What do you think about the whole abortion thing?

Question

I think abortion is wrong. I'm not saying that because I think some invisible thing would burn me in hell if I said otherwise, but because I think it's wrong to kill anything that's alive. Fetuses in the womb can react to music, which, to me, is a sign that they're not just bundles of cells.
I'm not trying to piss anybody off, just wanted to know what you guys thought.

not wrong to kill anything that's alive, but anyone that's alive*

Answer 1

I think that if you don't have a uterus, then you don't have an opinion. A woman's body, a woman's choice.

Answer 2

All babies start of as a single cell at some point.

Also you and I are 'nothing but a bundle of cells'. Unless you have some hard proof that there is something else in the human body.

To say 'abortion is wrong' is a very sweeping statement. What of an ectopic pregnancy where without an abortion both the mother and baby will die?


For a woman who will die if she becomes pregnant to flush away a fertilized egg is ethically acceptable to 99.99% of the human race.

For a woman to chose to abort (and in the process kill) a baby in the 8th month for no good reason is ethically unacceptable to 99.99% of the human race.


The problem is the gray area that lies somewhere between these two black and white extremes.

The law has attempted to draw a line that has some meaning behind it, but people will be unhappy about that in both directions.

Also it is subject to drift. If 20 weeks (140 days) is the legal limit, then 139 days is virtually the same. But 138 is almost the same as 139, . . . and so on until you get to a point where the limit is at 7 days - before you can know if you are pregnant or not. Likewise you can go the other way. 141 is the same as 140, . . . until you end up at 245 days, or 8 months.


If you want to seriously debate this then you need to educate yourself further. A 10 week fetus will not react to music. It will not even react to pain as there are no nerve cells to feel pain. It is, literally, 'just a bundle of cells'.

Answer 3

I am completely for abortion. I really appreciate you being respectful and not saying something like "Why do people MURDER BABIES??". So I will try to respond in the most respectful way possible.

I think if the man can walk away, then the woman should be able to. Fetuses aren't living things, so therefore it isn't murder. There are many other things I can say to support my argument, but I'll just stick with the top few. If we try to outlaw abortion, then we'll actually be killing MORE people. Women and girls who are out of options will just go to a back-alley abortionists and end up dying in the extremely dangerous and painful process. Abortion won't stop, ever. So we might as well be professional and safe. Remember the government trying to outlaw alcohol? What about the drug situation? None of it has stopped, so we have to try to see what, in the end, will do the most good.

And that's what I think about abortion :]

EDIT: Also, those who are saying "it's ruining a baby's chance at life", think about it. Every time a woman gets her period, that's ruining a baby's chance at life. Don't even say it isn't, because that's EXACTLY what it is. And when a man, for lack of a better term at the moment, jacks off, HE'S ruining a baby's chance at life! Unless you want every woman in the world to get pregnant once every nine months from the time she gets her first period to when she goes through menopause and for every man and boy on Earth to stop masturbating, then you should stop using that arguement >:(

Answer 4

Abortion does raise moral questions, that can't be disputed. But people sometimes overlook WHY mothers decide to abort their child. This could be because they were raped and became pregnant, or had a cancer that would be passed onto the baby. Should we prevent a woman or (more scary) a teenager from aborting a child they never wanted and did not voluntarily make? And should we let a child live that will certainly get cancer and probably die?
Then there's stem cell research. By using the stem cells from aborted fetuses, a ton of lives can be saved from terrible diseases.
A lot of people overlook these things because aborting a fetus automatically sounds immoral, but if you look closely, there are a lot of redeeming qualities to it.

Answer 5

I think they're acceptable depending on the viability of the fetus. At a few weeks, the embryo is not viable. At 6 months though, the baby could make it through. However, the mother's life is *always* a priority, so even if at nine months there is some medical issue that could cause either the baby or mother their life, the mother lives.

That being said, abortion is not an easy choice for most women, and when they do have to make that choice, they need all the assistance they can get.

Answer 6

Let me give this food for thought...

Do you know of any person who has a miscarriage that says they lost a fetus. No, they feel that they have lost a baby.

While I don't want Roe V Wade overturned, I think we need to teach more people responsibility. There are statistics out there to show that the majority of pregnancies are terminated not due to rape or incest or medical/emotional reason, but because it is not in the mother's best interest to continue the pregnancy. And the majority of abortions are performed on women between 19-25. Also, a vast majority of these women were using birth control.

