[RD] Thoughts on Abortion (split off from Very Many Questions XXXII)

[Manfred Belheim]

But which side are you going to apply it to? The liberals, who think abortion should be a choice government stays out of, or conservatives, who cause deaths all over the place by denying access to what is needed to live?

The side that call themselves pro-choice obviously.

 

[Cutlass]

The side that call themselves pro-choice obviously.

That side is for a lot less death than the side that calls itself pro-life.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yeah... I mean my comment was obviously a reaction to hobbysyoyo constantly saying pro-choice.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think you mean anti-choice.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Yeah that was the one.

 

[onejayhawk]

Theorically speaking, I'd say there is a being to consider when the brain is able to process feelings, and a person when the brain is fully functional. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know at which time this happens, so I'm playing it safe by pointing at 12 weeks and saying "it's not even possible to have a being before this".

It doesn't happen before 25 weeks, if you're looking for more accurate numbers.

His is better than yours. 12 weeks is about when the process begins. By 25 it is nearing at-birth norms. We cannot say fully or complete because the development never really ends during life.

I would have said at heartbeat, about 6-7 weeks. Often the mother is not certain of the pregnancy yet.

J

 

[Cassius Critzer]

The pro-choice crowd loves to label anyone who disagrees with their ethos as Hitler. But then all they need to do is study the statistics on abortion to see an outrageous genocide of millions in America alone (59 million since 1973)..which they are responsible for supporting. Which is tied to eugenics in America like the forced sterilization of minorities and those with mental issues.

And on and on. It is such a cruel hellish farce. The only way was to pretend that by magic the fetus was not a true human being ....just some totally unscientific collection of cells.

I don't know, but within 59 million deaths, there probably was a cure for cancer, clean energy, countless brilliant minds, thousands of gifted artists, etc.

It is an incalcuable loss.

 

[onejayhawk]

Abortion is legalized eugenics. It most harms minorities and their population sizes. It ultimately affects the demographics that it will affect political representation.

This is true in USA, but not so much elsewhere. It is no coincidence that Planned Parenthood was founded by a white supremacist and eugenics proponent, Margaret Sanger.

Abortion has always happened and typically by herbal methdologies to cause uterine bleeding leading to very early miscarriage. That historical phenomena is very different from macabre surgical abortion and surgical/chemical abortion. We treat a fetus like a collection of cells when in fact it has a beating heart and human DNA.

In many ways, abortion through history dovetails with ritual infanticide. The Romans had child abandonment as an integral part of their adoption practices.

Abortion is a totally solvable medical issue, done very early, without patient stigma, and in ways that nearly citizens could agree.

No part of this makes sense. What does solvable medical issue mean? Stigma is inseparable from the practice. Even very early, the charitable view is an admission of lapsed judgement. What is a nearly citizen?

J

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Jayhawker, are you aware of the fact that abortion has probably always been in humanity and will never leave?

Come on. I don't condone it. If your wife or girlfriend is on oral contraceptives than chances are she has effectively caused a miscarriage. Are you going to ban them by being intransigent on your position?

From a spiritual standpoint, the least effective methodology is blaming patients who abort their babies and then losing them in religious life. And that is a huge aspect of the abortion issue and how the pro-life movement feels. The goal is to get the statistics as low as possible and be open arms, not bar the door and make people lifelong pariahs.

I meant "nearly all citizens" ie a political and social position on abortion that 90% could live with.

There have been morning after pills going back to at least the fifties but not widely known and since the late seventies more commonly known. They are only vaguely stronger than standard oral contraceptives. Way back in fifties they were used in cases of rape on an experimental basis.

Standard surgical and surigical/chemical and vacuum abortions are horrific barbaric practices.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

In the thirties, the first use of morning after ie emergency contraception was done by high dose estrogen by veternarians. In the fifties, some docs knew the science and might let a rape victim know there were things he could do by high dose oral contraception. In 1971, there was an article on using DES in this manner in an off label manner. By the late seventies, the subject was even discussed in high schools on a routine basis when mentioning family planning.

So all of that predates french tests on RU 486 which came later....1980.
So I cannot understand why someone would wait so long.

Old people should know this as we lived as it happened.

 

[onejayhawk]

Jayhawker, are you aware of the fact that abortion has probably always been in humanity and will never leave?

Come on. I don't condone it. If your wife or girlfriend is on oral contraceptives than chances are she has effectively caused a miscarriage. Are you going to ban them by being intransigent on your position?

From a spiritual standpoint, the least effective methodology is blaming patients who abort their babies and then losing them in religious life. And that is a huge aspect of the abortion issue and how the pro-life movement feels. The goal is to get the statistics as low as possible and be open arms, not bar the door and make people lifelong pariahs.

I meant "nearly all citizens" ie a political and social position on abortion that 90% could live with.

There have been morning after pills going back to at least the fifties but not widely known and since the late seventies more commonly known. They are only vaguely stronger than standard oral contraceptives. Way back in fifties they were used in cases of rape on an experimental basis.

Standard surgical and surigical/chemical and vacuum abortions are horrific barbaric practices.

