Abortion: For it, Against it, or stuck in the middle?

I am completely against abortion in any case or circumstance. Talk to the women who have given birth to their child only to have just a few precious hours or even minutes before they passed away. Most will tell you it was worth it. I'm sure we have members here who care for children with Down's syndrome or other "debilitating" problems, and every one I have spoken to says that that child is a blessing, not a burden. In addition, I have heard many stories in which the child was supposed to be born with some horrible condition, only to find that the child was perfectly normal at birth.

Rape is a horrible thing, that's true. But I've also heard the stories of many women who chose not to punish their babies for the father's crime, and found that child to be part of the healing process.

Abortion hurts babies, it hurts women, it hurts men. The last abortion thread that I remember us having almost went very very badly because of the pain of several of our members who have had abortions in the past - women need to know the truth. There is a reason places like Planned Parenthood also offer post-abortion counseling.

I have opinions for both sides....Pretty much I am a hypocrite because yes I do think its wrong...and I also can't honestly say I wouldn't do it because I don't know for sure because I am not in that situation.

I am 100% for keeping it safe and legal. My reasoning is that making abortion illegal doesn't stop the problem; it creates a whole new one. The rich will be able to cross the border into Canada or fly to Europe to obtain one. The poor will be forced into back alley abortions that could potentially be life threatening.

The best way to cut down on abortion rates is by having comprehensive sex education starting in Pre-School. I also believe that condoms should be available in every public high school in America, and think that the pill should be OTC.

I don't think you'll find anyone who is "for" abortion. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be such a procedure. But it isn't a perfect world. Far from it. I'm with Heather - keep it safe and legal and yes, offer counceling before and after the decision (either to have it done or to have the baby). And definitely - most importantly - offer the means to avoid having to make such a decision in the first place.

I'm not touching this with a tenfoot pole!

I am personally Pro-Choice.

My slogan usually goes: If you can't afford the condom, then you can't afford a baby. A year ago my friend got pregnant. She was dumb enough to think that the pull-out method is fail-safe. She was trying to cut back expenses, and decided that since she wasn't seeing anyone, she was going to cur out the pill. Then one night she met someone, they had a one-nighter, and boom! Preggos for her! Now if she's trying to cut back expenses, has a HUGE credit card debt and is gone from home 4-5 days of the week on overnight trips, is that an environment you want to bring a baby into? Nope.
Yes, she did have other options, like giving the child up for adoption, but she is an all or nothing type of person. She DOES want to have a baby, and if allowed to get pregnant again she would. However, with the job she has she can barely afford herself...how could she make 2 people live off an low income?

Making it illegal causes more problems that making it legal. However, instead of separate clinics, I really like the Rx by doctor. This is the method my friend did. Most of the docs remain more anonymous and if you make the appointment, no one has to really know what the appointment is for except you, the doc and the nurse.

I really can't stand the people that stand outside abortion clinics. When I hear of women getting beaten to death because a group of people began to throw things at her and then mobbed her, it's really truely horrible. Those people ARE the HYPOCRITES. Religion or not, if you beat a person to death or serious injury to the point that the baby dies then you served no goal.
If it happened to me, I would definitely sue the dummies for harassment, injury, doctors bills, etc. If they were from a church, or institute of relgion, that establishment would be taken to court.

In some situations I can see where it might be the right choice. Such as if your life was in danger by carrying the baby to term ( or to a safe birthing term).

I am totally against late abortions.

But if done early..and for a VERY good reason. Then let the parents decide.

One of my pet peeves though is that the Father does NOT have to condone the abortion for it to happen. That needs to change. My husband would have another child right now if his ex-girlfriend hadn't of had an abortion. They were stupid kids in a time where teen pregnancy wasn't so accepted. She went away and when she came back there was no more baby. He pleaded before she went that if she would just carry the baby to term he would take full responsibility for the baby. She would not have to care for the baby at all. Yet she was too burdened by 9 months of pregnancy. My husband crys everytime he thinks about it.

Legislation should regulate it but not totally abolish it.

i am pro choice. which often gets confused with pro abortion. i dont ness. agree with it, but every woman has a right to chose for herself. period. i cant say i would never ever do it, i like to think i wouldnt..but you never know until your faced with the choice.