There are a significant amount of women who have more than one abortion. To me, that means that these women are not taking responsibility to prevent a pregnancy and are using it as a method of birth control.

At the risk of getting nasty comments, what's wrong with abstinance if you are not in a committed relationship?

Answer 7

In most cases it is wrong. But in some it is right.

Here are scenerios i think in which it is right in:
-Rape. Uhm..if u get raped and became pregnant then why should YOU have to live with that forever? You'll still remember it forever but with living proof around it'll haunt you everytime you look at ur child or hear its voice. The moment will be relived over and over again.
-If you arent able to take care of it, at all. I don't think adoption is a choice unless you are purposely having children to go through the adoption system for people who cant have children. As I've experienced, some people adopt kids only to get paid more money from the government. These houses are not good conditioned. They are horrible. Plus, that child has to grow up knowing that their parents are out there and that they dont want him/her.

Other than that...it's wrong.

Answer 8

I think it's an unfortunate reality. There are plenty of people who abuse the practice for selfish, lazy reasons, but there are also many women who face a number of equally repugnant choices. Moral absolutists like their reasoning to be simple, black and white, but there many situations that don't have a clear outcome. Some pregnancies go badly and seriously threaten the life of the mother. Where does one draw the line between her life and the baby's?

There are alcoholics who drink and drive regularly, ignoring ever stiffer laws against it and threatening (and taking) innumerable innocent lives. Yet we don't prohibit alcohol. (We tried that once but for some reason it didn't last.) Abortions are sometimes necessary. To make them completely illegal is to reduce the number of undesirable choices for some women to the worst.

There are many laws that permit terrible practices, even ruining people's hopes for a decent life. We permit them because the alternatives are impractical to enforce. Everything that is permitted can be abused. But not every permission is an abuse. Legislating "morality" is a crude form of mind control that often hurts more people than it saves.

The point is to awaken people to the abuse. Self-examination is not a comfortable thing because it might require change. People who examine their motivations may come to recognize flaws in their characters. A law merely punishes prohibited behavior. It can't address underlying principles. If people aren't free to make mistakes, they will never learn anything, except childish fear.

Answer 9

I agree with you. But still I wonder how many will post on here what they think even though you didn't ask. gilliegrrrl, I don't think you understand what this site is actually for, perhaps you should read the guidelines. This is not an open forum for venting and ranting. It is about asking questions that you generally want an answer for. And yes of course, I am guilty of ranting and voicing my opinion at times, but I don't deny that this is the wrong place to do it.

Answer 10

Is "being able to react to music" your definition of when abortion becomes wrong? Until the late 1800's, the Catholic Church said that abortion was okay until "quickening" -- when the woman could feel the fetus moving.

But now we know the fetus moves long before that. When, for you, do you draw the line between "bundle of cells" and a fetus?

There are so many different stages of development, I believe there is no ONE standard for every woman. Each woman must make her own decision about when abortion is right, or not right, for her. Four weeks? Four days? Four months? Does it depend on her health? The health of the fetus?

I'm going to repeat myself: "Each woman must make her own decision about when abortion is right, or not right, for her."

And NO woman should make that decision for someone else. You put this question into "Religion & Spirituality." In the United States, we are (supposedly) guaranteed religious freedom. It is wrong for anyone to impose their religious feelings about abortion on the rest of us by using our public laws to enforce their religious feelings.

Also -- if abortion were criminalized -- how far would you be willing to go? Should women who say, "I want an abortion" be arrested for it? Or women who are caught looking for one? Should they be arrested at gunpoint and put in prison until they deliver? (Pregnant prisoners are handcuffed and leg-chained to their hospital beds to deliver; I'm not making this up). Should she be forced (or forbidden) to raise the child if it is born alive?

Why do people who don't trust a woman to make her own decision trust her to raise a child for 18 years? I'm not trying to irritate you, either... just telling you what I think. :)

Answer 11

We need people of good will on both sides to stop demanding unrealistic all-or-nothing solutions. There will always be a few extremists but reasonable people can and should accept middle ground solutions... such as limited abortion (first trimester only, perhaps) combined with effective prevention programs that drastically reduce the need for the act in the first place. Then solid, stigma-free support for the much smaller number who will carry unwanted children to term and put them up for adoption, etc.