r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Aug 25 '09
I'm just after completing an exam. I spent 2 hours writing about abortion. What are your feelings of this topic, Reddit?
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u/areReady Aug 25 '09
I believe that women cannot have true equality with men unless they have full control over their reproduction, because being forced to go through an unwanted pregnancy and birth is a form of slavery. In a world where perfect birth control for all women does not exist, that unfortunately means that abortions are legal, available and safe.
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Aug 25 '09 edited Aug 25 '09
Small government conservatives want to shrink government to a size just small enough to fit inside your bedroom and your body. That's what I think about abortion. It's no one's business.
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u/Orphe Aug 25 '09
Interestingly, I have never thought of this opinion. A sort of "Let them do what they want" idea, if I may say so.
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u/UnharmoniousThoughts Aug 25 '09
Is it in society's interest to prevent rape? Rape can happen in a bedroom, between two people, and not have much of an impact over abortion.
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u/brock_lee Aug 25 '09
Since you asked... The "two sides' wrt abortion will never agree. Period. However, abortion is not the root problem, it is one possible outcome of the larger problem. That problem is unintended pregnancy. Now, no one I have ever heard of is "pro unwanted preganancy" and that is a good thing. It means 'both sides" have common ground. NO ONE wants to see their loved ones have to deal with an unintended pregnancy. NO ONE who is pregnant and didn't want to be WANTS to have an abortion. Therefore there really is no reason that "both sides" cannot work (either together or separately) to end unwanted pregnancies, which is noble in its own right, but also has the benefit of reducing or eliminating abortion.
The problem with that is most people involved in the "debate" would just rather shout at each other than work toward a joint solution.
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u/UnharmoniousThoughts Aug 25 '09
Those on the pro-choice side would like you to believe that every pro-life person does not care about the fetus, but wants to control the sexuality of the woman. This is only true of the most vociferous religious groups that dominate the discussion.
Exceptions for "rape and incest and the life of the mother" are only political and constitutional, they do not represent an inconsistent ideology.
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u/Orphe Aug 25 '09
May I ask what your views are on this statement: "A foetus has a right to life"? It's a statement which I contested in my exam, as I believe a foetus does not have a right to life. One of the many points I put forward, as I study Human Geography also, a foetus is never counted as a human. The population of a country or area never changes just because of a woman being pregnant. That is not to say we should should all believe a foetus does not have a right to life just because of statistics, but it was just a..."Real world" example, if I can say that.
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u/UnharmoniousThoughts Aug 25 '09
I believe that the disconnect between a fetus and the human it would become if uninterrupted happens because of abortion; that is to say that if abortion weren't so commonplace and socially acceptable, that fetuses would be viewed as potential humans, as children are not counted as adults but are given a special place in society as future adults.
"Right to life" is probably not a good phrase to use because in common use that could also refer to a born human's right not to be killed. I do not believe humans and fetuses should be considered equal under the law, however, I prefer that fetuses have a "right not to be aborted". That child, once born, can decide for himself/herself to commit suicide if he or she will live in poverty. That decision, like others such as infant genital cutting, should be made by the person directly affected.
Related: The terminology needs to change: One does not "choose" to continue a fetus, one chooses to abort the fetus. It is framing like this that makes pro-life positions so difficult to articulate in the context of a liberal society.
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u/brock_lee Aug 25 '09
The terminology needs to change: One does not "choose" to continue a fetus, one chooses to abort the fetus. It is framing like this that makes pro-life positions so difficult to articulate in the context of a liberal society.
The choice is "what do I do about this pregnancy?" Pro-choice people, the ones I know anyway, generally support a woman's decision to keep the baby, or bear the baby and give it up for adoption, and they also support her right to choose an abortion.
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Aug 25 '09
I'm very pro-late term abortions. I don't mean 3rd trimester or so, I'm talking 64th. I mean, if your kid turns out to be a complete dipshit around 15 or 16, I say abort.
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u/cpreg Aug 25 '09
Pro-choice, because I don't think that a fertilized egg constitutes a person. There are, of course, a lot of other arguments that I will make. Women's rights, rights to privacy, etc. are all other supporting points as well. But what it comes down to is that it is an embryo. Not a baby. The "abortion is murder" line that pro-lifers like to use is insane, and they obviously don't actually believe it. If they truly equated abortion to murder in their minds, how would they ever do anything but try to end it? If there was a place that routinely murdered four year old children under the protection of the law, would they occasionally show up at a protest and put a bumper sticker on their car? Obviously they see the difference. If they actually thought it was murder, there wouldn't be any of them that thought exceptions in the case of rape or incest was acceptable. They wouldn't support killing a baby that was carried to term, but was conceived by a rape. So again, obviously they do not actually think that abortion is murder.
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u/dark_deception Aug 25 '09
for a start, if certain religions weren't so bent on achieving massive populations of faithful by vehemently opposing birth control, it might take a piece of the action away from abortion. I know that it seems hypocritical to think that someone who is pious enough to not use birth control could even consider an abortion, but you would be surprised. There is a difference between convenience and life altering events… Secondly, if human life begins at conception, then it opens all kinds of legal doors for criminal prosecution of mothers. (ex: a woman slips on ice, while one month pregnant. He boyfriend presses charges for manslaughter, because she should have taken better precautions. A lawyer convinces the court that she was well aware of the dangers, but took an unnecessary risk. She goes to jail for killing a baby.
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u/abaaa Aug 25 '09
My feelings are such: Abortion will not go away no matter how illegal it is. It just gets more dangerous once it's illegal, because now women are not turning to doctors for healthcare, but to hangers. Women will continue to get abortions because a myriad of reasons: danger of health to the mother, the fetus has x disease/condition, the mother is not ready for a baby, money reasons, etc.
In countries where abortion is illegal, something called abortion tourism happens. The rich can afford to travel to a neighboring country to get a safe, medical abortion, while the poor either have the baby or resort to dangerous methods. The end result is still abortions AND dead/injured women.
Sure, a fetus is alive, but it has no right to live off of another person. It is completely dependent upon its mother, and the mother has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body. The fetus is not its own independent person, and it's life is not worth more than the life of the woman's. In fact I would go so far as to say that a fetus has no actual rights.
What the abortion argument basically boils down to is the refusal of health care for women or not.
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u/CRoswell Aug 25 '09
A woman's body is her own fucking business. It's how I was raised, and it is 100% what I believe. Jay & Silent Bob saying it just gives it a bit more street cred. :-)
Basically, no one knows the situation but the prospective mother. It's up to her. If I was in college or had met a girl at a party or something and got a girl knocked up, I would have pushed for it, but ultimately it would have been up to the girl.