Abortion

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yes, and as well Jack and I have taken our battles out back so to speak. Sorry to have laid so much on the public forum...
Jack and I differ, but we are similar in the intensity of personal experience. I wish our banter had not killed the conversation, but **** happens.

 

Actually, my mother had a point about the father's rights argument. If you're not sure she's willing to have your child should accident occur, keep your pants zipped.

 

If she is not willing to have her child, she should keep her pants zipped.

[ January 09, 2003, 15:55: Message edited by: Jack Funk ]

 

They both should.

 

Not all sex is intended to produce babies, or are you saying that unless I'm prepared to father someones child I should not have sex with them. Regardless of taking reasonable steps to avoid?

Get with the real world here, sex is NOT just for producing babies. It's FUN and damned nice too.

 

Although sex is fun Viking, one should not engage in sexually activity (particularly intercourse) unless one is mentally and emotionally prepared to deal with any of the possible consequences, of which there are many.
Although we can easily forget all the dangers in this day with all our modern medicine, the most dangerous of possiblities is death.

 

If it was only death. The thing that is swift and easy.

What it is, is pain. Years of suffering. Being forced to take strong medicins. To be isolated from the society. To know that your work and studying career is finished. To lose some of your friends and find it even harder to acquire new friendships. To suffer incredible hardships to new intimate relationships. It is to die slowly, painfully, in years and years worth of suffering, alone and ashamed, angry and sad. That's what it is. Unless you commit suicide.

There is nothing I fear more than a slow death, like that. Go ahead, keep that attitude of yours. Sex is fun, sure, but the risks involved in it are lifelong, and much more crippling than many of the risks involved in other sort of "fun" activities. Since I do not believe in any afterlife in hell or something suchlike, any more than I believe I'd ever be captured by some crazy lunatic who'd torture me in his basement for 10 years, the death due to a long-lasting cancer (which is the inevitable followup of AIDS for example) is the worst realistic curse that I can imagine. And something I certainly do not wish to play with.

 

Forashi - WTF?

What I'm saying is that I, and I would guess quite a few others, have discovered is that sexual activity can be great without producing babies.

I will not accept that I should not participate unless I'm prepared for a baby!

If I'm not prepared for killing someone in my car either, should I stop driving?

Get with it, take precautions and enjoy the intimacy without stopping to think: Oh I must be prepared for fatherhood [or of course motherhood before I get flamed].

Did you not know that one of the most distinguishing features of humans compared with animals is that we partake in intercourse WITHOUT intending to make offspring? Strange but true.

S**t happens, but if you go through life always expecting the worst case scenario, you will never have much of a good time, since you could never do anything.

Finally sex is NOT dirty, it's not abnormal, you should not feel guilty. It is after all as natural as it comes and the most fun you can have with no clothes on.

 

Agreed. Take precautions, use birth control/disease prevention. Enjoy sex, responsibly. There is also quite a lot to do that does not involve intercourse (if birth control is not available).
However, if the birth control fails, be prepared for pregnancy, if the condom breaks, it could be more than that.

 

Viking: Yes I assumed that the words "taking responsibility over the consequences of that fun" came out as obvious. My mistake. Though I must admit I did deviate from the topic a bit. But my answer was more for the death -thing than your post really. Just that whatever happens, condom breaks, e-pills fail, or something else.. you have to take responsibility. You know the risks when you get to the funmaking, after all.

 

There's a difference between *expecting* the worst case scenario, and *understanding* the worst case scenario.

I certainly would be the last person to suggest someone not enjoy sex for sex sake. But as well, I was young when I first had sex and thought I knew more than I knew, thought I was more emotionally prepared than I was, and I did almost die.

So, all I'm really saying is one needs to know the possible consequences when choosing to have sex with another.

 

All agreed there then, understaning the potential consequences is not the same as being prepared for them of course....

That's life.

 

Absolutely !!!

I had no idea what was going to hit me when I had my daughter! No way in the world can we be prepared for parenthood really, we can try, but we cannot know it until it happens.

 

That's just it, Viking. I admit that I am single and sexually active. At least 2 different types of birth control are used every time. But I am willing to accept the consequences if I get pregnant, and I won't bed a man who won't. And yes, I do make sure of it.

I don't disagree with you on that one, Jack, but the man is equally responsible to the woman. Trust me, I have talked many a teeenage twit out of "the desires of the moment"

 

Realized that I hadn't fully responded here...

Laches, this may come as a surprise, but I'm not done yet.

First, to reiterate , consider again the position that abortion is wrong. Now, according to the set of circumstances you described, the mother is in mortal danger, and the fetus inhibits treatment. The question posed is then: must you sacrifice the mother's life because abortion is immoral?

As I said before, premature delivery is the answer to the conundrum. If the baby is old enough to survive outside the womb, then there is no argument to this. (At least as far as I know, there is no abortion procedure that is significantly less invasive at this stage than a delivery.)

