much medical assistance is provided.
Anyway, This is not about the fetus, about what it can "feel", or about what's right or wrong, It's about the Mother. A woman's body is a woman's body and NOBODY can force her to do something she doesn't want to do with her body. When a woman is pregnant, it is still HER body and ONLY her body and she can do whatever she wants with it. A woman should not be forced to go through 9 months of Physical and emotional discomfort for something that will be born into a ****** up, unwanted child. Forced pregnancies will only give the child a bad life. The child won't have sufficent love, emotional, physical, and [in some cases] financial support. This child will most likely not have a quality life and does not deserve to go through so many difficulties. The mother also does not deserve to have to deal with an unwanted child; She should not have to waste time, money, and energy to raise an unwanted child which was brought into this world by force. It is NOT fair.
Also, It is NOT about the fetus! It's about the mother! Who cares about the fetus? Since when is a tiny piece cells and tissue that can NOT feel anything more important than a grown woman? NEVER! Women are more important!

Something important:Men do NOT have the right to stop a woman from getting an abortion. Abortion is ONLY the woman's business because it is HER body and HER choice and any man's opinion does NOT count; he does not have the right to stop the woman from getting an abortion and/or judge and critisize a woman who has had an abortion, has considered getting an abortion, or one who will get one in the future. How dare a man even say that abortion is wrong when he is a MAN? He will NEVER IN HIS LIFE get pregnant. Men don't have the slightest clue about what it is like to be a woman. How can a man say abortion is wrong when he doesn't nor will he ever understand the phyiscal and emotional difficulty of pregnancy? IT JUST DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. If you're a man, I suggest you SHUT THE **** UP and GET A CLUE; The day your penis turns into a vagina and your body changes to accomodate a child inside your stomach, you will have the right to talk about abortion...Too bad that will never happen so shut the **** up. You never will have to carry a child and i'm 100% sure no man would ever want to, so why do you all assume that a WOMAN would want to?

Another big issue: Abortion is none of anybody's business aside from the mother. If all you brainwashed, brainless, ignorant, stupid, highschool drop-out, trailer trash, bible freak, pro-life whores are so anti abortion then don't get an abortion! It's THAT easy. Just worry about yourself and leave everybody else alone! Stay out of everybody's business. If we want to "kill" fetuses, then we can. It's our business, so go get a life and stay out of our lives.

Also, Many people say: "Why would you kill a child when you can just give it up for adoption? There are so many people who want children but can't have any."
That is the stupidest thing ever! Why should somebody have to suffer for 9 months? Why would they want to carry a child for no reason? Going through so much emotional and physical discomfort for 9 months is pointless if you will just go back to your life as if nothing happened and you will have no affiliation with the child afterwards...You will be thinking: "What did I just waste the last 9 months of my life doing? I could have accomplished so much in those 9 months. I can't believe I went through so much pain just to bring a child into this world whom I will never see again. etc etc"
It is a waste of time! You are only making YOUR life worse.

Even if you do go through 9 months of pregnancy to carry an unwanted child, You WON'T want to give it up for adoption after you see it. It's not that easy. Do you really think that you can give a child away after you've gone through so much to give it life and after you've had it come out of you, held it, heard it cry, etc? NO! Even if it was an unwanted child, It's not THAT easy! After it is born, You will want it.

BUT...Let's say that you DO give it up for adoption, Don't be so sure that somebody will adopt it. Please remember that there are SO many foster homes with children who have been living there for years and have been waiting for a family to adopt them. There are plenty of children in this world who don't have families, so whoever says "There are so many parents who can't have children but want children and there aren't enough in this world" are idiots! Look around you, this world is so overpopulated! Go to your local foster home and you'll see so many sad children without families. Why don't you adopt them all since you're so "Pro-life"?
The world does not need anymore unwanted children. There is not an 100% chance that you child will be adopted. If there were an 100% chance, then there wouldn't be SO many children out there without families.


