|
Post by Liberator on Sept 3, 2009 13:57:17 GMT
I am involved in this discussion somewhere else. A couple of years ago Britain dropped the limit on abortion from 28 weeks to 24 and many wanted it to go down to 20 weeks. The rationale is that since abortion became legal, it has become possible to incubate foetusses at an earlier stage. This process can only continue driving the legal limit down with viability. Should the attitude to abortion change to treat it on the same terms as natural spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) on the assumption that where possible the foetus will be removed in a way to keep it alive? There are far more adoption applicants for babies than for older children. Would this be a way of compromise with all parties, taking the wind out of the 'abortion is murder' lobby's sails, remove all 'age' restrictions and allow religious believers in the foetus as a 'human life' to have an abortion with a clear conscience?
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2009 19:54:53 GMT
So why not take the baby to full term, and have it adopted? Severly premature babies stand a much higher chance of being born disabled if they survive. Also, many late abortions are perfomed because doctors have discovered there is a problem.
I am in favour of choice, but ideally abortion should be performed at an early stage. The idea of keeping an aborted foetus alive for a childless couple is interesting, but riddled with cantradiction.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Sept 3, 2009 20:23:55 GMT
Yes I've seen that about early prematures being disabled. I think too that often Nature knows best and far too many pregnancies are brought to term medically that would normally have aborted themselves. The question is really just how premature is viable. When the law came in it was 28. Now it is 24 with some pressing for 20. I'm more concerned really with allowing for late abortions without running foul of the viability limit. You could assume that where possible attempts will be made to maintain life, so that there is no reason for an upper limit, but you are not (usually) planning to impose a lower limit. I don't know whether medicine could ever develop to allow foetal transplant at the other end of the scale. Probably not I would think. What we don't know is how far existing problems might be solved in the future. If they are, then the viability limit would drop even lower and take the abortion limit down with it. I think that really, incubation would have to be an argument for removing the upper limit.
|
|
|
Post by chefmate on Sept 4, 2009 3:16:28 GMT
I just cannot stop believing abortion is the killing of a human being; it is an awful thing we have allowed into our supposedly civilized societies while innnocents are being killed the majority of people give a nod and go on their way never thinking how harshly we treat the unborn who have no one to speak for them.
Shame.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Sept 4, 2009 4:47:50 GMT
I don't feel that way, Chefmate, but living in a Catholic country, I know most women do and they regard abortion as depriving them of their freedom as females to support their right to give birth that men cannot, so they can be useful slaves of the Old Enemy. In that respect I thoroughly agree that men were not expected to care about relationships, and that is how a few madwomen calling themselves 'feminists' decree their hatred for any man who respects women more than they do. Men should be 'liberated' to equality with women's traditional values. By definition that is 'equality'.
removed off topic abuse - trubble
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2009 6:07:15 GMT
For goodnbess sake, ratarsed, give it a rest.
I don't regard an embryo as a human being, Chefmate. It has the potential to be one, sure, but it possesses none of the qualities that make a person special. I'd rather focus on making sure that every child is born into a caring home, and our shame is that there is too much cruelty to those who can feel suffering. That includes sentient animals as well as people.
I'm not sure about a 20 week old foetus, though. The nearer full term a foetus becomes, the greyer the area.
|
|
|
Post by trubble on Sept 4, 2009 15:20:04 GMT
I'm not saying this to be obtuse but I am baffled by this statement.
I live in the same country - the same city even! - as you Ratarsed and I have never heard of women regarding abortion as depriving them of their freedom to support their right to give birth so that they can be slaves to the Old Enemy. Generally the pro-choice lobby regard the lack of available abortion as depriving them of their freedom of choice and control over their own bodies and generally the anti-abortion lobby fall more in line with Chefmate's compassionate response.
In the past I have been involved in the Pro-Choice movement and have met quite strong opinions of varying politics on both sides, just not that one.
|
|
|
Post by trubble on Sept 4, 2009 15:27:00 GMT
Yes, eventually we will have to choose where the fine line between potential human and existing human, between life and potential life, between murder and euthanasia really is.
I think the idea of removal and incubation will cause as many problems as it solves, more even. I wouldn't be for it. I think we will just have to be brave and choose where the line is.
I am prepared to believe that I have found that line - the acceptable limit - for my own personal ethical conscience and it is not 28, 24 nor even 20 weeks. (Unless of course there is severe problems with the developing child and it would be prudent and kinder and safer to make the decision while it was still in the womb. Some problems do not even emerge until quite late on).
I refuse to make that decision for other people although I believe we can make an upper limit that is a good compromise. 20 weeks may well be it. We must each find our own acceptable place, for some people it will never be acceptable, some people don't even find the morning after pill acceptable. (That is why I am pro-choice, each to our own conscience).