Women should have control of their own bodies....choice.

Safe, dependable birth control options should be available to all women.
Counseling & education about safe sex & birth control for women around the world is critical to the well being of the planet.

Pro choice here.

I know for a fact that I wouldn't do it, but every Woman should have the freedom to make the choice for herself.

To ask if I'm for against abortion seems silly. Of course, I'm against abortion, I don't like the idea of it, I don't like how society views it and what women who choose it have to go through. In a perfect world, abortion would be unheard of because every child would be wanted.

But this is not a perfect world, and abortion ABSOLUTELY NEEDS to remain legal. This is a world where women...especially young women and low-income women are a) not properly educated (or even at all!) on how to prevent pregnancy and protect themselves in sexual relationships, b) birth control is expensive and difficult to get, especially if you're one of the millions of Americans who are uninsured and c) Sex has a stigma: religious zealots combined with our very own SECULAR government are conspiring to cloud the waters as far as changing the above 2 things...remember, sex is dirty and nasty and only bad girls do it. Riiiiiiiiiight. Oh yeah, and did I mention that there are STILL no male hormonal birth control options?

So, unfortunately, abortion is the only option for some women. And yeah, I agree with them. After all, would you rather have a life of poverty with a young, low-income and/or uneducated mother that statistically would make it difficult for you to pull you up by your bootstraps toa better life? Or would you rather not have lived at all? Would you like to go through life knowing that your parents didn't want you and that maybe you ruined it all for them? No? Didn't think so. I'm not sure what I would do if faced with an unplanned pregnancy. I guess it would depend on A LOT of things. But whatever choice would be in my best interest as well as the best interests of my partner and unborn baby. How am I supposed to raise a family if I'm in no place to rasie a family? How is that fair to ANYONE in the picture?

Every child should be WANTED. So I'm pro-choice. And Pro-Choice doesn't necessarily mean one is FOR abortions for all...it simply means that we are for CHOICE when it comes to planning a family...and we think that CHOICE should be accessible to every family and every woman...if they're 50 or 16, black or white, rich or poor. Every single person deserves honest, candid information about sex, sexuality and child-rearing...or how to prevent pregnancy from happening...and THEN they deserve full, uninhibited access to resources which will help them through whatever choice they make. Now, I'm not saying to sell birth control like it's candy...but I just don't see how a 16 year old or individual on welfare can afford 2 doctors visits plus $30 a month (and that's WITH my insurance) to get pills. Or whatever method these people choose.

I feel like the title of the thread is worded incorrectly, but it goes along with the common misconception people seem to have. As Heidi said, people aren't for abortion. Pro-choice means that you believe in the right for a woman to make her own decision. Many people who are pro-choice would not choose to have an abortion themselves, but don't feel that it is appropriate for them to make the decision for someone else.

Too right... It's not about being 'pro-abortion' as the OP wrote- its about allowing a woman the right to choose over her own body.

I would agree with that.

Juliekit
Do you just try and think of the most personal, contraversal Subjects just to stir the pot and get emotions running or what. There was another thread like it, and you were behind that one too. So I have to wonder .
This is such a highly personal decision people can be faced with. It isn't any ones business about some topics and they aren't meant for general conversation. {ep[le who are pro-choice shouldn't have to be made to feel bad for their oppinions and then defend them. It is so morally wrong and against their religious beliefs, I know there is even one Nun here.
You never know what is going on in peoples lives on internet forums there are so many people here of so many countries, cultures, religion, ect.
I could be one of the pro-choice peole feeling like I have to defend myself to a religious person say how it is so wrong. I could be the religious person mortified that some one would do it for any reason. I could also be one of the woman feeling attacked by pro-life people because I had an abortion for a valid reason to me taking arguements from pro life and pro choice people personal while pro choice people decide which choice is the exceptable circumstance for me to have an abortion and not fitting into their ideas of it. Or because of an abortion I can no longer have children. Mabey I was a rape victom. I will tell you some thing though, I am one of these woman, and I bet many woman are one of them too. No one should have to have wounds opened by a contraversal topic such as this. do you wonder in which way I may have been hurt or insulted by this? You will never know, it's personal and some things don't need discussing. I wouldn't discuss it in an open forum with any one. if I was ever faced in a situation of this magnatude I would only then involve the ones in my life who it is the business of.

