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Abortion, Civil Rights, Healthcare and other Social Issues Abortion, Civil Rights, Homosexuality, Education, Healthcare and other such issues

View Poll Results: Which position best describes your view of abortion and the law?
Abortion should be legal, without any specific restrictions. 19 20.43%
Abortion should be legal, but subject to some restriction(s). 50 53.76%
Abortion should be banned, but subject to exceptions. 10 10.75%
Abortion should be banned, with the sole exception of when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. 14 15.05%
Voters: 93. You may not vote on this poll

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  #331 (permalink)  
Old 06-29-2008
John Drake's Avatar
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by drgoodtrips View Post
Please tell me that this is tongue in cheek...
Not really
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  #332 (permalink)  
Old 06-29-2008
John Drake's Avatar
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by Eric Bachrach View Post
well if that situation witht he prison happens then couldn't the child be taken away by social services and adopted or something
Why go to all that trouble? Who's going to adopt such a child? and what kind of life will they have if they're not adopted?

I've really never understood why society is supposed to bend over backwards to give these unwanted children really miserable lives and then the same ones who agitate for it most strenuously are always the least understanding of how a hard childhood makes one turn against the world.

If you can save one from a really miserable existence before they really exist in any real sense of the word, shouldn't you?
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  #333 (permalink)  
Old 07-09-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by John Drake View Post
Why go to all that trouble? Who's going to adopt such a child? and what kind of life will they have if they're not adopted?

I've really never understood why society is supposed to bend over backwards to give these unwanted children really miserable lives and then the same ones who agitate for it most strenuously are always the least understanding of how a hard childhood makes one turn against the world.

If you can save one from a really miserable existence before they really exist in any real sense of the word, shouldn't you?
I don't think it should be legal for any other reason than because if it's outlawed, there's no way for the authorities to follow every single person in the entire country. We would go back to the days where families with money could afford to have the doctor pay a special visit to the house while poorer families would not.

And desperate times call for desperate measures; especially with teen girls. Better to abort a fetus in the first couple months than find some grizzly discovery near the end of the pregnancy or after they've given birth. We still see it with the odd case now and again of some desperate girl (usually from a strict and religious background) who does her best to hide it and then gives birth and throws the baby away in the trash, or a river or wherever.

The interesting thing to note about teens is that among the youngest who lose their virginity are evangelical teens, with a national average clocking in just under Protestants and Catholics at age 16.3 compared to 16.9 for the other two groups. But among the more religious groups you'll find that STD's and pregnancies are higher because of abstinence-only education, which is only one part of the education they ought to be getting, and not the whole part.

So what really gets my goat on abortion is that it's the very strict crowd against it that is also the most reckless. It's like they want sex to be as dangerous as possible for you if you do it out of wedlock.

I already think there are too many people on the planet. Teach kids to glove it especially and for girls to go on the pill. This ridiculous notion of chastity-pledges and abstinence are a myth and there ruining people's lives.
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  #334 (permalink)  
Old 07-12-2008
skeptic1 skeptic1 is offline
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by Dilettante View Post
First let me promise that this will be my last thread on this topic for the foreseeable future; I don't intend to make this the all-consuming topic of this sub-forum. However, some of the responses in my previous thread made it clear that the choices were unnecessarily restrictive. This thread is meant to rectify that.

Rather than proposing a specific hypothetical measure related to abortion in the US for people to simply say yay or nay on, I've come up with four categories which (I think) more-or-less cover the positions of people in the other thread. They are:

1) Abortion should be legal, without any specific restrictions. Meaning that abortion should be/remain legal in all forms, without any restrictions based on fetal-development, method of abortion, nature of pregnancy...etc.

2) Abortion should be legal, but subject to some restriction(s). Meaning that abortion should be/remain legal, but be restricted in some way. This could include restrictions on term of pregnancy (e.g. ban on late-term abortions), on stage-of-fetal development, on method used in abortion (e.g. ban on "partial-birth" abortion)...etc. If you select this catagory, please specify what restrictions you have in mind, as well as any exceptions to those restrictions (e.g. restriction of late-term abortions except to save the mother's life).

3) Abortion should be banned, but subject to exceptions. Similar to option (2), but somewhat inverted. This would include general bans on abortion that made exceptions for the health of the mother, for rape/incest, for the age of the mother, for fetal deformity...etc. Again, please specify which exceptions you have in mind.

4) Abortion should be banned, with the sole exception of when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. I think Steve's poll has conclusively demonstrated that this one exception is almost universally recognized as valid.