But suppose the child is not old enough to survive outside the womb. Haven't you just committed murder? I don't believe so; it's medical triage. Why? Simple. If the child is not old enough to survive outside the womb and the mother is in mortal danger, then the child is in mortal danger too, being entirely dependent on the mother's survival.

The life-support analogy you used is not directly correlated. To view the analogy properly, it should be stated thus: Say you have a patient who would be in mortal danger if not hooked up to life support -- but she is. Now say that the life support has developed a critical problem and will fail soon. Is it murder to unhook the patient and try to fix the life support machine? Perhaps in the most technical sense, as this life support is only a machine, you would have to wait until it failed and the patient died and then fix the machine, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, to return to the problem above. The reason I call it triage is because either way the child is going to die. There's nothing you can do to stop it, so you choose to reserve all your resources to save the mother. This means delivering the baby, although it has no chance to survive outside the womb.

Now this presupposes that the mother is going to die within the next few months. If this is not the case, and it's merely a question of optimal treatment, you can't sacrifice the baby merely to get better chances for the mother. So cancers with a life expectancy of two or three years are not included in the term "mortal danger".

Note also that as you stated, triage is a doctor's decision, not the mother's. So yes, the mother would not have the option of aborting her baby in order to increase her own life expectancy. It's only permissible when the doctor determines that there is nothing he can do to save the baby anyway (i.e., the mother will die without treatment and thus the baby with her).

Of course this is all based on the belief that the fetus has a right to life -- human from birth. That is my belief and for the most part is both unassailable and indefensible, and I doubt I'm going to do much to argue that point.

[ January 17, 2003, 20:56: Message edited by: Capstone ]

 

I guess this is where we may've been thinking differently from the beginning. I was considering a fetus say 5 months along and a mother with a two month life expectancy. At the end of those two months I take it the fetus might be viable, or on the cusp? Or make the fetus 6 months along and the mother has a 1-2 month expectancy. Also though, I personally consider the case of a malignant cancer that must be treated ASAP or the mother will lose her life in a year to fit the bill but now were just nitpicking. I think we both agree there are times where being pro-life means that you must accept that a mother may not have an abortion even though she may gravely put her life in risk and this is about all I was trying to show.

As far as your claim that a fetus has the right to life being unassailable and indefensible I for the most part agree and think that's why abortion is such a heated debate.

 

Actually, at five months the fetus has a chance outside the womb. But regardless, yes there are borderline situations... in those cases it seems to me it would be the doctor's call. Perhaps there would be some rare situations where it would make sense to refer the decision back to the mother, but I can't think of any right now.

 

Ok, first of all, what is life?
Let's see, the fundamentals of life are at the cellular level. The processes of life include; cellular respiration, reproduction and the synthesis of protiens for energy. This is directly from my genetics text book. A fetus is made up of cells. A human is made of cells. Since humans exhibit the same characteristics at the cellular level as a fetus, a fetus is alive. Plain and simple. There is absolutely no way to discount pure biology.
So in this respect it boils down to how you morally feel about destroying life.
So since I am against destroying life, I am against abortion. Do I hope abortion is made illegal? Not one bit. Why? Because if the Supreme Courts overturns Roe vs. Wade, it then becomes an issue for the states. We then get into states rights and the US is split on that level. We all know what happened around in the 1800s when state's rights became a major issue in this country. (I'm talking about the Civil War for all of you who think it was caused by slavery.)
Some of you say abortion is not murder. But it is. Let's say I am driving under the influence of alchohol. I crash into a car being driven by a pregnant woman. She does not die in the accident, but her unborn fetus does. I can be arrested and convicted of the murder of the unborn fetus in most states. What does abortion do? It kills the unborn fetus. Abortion is murder according to the law.
Some people use the argument that it is the woman's body and she has the right to choose what to do with her body. Well how come it is illegal for a woman to pour drugs into her body? Afterall, its her body, can't she do with it what she wants?
In my opinion there is a lot of double standards revolving around the issue of abortion.

 

I'm sorry Capstone, but I think it is completely ridiculous to put human life decisions in the hands of doctors. Doctors are the last people I would ever want making decisions for me.

Of course it has to be the mothers decision.
This whole conversation is so full of what I would describe as the original male to female resentment;
Women can give birth and men can't. This is so profound an issue I believe most of the history of societal development results from this power and the subsequent powerlessness men recognize they have over this domain. To put the power into the hands of doctors is virtually the same as vying for male control.

I know I am opening a can of worms here, maybe someone might want to create a seperate topic. Elios???

 

Ok, question. Why does it have to be just the mother's decision? Why don't father's have more rights in this country? I realize in a lot of cases the father isn't around. But if the father is around, he has an invested interest in the decision. He donated part of his DNA. No offense, but I am very insulted by someone who says that men don't have a say in the matter.