SRL Archive - Discussions & Debates

What do you guys thing about abortion? Do you think it is OK for a girl to have an abortion?

Some people say that abortion is murder, because its not much different if a doctor kills a baby 1 min before its born or 1 min after its born, but if it is killed before it is born then the doctor wont get charged, even though he killed a living thing.

If you think abortion is OK say why you think so, but in my opinion I don't think anyone should get an abortion, it is just plain wrong. They could at least give birth to the baby and put it up for adoption if they don't want it.

I think it's okay, if the woman has been raped or anything like that

From: Zyt3x
I think it's okay, if the woman has been raped or anything like that

If a women gets raped she can take the contraception pills that will stop her getting pregnant.

If she does get pregnant she can give birth to the baby and give it up for adoption

From: cycrosism
If she does get pregnant she can give birth to the baby and give it up for adoption

I think it should be up the the woman to decide that

Well the women can prevent that from happening with either contraception pills or anti-rape condoms

Its not like women plan to get raped.. so they wouldn't know when to wear this anti rape condom..

True, but that doesn't stop them being able to take pills.

Also, it doesn't always have to be rape that can make a girl want an abortion, what if she wants a baby then gets divorced like 3 months later?

What if the woman's life is in danger, where she would die unless she had an abortion?

What if the foetus has a deformity which makes it completely braindead? It would be in a vegetable state in its short, painful life.
Given that modern medicine allows us to predict in advance of the birth if the child would be in a vegetable state, isn't it a noble enlightened thing to put the embryo out of its misery before it is even capable of suffering? Wouldn't it be cruel and sadistic to force the child to live its short life filled with pain and suffering knowing it would die soon afterwards? Wouldn't it be cruel to force the child's family to go through this?


Its a fallacy to bring up 1-minute-before-1-minute-after-birth when all countries that allow abortion only allow it up to a certain limit. In the UK it is 24 weeks iirc. After that the embryo is judged to be capable of suffering. (except in cases of woman dying, braindead child and things like that)

From: kdj55
Its not like women plan to get raped.. so they wouldn't know when to wear this anti rape condom..

Make it illegal to rape someone without a condom. (kidding..)

I don't believe in abortion, i believe it is murder and as you stated before, the girl can give the baby to an adoption center if they don't want the baby.

i think that the parents(or women if she was raped) first has to decide if they want the abortion or not, since its compleatly up to them, and if then they want to have the baby, they have to take a parenting test, how they conceived the baby, and a general stupidity test. if they fail any, then the baby has to be aborted because the baby will most likely have a horrible life with horrible parents anyways

also if the baby has a major deformation

From: Awkwardsaw
i think that the parents(or women if she was raped) first has to decide if they want the abortion or not, since its compleatly up to them, and if then they want to have the baby, they have to take a parenting test, how they conceived the baby, and a general stupidity test. if they fail any, then the baby has to be aborted because the baby will most likely have a horrible life with horrible parents anyways

also if the baby has a major deformation

lolWUT?

if the parents/woman aren't/isn't capable, there is a little thing called adoption ;)

From: bionicle1800
lolWUT?

if the parents/woman aren't/isn't capable, there is a little thing called adoption ;)

"wait, you guys arent my real parents? I FUCKING HATE YOU GUYS"

Both sides of this debate can agree that the situation where women find themselves pregnant with an unwanted child is very unpleasant and these girls deserve to be pitied and helped.


You guys are really going to have to consider the moral implications of forcing a woman to carry an embryo to full term. One could make a case that banning abortion takes this choice away from woman in an unacceptable way.


Its been shown time and again that making abortion illegal does little to deter women from having an abortion anyway in a backstreet clinic with unsterilised conditions and untrained 'doctors'.

The bottom line is that you as a government have a choice between legal safe abortions done in hospitals by trained doctors or illegal unsafe abortions done in a backstreet room by an old lady.
I have never heard a competent consistent solution to this problem. Even in America where something like 65% of people oppose abortion, the educated powerful elite recognise that they cannot ban abortion for this reason and others.

reference: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/news/12iht-12abortion.7863868.html


Its clear to me that the way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is to educate children about safe sex and stopping them becoming pregnant in the first place.

I think abortion is great, if the baby is unwanted, why bother spending the energy and time to create it?

