Pregnancy and Matters of Choice

Hm, I wouldn’t call it “forcing” her to have a kid, since she’s the one that got pregnant in the first place. Since you choose to get PG, or take the actions that can lead to pregnancy (well, sex), then you “force” it upon yourself. Nobody else “forced” you to get into bed and take the overwhelmingly serious issue of potential human life into your hands.

Rape, on the other hand, is a completely different story. The word “force” would actually apply there.

Just want to clear up that semantics issue.

My thoughts exactly, Heather. Women(in most cases) have the choice of whether or not to have sex, knowing that birth control is not 100% effective.

Also, regarding the responses about women knowing that they can get pregnant . . . Sorry, but that doesn’t hold water for me. People make mistakes. Especially teenagers, and I don’t see why their lives, as well as the life a potential baby should be ruined by those mistakes when the mistake can be rectified. And let’s not forget that criminalizing abortion only leads to illegal abortions being performed — inevitably leading to more deaths. It’s impractical to say it should be criminalized.

I think the teen should have access to the morning after pill, but killing a baby after its heart starts beating is my real problem.

Anyway, my issue was with the word “force.” That’s all.

This argument could go on forever, so I will just agree to disagree (;

I agree with Charliezangel, although I am not pro-choice. I have friends who have had abortions but I don’t judge them. I just think that the wide availability of abortions makes it easier for people to be irresponsible.
Although I hate the idea of abortions, a small part of me wants to say it’s okay in cases of rape, etc. But I just can’t sanction it as birth control when the morning after pill is available.

I am pro-choice, not yet a parent, but I think it’s a really, really hard issue, harder than either side would have you believe. The biggest difficulty I have is the way that the fetus/baby distinction depends on whether the being is wanted. What I mean: for many women who want children, the baby is a baby from the moment she becomes pregnant, and a miscarriage during the first trimester is experiences as the loss of a baby. By contrast, when a woman does not want a child, the fetus remains a fetus. While I fully support keeping abortion safe and legal, I can’t get my head around determining the “worth”, so to speak, of a baby/fetus by whether it’s wanted. I can’t think of any other analagous situation where we would approve of such a distinction (a person isn’t a person unless it’s wanted?).

“No one should be forced into parenthood …”

I think no baby should be forced to die.

There’s more than one human being involved in the equation.

Interesting post and discussion. I have always said I am strongly pro-choice as well as strongly anti-abortion. Yes, you can be both - I don’t think it is a choice I would make for myself and I wish it weren’t a necessary reality but I have NO RIGHT to tell anyone that they don’t have that option and every woman should have that right.

I am due with my first child in September and was telling my DH last week that pregnancy has made me more pro-choice than ever - every child should be a wanted one and until someone comes up with a way to adopt every single unwanted, abused and neglected child in the world I will support a woman’s right to control what she does.

Ysolde, I do know a woman like that. She had 5 abortions and had given 2 children up for adoption by the time she was 19. Her parent’s insurance covered the abortions.

Emilie, Pro choice does not mean anti-life. You can be pro choice and still not agree with abortion, but agree with a woman’s right to chose. I think abortion should be kept safe and legal, but I think that , along with sex ed, the consequences of having an abortion should be taught as well.

“Emilie, Pro choice does not mean anti-life. You can be pro choice and still not agree with abortion, but agree with a woman’s right to chose.”

Charliezangel - I hope my statement didn’t come across wrong as I agree with you. Sorry if it didn’t read that way as I am 100% pro-choice.

“wouldn’t it be worse to be an unwanted, unloved baby?”

I think this is a terrible argument for the pro-choice position since it assumes we are in a position to decide whether someone’s life is worth living and if we decide it isn’t, we can just kill them.

The line of thought that the reason to make abortion legal is to spare people a bad life is a very disturbing line of thought. Suppose we knew that someone was having a baby for a bad reason and didn’t actually want the child. Is it then OK to kill the child?

There are so many assumptions built into the idea that a person who wasn’t able to have an abortion would be abusive. Why assume this? If you were forced to have a child, would you abuse it? People talk as if this is almost a unquestionable truth! The reasons for child abuse have very little to do with the mother’s intentions to bear a child or not. Many women have had children they did not plan and they did not abuse them. People have abused adopted children they went to great pains to adopt.

Abortion was not legal for most of the country’s history but there wasn’t some kind of huge population of unwanted children being abused.

But even if there were I strongly doubt the idea that abused children are vastly better off dead is a defensible position.

Should our concern for handicapped children also make us decide that they are better off dead, too? There is a home for almost any baby born whose mother puts it up for adoption. Handicaps seem like a separate issue. We don’t have a problem placing infants when mothers want to give kids up for adoption. Handicapped children do get placed but yes, it is more difficult. But the fact that a small number of children don’t get placed doesn’t justify a reason to abort any child whatsoever. And maybe those children are better off alive anyway. Maybe a difficult life is better than no life at all? And in the vast majority of cases, we cannot determine what sort of life someone will have when they are still a fetus.

I just wish pro-choice people would give up this argument that, in order to protect a future person from suffering, we have to kill them now. Since it’s better to be dead than to be born to a mother who initially did not intend or want a baby. How can we possibly know this?

The arguments Emschwar gives are on more solid ground. Even if you agree with the pro-choice position it is still worth it to think about the specific arguments for the pro-choice position and whether they are good arguments or not.

I had similar thoughts to Emschwar when I was pregnant as well. It is a significant burden to carry a child. I think this is a better focus for pro-choice arguments.

My question is: Why do you have to kill an already forming child? Why can’t you just take the morning-after pill to prevent the fertilized egg from ever implanting?

I don’t understand why you have to wait weeks or–God forbid–months to decide to get rid of the already developing child.

