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What's your stance on abortion?

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Alma, Feb 18, 2008.

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Which of the following best describes your position on abortion?

  1. I am pro abortion rights. A woman has a right to privacy and I'll defend that with political activis

    17.9%
  2. I am pro abortion rights, but choose not to be politically involved.

    10.4%
  3. I am pro abortion rights, but against third trimester abortions.

    17.9%
  4. I am pro abortion rights, but I think some women abuse/misuse those rights.

    11.9%
  5. I am pro abortion rights, but the father should have a say.

    6.0%
  6. I am anti-abortion rights except in extreme or life-threatening cases.

    16.4%
  7. I am anti-abortion rights because of my religious beliefs.

    7.5%
  8. I am anti-abortion rights for reasons other than religion.

    4.5%
  9. I support a culture war against abortion, which includes picketing, distributing literature against

    1.5%
  10. I really don't know/care.

    1.5%
  11. None of these options are suitable.

    4.5%
  1. hockeybeat

    hockeybeat Guest

    Like Frank and others, I believe that a woman's body is her own and I support her right to choose. And like bagelchick, I believe birth control should be free.
     
  2. JR

    JR Well-Known Member

    I ddin't vote because there's a built in bias in the polling questions.

    It's about a woman's right to privacy AND her right to choose.
     
  3. outofplace

    outofplace Well-Known Member

    None of those options really fits my feelings on the subject. I am pro-choice, but that particular choice doesn't fit with my own personal morals. I refuse to impose my morals on anybody else, but that doesn't mean I can't be deeply disturbed by somebody making that decision.
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Not giving you flack. You're entitled to your beliefs... But for someone who believes it is morally wrong, it's a human issue, not a man/woman issue. It'd kind of be like saying that northerners shouldn't have been involved in the debate about slavery since it didn't effect them

    To me, slavery and abortion are similar in that there was a split about whether it is morally bad and you heard similar arguments for and against. The difference is that attitudes regarding slavery shifted in a way that I am guessing they are not going to shift anytime soon with regard to abortion.

    These kinds of issues are always circular when they turn into debates. You can't prove your views are right and someone else's are wrong, because it comes down to your personal moral code, and ultimately what the consensus moral code is--which is what determines its legality. And moral codes are not provable things. It's just how you feel.

    Most people can't tell you why murder or rape are wrong, other than they just know in their guts that they are wrong. There is relative agreement about those things (although there hasn't always been, and there are still people who will murder in this world without remorse) and we have laws that make it illegal. Abortion is a similar kind of thing, except without the consensus that it is wrong. It's split between people who are OK with it and people who aren't, unlike things like murder or rape. For a long time, slavery was like abortion. Opinions were split between people who saw nothing wrong with it and people who thought it was horrific. Attitudes have changed and our consensus morals have changed.

    I'm anti-abortion, although I can't say why, other than my gut tells me it is a bad thing. At the least, I look at the fact that more than 1.25 million abortions are performed in this country every year and wonder if in the cosmic scheme of things we are doing something horrific on a grand scale without understanding what we are doing. I don't feel this way for religious reasons. I'm agnostic. I'm not rabid about it. I don't crusade, because I don't think I can convince anyone who doesn't agree with me -- just as they can't convince me. Again, that is because it comes down to whatever moral code you've settled on, and in the gray areas of your code where there is disagreement with others, it's really hard to convince anyone that you are right and they are wrong.

    I have almost always had very defined ideas about "right" and "wrong," and I don't know where they came from... They are pronounced, though. I don't eat any meat, fish or poultry (or dairy or egg anymore, either), for example. I don't wear any leather or animal-made clothes. Again, I can't say why, other than my gut tells me those are bad things to do. I also know that I am clearly in the minority feeling that way, although I feel strongly about it. I don't crusade or try to change the world, even though my beliefs are strong. My hope is that like slavery, attitudes change and people come around to my way of thinking.

    I don't mean for my ideas to turn into a debate or argument with anyone. I don't expect anyone to agree with me. It's just the way I feel, just as everyone else has their feelings... But I think a big part of my thinking is that like anyone else, I can't tell you with certainty that abortion or eating animals (and lots of other things) are wrong in the cosmic sense, but I can say they are things we choose to do that we don't have to do. Given that, I figure why not just avoid doing things that may be really wrong and err on the side of moral caution.
     
  5. Pastor

    Pastor Active Member

    I am personally opposed, but would never impose that belief on others. For a variety of reasons there isn’t a defining moment of when life begins. In addition to this, there are many situations where bringing someone forward into the world would be horrendously awful in a way that impacts others and not just the child.

    It isn’t my body which means I wouldn’t be the one making the decision.
     
  6. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    Alma, with all due respect, the choices in your poll are deeply flawed and biased.

    Is it not possible to support abortion rights without political activism?

    You offer no options favoring abortion in the case of rape, minors, or threat against the mothers life.

    I am pro choice because I don't believe legislators and politicians have the right to decide the course of my life. There are enough crimes against women in this culture.
     