I am against abortion as a form of contraception - horribly, I know many young women who are not careful about getting pregnant in the first place because `they can always have an abortion'. That makes me want to So disgusting.

I am pro-choice, but I think that it's too easy to say that women can choose what happens to their bodies. I agree, if it comes to breast implant surgery, or having a mole removed, or anything that doesn't involve the life of anyone other than yourself.

I think that the impossibility of providing a good, stable, happy life for a child is what needs to be taken into consideration. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime, as it were (although sex is hardly a crime and having a child hardly `doing time' - depending on how you look at it...lol)

I can only speak from personal experience and that is to say that I had an abortion at age 22. I wanted the baby, as did my partner. I was on the pill when I got pregnant, which is pretty unlucky, but we felt that we had a responsibility to live up to.

That is until we found out that because I was also on medication for an illness when I fell pregnant, that there was a 1 in 6 chance that my child would be born with Epstein's Anomaly (a fatal heart condition) and had a very high chance of either dying in utero, during birth or shortly thereafter, with a very high degree of suffering no matter which way it died (and it would die, no doubt). If it wasn't born with that, there were a number of other incredibly high-risk disorders it could have been born with. The medication I was on was classed as Category X for childbirth (i.e. - the absolute most dangerous). I was already having a bad pregnancy, with a lot of bleeding, pain, dreadful nausea and vomiting, rotten discharge - all kinds of horrible things.

I'm glad you said `most' would say it was worth it. To say that I would have felt that enduring a progressively dangerous pregnancy (oh, I could have died, too - I didn't mention that) all for the sake of holding my suffering child for five minutes before it died, even if I and it got that chance, would all be worth it, is completely wrong in my case. I didn't want that for myself, my partner, my family and most importantly for my child. No way. There is humanity and there is insanity. To do that - to risk that - would have been insanity, and the utmost in cruelty to everyone involved including the baby.

I don't think that until you have been in that position that you can say how you would feel or what it would do to your life. There is no way that you can tell me that having that kind of outcome would have been better than a humane, safe and painless procedure on a 12-week foetus, which in itself is horrible enough, but not compared to the alternative. Now, there was a chance that it would have been born healthy - but I knew in my heart it wouldn't have been. The whole thing felt completely wrong from the start, physically, and I truly believe in listening to what your body is trying to tell you. I really do.

In circumstances like mine, abortion is a blessing. A child is not a tumour, or a malignant growth - but a foetus develping like mine was could be classed that way, because of the damage it was doing to my body and to my health, and the fact that it was not forming right and would have died eventually anyway. We have procedures that keep US safe, that make OUR lives healthier, less risky and that give us more quality. When you are talking about 22 years of someone's life, where I had love, family, friends and full consciousness, and you are talking about a wrongly developing bundle of cells that was poisoning me and itself, I'm sorry, but I chose my life. And I also chose not to create a life only to have it suffer and die.

The day after my abortion, the doctor who performed it was arrested, because abortion is not `technically' legal in Western Australia. It made me feel like a criminal, and made a lovely man who helped me (and so many other women) look like a killer. It was a horrible ordeal and more understanding needs to be given to women in my situation or one similar, and to the people who perform this dreadful service to help make better the lives of the people who are already with us, with a lot more to lose.

I think this post is really unfair. If you have a personal stake in the subject and it insults or opens wounds, you have the option to stay out of the thread. The topic was placed in IMO, which is specifically designed for controversial topics. As well, many of us enjoy learning about the different cultures and opinions that our fellow members may hold on these difficult issues. If you are feeling attacked in anyway, in this thread or others, I'm very sorry, because that's not at all what TCS or IMO are about. However, I don't think Juliekit or anyone else should be censored from entering a topic like this in a forum like In My Opinion. If we are going to start leaving out threads because there may be somebody online that could be offended, since, as you put it, we never know what's going on in people's real lives, we are stepping onto a very slippery slope of censorship. There are rules on TCS regarding the posting of inflammatory material such as pornography, swearing or anything racially or culturally derogatory, but I do feel that the OP broached this topic in a respectful manner. Again, please do not feel attacked. If you don't want to discuss a topic, that is absolutely your right. But please don't assume it shouldn't be discussed by anyone unless you yourself are comfortable with it.

