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Damn, a menopause baby? From a rape?

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ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt

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Damn, a menopause baby? From a rape?

With my tubes tied, no less.

I took the liberty of backtracking my age a "tad" for the sake of this particular issue.

You know, in an ideal world, no female would ever have to make the choice to abort her child, but then in an ideal world, females wouldn't get raped, either.


These are some tough questions and I'm thankful I never had to face them for real.

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If you (the general you, not anybody in particular) believe life begins at conception

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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If you (the general you, not anybody in particular) believe life begins at conception

I, and the Roe v Wade Supreme Court, factor in viability. Eighty-eight percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state's two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women's health. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the trimester of pregnancy.

The Court later rejected Roe's trimester framework, while affirming Roe's central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability.[1] The Roe decision defined "viable" as being "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid", adding that viability "is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks."[2]

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As NICUs become better and better at what they do, does that mean that we, the people who support abortion up to the point of viability, will have to move the goalposts every so often?

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ORIGINAL: JanahX

As we all know, if the R's are elected into office, Mitt & Ryan would press to have all abortion made illegal in the United States, including cases where the woman was raped.

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- would you feel blessed because "God" gave you the chance to give life?
- would you cherish your baby?
- would you be set up to bring a child into the world?
- would you have the money to bring a child into the world?
- would you pay to have the child and give it up for adoption?
- would you go on welfare to have the child and give it up for adoption?
- would you leave the country to have an abortion elsewhere?
- would you try to hurt yourself or the baby so it dies?
- would you kill yourself?

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

Thanks Tazzy, very interesting. I learned that until 1869 Catholic law factored in ensoulment/hominization as well.

http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/pubs/cfc_archive/articles/TheHistoryofAbortion.asp

...In the fifth century A.D., St. Augustine expressed the mainstream view that early abortion required penance only for sexual sin. Eight centuries later, St. Thomas Aquinas agreed, saying abortion was not homicide unless the fetus was "ensouled," and ensoulment, he was sure, occurred well after conception. The position that abortion is a serious sin akin to murder and is grounds for excommunication only became established 150 years ago.

A brief chronology cannot do justice to the twists and turns of theological thinking through the centuries. It can, however, put the abortion debate within the Catholic church into historical perspective and show the importance of continued debate and of open hearts and minds.

The First Six
Christian Centuries

Early Christianity: Moving Away from Paganism

Pagan religions had a calm acceptance of abortion and contraception, including the use of barrier methods, coitus interruptus, and various medicines that prevented contraception or caused abortion.

Early Christian leaders, distinguishing Christianity from pagan beliefs, developed ideas about contraception and abortion, marriage and procreation, and the unity of body and soul. They taught that sex even for reproduction was bad and sex for pleasure heinous. Chastity became a virtue in its own right.

100 A.D.: The Debate Begins

One of the earliest church documents, the Didache, condemns abortion in a list of “grave sins” which includes other sins such as adultery, theft, lying, swearing, hate and hypocrisy. This document, written around 100 A.D., was lost for many centuries until it was found in the late 19th century.

At that time, the debate on abortion centered on two critical questions: 1) Is abortion being used to conceal the sins of fornication and adultery? and 2) Does the fetus have a rational soul from the moment of conception, or does it become an "ensouled human" at a later point? The matter of "hominization" -- the point at which a developing embryo or fetus becomes a human being -- would become one of the cornerstones of debate about abortion, and it remains a subject of debate even today.

St. Augustine: Early Abortion Is Not Homicide

St. Augustine (354-430) condemned abortion because it breaks the connection between sex and procreation.[1] However, in the Enchiridion, he says, "But who is not rather disposed to think that unformed fetuses perish like seeds which have not fructified"--clearly seeing hominization as beginning or occurring at some point after the fetus has begun to grow. He held that abortion was not an act of homicide. Most theologians of his era agreed with him.

In a disciplinary sense, the general agreement at this time was that abortion was a sin requiring penance if it was intended to conceal fornication and adultery.

Read more: http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/pubs/cfc_archive/articles/TheHistoryofAbortion.asp

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ORIGINAL: DNAHelicase
This entire line of debate makes no sense to me. If you (the general you, not anybody in particular) believe life begins at conception, I can't understand how you can have an exemption for certain cases. I see most things in shades of gray, but on this particular topic I cannot understand how you can think it's ok to terminate a fetus conceived through rape or incest, but not ok to terminate a fetus conceived through consensual sex (leaving aside the myriad of grayness in that term "consensual").