I'm not sure why my interest in people's take on this issue has suddenly peaked, but I do appreciate the level of participation and the lack of open hostility in the earlier thread and hope that any discussion here will be similarly respectful. And, again, sorry to create such clutter over one issue.
Restrict your poll to Women only until men are capable of pregnancy and thus become eligible to vote on the matter !
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  #335 (permalink)  
Old 07-24-2008
cns3e cns3e is offline
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

Considering it's a man's baby the female is aborting, I say let the MEN vote and Speak.
Whatever happened to equal rights?
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  #336 (permalink)  
Old 07-26-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

Why not just allow abortions but make it dependent on professional approval? I think the way it works in much of Europe is an adequate solution. It doesn't prohibit all abortions, but it does prohibit abortions which are just a matter of personal choice without consideration of the standard of living of the child and parents or mental and physical health.

To think that mothers have some inalienable right to have complete power over the life or potential life of their children is rather ridiculous. There are many, many more people involved in this decision than just the mother. What of society? What of the father? What of the medical considerations? All these things need to be in the equation.
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  #337 (permalink)  
Old 07-26-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by redflagboy View Post
Why not just allow abortions but make it dependent on professional approval? I think the way it works in much of Europe is an adequate solution. It doesn't prohibit all abortions, but it does prohibit abortions which are just a matter of personal choice without consideration of the standard of living of the child and parents or mental and physical health.

To think that mothers have some inalienable right to have complete power over the life or potential life of their children is rather ridiculous. There are many, many more people involved in this decision than just the mother. What of society? What of the father? What of the medical considerations? All these things need to be in the equation.
Women do have complete power over their own bodies. We have no obligation to act as incubators for the sake of society or the biological father, and the medical implications are own own concern. Your proposal of making women grovel to doctors for the right to have an abortion is patronising. Do you honestly not think that a woman's desire to not continue the pregnancy isn't a good enough reason to "allow" her to have an abortion?

I can actually respect the people who oppose abortion because they genuinely believe that it is murder, even though I passionately disagree with them. The people I just cannot respect are the ones who support abortion, but only whent they approve of then reasons and the circumstances. That stems from a far greater desire to control women than anything the "pro lifers" can come up with.
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  #338 (permalink)  
Old 07-26-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

No, I don't. We have to "grovel" before planning boards to change the paint on our homes, we have to "grovel" before so many people in order to get simple, quite unimportant things done. With something as important as an inevitable life, how can society not have some control? This is especially the case when society is providing these services.

Taking a reasoned stand is never the wrong thing to do. Taking a stand that involves or at least recognises all those concerned is never wrong.

It is taking the blind positions such as the one you are taking or the one you respect that leads to untold suffering and unnecessary loss of life. Who really wants a system like you have where the Health Service Executive prevented women from travelling to Britain to get an abortion? Who wants a system where partial-birth abortions are perfectly legal, as in Canada? Those are the products of unreasonable and purely ideological abortion laws.
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  #339 (permalink)  
Old 07-29-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

This is probably going to piss people off, but it needs to be said. I posted my thoughts about adoption instead of abortion here:

Dealing with Abortion

I have been pro-life, then pro-choice (as a young adult), and then finally pro-life again. The only time a baby should be aborted is when the mother's life is in jeopardy. It's better to save one life than possibly lose two.
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  #340 (permalink)  
Old 07-29-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by redflagboy View Post
No, I don't. We have to "grovel" before planning boards to change the paint on our homes, we have to "grovel" before so many people in order to get simple, quite unimportant things done. With something as important as an inevitable life, how can society not have some control? This is especially the case when society is providing these services.

Taking a reasoned stand is never the wrong thing to do. Taking a stand that involves or at least recognises all those concerned is never wrong.

It is taking the blind positions such as the one you are taking or the one you respect that leads to untold suffering and unnecessary loss of life. Who really wants a system like you have where the Health Service Executive prevented women from travelling to Britain to get an abortion? Who wants a system where partial-birth abortions are perfectly legal, as in Canada? Those are the products of unreasonable and purely ideological abortion laws.
As you believe society has a say in one's rights with respect to procreation, perhaps a man should grovel before some judge when society has decided he needs a vascectomy.
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  #341 (permalink)  
Old 07-29-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

Ithat were indeed the case, and society does decide a man needs a vasectomy, the very least they could do is allow him to have a hearing in front of a judge.