I think it is just murder & it never should been seen as a solution. Thats my opinion.

Pro-choice!

this thread has too much assertions and not enough evidence, analysis and argumentation.

From: Yakman
this thread has too much assertions and not enough evidence, analysis and argumentation.

Some girls check their baby (While it is still in them) and could see it has down syndrome or something and they decide to abort it.

But it could of only been a VERY mild case of down syndrome and the baby could of turned out normal and they just killed a normal baby…

From: cycrosism
Some girls check their baby (While it is still in them) and could see it has down syndrome or something and they decide to abort it.

But it could of only been a VERY mild case of down syndrome and the baby could of turned out normal and they just killed a normal baby…

Its not a baby until its been born, before that its either a feotus or an embryo. Now these cases of abortion due to diability are usually done before the embryo has developed any nervious system and is therefore unable to suffer.

Luckily medical science is capable of telling us how severe a disability will be before the decition on abortion is made. Down's syndrome is slightly different since some argue it is possible to have some quality of life.

The point I was raising is when the child would be brain damaged and in a vegetative state with only a few days to live after its born. What do you do in that situation then?!

Pro-Choice.

A babies life can be severely fucked up by adoption. The parents will probably want to get in touch some day. Adopted Parents generally tell their kids they are adopted hence are likely to take it hard.

I believe in abortion. Not as a contraceptive, but there can be severe mental problems associated with pregnancies and birth. It's not murder if the baby is technically brain-dead.

Yakman, I think its been pushed to 21-weeks now.

I think that it's the woman's fault for getting raped in the first place, so they should just go through nine months of hormonal waiting and then give their child to a family whom they don't know. Oh, and also they shouldn't be able to be a proper mother to their child. And on top of this they should have a life time of mental, abandonment, trust, and people issues because the rest of that horrific life-long shit isn't enough for someone who purposefully got raped. Oh, and of course if the women is too ashamed of it to talk to someone about the actions that she obviously inflicted on herself and get a pill to ultimately do the same exact thing as abortion, she's just stupid.

Obviously.

From: i luffs yeww
I think that it's the woman's fault for getting raped in the first place, so they should just go through nine months of hormonal waiting and then give their child to a family whom they don't know. Oh, and also they shouldn't be able to be a proper mother to their child. And on top of this they should have a life time of mental, abandonment, trust, and people issues because the rest of that horrific life-long shit isn't enough for someone who purposefully got raped. Oh, and of course if the women is too ashamed of it to talk to someone about the actions that she obviously inflicted on herself and get a pill to ultimately do the same exact thing as abortion, she's just stupid.

Obviously.

soz for big pic lol

Just wondering if anyone here who claims to be opposed to abortion shares a similar view to Catholics, in that life begins at conception. In which case, things like the pill or the like would still be classed as murder.

If you don't share this view, then when do you say life begins? Abortions usually have strict moral codes to follow, for the UK I believe it's only if it is judged that the mother will die or it would have a detrimental effect on her quality of life, if the baby itself would have a low quality of life (such as serious disabilities) and other similar things. I do also think at least 2 doctors have to agree to the above conditions, though I may be mis-remembering.

To my knowledge it's not simply that the mother doesn't want the child, therefore she can get an abortion. Even when she `qualifies', the time up to which an abortion can take place is usually much lower than the earlier said time as that's more for serious incidences.

I also think none of your opinions matter that much as none of you are women and this dilemma is very unlikely to affect you specifically unless you're one day married and something happens regarding your unborn child, in which case it's still ultimately the mothers decision unless she's unable to make it. I think it's very easy to say `abortion is wrong' when you haven't experienced anything related to it and its associated impacts on lives.

But anyway, a pro-choice society shouldn't limit people when the results can be detrimental to peoples, and their families, lives.

Its a bit of false dilemma there isnt it?
This black-and-white thinking where life 'begins' at a specific point.

And why should the fact that something is alive afford it any protection? We already destroy cancer tumours knowing that they are both alive and human. We happily allow a placenta to die, knowing it is a clone of the newborn child.


The question is not whether something is alive, but whether it can suffer or if its family and friends can suffer.
Modern societies recognise it when they send somebody to jail instead of the death penalty, knowing that jail is a far worse experiance then going peacefully and painlessly with an injection.