Why abortion is LEGAL, should REMAIN LEGAL, and why abortion is RIGHT:

1. Laws against abortion kill women. To prohibit abortions does not stop them. When women feel it is absolutely necessary, they will choose to have abortions, even in secret, without medical care, in dangerous circumstances. In the two decades before abortion was legal in the U.S., it's been estimated that nearly a million women per year sought out illegal abortions. Thousands died. Tens of thousands were mutilated. All were forced to behave as if they were criminals.

2. Legal abortions protect women's health. Legal abortion not only protects women's lives, it also protects their health. For tens of thousands of women with heart disease, kidney disease, severe hypertension, sickle-cell anemia and severe diabetes, and other illnesses that can be life-threatening, the availability of legal abortion has helped avert serious medical complications that could have resulted from childbirth. Before legal abortion, such women's choices were limited to dangerous illegal abortion or dangerous childbirth.

3. A woman is more than a fetus. Some people argue these days that a fetus is a "person" that is "indistinguishable from the rest of us" and that it deserves rights equal to women's. On this question there is a tremendous spectrum of religious, philosophical, scientific, and medical opinion. It's been argued for centuries. Fortunately, our society has recognized that each woman must be able to make this decision, based on her own conscience. To impose a law defining a fetus as a "person," granting it rights equal to or superior to a woman's — a thinking, feeling, conscious human being — is arrogant and absurd. It only serves to diminish women.

4. Being a mother is just one option for women. Many hard battles have been fought to win political and economic equality for women. These gains will not be worth much if reproductive choice is denied. To be able to choose a safe, legal abortion makes many other options possible. Otherwise an accident or a rape can end a woman's economic and personal freedom.

5. Outlawing abortion is discriminatory. Anti-abortion laws discriminate against low-income women, who are driven to dangerous self-induced or back-alley abortions. That is all they can afford. But the rich can travel wherever necessary to obtain a safe abortion.

6. Compulsory pregnancy laws are incompatible with a free society. If there is any matter that is personal and private, then pregnancy is it. There can be no more extreme invasion of privacy than requiring a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. If government is permitted to compel a woman to bear a child, where will government stop? The concept is morally repugnant. It violates traditional American ideas of individual rights and freedoms.

7. Outlaw abortion, and more children will bear children. Forty percent of 14-year-old girls will become pregnant before they turn 20. This could happen to your daughter or someone else close to you. Here are the critical questions: Should the penalty for lack of knowledge or even for a moment's carelessness be enforced pregnancy and childrearing? Or dangerous illegal abortion? Should we consign a teenager to a life sentence of joblessness, hopelessness, and dependency?

8. "Every child a wanted child." If women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, the result is unwanted children. Everyone knows they are among society's most tragic cases, often uncared-for, unloved, brutalized, and abandoned. When they grow up, these children are often seriously disadvantaged, and sometimes inclined toward brutal behavior to others. This is not good for children, for families, or for the country. Children need love and families who want and will care for them.

9. Choice is good for families. Even when precautions are taken, accidents can and do happen. For some families, this is not a problem. But for others, such an event can be catastrophic. An unintended pregnancy can increase tensions, disrupt stability, and push people below the line of economic survival. Family planning is the answer. All options must be open.

At the most basic level, the abortion issue is not really about abortion. It is about the value of women in society. Should women make their own decisions about family, career, and how to live their lives? Or should government do that for them? Do women have the option of deciding when or whether to have children? Or is that a government decision? The anti-abortion leaders really have a larger purpose. They oppose most ideas and programs that can help women achieve equality and freedom. They also oppose programs that protect the health and well-being of women and their children.

Anti-abortion leaders claim to act "in defense of life." If so, why have they worked to destroy programs that serve life, including prenatal care and nutrition programs for dependent pregnant women? Is this respect for life?