  7. Flash

    Flash Guest

    Can't be said better. No vote from me.
     
  8. ifilus

    ifilus Well-Known Member

    That same argument could be used to oppose birth control.
    And masturbation.
     
  9. Pete Incaviglia

    Pete Incaviglia Active Member

    Strange. I've been pro-abortion all my life. Until my wife got pregnant. Once I saw that ultrasound, I have no idea how anyone could go through with it.

    That said, I still think if a woman is raped and impregnated, all bets are off.

    Other than that, there's always adoption agency and ready, willing and able parents (like my friend) who can't have kids but would love kids.
     
  10. Beaker

    Beaker Active Member

    I think everyone's "opposed" to abortion, but as Pastor said, I don't think anybody should have the right to infringe upon a woman's right to choose and right to privacy. As 21 pointed out, there are a number of situations in which denying a right to an abortion would be an injustice.

    Of course birth control should be freely available, and I think our society needs to do a better job of promoting adoption as an alternative to abortion. A potential solution to the problem would be to allow gay couples to marry and freely adopt children, which would ease pressure from our already full orphanages.
     
  11. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    I'm pro choice. Sure, I wish that women didn't have abortions, but this isn't the land of make believe.

    I often ask pro-lifers what they think would happen if government outlawed abortion, except in cases of a woman's life/health are in danger or in rape/incest cases (polls have shown that very few pro-lifers would force a woman to remain pregnant in these cases). Most of them answer that they feel that abortion would just go away.

    I feel that wouldn't happen, and I subscribe to a theory I call "4 women per day". Let's say, for instance, that pro-lifers get their wish, and abortion is banned, except for the reasons listed above. There are roughly 4,000 abortions per day. Let's say that 99.9 percent of those abortions either don't happen because it's banned, happen in a back alley where the woman ends up fine, or happen in a back alley and a woman gets hurt. That leaves the 0.1 percent, which would be four women, dying EACH and EVERY DAY, from an abortion.

    Imagine that making the news each and every day. This isn't 1950, where these sort of things were just whispered about behind closed doors. Imagine that instead of people marching in protest with pictures of fetuses, people with pictures of their wives/girlfriends/daughters, and signs saying that "she would be alive today if abortion were legal"

    Some radical pro-lifers might say that the women deserved it because it's an illegal act. If that's the case, then they can't call themselves 'pro-life'. That would make them 'anti-abortion." If they're against abortion, then don't have one.
     
  12. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Bubbler and TBR pretty much covered my answer and then some. The funny thing is, I was a (by y'all's standards) rabid anti-abortion activist in high school; I volunteered at a local right-to-life office and marched on Washington a couple of times, back when the fire of naive righteousness still burned deep within me (and well before I started working at newspapers, which helped squelch anything in me more powerful than a 2 a.m. hunger for Waffle House). I became a Christian a few years later and, whether coincidental or not, my interest in the abortion issue actually dropped off quite a bit. I mean, I'm still unalterably opposed to it, but it's a lot harder to work up any enthusiasm over it. But the times I was most accused of trying to impose my religious beliefs were during a time in my life when I had the least strong of them. Go figure.

    Now I suppose I'm fairly pragmatic about it. I still believe abortion is murder based on scientific evidence about the development of the embryo and fetus, not because Preacher or George Bush told me so. But we've had nearly every combination of president/Congress/Supreme Court liberal/conservative alignment in the past 20 years, and for the most part the effect on abortion has been minimal. Abortions didn't skyrocket under Clinton, and they wern't criminalized under Reagan or either Bush. The rate of abortion has slowly decreased in the last 15 years, and both sides seem to agree that's a good thing (if for different reasons).

    But I'll say this much, and no offense to those of you who might believe this, but the whole "personally I'm opposed to abortion because I think it's murder, but ..." argument is pretty damned lame to me. If you think something's murder, but you don't have a problem with it being legal, then you don't think it's particularly wrong. I could take that stand on anything else that doesn't affect me directly (like, say, the atrocities in Darfur) and you'd think me a madman if I said "well, personally I'm opposed to genocide, but I'm not in Sudan, so I don't have the right to impose my morality.) You can be opposed to something on a personal level and still think it's acceptable that it's legal (drug/alcohol/tobacco use, for example), but if you think that something's murder, then it doesn't say a lot about you that you'd then shrug it off with "well, it's not really my concern, so I won't impose my morality." I have a lot more respect for people unrepentently supportive of abortion rights without a hitch in their step than someone trying to play both ends of the issue weakly.

    Oh, and I'd also like to propose a truce of sorts, at least on the board: Your side doesn't accuse my side of hating women and wanting to keep them barefoot and pregnant, and we don't accuse you of getting off on dead babies. Deal?

    And double oh, since this thread keeps getting new replies every time I try to send: I have no beef at all with abortion in the case of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother. But the overwhelming majority of abortions take place for far less critical reasons, and there's the focus of my opposition.
     
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