The Benefit of the Doubt
Abortion is one of those things that I feel is a defining struggle for our time. Strong feelings exist on both sides of the debate, but for me it all comes down to the simple principle that no person should be denied the right to draw their first breath.
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness...is their order an accident? I think not. Happiness can only be pursued in an atmosphere of liberty (from government, from tyranny, from discrimination). Liberty cannot be said to exist unless all are given equal rights under the law, and the foremost of these is the right to life.
Piddling questions of when life begins are irrelevant. Should we not err on the side of caution when dealing with such great matters as the life of a potential being? A being that if left to develop will only die from disease, defect or man's intervention. When weighed against the limitless potential of a human life these three instances are trifling obstacles. Always err on the side of life.
Comments
The fact that these words can be spoken by a now full grown adoptee to his biological parents are one of the biggest reason I cannot support abortion.
That's the nub of the problem - how do we define something as a "human being"? And should we give "potential human beings" the same protections under the law as "human beings"?
Human is an inherently cultural definition and it changes through time and across cultures. It is well known that, until 1869, the Roman Catholic Church permitted abortion as long as it took place before the "quickening" in which a fetus was regarded as gaining a soul and so becoming a true human person [1]; prior to the quickening, a fetus was regarded as inanimate.
They were hardly alone in permitting death of a potential human being [2]. The Islanders of Tikopia practiced infanticide, as did the ancient Romans, the Tamim tribe in Arabia, and numerous other groups.
The root of the problem is that we tend to define "human" in ways that are incapable of proof. Those raised in societies with a Judeo-Christian background hold that only humans have souls; animals do not. Those raised in other societies may say that all things, animals and plants, have souls and so should not be harmed. But souls have no objective proof. You cannot see a soul, nor weigh one in a balance, nor show it by your actions; the presence of a soul must be taken on faith.
And that's where we run into problems. Your faith is not mine - and the document that you cite at the start of your post is very clear that neither your faith nor mine should be given precedence. Thus, in Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court tried to come up with a physical basis for determining when something stopped being a human in potentia and became a human in reality, worthy of the protections of the law. They settled on the first trimester, on the basis of medical safety.
From a purely physiological standpoint, it is a reasonable compromise. Brain activity does not begin until somewhere near the 119th day. I select brain waves as that is the one, demonstrable way in which you and I differ from the animals – in the structure and use of our brains. It is also consistent with court rulings on when a person ceases to exist as a person. It is further consistent with practical experience; there are thousands of people alive who are missing limbs, or who have had their hearts, livers, kidneys, or some other “vital organ” replaced – but no-one who has had their brain replaced.
So from a purely constitutional standpoint, allowing abortion up to the first trimester (the first 98 days) with no restrictions appears justified. Allowing it after that in cases of rape, incest, or for the sake of the mother’s life also seem reasonable. But I suspect that is a place where we differ.
John
[1] Defined as 40 days for a male fetus and 80 days for a female fetus. No, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.
[2] Shall we ignore the question of the "potential human beings" that are lost to menopause, as well as those who might come about through cloning? For, taking your argument logically, every woman at menopause should have her ovaries removed and implanted into a younger/infertile woman so that those potential human beings may become reality; similarly, we should be pressing forward on cloning so that we can create new humans from the potential ones in our every cell.
The uterus is removed when an abortion is performed? Or are you daring to equate the life of a child with an organ? I can make that choice for another human being...seeing that the pro abortionnpeople make that same choice all the time...for the innoc3nt child...that has its rights ripped away in a vacuum...grrrrrrrrrrrr
Please give me a scenario that would come up for a woman that is absolutely necessary to kill the baby inside of her...just one viable scenario
The most common and easily brought to mind is where the woman has cancer and needs chemotherapy/radiotherapy: both of which are incompatable with a pregancy, or rather the risk of harm to the foetus is huge and proven.
Either the mother does not have the medication she needs to give her a chance to live or the baby is permitted to continue to exist within the womb most likely to die at birth or be horribly damaged. This is quite rare, admitedly, and there are a number of drugs that you can be given while pregnant against cancer. Also you can try keep the baby as long as possible, deliver by c-section early and hope like crazy / operate etc on the tumor masses present ~ it is a pretty bad idea to carry out abdominal surgery while someone is pregnant. There is also a small risk that a spreading cancer may cross the placenta and infect the child.
There have been a number of cases where the mother has chosen to forgo thereapy so that she can bring her child to term, and then die. That is her choice, but in my opinion it should remain her choice.