Though, if you're asking in general if I think there is social involvement in contraception (of which a vasectomy is amongst the most permanent of examples), then I think there is but this social involvement is less than in the case of abortion. By the very nature that an abortion is post-conception means that it is not as advanced and important in relevance to the inevitable (or at least nigh-on-certain) life. Unless you follow the Catholic Church's instruction or you have a very radical view of choice in abortion, I think you'd agree that an abortion is more serious a matter than contraception.
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  #342 (permalink)  
Old 07-29-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by redflagboy View Post
Ithat were indeed the case, and society does decide a man needs a vasectomy, the very least they could do is allow him to have a hearing in front of a judge....
Personally, I'm a fan of the elegant solution (AKA, Ockam's razor or the KISS rule); allow an individual to be the only one to have control over what s/he does with her/his body. Cut out the middleman.

Quote:
.... Though, if you're asking in general if I think there is social involvement in contraception (of which a vasectomy is amongst the most permanent of examples), then I think there is but this social involvement is less than in the case of abortion. By the very nature that an abortion is post-conception means that it is not as advanced and important in relevance to the inevitable (or at least nigh-on-certain) life. Unless you follow the Catholic Church's instruction or you have a very radical view of choice in abortion, I think you'd agree that an abortion is more serious a matter than contraception.
I should have been more specific in my post. If a man and a woman get pregnant by accident, then, going with your idea; if society gets to decide that the woman must endure an unwanted pregnancy and all the ramifications that has on her body and life for nine months, then society must also decide the fate of the equally irresponsible man and his ability to be irresponsible in this manner in the future - vasectomy or not.

That's too Orwellian for my tastes.
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  #343 (permalink)  
Old 07-30-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

Perhaps, but in that case why not legalise drugs and suicide, tolerate self-harm and all sorts of other 'doing things to your body' things?


And it isn't purely the responsibility of the man to ensure contraception. Yes, it is his role too, but as the old cliche goes, it takes two to tango. And it must be kept in mind that whilst the woman does and still would under my idea have quite a lot of control over whether to have the child, the man has no such control but he must still, except in the case of adoption, help to pay the costs of that child. I do not disagree with this, whilst it strikes me as somewhat unfair, any move to change that would be so viciously anti-woman as to completely rule that out. So to say that the male consequence for pregnancy could reasonably be a vasectomy fails to realise that the consequence is 18 years of child support payments.

It's not "Orwellian" at all. Wherever you have abortion regulation, you have limits as to when you can or cannot get an abortion. It's only sensible to have these limits and to have some sort of justification for stopping a birth and a life coming into existence that is not just "because this is what I want". I appreciate that abortions are not easy decisions, by all means trust me I know, so do not take what I said as somehow thinking that women who want an abortion are just doing it either on the spur of the moment or somehow with shallow thought. Very rarely, if at all, is that the case.
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  #344 (permalink)  
Old 07-30-2008
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by Dilettante View Post
4) Abortion should be banned, with the sole exception of when the life of the mother is in jeopardy.
I'd have gone with option #5, "Abortion should be banned" (period), if there was one.

In any case, none of this should be up to the federal government. The Constitution neither guarantees the right to abortion nor calls for its prohibition.

Leave it up to the states. That is what the Constitution actually requires.
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Old 07-30-2008
Hafke Hafke is offline
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Re: One last abortion poll (Now with more options!)

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Originally Posted by redflagboy View Post
(1) Perhaps, but in that case why not legalise drugs and suicide, tolerate self-harm and all sorts of other 'doing things to your body' things?

(2) It's not "Orwellian" at all. Wherever you have abortion regulation, you have limits as to when you can or cannot get an abortion.

(3) It's only sensible to have these limits and to have some sort of justification for stopping a birth and a life coming into existence that is not just "because this is what I want".

(4) I appreciate that abortions are not easy decisions, by all means trust me I know, so do not take what I said as somehow thinking that women who want an abortion are just doing it either on the spur of the moment or somehow with shallow thought. Very rarely, if at all, is that the case.
(1) I was wondering when you'd bring up the "thin end of the wedge" argument. Why not, indeed, but those are different issues.

(2) So what? The fact that these regulations exist doesn't make them right.

(3) Why is it "only sensible" to have these limits? If you think abortion is stopping a life then why do you support it at all? Not wanting to have a baby is an excellent reason to have an abortion.

(4) Actually, for a lot of women they are, by all means trust me I know... And if a woman has an abortion on the spur of the moment, so what? You can't only support a woman's right to have an abortion when you feel she has gone through the proper anguish and the proper consideration of what it means for society as a whole.
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