I think an important thing to clear up is what people mean by "life" and "alive".

In terms of very scientific terms, the points you make in the latter half are very accurate. However, I think the majority of people in this thread class it purely in terms of a point in development of the foetus. The main difference between the two cases is the foetus having the potential for consciousness and the like.

So if you do agree with that conclusion, it then comes down to "when does a foetus gain the potential for `life'?". Catholics claim it to be upon conception, the law a little later on and most other people have varying points in between the two.

Potential is a very bad argument for this case.

If a woman refuses to sleep with you, she is breaking a chain of potential which could lead to a newborn concious baby. Using the Catholic logic this is the same as murder. (assuming that what mixster said Catholics believe is what they really believe)
Resisting rape is also murder for this reason.


Its wrong to say that the law bases its cut-off on the potential. When abortion laws were being formulated in the mid-20th-century they were based on moral philosophy going back to Immanuel Kant, which is based on asking questions like 'who is suffering here?'

I say it's ok to make an abortion if
1) the fetus is so young you don't recognize it's species. Say, 7-8 weeks.
2) the fetus has a disease that will make his/her and/or his/her mother's life too difficult. This has to be decided with common sense.

Marpis, your first point is kind of odd. It seems like it'd be obvious what species it is.

From: i luffs yeww
Marpis, your first point is kind of odd. It seems like it'd be obvious what species it is.

Lol yeah, it's not like a woman would give birth to a dolphin xD

From: i luffs yeww
I think that it's the woman's fault for getting raped in the first place, so they should just go through nine months of hormonal waiting and then give their child to a family whom they don't know. Oh, and also they shouldn't be able to be a proper mother to their child. And on top of this they should have a life time of mental, abandonment, trust, and people issues because the rest of that horrific life-long shit isn't enough for someone who purposefully got raped. Oh, and of course if the women is too ashamed of it to talk to someone about the actions that she obviously inflicted on herself and get a pill to ultimately do the same exact thing as abortion, she's just stupid.

Obviously.

How could you say that? That's ridiculous.

I hope your kidding.

Dude.. Haha I was obviously being sarcastic..

From: Zyt3x
Lol yeah, it's not like a woman would give birth to a dolphin xD

i think he means like it's not even an actual human at that point, like it doesnt really think or feel or can even be called 'human' in a sense because its so indistiguishable from, say, a fish fetus? i dont know that what i thought

I'm a proponent of waiting 9 months, having the kid, then giving it up to a gay couple.

erryone wins.

yes because pregnancy is just "waiting 9 months"

Yup. What else could it possibly entail? It's not like there's any emotional/physical/social pain from it. It's not like women get hormonal and go crazy and get depressed and eat everything and can later want to kill their baby due to some sort of postpartum depression or anything.

From: i luffs yeww
Marpis, your first point is kind of odd. It seems like it'd be obvious what species it is.

From: Zyt3x
Lol yeah, it's not like a woman would give birth to a dolphin xD

This is week 4:

What species? Human, fish, or a dinosaur?

Embryo's are hard to be distinguished. I was mainly kidding because I meant that you'd be able to know what species it is by looking at the mother. Embryology isn't the only way to identify an organism. :)

marpis why does it matter what the embryo looks like? Talk us through the moral argument of using looks to judge when its okay to have an abortion.

You can't really base it upon whether its alive or not. Alive is a silly word and its not specific. using this definition of alive -

Organization
Metabolism
Growth
Adaptation
Response to stimuli
Reproduction

a number of things non organic can be considered alive. I would consider communities of people to be "alive" (not the people in them, but the community itself. The internet could be alive, etc. The definition of when something is alive is too marred for it to be conclusive anywhere.

The other problem is that that could be said of most ways of deciding. Using morals will most surely bring heat from people that do not see things the same way. Using relatively unbiased opinions of how life will be for that child whence they've been born will always remain opinion, so it wont work.

I think it is a good idea to allow it in cases, but the problem with allowances is that everyone wants them. If you only allow rape victims to get them, you'll have a lot more teenage girls crying "Rape!" when they willingly had relations with a teen-aged boy (which i don't consider to be quite fair). Other such ways will lead down the same path. I think that basing it upon whether it endangers the mother's life (based on her choice after that) is a good middle ground until all antiabortionists die or a solution is found.