Here is a case that I present simply to supply more info on the actual problems faced in a single patient, pregnant with malignant spreading cancer: BMJ ~ A difficult case: Management of metastatic melanoma during pregnancy. It is a presentation of an issue, with commentary from a number of different medics with varying opinions.
OK, this is rare. But the end result is, for me, who chooses? Should the state choose for us by placing a blanket ban, no matter what, ignoring our own ethical, moral & religious views? Or should the individual most impacted by a pregnancy choose? Or a balance of second opinions etc?
For the record if abortion had been an easy option in 1966 I may well not exist: I am adopted and my first-mother may well have wanted an easier option.
As for giving you an additional scenario to the one I had already mentioned, Blue-cat has done an excellent job of that already and I feel no need to duplicate the effort.
There are so few cases of abortion in this country where it is viewed as a medical necessity that your question is almost irrelevant. Fully 93% of abortions are performed purely, unequivocally for social reasons. The other 7% is split among medical "necessity" and rape and incest cases as well as miscellaneous occurrences.
The short answer is that responsibility for the woman's death would rest with no individual. It would be a tragedy. Responsibility for the infant's death would rest with everyone who allowed it to occur. It would be a crime against a human being.
It would be immoral to clone a human being, but immoral to destroy it.
That was my whole point. We cannot know for sure, but we should err on the side of life. Life is hope, life is possibility, life is a chance for happiness. Abortion is nothing but death in every sense for an organism that has as much right to live as you and I do.
Potential human being is sort of a misnomer. It would be more accurate to say that it is a human being at a stage of development which requires protection in the womb. Thanks for pointing that out.
The rights in the Constitution only apply to people given that basic chance at life. And life is one of those things that was understood to be inalienable. That is, you don't mess with a person's right to live. As our understanding of development has increased our concepts of when life begins have changed.
Roe v Wade may have started out to simply allow the option, but look at what is going on these days. Until recently you could deliver a baby at 8 months, 9 months and then vacuum out its brain. Where is the medical necessity in that? As I said to Queen, 93% of abortions are not performed for medical necessity or for rape and incest, but for social convenience.
Correct. Every person should be given a chance at life, regardless of who their parent is. The child is not responsible for the sins of their father or mother. And medically "necessary" abortions are rare, and will continue to become moreso as our knowledge increases.
My whole point in this post was to move beyond the hairsplitting. We have to believe that life should be given every chance because that is a "good" belief. To embrace a philosophy that allows for the intentional termination of a child is to publicly declare that the value of any human life is mutable. It opens the door for us to become a society no better than the Romans, Spartans or some islanders squatting in their huts. A society that kills its own children is not far removed from one that kills undesirables who have had the good fortune to live outside the womb.
Aborted children were as human as we who have this debate. They had the potential to grow into thinking, feeling, caring human beings. They had the right to do so.
And thank God for those adoptive parents, right? Platitudes about preventing abortion are great, but it takes action to solve the problem. Adoption is one such action, giving aid and comfort to mothers is another. Donate diapers, formula, anything! Money and social concerns are the primary motivators for abortion. Take away their power.
Of course, if people travel across state lines to procure an abortion then the feds might get into the act, saying that those people should not be prevented. That seems like the sort of unsatisfying political compromise that solves problems. Neither party gets what they want.
Again, I'd say we should err on the side of life, even as a country.
How could anyone support abortion if they knew that they might have been killed? You've had years to realize that if you had died then none of your fondest memories would have occurred, your favorite desserts would have gone uneaten, music unappreciated...how we cannot be fiercely protective of our own lives is beyond me.
One can with as much justification say "the next Jeffrey Dalhmer, the next Adolf Hilter, the next Ghengis Khan, the next <FITB>".
John
Anyway, that's the thing about free will. We all have the same opportunity to do good in our life, but some waste it. Some choose to do evil as they pursue their goals. And those who are good have made laws to punish that.
Some people may have a goal of adequate healthcare and financial support for women, but have decided that the evil of abortion is the way to realize that goal. It's easier, that's for sure, but it's not better.
Not quite - he said "Of course the other side will say but we're killing the potentially Insane, murderous , Criminal minded the unwanted." What I said was that both arguments are equally true (or equally false). It all comes back to potential, as you noted in your opening post.
John
I'd say that's splitting hairs.
I'm not asking you about the majority of cases. I'm asking about the rare. Even one exception to a rule can invalidate it.
Would you still feel this way if the woman in question were your wife?My intent was to leave out the logical extremes, hence the prefacing "shall we".