A little civility, please.

I just stated that abortion had historically been a part of human society. Infanticide has also been a part and the two are closely related.

You did condone it, with the words, "without patient stigma." Society tolerates abortion, but does not condone it. Any surgery is an horrific barbaric procedure, however many (most?) of them we do condone.

J

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Civility??? How was I not civil?

Oh my goodness. You are comparing exposure by the Romans with abortion. What is next? Are you going to compare it to child sacrifice to Baal?

For anyone interested, the New England Journal of Medicine in May 1971 was the first mention of emergency contraception and the doc was really sticking their neck out. Roe v Wade was 1973 and so they could have lost their license for violating ethical standards.

And I do not condone abortion. I am mentioning the history.

Spiritually condemnation is disallowed for Christians. If I err, that is between me and God. I am not going to judge some teenager who is terrified and who waited and got an abortion. Rather, every ounce of my being wants her to be embraced by God and restored.

We know that abortion was practiced in an herbal manner in America's colonial past. Undoubtably by uterine bleeding or even by phytoestrogens in various plants.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

It is no coincidence that Planned Parenthood was founded by a white supremacist and eugenics proponent, Margaret Sanger.

The wiki does not tell me these things as motivators. Do you have a citation for this?

Wiki:

In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. Already imbued with her husband's leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics and modernist values of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia. She joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[18]

Sanger's political interests, emerging feminism and nursing experience led her to write two series of columns on sex education entitled "What Every Mother Should Know" (1911–12) and "What Every Girl Should Know" (1912–13) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By the standards of the day, Sanger's articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor. One stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty".[19] Both were published in book form in 1916.[20]

During her work among working-class immigrant women, Sanger met women who underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Seeking to help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[21] These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs", who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie's apartment — only this time, Sadie" died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[22][23] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth." This story – along with Sanger’s 1904 rescue of her unwanted niece Olive Byrne from the snowbank in which she had been left—marks the beginning of Sanger's commitment to spare women from the pursuit of dangerous and illegal abortions.[23][24][25] Sanger opposed abortion, but primarily as a societal ill and public health danger which would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.

Upon further reading:

http://www.politifact.com/missouri/...ig/margaret-sanger-alleged-white-supremacist/

Our ruling
Koenig said Margaret Sanger statues should be removed because Sanger was a white supremacist who "spoke at KKK events."

Sanger spoke at one event for the women’s affiliate of the KKK, but it was to educate those women on birth control. And this was the only event she spoke at that any sources or documents pointed to.

Sanger has been accused of white supremacy by many because of her belief in eugenics and her implementation of a birth control clinic in Harlem and other black communities. But historians point out this was because she wanted to share her belief in the importance of birth control with both white and black women.

Koenig’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate it Mostly False.

Not that it makes a difference mind you, since it's the way PP is run today that's important.

We have an airport nearby which was built by the Nazis, for instance. Should we tear that down and rebuild it because of that? In Germany fox-hunting with hounds is outlawed because of Nazi policy. Does that mean they should allow fox-hunting with hounds?

 

[Akka]

His is better than yours. 12 weeks is about when the process begins. By 25 it is nearing at-birth norms. We cannot say fully or complete because the development never really ends during life.

I'm talking about being functional, not being static. And anyway, it's theorical due to the complexity of the elements involved.

I would have said at heartbeat, about 6-7 weeks. Often the mother is not certain of the pregnancy yet.

And what is the argument about a heartbeat ? No neural system means you can't feel. The heartbeat has no actual effect on wether it's a person or not.

I'm still waiting for an actual counter to my position.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The organization in question has to check a box declaring, they are, in essence, pro-abortion/pro-choice/whatever you want to call it regardless of whether or not they will actively be doing anything involving abortion.

I'm flabbergasted at how the right-wing doesn't understand that it's unethical of a government to give money to organizations that intend to flout the right of women to seek reproductive health care services that are legal, by harassing and shaming them and distributing their disgusting "literature" in people's mailboxes.

The article, as I recall, stated that part of what the students would be doing would involve "counseling" with regard to abortions... in other words, shaming, harassing, guilt trips, carrying on and on and on about "sin" and promoting unscientific nonsense.

It essentially forces every group that wants to hire students with government funding to declare themselves, unequivocally in favour of the women's right to choose, whether or not that was going to be an issue that would come up over the course of that summer-work.

And choice is such a terrible thing.

Essentially, it was either a direct attack on freedom of conscious or an incompetently implemented policy.

Everyone has the freedom of "conscious". In fact, it's a biological necessity that humans are required not to be conscious for approximately 8 hours out of every 24. In my case I'm fortunate to be able to choose which 8 hours in which to not be conscious.

Although I doubt anything will change the opinion of a person that is seemingly unable to even refer to the conservative party by their correct name.

LOL.

There are far worse words I could use than "Reformacon." "Conservative Party of Canada" is too long to type out every single time, and I refuse to call them "Conservatives" because that implies that they're part of the Progressive Conservative party, and they're not. The Reform/Canadian Alliance hijacked the Progressive Conservative party in a sleazy backstabbing maneuver that allowed Peter MacKay to hand the party over to Stephen Harper after he swore up and down to David Orchard that he wouldn't do that.

