I plan on voting for Obama when I send my absentee ballot here pretty quick, but there is one strong issue that only *slightly* worries me: his more extremist voting for abortion. I just wanted to hear some viewpoints on the topic itself, but it really confuses me on how people can be for this. Now let's get this straight, I am for it in cases where it would kill the mother otherwise. But even in terribly sad cases of rape, does this give the victim justification to kill another? I guess it would depend on your definition of where life begins too. I'm not too sure on that either. But my main confusion is how people can be for abortion just because of a woman's circumstances, like she just doesn't want it. It is taking the chance away for a life for someone just because it's not convenient for the mother .... right??? Just wanting to hear some other viewpoints.

I don't have much time to write an extensive comment, so I will make it short

One of the biggest reasons I am pro-choice is because if a woman is not ready to keep a child (due to her age, money, drugs, housing, whatever the case), it is better for the mother to not have the child. Now this is very sad of course, but realistically, it does avoid a lot of abandoned babies and murdered babies. As well as babies how suffer from serious illnesses because of malnourishment.

Also, abortions happen, no matter if it is legal or not. But if it is legal, at least there will be a safer way to abort a pregnancy than going to a black market doctor. But of course, this reason has plenty of flaws in it as well.

Anyway, this was a quick respond, so I probably typed some of my ideas incorrectly, but I think you should get a sense of what I think. Overall I think abortion is a very difficult subject, but for me pro-choice is the way to go. And as you said, it really does depend on what your definition of life is.

Many young people are forced to support abortion because if they don't they are seen as people who hate women. I support it mostly but not in cases where it is done for convenience. I argue that in a politics class and all those stupid "feminist" women were ready to cut me up into 1000 pieces.

I am sorry, just because you cannot control your lust does not mean you can end lives!

I do not care how that sounds.

You want to live the "sex in the city" life style, go on birth control...


By the way I am talking exclusively about women who are fully capable of having healthy women, who abort because they don't feel like having one.

Nobody supports abortion, except for some lunatics who think there are too many human beings on this planet or whatever.

Those who support a woman's right to choose emphasize one aspect of the issue which those who support a ban on abortions ignore, which is that fundamentally, the issue here is whether a government has a right to impose strictures on a woman's body.

The famous analogue that's given is as follows: say that you have fallen asleep. Somebody comes into your house and connects you to another person. You wake up and realize you are tied to this person (via tubes or whatever). People are telling you that, if you decide to detach yourself from this person, that person will die. In fact, they are forcing you to remain stuck to this person until that person gets better.

Do you have the right over your body in this case? Is it fair that authorities forbid you to say no, to make a decision to detach yourself from the other person?

Abortion is more complicated than that (is the embryo even a person?), but I think the analogue sticks; does a woman not have a right over her own body? This question is relevant in all cases of pregnancies, not just those resulting from rape or incest. Fundamentally, will you support the legal subjugation of women?

To repeat: those who are pro-choice are not pro-abortion; rather, they emphasize the rights that all women should have as independent agents. This does not make it more or less of a morally complex issue, but it points out why the legal ramifications of the issue are so potentially alarming. At no time in history has a country that has denied women the right to choose given women full equality. If you deprive them of as fundamental a right as control over their bodies, you cannot claim to have any respect for their rights.

Nonsense. I have never heard of any woman who has made the decision to have an abortion lightly. The "Sex and the City" lifestyle is as complete a fabrication as that show. The women you are talking about are a very small fraction of the total, and you know what? They would most likely have abortions whether abortion was legal or not if they could find a way to go about it. And even if that's the decision they made, they have a right to do with their bodies as they please, and you have no right to deny them that right.

There are instances where birth control fails. There are cases where women are deceived by their male partners who assure them that they are using precaution.

And you're entirely skirting the role that men play in this. There are instances where men coax women into having abortions, even if their own inclination is toward giving birth. Are women to blame in all those instances? Perhaps they should not have sex at all until after they pass the bearing age.

The fundamental difference being, of course, that the welfare of women will often be at stake because of rogue medical practitioners and impostors, to say nothing of the financial and temporal burdens.


And it goes without saying that abortion would become an issue of class and financial standing (more so than it is now, anyway). Rich people? No problem. Poor ones? Yeah...

I don't see much justification for forcing a woman have her rapist's baby, just because of some distorted view of the Bible or an absurdist definition of when life begins.

Also, for the record, Obama's position on abortion is not extreme. Christianists have portrayed him that way, but they also claim he's a Musim, a terrorist, and a racist. Christianists are liars.

He's arguably more pro-life than any of the Christianists. He has a very measured stance on war - they don't. He's against torture - they're not. And he's for sex education that would prevent the kinds of unwanted pregnancies that might lead to abortion. He's for restrictions on late-term partial birth abortion.

As others have said, it's not about being PRO-abortion. No one is for abortion. It's about that choice and what role the government should play in such a private matter - up to a point. In my case, I am against abortion after the 2nd trimester, when a fetus can live outside the womb.

Pro-choice is not pro-abortion. You so-called pro-lifers need to realize this.

If you mean partial-birth abortions, he didn't vote for it. He voted against a ban on partial-birth abortions because the same Bill prohibited partial-birth abortions when needed to save the life of the mother.
Not the same as voting for partial-birth abortions.

EDIT: An abortion is considered a partial-birth abortion when administered at 21 weeks or later.
The phrase was coined by a pro-life advocate, hence the use of the word "birth". The medical community recognizes the phrase "Late Term Abortion" as being correct. The Federal laws identify the procedure as when the fetus with a normally developed head and body is passed from the point in distance from the mother's navel and out of the womb.