So does miscarriage, which is a natural process. The only difference is that one involves action on the part of someone to create the event, whereas the other may (or may not) involve action to prevent it.
If "life should be our goal, always", then in vitro fertilization should be embraced, no? It offers the chance of life to those who might not have it otherwise.
No. You (and your church) say that it would be immoral. There is a difference between what your church says is immoral and what necessarily is immoral - otherwise their list of immoralities would not have changed over time so that things that were once immoral now are acceptable. There are some churches that say that cloning is not just moral, but desirable.But does it have that right? You are arguing your premise - that because it is a potential human being, it deserves rights. The question is "Do potential human beings deserve rights, and if so, at what stage of development do they accrue those rights?" Shall we give human rights to gametes? To fertilized morulas? To unimplanted blastulas? To eight week fetuses? To children born female? If so, what objective reason (i.e., one that does not require a religion to make it so) can you give for the decision? The change from gamete to blastula to delivered child is gradual, with few hard and fast breaks from one stage to the next.
By that logic, an sperm is a human being at a stage of development that just requires fertilization and protection in the womb.
Right - and here's the nub: your definition of human in based on the unprovable assumption that we have souls. (Actually, I've met some atheists who were rabid anti-abortionists because they felt that humans had no soul; therefore, ending a pregnancy ended the potential human's only chance to be at all.) If that assumption is removed, will your arguments still hold sway?
Again, you argue your premise. Since the "government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion", then no religion's statement about when human life begins is a valid legal argument.
And here you conflate the question of when life begins (indeed, it never stopped - from gamete to morula to blastula to embryo to fetus to child to adult to gamete) with the question of when human life begins. A sperm is not human, nor is an egg. Is a morula? A blastula? The legal experts have given us a definition based on medical science. Why should we change it?Really? Can you cite any case examples where the mother has done that simply for her own convenience?
Really?No - to your church it is a good belief; not to all religions. If you wish society to enact laws enshrining your moral beliefs, then either be ready for them to enact laws enshrining those of other religions, or come up with an overriding reason for the state to get involved.
John
John
[1] According to the FDA, the odds of pregnancy happening in such a case are about 14 in 10000.
In vitro fertilization often involves the selective termination of embryos. If it had a 100% effectiveness then it might not be morally questionable. Accomplishing good by doing evil is not appropriate.
Wonderful. They're wrong and inconsistent in their Christianity.
Yes, at conception.
Obfuscation. Human life should be protected and encouraged from conception until natural death. Natural deviations and defects should be avoided when possible, but the resultant life (if one survives) should be protected.
Well, you cite one later on yourself.
All I've done is argue that every person at least deserves the chance to live. Every person. Do we have souls? I don't know. I believe that we do, but if your atheist friends are right then it's even more pressing that they are given a chance to be
Come on, be serious or I shall say "Nee" to you.
That's generally how one wins. But I didn't say that we are guaranteed A Soul, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness. Life is life, and our scientific understanding of life's beginnings has developed since the time of our forefathers. To be fair, I haven't really cited the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence...which specifically references a Creator. The Constitution is a document of government, not a statement of principle and list of grievances. I feel it is essentially neutral towards God in a way the Declaration is not.
But the values of this country and its people, who enact legislation and can amend the Constitution, are informed by religion. Should the people of this country ratify an Amendment to the C. that establishes protection for Human life from birth to natural death, that would be a legal argument. It's possible.
The law is fundamentally ill-equipped to deal with issues of morality. What's legally correct is not always right, and what's right is always informed by intangible values that come from "somewhere."
I don't have access to anything but general statistics. Does that somehow invalidate the barbarity of the practice?
Yes, really. The child should not be killed because the parents made a bad decision, or because they think they can't afford them.
You have put forth a worthy Catholic source, by the way! Thanks.
The definitive solution is a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. A more likely scenario is the overturn of Roe, which would allow the states to decide for themselves. The Feds would only be involved to arbitrate interstate "commerce."
The only church i could think about is westboro baptist church which will probably be burnt to the Ground.
John
In what way? What if a woman fails to take care of herself and subsequently miscarries. Is that natural or active?
Not all of them are Christian. Remember that Christians don't have an exclusive claim to morality.
Not obfuscation - an honest statement of the situation. If,as you said, rights accrue at conception, then shouldn't we have a "morula rescue squad" to ensure that no zygote fails to implant in the uterus?Not for saying that human life begins at conception, no.