It's worth noting that the new party tried to use the Progressive Conservative Party name but were correctly prevented from doing so. Then somebody had the idea that to honor their party's heritage (going all the way back to Preston Manning, lol), the new name should be the Conservative Reform Alliance Party.

What a shame someone realized what the acronym would spell. It would have been hilarious if their party's official initials would have been "CRAP."

In fact, some posters on CBC.ca continue to refer to it as the CRAP party.

So "Reformacon" is just another (politer) way of acknowledging their party's history: Reform-Alliance-Conservative. It's also a way of keeping it firmly in mind that no matter what they choose to call themselves, they're still the same Reform Party that even Joe Clark wanted nothing to do with.

Funny thing about Joe Clark. He was Prime Minister in 1979-1980, and still holds the record for the youngest person to ever become Prime Minister of Canada (he was 39). Yet the Reformacon posters keep tagging Justin Trudeau (who was 43 when he became Prime Minister) with names like "Junior" or "kid" or "Selfie Boy".

And don't lecture me about being unable to refer to people properly. There have been far too many instances where right-wing posters refer to the PM as "Justine" or "Justina" - as though they think they're being terribly clever for feminizing his name.

I don't know, but within 59 million deaths, there probably was a cure for cancer, clean energy, countless brilliant minds, thousands of gifted artists, etc.

It is an incalcuable loss.

Maybe. And then again, there were probably military dictators, rapists, drug dealers, terrorists, mass murderers, and destroyers of whole ecosystems.

We can't know this without a time machine and access to every possible alternate timeline, assuming that such things are even possible.

Any surgery is an horrific barbaric procedure, however many (most?) of them we do condone.

I would hardly call it "barbaric" to perform surgery for someone with appendicitis, someone who needs an organ transplant, or in my own case, removal of the gall bladder.

I freely admit that I'm too squeamish to want to witness surgery, but I'm very glad that it was available to me.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

The pro-choice crowd loves to label anyone who disagrees with their ethos as Hitler.

Irony. I never label anyone as Hitler. You on the other hand just labeled me with someone who would label anyone who disagrees with their ethos as Hitler.

Thanks for providing me the moral high ground without me ever even having to come out of bed.

But then all they need to do is study the statistics on abortion to see an outrageous genocide of millions in America alone (59 million since 1973)..which they are responsible for supporting. Which is tied to eugenics in America like the forced sterilization of minorities and those with mental issues.

This of course is complete and utter bollocks.

And on and on. It is such a cruel hellish farce. The only way was to pretend that by magic the fetus was not a true human being ....just some totally unscientific collection of cells.

Correction: totally scientific blob of cells.

I don't know, but within 59 million deaths, there probably was a cure for cancer, clean energy, countless brilliant minds, thousands of gifted artists, etc.

It is an incalculable loss.

Ah, the potential argument. Which can be extended to: anyone who is fertile and is not breeding is causing an incalculable loss of potential cure for cancer, clean energy, countless brilliant minds, thousands of gifted artists, etc.

And if you extend that to: anyone who is fertile and able to support a child, then you would end up in a better situation than many women who have an abortion. For the main reason women have abortions is that they feel they are not ready to, or are not able to raise and support a child.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Ah, the potential argument. Which can be extended to: anyone who is fertile and is not breeding is causing an incalculable loss of potential cure for cancer, clean energy, countless brilliant minds, thousands of gifted artists, etc.

That one got trotted out against me in an earlier thread, some time ago. How dare I "deprive the world of someone who could have been awesome"!

I don't owe the world my offspring. As a matter of fact, I'm doing the world a favor by not having offspring. Call it my contribution to evolution, albeit in a very small way.

Just think what kind of world we could have if it were possible to screen for various types of cancer or other diseases in utero, and edit those genes so there wouldn't be any people worrying for decades about whether or not they inherited the cancer that killed so many relatives over the generations.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Cancer is probably the only thing keeping the population in check (by which I mean slightly less wildly out of control). Well, cancer and abortion. Probably some other stuff too.

 

[Borachio]

Three things: Cancer, abortion, and child soldiers.

And people not wanting to spend their time and money raising ungrateful offspring.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

That one got trotted out against me in an earlier thread, some time ago. How dare I "deprive the world of someone who could have been awesome"!

I don't owe the world my offspring. As a matter of fact, I'm doing the world a favor by not having offspring. Call it my contribution to evolution, albeit in a very small way.

I remember many family parties where aunts asked me when I was going to have kids. When I responded I wasn't, I was asked: "Why not?"

Which seemed to me the most backward question ever. As if you need a motivator not to have kids.

edit: Mr. B. to the rescue

And people not wanting to spend their time and money raising ungrateful offspring.

/edit

In my fertile life, assuming a monogamous relation and a little breather for the misses. I could have had about 25 kids by now. Now extending the 'logic' presented here, I am responsible for the (in)calculable loss of potential cure for cancer, clean energy, brilliant minds, gifted artists, etc.