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on Sept 4, 2009 17:53:48 GMT
I just cannot stop believing abortion is the killing of a human being; it is an awful thing we have allowed into our supposedly civilized societies while innnocents are being killed the majority of people give a nod and go on their way never thinking how harshly we treat the unborn who have no one to speak for them. Shame. I agree with you 100%, Chris. I've been there myself when I got pregnant with my first kid and the doctor warned me that my son would be born with genetic defects and advised me to have him aborted. Mike and I talked it over and he gave me the right to take the final decision. I chose to have my baby and I love my dear boy Louis very much. Sure, he can't do all the things a normal 8-year old can but so what? I do - very reluctantly - support abortions where the mother's life is in danger or where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Other than that I'm pro-life. I actually belong to a pro-life feminist group (yes, we DO exist!) and it's so refreshing to meet with other women who feel the same sense of agony and pain rather than just looking on a foetus as something to flush down the toilet. The sad thing is that so many abortions are NOT carried out for medical reasons but for 'social' ones. I find it quite appalling that a human life is worth less than money or 'convenience' and I do really feel in my heart that abortion is a great moral evil, even though it is SOMETIMES a necessary one (on the lesser of two evils principle.) I can't help how I feel and I've taken more flak on this issue than any other from my feminist sisters but that's just how I am. Life is easier when you're politically correct but then morality is always about making the TOUGH choices in life.
|
|
|
Post by trubble on Sept 4, 2009 18:53:53 GMT
Can I ask if your Pro-Life stance includes a Pro-Choice aspect -- are you content to let people decide for themselves, in other words, or does the moral evil of abortion necessitate removing choice from others who may not see it as so evil?
This is an enormous issue in Ireland and where the two factions clash most is control over what others may do. Both factions feel so strongly and deeply about it.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2009 19:16:10 GMT
Doesn't everything hang on Lin's use of the word "human"?
As I said before, I can' think of an embroy as a human but if it is, it surely has just as much rights to life if it was created from rape as created from ignorance?
In fact, I have more of a problem with people who have abortions because they find out their child won't be perfect. Respect to you Lin for going ahead. (That doesn't include the heartbreaking cases where a baby would be born only to suffer terribly. Abortion might well the the right thing there).
|
|
|
Post by Big Lin on Sept 4, 2009 22:23:45 GMT
Can I ask if your Pro-Life stance includes a Pro-Choice aspect -- are you content to let people decide for themselves, in other words, or does the moral evil of abortion necessitate removing choice from others who may not see it as so evil? This is an enormous issue in Ireland and where the two factions clash most is control over what others may do. Both factions feel so strongly and deeply about it. I've agonised over this issue for years, Trubble. In certain moods, like when I read about a woman having her seventh abortion, I feel like screaming and locking her up in prison (though I suspect mental hospital would probably be more appropriate). Then again, I'm fundamentally a liberal-minded type of person and I DON'T want to go back to the days before the 1967 Abortion Act when abortions were illegal. What I feel is that there should be far more emphasis placed on support, on psychological counselling, on offering alternatives to termination. I just feel that on balance I'd rather have the law strengthened so that the only reasons for having an abortion would be that either the mother's life was in danger or that the baby had been conceived as a result of rape or incest. I wouldn't on balance lock up mothers who terminated in circumstances that WEREN'T either of those but I'd certainly look very hard at their reasons for doing it. I don't know, it's a tough life.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 4, 2009 23:10:22 GMT
Why incest (assuming of course that it wasn't rape)?
|
|
|
Post by trubble on Sept 5, 2009 0:47:25 GMT
While that's a well-meant compromise, the problem with making that a practical measure is the ability to falsify.
''It was rape but I couldn't/can't report it...''
''I am going to kill myself if I can't have a termination...''
...and so on.
Inevitably, someone will be denied an abortion because they aren't believed and the bottom line for most of the cases will be that women will have to lie to get a service that they choose - it will just be another hurdle for them jump, another point to make them feel bad, an obstacle that will no doubt prove too hard for some scared girl who will go to a less reputable operator or have a baby in a field and kill it then - and the only thing it will really do is make the rest of the public feel less awkward or guilty that other people are having abortions.
|
|
|
Post by Liberator on Sept 5, 2009 0:58:30 GMT
I think the let-outs like rape, incest, under-age that anti-abortionists allow themselves completely destroys their murder stance. Can you imagine, using their reasoning that a foetus is a baby, killing a born child because it was conceived by rape, incest, under-age or witchcraft? If they truly believe foetus=baby then means of conception has no bearing.
For some (I don't think for me) terminating pregancy might equal 'murder'. That is why I would like to see efforts made to keep terminated foetuses alike when possible. Then, a woman wanting to rid herself of pregancy woul no longer necessarily be 'killing' her foetus and some compromise would be possible.
I think, from what others apart from Skylark have said, that we do not really have the technology yet to remove and incubate a foetus, but it will come. On the other side, since viability is used to lower the weeks of abortion, then I think we should look to keeping the foetus alive so that women are free to have a pregnancy terminated late and there is no excuse as at present for lowering the 'age' because 'it might be viable'.
Far better of course would be a world that does not treat pregnancy as an unfortunate condition that interferes with women's ability to do the work and spend the money and have nothing else in their life, just like the traditional ideal imposed on men. I'm with Lin, that women should have the choice - but let's make this an honest choice, not the Supermarket kind that you can any manufacturer of baked beans as long as you want them in tomato sauce. You want garlic? What are you to deny people the choice of tomato from different providers that we give you?
We get told 'choice' without freedom of what kind of choice and obscuring 'choice' from what is on offer and 'choice' to demand more than is on offer. You are free to choose anything we have decided to make available to you - do not expect to choose anything you imagine for yourself that we have not offered you as 'choice'
|
|