I am being serious. Reproduction is an area where non-scientists draw all sorts of lines that just aren't there, in order to make their arguments simpler. But nature isn't simple.
No, one wins by supporting one's premise, not by arguing it (aka "begging the question"). There is a difference (even in an election year). You are saying that human life begins at conception therefore all abortions are wrong. The premise is that the zygote is human; that has not been established.
Yes, but not necessarily a Christian one; remember that many of the Founding Fathers were not Christian. Their god may not be yours.
It is indeed possible, just as we could have an amendment to the Constitution that establishes this as a Christian country. Right now, neither seem likely.This directly contradicts your previous statement.
If the practice has never been done, then yes it does. You have raised up a strawman; please forgive me if I refuse to be scared by it.
And yet, that is the basis of original sin in your Church, as the link I provided (and you praised) shows. We, the children of Adam and Eve, are punished for their sin, not our own (recall the conundrum of the "virtuous pagan").John
If you (as in any woman) do go ahead and end up pregnant, then you knowingly and willingly took part in a act that resulted in a life and you should be willing to take on your responsibilities for that selfish act.
How could anyone support abortion if they knew that they might have been killed? You've had years to realize that if you had died then none of your fondest memories would have occurred, your favorite desserts would have gone uneaten, music unappreciated...how we cannot be fiercely protective of our own lives is beyond me.
~ Yup, I am fully aware of the dichotamy that I might not exist, but then I wouldn't exist to care. I am also protective of life, of liberty of justice. But I say that if you are unjust, unfree then life is less worth living. Would I die to preserve the freedoms of what I believe in? Possibly. If so I must therefore contemplate the idea that the freedoms I choose to believe in may have lead to my non-life.
~ At the end we are flawed. In a perfect world neither abortion or adoption would be necessary. Each child would come into the world to a happy healthy family and be loved and well cared for. Abortion and adoption are ways to deal with what is wrong and may or may not be for good / right reasons: often the reasons are really bad. War is intrinsically wrong. But declaring war may be the most honerable thing to do, or the most dishonerable: and the winner, or history, decides in retrospect ~ that is what I feel about any decision about any life: age of the individual is irrelevant.
It is probably also worth pointing out that I am best described as agnostic (I believe in a divinity, but not subscribe to any particular human defined version) so have no particular statement / feel / faith based thoughts about the soul / life etc.
Even not having sex is not 100% fool-proof, if one can believe certain Civil War legends...
And the guy should get off scott-free? It takes two to have sex, you know. As for "willingly and knowingly" - what about cases of rape? Should a woman be forced to carry her rapist's byblow?
John
There's no need to be scared. But the point remains that Roe opened the door to a practice that involves the near delivery of infants and the vacuuming out of their brains. It is touted as a way to avoid complications from hydrocephalus, among other things. I'm not sure it's ever been clear just what makes the procedure necessary. This list seems sort of conflicted.
Agreed.How so? The law doesn't account for morality unless that morality is codified. The argument against abortion must be made on legal precedent, which must ultimately arise from a codification of that morality by voters, local government, and then state governments. The law and morality can exist separately...witness the sentencing to death of juvenile offenders, which I find morally repugnant but precedented in law.
Were we arguing that there was a Creator who provided us with inalienable rights, or that it was the Christian God who did so? Does this somehow invalidate their assertion that all of us should be guaranteed the basic right to life?
The law cannot determine these metaphysical questions such as when human life begins. Unless people force it to do so.
I feel this only becomes an issue when we concede that all are given the basic right to life. I contend that we have this right, and that once the process of development has begun it should not be interfered with.
Yes they deserve rights. They accrue these rights at conception. We should protect and encourage the natural development of life, and grieve when it goes awry. We should apply this right equally to all people.
An objective reason for assigning human rights to people at conception is beyond the ken of the law. The law and reason cannot answer all our questions, especially not "Is this right," because the law is informed by what we have already decided is "right." So the argument will be won or lost in the realm of morality and religion and subjectivity, which means that we'll never reason this one out to either of our satisfaction. Eventually the law will be changed to reflect one or the other's opinion, and subjectivity will become objectivity only then.
Protection and encouragement of natural development. Prenatal care, responsible motherhood, etc. It's a little silly to think that we should micromanage pregnancy in the way you suggested.
But a woman who fails to take proper care of herself and her unborn child should not be criminalized, I believe that. If necessary, she should be prevented from continuing to damage her child, but the law has always refrained from actively punishing a woman until she is no longer pregnant. Mary Read and Anne Bonney come to mind.
