Which of the following cases should be granted an abortion

You can choose as many or as few of these cases as you like. This is my attempt to have people think about some of the choices women face.

Consider what must drive women to choose unsafe abortions



Who would volunteer for a surgical procedure in a backyard alley with little to no anaesthetic? Only the desperate ad yet this is what a lot of women face around the world

 

I am pro-choice. I don't understand why an unborn's life is more important than the woman carrying the pregnancy. I also don't understand why anti-abortionists make all kinds of waves about abortion but don't show an ounce of interest in that life once he or she is born.

The unwanted children are often abused and neglected. Some of them are food poor and without medical care. Some of them will be raped and sodomized by their own parents. Some of them will be sold for human trafficking. It's disgusting on so many levels.

I believe that anyone arrested for causing problems at abortion clinics should be sentenced to work in a women's clinic or a crisis line for post-partum depression. Countless women begged for help before they took drastic measures and killed their child(ren). Those pleas often go unanswered and we only hear about it on the back-end when they get arrested. Yates didn't just fall from the sky. Smith didn't either.

If "life" matters, ALL LIVES SHOULD MATTER whether they are in the womb or not.

 

This valedictorian address is receiving a whole lot of attention. Good place as any to post it...
The text of Smith's speech, as transcribed by NPR:

I'm not usually very good at expressing my gratitude for the people that I care about. But I would like to say "thank you" to Coach. I think he's had a bigger role in my life than he realizes. [deep breath]

OK.

As we leave high school, we need to make our voices heard. Today, I was going to talk about TV and media and content, because it's something that's very important to me. However, under light of recent events, it feels wrong to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in the state.

Recently, the Heartbeat Bill was passed in Texas. Starting in September, there will be a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, regardless of whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest.

Six weeks. That's all women get. And so before they realize — most of them don't realize that they're pregnant by six weeks — so before they have a chance to decide if they are emotionally, physically and financially stable enough to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human being into the world, that decision is made for them by a stranger.

A decision that will affect the rest of their lives is made by a stranger.

I have dreams and hopes and ambitions. Every girl graduating today does. And we have spent our entire lives working towards our future. And without our input and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us. [applause]

I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter. I hope that you can feel how gut-wrenching that is. I hope you can feel how dehumanizing it is, to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you.

And I'm talking about this today — on a day as important as this, on a day honoring 12 years of hard academic work, on a day where we are all gathered together, on a day where you are most inclined to listen to a voice like mine, a woman's voice — to tell you that this is a problem, and it's a problem that cannot wait.

And I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace, when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers [cheers], a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters.

We cannot stay silent. Thank you.

 

That's beautiful.

 

"Granted." Who has the right to know a woman's personal history or any of the content of her discussions and decisions made with her medical provider?

 

Frankly I did not vote on the Australian laws. I do not plan to vote on their laws.

 

All choice means is the baby's life is in the hands of the mother who as said above has tons of problems. She should have used birth control. That is legal.
That is why Democrats should never be in charge of making our nations laws.
But wait, Democrats refused to make laws on abortion.
Republicans have to step up and do it for our nation.

Congress to this very day has refused to make laws making abortion legal.

I also commented that what Australia does in their country does not concern me and if they want abortion, simply create law making it legal.

 

Women can still get abortions in TX.

 

<COMMENTS EDITED AT POSTER'S REQUEST>

I really don't understand people that think the way you've expressed here. The fact of the matter is the woman is already pregnant so the question of what she should have done before that happened is irrelevant.

Years ago, my ex's sister got divorced and she had a really hard time with her ex-husband taking care of their daughter. He wouldn't buy groceries for when the girl was visiting and he just plopped her in front of a tv set while he watched porn in the next room. It was astonishing to me the number of people that turned their back on her saying "you shouldn't have had a kid when a loser." What good does that do? The kid was already born. Sure, she could use that experience to be more careful in the future but it's not like she could go back in time to not have that baby.

The reality is people are going to have sex and some of that will lead to unwanted pregnancies. We can cry about moral decay and condemn these people but at the end of the day there is a decision to be made.

• I have absolutely no idea what was going on with my own mother when she had me but I was repeatedly told that she wished she had aborted me.
• A very good friend of mine passed a few years ago. Her mother was so sick and twisted that she would keep journals about the various ways she abused her children and was so proud of her ability to do so that she left those journals to my friend when she passed away.
• I knew a guy from school who had four brothers. One day, his father called them into the garage where he had hung five nooses and taunted them saying he would laugh as he watched them slowly choke to death. My friend ran away from home soon after that.
• I knew another guy who was taken from his mother because she was a hooker. She never beat him or neglect him, she provided for him and she didn't expose him to her work in any way. Yet, he was placed into foster care and group homes where he was beaten and sodomized repeatedly.
• I know women that have sold their daughters for sex to pay off money owed to bad people.
• I know a man that left his wife and kidnapped their two children who he left with his pedophile friends.