Anti-abortion leaders also say they are trying to save children, but they have fought against health and nutrition programs for children once they are born. The anti-abortion groups seem to believe life begins at conception, but it ends at birth. Is this respect for life?

Then there are programs that diminish the number of unwanted pregnancies before they occur: family planning counseling, sex education, and contraception for those who wish it. Anti-abortion leaders oppose those, too. And clinics providing such services have been bombed. Is this respect for life?

Such stances reveal the ultimate cynicism of the compulsory pregnancy movement. "Life" is not what they're fighting for. What they want is a return to the days when a woman had few choices in controlling her future. They think that the abortion option gives too much freedom. That even contraception is too liberating. That women cannot be trusted to make their own decisions.

Americans today don't accept that. Women can now select their own paths in society, including when and whether to have children. Family planning, contraception, and, if need be, legal abortion are critical to sustaining women's freedom. There is no going back.

Answer 2

I believe life begins at conception. Everyone talks about the woman's right to choose, but what about the baby's right to life?

As far as women not being given a choice about what to do with their own bodies- I believe they chose to have sex, if they get pregnant because the birth control method they chose did not work, that's their fault, not the baby's. When you decide to have sex, you have to always know that there's a chance- no matter how slim, that you may become pregnant. If you do become pregnant, at least take responsibilities for your actions and give your child a chance at life,whether you keep it or decide to give it up for adoption.

Go to the nrlc.org website and read what actually goes on during an abortion. A baby can feel pain as early as 17 weeks after gestation. The methods used to perform abortions are horrible. If a one year old was killed by having his head cut open and his brains sucked out you'd think the person who did it was a monster, but do it to an unborn child days before the due date and it's just called a partial birth abortion. Not to mention salt poisoning or suction. These are horrible ways to die, and yet, everyday unborn child are killed and we say it's the woman's right to decide whether her child lives or dies.

Basically, what it comes down to is not whether or not your some sort of religious zealot who is blowing up abortion clinics, but whether or not you have any respect for human life. Abortion is not the only choice for women who do not want to be pregnant. We need to stop being so selfish and thinking about what's best for us and what we want and start thinking about taking responsibilities for our actions and realizing that human life is precious!

Answer 3

The pro life creed requires that no person be allowed to have an abortion. The pro choice creed allows each person to choose for himself. If you pray to your God and ask for permission to abort and he says you must abort, then in the pro life creed you could be punished for murder even if following the instructions of God. God himself uses abortion in the form of miscarriage. God does not call it murder when he aborts. The Bible does not call abortion murder. The Bible makes a distinction between violent abortion and murder with a lessor punishment for violent abortion. There is no penalty for consentual abortion in the Bible.
Those who claim that abortion is murder are following a god that is evil. The God of the Bible is not evil and that is the reason abortion is not called murder. God does not kill the fetus in abortion. The God of the Bible gives eternal life. DNA and other test do not prove that something is a living human in God's eyes.
At some point in the near future humans will clone new life. Do we want to be unable to abort a baby conceived by a clone. If you believe in the Bible do you want to be able to abort the anti-christ. Do you think God would give the power and knowledge to humans to abort and not leave instructions if it were a sin? Do you think that abortion would be outlawed in the bible if it were murder?
For these and many other reasons I am 100% certain that abortion is a God given right that we are to use after considering all other options.

Answer 4

I think its wrong that politicians have pigeon holed us into these "pro life" "pro choice" stances. I am neither and both of course i am pro life life is good, babies are good. But I also feel I would like to have some control over my body and children. Then again I don't think I could personally have an abortion but that is easy to say im married, have extra cash and a good house. If it was a different situation who knows maybe I would have one. The point is you don't have to be pro choice or pro life but you can have ideas.

Answer 5

Pro-choice just means that you think the decision should be made by the pregnant woman, not politicians, religions or special interest groups.

Pro lifers will take that choice away from the woman and force her to complete the pregnancy, regardless of what she wants or needs.