I feel that when it comes down to abortion versus big government, the abortion is the bigger sin against humanity. I'd support government pregnancy support programs that encouraged women with destructive tendencies to safely deliver their children.
A man is responsible whether he wants to be or not, if he doesnt want the child he has no say so, if he does want the child he has no say so. The only thing he has any say in is whether or not he actually gets to see a child that is born. Even then he has very little actual say although that part is getting better.
I dont believe its right or fair, but thats the system as it is today.
As for rape victims, they didnt factor into anything i said, my whole comment was about pregnancy based on choice. Rape victims have no choice. Regardless thanks to modern medicine we now have the Plan B pill. It can be took up to i believe its 72 hours after a rape and is sold over the counter.
Would you still feel this way if the woman in question were your wife?
What I would feel and what I would know to be right are two different things.
I would feel like I allowed a doctor to kill my child to save my wife, or that a doctor allowed my wife to die to save my child, or that both of them died.
I would be unhappy for a long time, but I would know that my wife died according to her beliefs and my own. And I'd live with that.
That question's about as valid as me asking you how you'd feel if someone tore you apart limb from limb and then sucked you out of your mother's womb. Difference being that you wouldn't have any sort of choice in the matter.
I disagree. I'm asking you about something that could happen in your future. You're asking about something that might have happened in my past, but didn't. Those are two very different things.
I have one more question which I'm pretty sure you've already answered, but I'll ask it anyway for the sake of completeness.
Can you look your wife straight in the eye today and tell her that?
Do you think that adhering to our principles in such a situation would make us foolish?
But both entirely hypothetical.
But one has a chance of happening where the other does not.
Since these people can't speak for themselves, shouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt and allow them to live?
No, instead we choose to deny their humanity. Seems backwards to me.
If you ascribe to a relativistic worldview, then I don't know what to tell you. It's not so much me telling you what to do as it is trying to inform your conscience so that you make the right decisions on your own.
Relativism must suck. How do you argue with your children or someone you are trying to discipline if they can just spit "what's right for you isn't right for me" back in your face?
So did I, eventually...
John
John
Didn't say it was - merely pointing out that we are being punished for the sins of our fathers if RCC dogma is to be taken seriously. Thus, your argument contradicts itself.
That wasn't what you originally stated: "Until recently you could deliver a baby at 8 months, 9 months and then vacuum out its brain. Where is the medical necessity in that?" And I asked if you could show any cases where it was done except as a medical necessity; the necessity of the procedure is clear to those who have studied it, though not all agree with it.
If the law is "informed by religion" and the the law is "ill equipped to deal with matters of morality", what does that say? You are using the wrong tool to solve the problem.
Yes; remember that their assertion of "liberty" was limited to free, white, land-owning males. The Christian god creeps in when you assume that your morality is theirs and so should be codified in law - despite the fact that it is ill-suited for such tasks.
As noted before, "life" never ends. The nub of the problem is that defining when human life begins is very tricky, and changes from group to group and from era to era. The Old Testament God declared that women and children weren't the equivalent of people; they were property. In India and China, female infants are exposed to die. In ancient Rome and Greece, it was all malformed children. Arguing that there is a moral basis for a law only works when all moralities agree.
All humans, yes. But you have yet to establish that a zygote is a human. You say that the right to life begins at conception; others disagree. Why is your definition superior?
But objective reasons are the basis of our legal system, which you appear to wish to use to prevent abortion. If you want to use the legal system, then why not provide an objective reason? Why should your morality rule?
No, it remains subjective. That's why "blue laws" are generally unlawful today.
And yet, as the link demonstrates, there are many who believe that we should micromanage pregnancies - and have attempted to do so, based on the same logic that you have applied. Why is their use silly, but yours OK?
Sin, perhaps. But legality and morality, as you have already noted, rarely even speak to each other. As for me, I'd support government pregnancy programs that provided material support for all women to take care of themselves (and hence, their precious cargo). Forget about platitudes - let's expand WIC, provide funds to March of Dimes and other birth defect prevention groups, aid Planned Parenthood in preventing teen pregnancies, and improve the prenatal care centers. But then, you knew I'd say that.
John
Your missing the whole concept of Plan B, they dont wait until they find out they are pregnant, once they are pregnant Plan B wont work. Its not an abortive. They have 3 days after they are raped to take it. As for the pharmacist, the pharmacists refusing to dispense are few and far between. The woman involved have 3 days to find one that dispenses it and its illogical to assume that they cant find one within that amount of time, but say those woman cant someone to dispense it, there is still even another alternative. If a woman goes to the hospital or doctor he can medically remove the sperm and if its done once again within 72 hours, pregnancy is very unlikely.