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And that is part of the reason why I think the abortion debate really ought to come down to yay or nay. There is no in between, there can be no exceptions for the people who truly believe a zygote ought to have the same rights as a person. It either does or it doesn't. Anybody who says abortion is wrong *except* in cases of rape has some ulterior motive other than sticking to his or her "beliefs". What those motives are may be up for debate, though it certainly seems to me that many of the people who espouse this view espouse many other views in line with keeping women in a position of less than equality to men. Further, when it comes to the health of the mother, if an abortion is the only thing that is likely to save her life, how does that square with personhood ideology? If you say that a fetus has all the rights of a person, but it's endangering the life of another person, doesn't that mean that that person has the right to defend herself? Or does it become a quagmire of ethics about who is more human, who has more right to live (in the knowledge, of course, that if the mother dies the fetus does, too, so nobody's rights have been protected)? What about in the case of rape, if being forced to carry this fetus is endangering the mental health of the woman to the point she becomes suicidal? Some states have laws that allow them to prosecute women who knowingly harm their fetuses; there's a particularly outrageous case in Indiana about a woman who took rat poison to kill herself because she was depressed when the father of the fetus left her ( a real winner, he suddenly announced he was married and decided to go back to his wife). She lived, the baby was born but died 3 days later, and she's being charged with murder.

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
  

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: DNAHelicase
And that is part of the reason why I think the abortion debate really ought to come down to yay or nay. There is no in between, there can be no exceptions for the people who truly believe a zygote ought to have the same rights as a person. It either does or it doesn't. Anybody who says abortion is wrong *except* in cases of rape has some ulterior motive other than sticking to his or her "beliefs". What those motives are may be up for debate, though it certainly seems to me that many of the people who espouse this view espouse many other views in line with keeping women in a position of less than equality to men. Further, when it comes to the health of the mother, if an abortion is the only thing that is likely to save her life, how does that square with personhood ideology? If you say that a fetus has all the rights of a person, but it's endangering the life of another person, doesn't that mean that that person has the right to defend herself? Or does it become a quagmire of ethics about who is more human, who has more right to live (in the knowledge, of course, that if the mother dies the fetus does, too, so nobody's rights have been protected)? What about in the case of rape, if being forced to carry this fetus is endangering the mental health of the woman to the point she becomes suicidal? Some states have laws that allow them to prosecute women who knowingly harm their fetuses; there's a particularly outrageous case in Indiana about a woman who took rat poison to kill herself because she was depressed when the father of the fetus left her ( a real winner, he suddenly announced he was married and decided to go back to his wife). She lived, the baby was born but died 3 days later, and she's being charged with murder.

The issue can't be a yea or nay issue until the debatable parts are acceptably defined. We, in the US, have not acceptably defined the debatable portions of this issue. At what point does a fetus assume full personhood? If not until birth, then it becomes legal to perform abortions right up until birth. If personhood is defined to be conception, the only gray area is when conception actually occurs. In all these cases, though, there is the ability to defend, if a pregnancy will cost, or presents a very high likelihood of costing, the mother's life, abortion should be an option for the parent(s).

If all life is sacred, and all life should be protected, how can there be war? We aren't going out there with Nerf® guns or playing Lazer Tag. This is much more than simply Dodgeball where those who are "out" can join in the next game.

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ORIGINAL: DNAHelicase
I don't believe a fetus should get full rights until it's left the womb. I think it should have some *limited* rights once it has reached a point it could be both viable and functional (as opposed to being kept alive but with miserable quality of life) outside of the womb, but hasn't been born yet.

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And this, if my understanding is correct, is more or less the way federal law sees it, too. From my point of view, I think it's a perfectly reasonable compromise between a woman's autonomy over her body and her life versus the life of the fetus. I do not understand the people who believe personhood begins at conception but it's still ok to have an abortion in situations other than the life of the mother is in danger (and even then, it's sticky ethically).
You say that the debatable parts haven't been acceptably defined yet. I think viability has been well defined; it does shift slightly from time to time, as NICU technology gets better. But I doubt it can get much better than it has at this point, short of developing artificial wombs in which case the abortion debate would be likely to drastically change, anyway. The only debatable portions left are terms like "personhood" and "right to life" both of which are so philosophical and unscientific (untestable) I doubt they ever can be defined in a way that a majority of people will accept (at least, not for the ones who do not take religious scriptures literally). To me, it seems like people who are against all or most forms of abortion are using those terms as a smokescreen, precisely BECAUSE viability IS well defined and they don't like it.

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
  

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What about those babies with birth defects, who pays for them?

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ORIGINAL: Endivius

But but but, I thought during rape a woman's' vagina exerted teeth to bite her attacker. That guy on the news said so


Even if Mitt get's elected, they will never over turn Roe vs Wade. Supreme Court > President.