Answer 6

I am pro choice for many reasons.

How many welfare babies do we need?

I have a sister that had 3 babies from 3 daddies and none of the fathers had anything to do with them. My sister was dirt poor and thought about abortion she was talked out of it.

I had a call one evening late at night from the local (small town) judges daughter. She and my sister where close.
She proceeded to ask me about my niece and nephew ( only two kids at the time) I was wondering what she was getting at so I asked.
I was informed that my sister was in jail for prostitution, she was trying to make money to feed her kids. She would be damned if she was going to be a welfare recipient.

Anyway, back to the story.

I called the police and the social service agency and asked them to meet me at her house. We arrived roughly at the same time just in time to see my niece eating out of the garbage can because their was no food in the house.
Needless to say, the kids where removed from the house and placed in protective custody. The whole family was distraught over the situation but no one in the family knew I was the one that did the deed.

I knew what was right and what needed to be done but I also know that if I could have ever found out who was the person that talked her out of an abortion I would kill them, literally!

The family was torn apart and my sister tried to get back up on her feet but did not right away, she did to a point 20 some years later. However, the children went from house to house never being adopted never knowing quite why things went the way they did.
I knew where they went and I kept an eye on then from a distance, I too could not afford additional kids of I would have taken them in, in a heartbeat.
Now my niece has two children from two fathers not married to either, my nephew has one and one on the way from two different women
The third and final child is the sad story. Again my sister was talked into having the child. But this child would suffer a far worse fate, he passed on by SIDS but was revived to late. He was a baby of the state from the get go.
He has cost us taxpayers much money over the years due to the brain damage he suffered.
He is now a liar, a thief, and a generally worthless person; he also lives off the system.

I am not here to condemn my family but to say that all the holy rollers that say don’t abort, have the baby and give it up did nothing, absolutely zero to adopt the children. They sure will be the fist to step in and condemn her for not being a good mother.

I have not met a pro-lifer yet that has adopted. Everyone says people are standing in line to adopt but they are not.

Pro-life people only want to tell you that you are dirty and a sinner but they themselves are guilty of sin. They break of the spirit of what they preach.
They want to create laws over a belief, a belief in a invisible god, a god that they twist and turn to fit what ever need they see fit.
If the god they prey to is so good why are so many afraid to go to him. People will spend money like crazy to live longer and to keep from ending a life of a person hooked to life support.
Why?


Because they are self centered. They do not want to hurt, they do not want to miss the person after they are gone. That is just tuff cookies. Deal with it and stop telling everyone else how to live or die, it is not your decision to make.

Answer 7

Abortion is the killing of your own child just because you were irresponsible. Killing a life is wrong. You take it from here and decide if you are pro life or pro choice.

Answer 8

do what feels right in your heart. even though i am VERY pro-choice, if you canot live with a decision then it wasnt the right one.

You are going to get A LOT of religeous people anwering this question talking about the bible, and how you NEED to keep the baby or you are going to hell...

If you feel this is something you must do, dont let THEM make the decision for you. Do what feels right.

-A

Answer 9

i think you should THINK for yourself. I think it's lame to post bout abortion here WHERE you are going to get a ton of it's murder answers and a few it's a choice answers. MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND don't be a sheep that follows the herd think 4 yourself.

Answer 10

I say : Give the baby a chance to live.

If you cant support him or you are not emotionally ready to raise him, well, there are a lot of people who want a baby and cant have one, you're lucky in that way.

Lots of people want to adopt, and the baby for sure doesnt want to die, who does??

My brother and his wife for 5 years have been trying to have a baby, but haven't been able yet...I say you are blessed and the baby deserves a chance.

Answer 11

Abortion is killing a human life. Something that I consider murder. If you were stupid and ignored condom use or birth control, you deserve to have this baby at such a young age, and raise it to be healthy and happy. But, if you were raised to believe murder is ok..then, thats another story.