Personally i feel your looking at this from to much of a simplistic view. Take some time and look into deaths arising from abortions and complications, look at suicide studies regarding woman and abortions. Rape is traumatic to a woman but abortion is just as traumatic, so using it like its some kind of emotional relief from rape isnt realistic. Most of the time it adds even more emotional distress on a woman who already has been threw hell. Its even worse if you get into the teen statistics on abortion and rape and suicide.
Plus the facts are only 1-2 woman out of a 1000 who get raped end up pregnant, if you add plan b or the medical procedure into that the number drops even a lot lower. There are around 1 million abortions per year, like someone already mentioned regarding the numbers of abortion on another issue, pregnancy by rape is such a very rare occurrence its irresponsible and illogical to base all of our laws regarding abortion on that very rare occurrence that in most cases can be prevented in the first place if woman were given all the information available.
Contraceptives aren't the answer either. I think it's something like 50% of abortions are performed on women who became pregnant while using contraceptives.
From a study by the PP research arm, the Guttmacher Institute:
So, contraception fails outright quite a bit. And it doesn't prevent abortion because it increases risky sexual behavior (such as...having sex) that may result in pregnancy.
My mention of Plan B was only in regard to rape. I dont see it as a oops preventative but only an alternative in situations where a woman does not have the choice of abstinence. In all other pregnancies, its personal responsibility and if a woman gets pregnant while using contraception then she should be willing to shoulder the responsibility of pregnancy when it fails because she knew ahead of time there was that risk yet she choose to have sex any way.
I am curious though, exactly what do you see as a realistic answer, abstinence comes to mind, but i feel its unrealistic to believe every one would practice abstinence.
Now The way the law is now we are crushing heads and dismembering fully formed Fetuses. That is out right murder. The fail safes of the law will always stand. The protection Of the Mother which covers any of the medical mishaps of a deadly pregnancy and or any thing stated above.
When it comes to Rape and Incest that will solely be the decision of the women. It's been known for women to Keep the Baby and love them as their own and God Bless them for it. But I would not stop one from having a baby of an animal growing inside you.
I think i said it already Abortion is not cosmetic surgery. They chose to be in the situation to get pregnant. So Contraception Failed so what you knew it wasn't 100% Hurry run to the doc with the Hoover Oh i really would like to go skiing this summer Run to the Doc with the Hoover, Oh my I cheated on my husband Run to the Doc with the Hoover (He'll never know), No Questions no name for the murdered *BABY* No abortion certificate, no Birth Certificate, No Death certificate and No worries just onward to the next fun time. Maybe STD's is a good thing. Proper Punishment for the proper people.
Someone said it best up there in the Muck "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" And they are in that order for a reason .
Life in God, Liberty in Country and Pursuit of happiness Family.
The first we protect Life It's Self, We then take liberty in the Protection and safety of our Country, and only then we pursue Happiness and family with the first one forbids us to terminate a defenseless life .
Sooner or later the law will be written correctly. And we will be down to the 7% of Medical, Rape and Incest will be the only reasons for Abortion.
It will be such a shame People being held accountable for their actions won't it. I hope to god i see that day.
Well, abstinence is obviously tied up in it. And from a moral (and practical) standpoint, people should not have sex outside of marriage. Responsibility is really the biggest issue here. And to that end, I would suggest Natural Family Planning. It's not the rhythm method, despite claims to the contrary. It's actually very effective at spacing births without closing off the option to life.
And just because not everyone would practice abstinence doesn't mean we abandon our principles. Principles like 1. Teen moms are not generally a good thing and 2. Kids don't know what's best, so we should be involved in their life even if they "hate" us.
But obviously people will screw around and I feel the resultant children should not be punished. I would favor government supported prenatal care for women and an increase in charitable contributions such as diapers and other essentials.
I couldnt agree more, and also agree about responsibility.
There is already prenatal care along with postnatal care available to those who cant afford it, its part of the medicaid program and is available in all states. Also there is a nutritional program called WIC for mothers, babies, and children under 5. Also if your low income you can even get free child care so you can continue highschool or go to college, or if you want to work. There is also a lot more available to moms to be and new moms. Financial matters is the least acceptable excuse in my view for an abortion because help is available for mothers, but they have to be willing to take part in it.