I don’t understand the first policy argument. Would someone explain?

Pro-lifers are not against sex ed. Some, including myself, are against contraception because it does NOT save tens of thousands of children from being murdered. Instead, it prevents the proper forming of life in the womb.

Your argument against the banning of D&X abortion does is not valid because we are also against any other form of abortion, therefore we believe that doctors should not perform the abortion in anyway.

IF there is such policy as advocataing less generous welfare for poor single mothers (rather than just people in general), there are plenty of people willing to help like pregnancy help centers (not planned parenthood).

Pro-lifers are not opposed to having a vaccine against HPV.

The key thing about pro-lifers is that they are PRO- LIFE in all forms. The bombing of abortion clinics (if there were people inside) would therefore be injuring, if not killing, the doctors, patients, and anyone else in the buildings.

Pro-lifers would oppose the use use of birth control. Therefore it is valid that pro-lifers would oppose the funding of the Population Fund.

Furthermore, total abstinence for life (except for when you want to become pregnant) is an extremely unnatural state and may well be bad for your health. Why should a person suffer ill consequences to their emotional and physical health simply because s/he is not interested in having a child at the moment? Consistent use of birth control (as in use birth control EVERY TIME, no “being careless” as you and your ex were) reduces the risk of pregnancy greatly. If an occasional pregnancy occurs nonetheless, well, auto accidents happen too, even to people who are not drunk or talking on their cell phones. Does that mean that they shouldn’t receive medical care for their injuries because auto accidents are 100% avoidable by not driving?

And, yes, an unwanted pregnancy is an injury acquired during sex. A potentially deadly injury. Women have died from pregnancy. An epidemic of H1N1 (”swine”) flu is expected this year. Current predictions are that treatment of severe flu will require 150% of available ICU bed capacity. One group of people most likely to be severely sickened and killed by the swine flu is pregnant women (several pregnant women have already died of it.) So this year is a particularly dangerous time to be pregnant. Do you wish to force someone else to take this risk-a risk you will never have to bear?

David, I think you’re really dodging around in your arguments here. On the one hand, you speak of “birth control,” yet on the other, you acknowledge that what most people call “birth control” (condoms and other contraceptives) can fail and that what you actually mean is that no woman ever ought to have heterosexual intercourse without being willing to bear a child. Total abstinence =/= birth control.

Also, I’m really troubled by your assumption that anyone who has sex in a loving, committed relationship therefore must want to have children. It is an extremely essentializing view to take of women that all of them must want to be mothers. Some women do, some women don’t. Those who don’t should still be able to have loving, committed relationships that include sex. If you criminalize abortion (which appears to be what you are advocating), then you are saying no woman should be able to have sex without becoming a mother, and any woman who doesn’t want to be a mother never should have sex.

Finally, your daughter was never an “unwanted” child; she was born of an unplanned pregnancy. That’s not the same thing. You and your ex evidently wanted her, or you would have had her adopted at birth. Thus your sentiments about your daughter are wholly inapplicable to what is meant by “unwanted children.”

I don’t know you and as I said before I am not interested in judging you or any of the millions like you.

[reads David's previous several sentences]

I do not think that sentence means what you think it means.

I won’t bother correcting any of the many erroneous assumptions in your paragraph, because you’re not here to talk to anyone, just to talk at people. If you can say “pregnancy is avoidable” and yet say you know about failure rates, you are showing a level of dishonesty, either with yourself or with your audience, that makes you utterly uninteresting to converse with.

Pregnancy is completely avoidable. I believe anyone who can’t be bothered to use birth control or self control to avoid pregnancy should be responsible for themselves.

Oh dear.

David, are you aware that contraceptives have failure rates?

I’m asking because my unplanned pregnancy, which ended in abortion, came about after correct use of birth control.

You see, I am not a religious nut like some that I think you were referencing. While I still hold a hope that there is a presence bigger than us and am partial to the idea that when I die maybe I will get to see some of the loved ones in my life that have already passed away. That is as far as me and religion go.

That being said, pregnancy is completely avoidable. I believe anyone who can’t be bothered to use birth control or self control to avoid pregnancy should be responsible for themselves. I’m only 27 years old. 7 Years ago myself and my 18 year old girlfriend were careless and now I have a 7 year old daughter. No one in our lives pushed us to have the baby, in fact parents on both sides were willing to help us terminate the pregnancy. We both felt that it was not appropriate to go the abortion route. Not a day goes by that I don’t look at my daughter and feel ashamed that the thought of aborting her even crossed my mind.