Wouldn’t you know you had unprotected sex? If I was somebody who didn’t want a child and yet was still having sex, I sure would be taking every precaution on the planet to ensure that it didn’t happen! IUD, BCP, condom, morning after pill, you name it!

I agree that condoms should be free from the nurse. Heck, BCP should be cheap too.

Honestly, yes. I think that if you’re not ready for the potential consequences of sex, whether an STD or pregnancy, you shouldn’t be having sex. And if you still have sex, then take the steps to prevent pregnancy, even if those steps could in some way hurt you. Abortion is no picnic either, and I think a woman would take a morning after pill any day over abortion. People need to accept the consequences of their actions.

Sex is taken far too lightly. It is an overwhelmingly serious issue, not a game like many would lead teens to believe.

I remember having this conversation with DH while pregnant. I told him I could finally understand how a woman could make the decision to have an abortion. How debilitating and scary it has to be to face an unwanted pregnancy. It would cripple me to have to endure nine (ten) months of pregnancy if I wasn’t looking forward to the end result – a child.

While I might have developed a new respect for the pro-choice movement – my stance did not change. This is an issue of life. The life of an unborn child is simply more important than the hardships of an unwanted pregnancy and the subsequent labor, delivery, and choices to follow. With a few obvious exceptions, which most pro-lifers agree with, a woman has a choice to get pregnant, i.e. don’t have sex unless you are ready to accept the responsibilities that follow. That unborn child can not make choices – and must be protected.

Dansgirl: Yes, that was exactly what I was coming back in here to say! Thanks (:

“how do we know more children were not abused before abortion became legal?”

We don’t. Even if we knew how many were abused we would never be able to tell whether the reason was because of lack of awareness or some other cause. There’s no way to tell although there is that freakanomics guy who argues that the reduction in crime is due to the increase in abortion.

I think what I ultimately mean to say is that the claim it is justified to prevent someone from existing because we have judged ahead of time that their life not worth living is disturbing. It is something pro-choice people say often but I think it ultimately undermines their argument. It just isn’t something we can every say about any other human being. Primarily, because we can never, ever know whether it is true or not. Nor should we say that about anyone.

I definitely agree with you about the fact that this society leaves mother and child to twist in the wind if they are poor or have other problems and so it is pretty damn callous to say once you get pregnant, tough luck you have no options.

There are as many reasons to have or not have an abortion as there are women in the world.
Not every woman has been educated about birth control.
Not every woman has the strength to tell her boyfriend no to sex.
Not every married couple can afford another mouth to feed or the medical bills with the pregnancy.
DH’s grandmother had an abortion in the 70s. GM and GP already had 7 kids, and one more was just too many for them.
Not every woman who needs an abortion is a careless teen.

Why does it always seem that for pro-lifers, birth control has a 100% success rate? That can be one reason a woman doesn’t “just take a morning-after pill”.

And can you really “punish” a fetus?

I don’t see how a person can be pro-life and really believe that aborting a pregnancy is the equivalent of murder, but be able to make an exception for rape. Does knowing the reason why a woman is making that choice really make it less of a murder in your eyes?

I’m (obviously) pro-choice, and to me this means being pro-choice, PERIOD, regardless of why the woman is choosing to abort. I can understand the “don’t like it but think it should remain legal” stance, but I just don’t get the “think it’s murder and should be treated like murder, unless the woman was raped.”

I’m pro-choice because I believe that it’s a medical procedure and that lawmakers should not have the right to legislate medical care. The performance of the procedure, or the prescription of the medication, should be a decision made by the patient and her doctor, no one else. I couldn’t care less about the possibly morality of the procedure. I don’t think lawmakers should govern morality, nor that any person has the right to force their moral beliefs on another person. If you feel it’s an immoral procedure, then don’t have one. That’s your right to choose.

Niobe - as someone who is pro-life, I agree with you that it’s inconsistent to make an exception for cases of rape. That’s a position I used to hold, but when I examined my views more carefully, I realized that it just doesn’t work. If (as I believe) abortion is the wrongful taking of a life, then it is the wrongful taking of a life whether that life was conceived through consensual sex or not. I know that many pro-lifers do make the rape exception, but I just can’t reconcile it with my beliefs on life. The child is not responsible for the circumstances in which he was conceived, so I can’t view those circumstances as an acceptable reason for ending his life.

I too am pro-life with no exceptions. My comment about excluding rape was only to point out a time when sex was not done with consent.

Honestly, I’m happy to see people who are strong enough in their pro-life stance to make the fairly inflammatory statement that all abortion is wrong, whether the woman was raped or not. Regardless of my opinion on the subject, I have a lot of respect for people who can take such a hard position on something and really stand by it.

However, I still don’t think you can, by definition, punish a fetus, as punishment indicates the commission of an offense. A fetus is incapable of committing an offense and to use the term is purposefully inflammatory and inaccurate. While the abortion of the pregnancy is certainly detrimental to the fetus, it is not a punishment, as there is just no offense to punish. I really dislike the idea that women who abort a pregnancy are doing so with the mindset of “well this fetus has committed the offense of existing, so I’m going to punish it by aborting the pregnancy” as that is such a distortion of reality.

And if the only consideration is the life of the fetus, or if the continuation of the fetus is more important than the rights of the woman carrying the fetus, how far should that extend? Should pregnant women be legally prevented from participating in activities that may carry a risk of miscarriage - like horseback riding and taking hot baths. Should pregnant women be forbidden to leave the house (god forbid she was in a car wreck and lost the pregnancy) and be confined for the duration of the pregnancy for the protection of the fetus? Where is the line drawn?

And before anyone says I’m taking this too far, it was very common to confine high-born European women during the 15th and 16th century for the last trimester of pregnancy to “protect” the fetus. There is a precedence for such a concept.