I could go on and on, but the point should be clear. Life is not a fairy tale for most people.

Yes, it would be great if people were responsible and made plans before bringing a life into the world but it just doesn't work that way for many people for all sorts of reasons. If we care about LIFE, shouldn't we care about *that life* post-birth as well?

 

OK. And?

 

I'll stick with my poor dead momma's sentiment, "Children should be "fixed" at birth, and only un-fixed when they proved capable of raising children". Assuming this were ever to be possible I'd LOVE to see how it would play out among the absolutist pro-life and pro-choice camps.

 

What “laws?’ These are individual cases

 

I fear it will take more than one Savita Halappanavar to overturn these laws once enacted. The cases above, well most were made up but Not untypical of the women seeking abortion As per the statistics but the first two were based on real cases and BOTH cases overturned what had been draconian anti- abortion laws in Catholic countries

 

none of them should be prevented from choosing to abort; all of them should be encouraged and incentivized to carry, birth and raise or give up for adoption with moral and financial support options.

 

Shrugs

I have been advocating for years that since the majority of abortions are unwanted pregnancies the best way of preventing it is to sterilise every male after adolescence but banking the sperm first and then he would have to petition the woman for her to carry the child to term

 

The woman whose baby has been diagnosed as anencephalic? That means the brain has not developed and most only live a few days - she must now spend the rest of her pregnancy telling all who care for her that essentially she is carrying a dead child

 

Okay

Who among the women I described “should have used birth control” ? Savita? That was a wanted pregnancy that went terribly wrong. Our 1a year old Argentinian girl? Really? I know that many states in America allow for child marriages but even then 11 is a bit young for sex don’t you think? The woman with the family?


59% of women seeking abortions already have children - for them it is often about ensuring the children they have can be supported. The 17 year old homeless girl? Yes, how is SHE to survive? Forget about actually adopting it out and think about how she will cope getting enough food during the pregnancy? Finally the woman carrying the anencephalic - a WANTED pregnancy even maybe a yearned for pregnancy - what will you say to her?

 

if the government can choose for a woman, then they could choose for a man too

 

and she must risk her life and limbs to do so

 

Earlier today I read a post that was about the poster's views on homosexual people and how he had come to know them so his opinions started to change. Another poster replied to that to say that is a big step and that we could all learn something from that. I've never been homophobic (despite being raised Catholic) but that exchanged touched me.

I thought about it when I was responding to this topic because I believe a huge chunk of our differences of opinion are simply because of lack of exposure. It's easy to lay down the gauntlet when it's a nameless, faceless person we know nothing about. It's a different story when we take the time to hear their stories.

Lastly, as you point out...it's not about anti-abortion versus pro-choice. It's really about safe versus unsafe methods for terminating a pregnancy. A law is not going to stop a girl or woman from aborting if she wants to (any more than a restraining order stops domestic violence). It's only going to make it harder for her to obtain one in a sterile and safe environment.

 

Exactly and thank-you. The anti-abortion crowd have done a very good misinformation campaign that includes the following
A) equating all abortions with late term abortions - late term abortions are rare and overwhelmingly done for foetal abnormally
B) convincing people that abortions are done for “frivolous” reasons I.e. that the woman wanted to fit into a bathing suit
C) that women who abort are “heartless” and do not consider all the options
D) that it is “their fault” because “they were sluts” who asked for sex and were too lazy to use contraception

Now given that the above is taken from typical republican leaning poster responses - what does that say about republican attitudes to women?

 

Yeah, well, the thing is, sometimes that is true.

We don't even know how much because no statistics on this are really being collected or compiled.

And many pro-choicers here attempt to do just the opposite: attempting to equate all abortions to zygotes and embryonic clumps of cells.

Sounds a little like just two sides of the same coin to me.

 

How often? And can you provide proof?

what am I saying - you ignored the statistics from Guttmacher which means you either did not read it or assumed it was a meme

Now want to lay out your responses to the above situations?

 

The question is, can you?
Shouldn't the burden of proof be on your side to prove this is not going on?

 

Oh! And Katz

BOTH sides use Guttmacher as a resource

https://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/abortion