The thing in the picture above is not a human being. Yet a lot of people who want to forbid abortion claim that it is.

...It's not. Not by any actual, logical, fact-based definition.

More over, it's impossible to determine when a human is "born". Because the birth of a human being is a slow process, with billions of different phases, lasting for 9 months. We can determine fairly well when a human being is not alive, and when he is alive, but it's impossible to determine the exact moment when the former changes into the latter.

...Which is the reason why we simple have to compromise. We have to allow the right to abortion, but on the other hand we can have some sensible control over it - Like possibly forbidding it after 3 months pregnancy, unless the mother's life is in danger, etc.

It also made practicing abortion a felony and defined single-cell embryos as human beings with full rights.

These are the extremist positions, not Obama's. And they are that way by design. They KNOW that people are going to oppose it on reasonable grounds, and they can then use it as a wedge issue to defeat pro-choice candidates.

I wonder what pro-life advocates think about the morbidly deformed, a.k.a. a "monster fetus"?
Should a mother be required to carry one to term? I say no, though I do oppose abortion for reasons of creating a perfect race/a perfect child by eliminating a so-called 'imperfect child', but that is another issue entirely.

What I wonder is why pro-life advocates don't oppose invitro fertilization with the same vigor and adamance they oppose abortion, since both "murder" fertilized eggs.

One has to question whether or not they truly believe that life begins at conception or if there is something else going on.

Well, A.F.A.I.K., these all-encompassing bans make no exceptions for "monster fetuses".
These are fetuses with grossly enlarged heads, stumps or three legs/limbs, no eyes, no features, their spines outside of their back, etc. If the deformities are merely cosmetic or repairable, then that's different.
I was born with a repairable cleft palate, but a fetus in the womb looking like The Elephant Man and facing an extremely difficult, painful, miserable existence must be a consideration.
I also identify that pro-lifers oppose euthanasia for persons who are severely mangled by accidents or disease. Remember Terry Schiavo and the battle to remove her life support? This wasn't even about euthanasia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo

BTW, The Elephant Man's deformities began three years after birth, so he was not "a monster fetus".

Using that idiotic idealistic argument white people have zero say when it comes to rights of minorities.

You can not have it two ways.

The govt already says you cannot do many things to yourself so why cannot not stop pointless abortions?

This has nothing to do with minorities or whites. Women are the majority of the population, and the issues concerning them are entirely different than those concerning minorities.


The government does not allow you to do many things in order to protect other people's rights; that's why there are laws against fraud and discrimination. By extension, there should be rights in place that protect women, and the right to choose is one of those rights.

I disagree 100% and Abortion is something we will never settle.

I am not saying we should ban abortions for some but there should be a limit of like like 3-5 or something like that. After that your being very irresponsible.

+1

No one actually supports the act of abortion. But the government does not and should not ever have the right to tell a woman what she can and can't do with her own body.

That's what pro-choice means.



I'm not really sure what to say about this. How many women do you honestly think have more than five abortions? Women don't get abortions for fun. It's not a game.

Interesting thoughts, most seem logical. I only have a few responses to some of them.


The difference here, though, is that the woman took an action to cause pregnancy, unlike in this scenario where the person is just randomly attached to someone from no cause. (Not talking about rape here)

To Libs, at what point does the baby not count as the woman's body for you?

And to the picture of the embryos, that does represent the potential for life. I know a lot of people who were "surprise babies" to their parents, and in a culture where abortions are culturally accepted as a necessary evil, they might have not existed. That's the only thing that kind of scares me.

Yes, but you oppose abortion even in the case of rape. So there is no difference here. You think a woman should be forced by the state to have her rapist's baby.



In almost every case I know of, parents of surprise babies have chosen to have them. They CHOSE. That's what we're advocating here.

I consider myself "pro-choice", but Abortion, to me, is one of those issues that shouldn't even be an issue. I don't care, and really, why should anyone care about a matter this personal if it doesn't involve them? Do I care about a family in Alaska discussing with their pregnant teen daughter about how to deal with her possibly becoming a mother? No. I might disagree with some decisions people make on abortion, but I'm not going to say they are wrong. And I may agree with some decisions made on abortion, but I'm not going to say they were right. Leave government (national, state, and local) out of these personal, family, individual matters.

This is one of the only times where I think Magnus' point shouldn't be overlooked: abortions will take place whether legal or not. Back-alley illegal abortions are not a good idea.

^ Pretty much, and I'd also agree with his stance that sex ed should be increased. The abstinence only supporters make me sick.

I'm pro-choice, btw

Frankly I hate the idea of young girls with potentially bright futures essentially dropping all their aspirations and oppurtunities in favour of living a hellish single mom lifestyle for the next 20 years, because the government says you can't kill an embryo. Not to mention the pain and trouble of the pregancy period itself. You can talk about abortions as 'killing', but what about its effect on the mother? A young soul dropping all their oppurtunities and ambitions in life in favor of staying in one place for 20 years and raising a child, to me, IS death... I don't wish that fate on anyone. I mean I know there's adoption, but obviously many unplanned pregnancies lead to keeping the baby. You can say this paragraph is bunk because that in itself is a choice... but in any case the whole conservative ideal of being a mother = your life, is what gets to me.

I also don't think the embryo is life. I mean I know the 'potential for life' thing is there... but then do you ban couples divorcing before a child is conceived too? Next thing you know, they'll be teaching the neglect of birth control because they stop potential for life too (Oh wait, they actually do that). I mean I know obviously the embryo is further along the scale of a 'being' than either of those things, and I certainly can see some of the reasons pro-lifers have, but to me the positives of abortion far outweigh the negative.