Since her birth her mom and I have split up and now share custody. I believe we are both better people today because of what Kali has brought to our lives.

I don’t think I am morally better than anybody. I have faults on top of faults and don’t believe I am worthy of passing judgment on anybody. I just don’t buy the argument that our society is better off without “unwanted” children. Also I truly believe it to be out right irresponsible for women (and the cowardly men that put it all on the woman) to use abortion as birth control. The statistics show that abortions preformed due to rape, incest, and other horrible things that are certainly not any woman’s fault, only make up between 1% and 5% of abortions preformed in the U.S. In 2007 planned parenthood preformed 305,310 abortions. This number is shocking to me and it only represents part of the total which I believe sits around 1.5 million. Since 1973 our society has aborted 49,551,703 American children. How can someone see numbers like this and not be affected.

Sorry if I rambled I just wish society (not just women) could take a little more responsibility for our actions. I don’t hate women that have had them done but if I knew a woman that was continuously going to the clinic to hit the delete button on life, I would find it hard to have any respect for that person.

I wrote to point out that not everyone who feels the fetus is a person also feels abortion should be illegal or is ethically wrong, because there were a few comments equating seeing a fetus as a person as being opposed to abortion.

Basically, I described bodily domain and how it relates to abortion. Specifically that bodily domain is the ethical construct defining the ownership of an individual over his/her/whatever body.

Being that I am the sole determiner of what happens to my body in bodily domain, it depends on my explicit nonpermanent consent. Implied consent is not real. Consenting to something does not bind me into a contract to remain consenting either. So, say, if a man wanted to have sex with me he could not assume I consented by my clothing or manner and be exempt from being a violator of my bodily domain. And if I consented to sex initially but then needed to stop (for whatever reason that may be) he would be violating my bodily domain if he did not stop.

Bodily domain ethically justifies the use of force to protect your BD. This force must be necessary to end the violation, excessive force isn’t really justified. This force may violate the perpetrator’s BD if that violation is unavoidable in protecting yourself from a current violation. So if the only way to stop this guy from raping me is to kill him or stab him or spray him in the eyes with something caustic, then I am justified in doing so. But if I were to be raped and then I came across him later, I would not be justified through bodily domain in killing him then.

This still applies if the violator isn’t in control of themselves or isn’t purposefully violating you. Someone with a ridiculous level of psychosis and isn’t in control of his actions can still be responded to with force in self defense. So a lack of intent in violating my BD is not an excuse or an “avoid self defense” card.

We can all agree on these principles. They are a necessity in our society and provide a guiding framework for how we protect ourselves and avoid harming others.

Well, they apply to unwanted pregnancy too. The fetus in an unwanted pregnancy is violating bodily domain. It doesn’t have intent sure, but it is there without consent nevertheless. Therefore a pregnant individual may defend themselves from the violation and remove the fetus from their body. This does mean the fetus dies, but bodily domain justifies this just as it justifies killing a rapist in self defense if that’s the only way to stop him (or her, must not be sexist against men, women can rape too).

Bodily domain works whether the fetus is a person or not. People are not allowed to violate me. I can defend myself with force against people who violate me. Therefore, I may defend against an unwanted fetus too.

er…pro-lifers?…want to rebut this?

I just arrived on this debate. Has Eric read the chart?

If you decide to post and desire to refer to those opposed to abortion as Anti-Choice instead of Pro-life, the name they call themselves, you may want to rethink your post.

Everyone has the right to their opinion without name calling. I am not stating my position on the issue of abortion, but I find it interesting that Anti-Choice appears many times but Pro-death or Pro-”murder” has not appeared anywhere.

If we want people of differing opinions to respect us, we must first show mutual dignity and find common ground from which to build on.

Do we think that assumption of risk equal consent? For example, Sarah Palin agreed to have amniocentesis before giving birth to her fifth child, even though it involved assuming a risk of triggering a miscarriage. If the miscarriage had occurred, would we say that she had consented to it? Similarly, a guy who is mugged while walking through a crime-infested neighborhood to work will probably not be accused of “consenting” to the mugging.

Law professor Sherry F. Colb argues that people’s willingness to make judgments about consent is heavily bound up with our judgments about the merits of the underlying risky activity. Thus, a person who goes bankrupt after trying to build a restaurant is regarded differently than a person who goes bankrupt at the casino – even though the odds of success may well have been the same.