I'd like to comment on the topic of abortion as birth control. Until recently, some health insurance plans would only cover the following: tying tubs or abortion. That really put women in a tight spot, and taught them that it was okay to use abortion as a means of birth control. The whole point I'm making is I'm not "for" abortion in the slightest. I'm for preventing them all together.

The reality is that we have a problem discussing sex in this country. For some reason sex and women's sexuality specifically is still somewhat taboo. In a perfect world we'd be able to tell every young girl not to have sex until she is ready. In today's society that young girl is bombarded with sexual images as soon as she learns to turn on the TV. I think the more that we educate those young girls about their bodies, the better off we will be.

I don't have any open wounds or issues. I am pro-choice. But, I think it is a very touchy subject the can easly get emotional. People have very strong oppinions about it and get very heated. I just wonder why people will want to ask if people are for or against abortions in a general question when it has such strong oppioms and will get flamed. Look how emmotional and confrontational when people ask if they should "breed their cute kitty" or "de-claw their cat" and that's not comparable to talking about abortions.
Since you brought up being an oppinion, that is hers yhat was mine that's why I posted a reply in the IMO I don't have to agree and can give my oppinion on it. So I will go in any thread and give my oppinion even if the OP doesn't shaer it or some one else that calls my post un-fair and states their oppinion. Some things don't need to be talked about, best left unsaid.
Adain "I didn't feel attacked" as you put it again I was saying from another point of veiw, some one elses concerns which most aren't interested in. I have never been in the situation to make the choice, when I get pregnant I had her, her father wanted her and we live together, ect, nothing bothers my about it, but it is painful for others (as said by another poster, if the OP wanted to know the oppinions of it read that thread)
I never said she broke any TCS rules, didn't say I didn't want to discuss it, I posted so I am discussing it, my oppinion on it was that it is an emmotional decision for all involved and it is a personal choice, and that it wasn't some thing that you don't need to ask people.
I wouldn't assume that "it shouldn't be discussed becuase little ole me myself isn't comfortable with a topic. I just wanted to give MY oppinion, even if it wasn't the popular one, or some thing some people apperently don't like or want to hear, in the future I will try and stay out of it if my post is not what some one elses oppinion is ) I am not un comfortable with it any way but you seem aweful concerned with me being attacked
I guess there people who like to stir the pot and see what they can get for a rise out of people in every group.

I am 100% against abortion. I am very Pro-Life...and I make no appoligies- I do not believe in taking the lives of innocent children. I believe that every child deserves the right to life. Life is prescious...it deserves to be lived. I believe that life begins the moment the egg and the sperm meet...I believe anything used to prevent the furthering of that life to flourish and develop is murder....this includes imo the morning after pill, and any other form of abortions whether medicinal or not.

I was raised to respect life and that life starts as soon as that sperm meets the egg period. Although I dont try to push my views on other and I try not to judge others.

In that case (and I'm not trying to attack you darling, I love you and you know that), then God- or our bodies or however you view it- is the most prolific abortionist of them all. At some point in our lives, most of us women who have sex without a barrier method will have egg meet sperm and that egg will not implant, for no other reason than that's just what nature does. Our bodies will shed the fertilized egg in a normal period. It's normal, natural and happens constantly.

Exactly. So what about the life of the mother? Is that less important, particularly if it is threatened by its unborn child?

You said that perfectly and I agree with you completely.

Just for clarification, to condone means to forgive, overlook, or excuse. I think you mean that you could condone an abortion if you feel it was for a good reason, right? To not condone means that it is inexcusable.

The reason I mentioned that was because I think this same mistake was made in your original post. You said that you could not condone a woman who had an abortion when the pregnancy was the result of a rape...