FirmhandKY
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quote:
ORIGINAL: pogo4pres
quote:
ORIGINAL: FirmhandKY
Are you saying that when someone requires life support, then they have no right to live?
Not at all, I just think that if the point of external viability of the fetus has not been reached, abortion should not even be an issue. Of course I also think that a person that wishes to die should be allowed to as well. I am of the opinion that we waste entirely too much money on keeping people alive that really wish to pass-on.
The real issue is the "men" that decide to walk away from the responsibility of the child. Therein lies the crux of the problem, imagine you're a young woman and you've taken the precaution of birth control, and you get pregnant anyway, and the guy is no fucking where to be found. You have three choices abortion, adoption, or single motherhood. Let me tell you from personal experience, adoption, is rather more difficult to deal with than is abortion, so you pretty much have only TWO options.
Look I am no fan of abortion, but since I will never be saddled with the carrying to term an unwanted pregnancy, I really don't have a right to object. I was 33 when my wife (then live-in girlfriend) announced she was according to her OB-GYN ten weeks pregnant. This left us with a roughly three week window to legally obtain an abortion, here in NJ. I informed her that whatever decision she made I would support, and added that if she went ahead with having the child she was gonna be stuck with me for at least the next 19 years.
Who could predict that my son would turn out to be autistic and I would be on the hook for a life time commitment now? Still I'd not trade being a father for any amount of money you could ever offer.
Excellent post, pogo!
I think this is an important sentence, and doubtlessly true:
The real issue is the "men" that decide to walk away from the responsibility of the child.
However, I don't think it is the only issue.
The real problem is that we are trying to balance biological facts with moral judgments and legal actions. I'm not sure that there is a "perfect answer", although the ability to pull a fetus out of the body of a woman, and keep it viable outside of her body, and with the ability to later "decant" it as a healthy human baby might allow a closer symmetry between our concepts of "fair" and reality.
The fact that women have a greater immediate physical burden, and then a greater long term social and physical burden is a fact of the evolutionary process, that has an immense impact on the male-female development, and on the individual aspects of masculinity and femininity.
Prior to the availability of the procedure we call "abortion", much of society's norms were focused on this aspect of human reproduction, and we are in a transition period as the associated reproductive technologies mature. Eventually, I believe that if our society maintains these technologies (or even technology at all), these technologies will have a serious impact on our future evolution (and in conjunction with some other societal changes).
One of the possible negative effects could be a much reduced birth-rate (kids are a pain, and many people who do not wish kids to encumber their lives end up changing their minds when force-ably confronted with raising their unanticipated child). This reduced birth-rate is something we have seen in most of the modern Western cultures, to the point that there is a fear of the disappearance of those same modern Western cultures.
There are lots of other issues, but in the interests of not writing a book, I'll just stop there.
I think many of us fit Bill Clinton's pronouncement on abortion:
"Abortion should not only be safe and legal, it should be rare." -BILL CLINTON, speech at DNC, Aug. 29, 1996
Firm
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