Is abortion really wrong?

Oh goody, a nice, juicy abortion discussion! (I'm still fairly new in this forum and am exploring all the different areas I'm interested in.) So, at the risk of being redundant:

I think the problem with this issue is disagreement as to when a tiny bit of protoplasm actually becomes a human being. The pro-lifers believe it is a complete human being with full human rights as of the moment of conception. In the case of those who are opposed to contraception, they believe it even before conception!

Those who are on the other extreme of the spectrum believe that it is just a fetus without any human rights at all up to the moment it is born.

My beliefs are somewhere in the middle, which usually gets everyone mad at me on this subject. I think it's a continuum where a human being becomes one, slowly and gradually, in the course of its mother's pregnancy. No way would I consider a first trimester embryo a "human being."

OTOH, in the last trimester, it is already a baby, admittedly a very small one, but a baby nevertheless. It is often capable of surviving outside of the womb.

So the troubling area is in that second trimester. My inclination is to be pro-choice during that period, but abortions should be discouraged the later it gets, providing the fetus is normal and the mother is not running any serious health risks. Obviously, if the fetus (or baby) has something drastically wrong with it, or the mother's life is in danger, an abortion should be allowed and even encouraged at any stage.

Not an easy question to answer in a few words, although some would like to do so. Not every issue in life lends itself to a simple "right" or "wrong."

OK, how about getting into stem cell research next?

Oh goody, a nice, juicy abortion discussion! (I'm still fairly new in this forum and am exploring all the different areas I'm interested in.) So, at the risk of being redundant:

I think the problem with this issue is disagreement as to when a tiny bit of protoplasm actually becomes a human being. The pro-lifers believe it is a complete human being with full human rights as of the moment of conception. In the case of those who are opposed to contraception, they believe it even before conception!

Those who are on the other extreme of the spectrum believe that it is just a fetus without any human rights at all up to the moment it is born.

Body Of Fetus Found At Women's Clinic

WTVJ-TV
12:05 a.m. EDT July 29, 2006
HIALEAH, Fla. - Police are conducting an investigation at a Hialeah women's clinic after a fetus' body was found there. Hialeah police returned to the scene Friday evening after receiving a tip in an investigation that started last week. Police said someone called them saying that a woman went to a clinic in the 3600 block of West 16th Avenue and gave birth to a live baby, and that someone allegedly killed it, NBC 6's Sharon Lawson reported.

With a search warrant in hand, police said they searched the clinic and found nothing. On Friday, police said they received a tip from another source, returned to the clinic and found a dead 22-week-old fetus.

"We were able to locate the mother of this child, who is an 18-year-old female. We located her. She, in fact, reiterated that she did come to this clinic to have an abortion, and she gave birth to the baby while waiting for the doctor to arrive. The doctor was not here," said Lt. Ralph Garcia of the Hialeah Police Department.

"I believe that it's premature to state that the baby was born alive. This was a fetus, 22 weeks approximately. The doctor should be held responsible for this. He was supposed to be here. He was not. My client, who is cooperating, did not see this fetus. Right now, we basically don't have a medical examiner stating that the fetus was born alive," said Regina De Moraes-Millan, the clinic owner's attorney.

Authorities have closed the clinic until the investigation is completed. They are waiting for a medical examiner to determine the exact cause of death and to see whether a crime was committed.

Was it murder , or a 'post-birth abortion' ?

I would be very interested to hear what our pro-abortion members have to say.

If, as it appears, the sequence of events is:

Woman goes to abortion clinic to get an abortion

Doctor isn't there

She gives birth while waiting

Baby is snuffed by the staff

Is this murder, or just an abortion 'after the fact' ?

After all, she didn't want the baby and was going to abort it. Does the baby have any rights? Did anyone do anything wrong?

I think the answers we'll read are quite predictable, but..........you never know for sure.

from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14084408/

Quote:

Body Of Fetus Found At Women's Clinic

WTVJ-TV
12:05 a.m. EDT July 29, 2006
HIALEAH, Fla. - Police are conducting an investigation at a Hialeah women's clinic after a fetus' body was found there. Hialeah police returned to the scene Friday evening after receiving a tip in an investigation that started last week. Police said someone called them saying that a woman went to a clinic in the 3600 block of West 16th Avenue and gave birth to a live baby, and that someone allegedly killed it, NBC 6's Sharon Lawson reported.

With a search warrant in hand, police said they searched the clinic and found nothing. On Friday, police said they received a tip from another source, returned to the clinic and found a dead 22-week-old fetus.

"We were able to locate the mother of this child, who is an 18-year-old female. We located her. She, in fact, reiterated that she did come to this clinic to have an abortion, and she gave birth to the baby while waiting for the doctor to arrive. The doctor was not here," said Lt. Ralph Garcia of the Hialeah Police Department.

"I believe that it's premature to state that the baby was born alive. This was a fetus, 22 weeks approximately. The doctor should be held responsible for this. He was supposed to be here. He was not. My client, who is cooperating, did not see this fetus. Right now, we basically don't have a medical examiner stating that the fetus was born alive," said Regina De Moraes-Millan, the clinic owner's attorney.

Authorities have closed the clinic until the investigation is completed. They are waiting for a medical examiner to determine the exact cause of death and to see whether a crime was committed.

Was it murder , or a 'post-birth abortion' ?

I would be very interested to hear what our pro-abortion members have to say.

If, as it appears, the sequence of events is:

Woman goes to abortion clinic to get an abortion

Doctor isn't there

She gives birth while waiting

Baby is snuffed by the staff

Is this murder, or just an abortion 'after the fact' ?

After all, she didn't want the baby and was going to abort it. Does the baby have any rights? Did anyone do anything wrong?

I think the answers we'll read are quite predictable, but..........you never know for sure.

real life wrote:

Was it murder , or a 'post-birth abortion' ?

I would be very interested to hear what our pro-abortion members have to say.

If, as it appears, the sequence of events is:

Woman goes to abortion clinic to get an abortion

Doctor isn't there

She gives birth while waiting

Baby is snuffed by the staff

Is this murder, or just an abortion 'after the fact' ?

After all, she didn't want the baby and was going to abort it. Does the baby have any rights? Did anyone do anything wrong?

I think the answers we'll read are quite predictable, but..........you never know for sure.

If it happened exactly this way RL, and I was on the jury, I would go for guilty of murder, or at least negligent homicide on the part of the staff who "snuffed" the baby.
I imagine my position surprises you?

real life wrote:

Was it murder , or a 'post-birth abortion' ?

I would be very interested to hear what our pro-abortion members have to say.

If, as it appears, the sequence of events is:

Woman goes to abortion clinic to get an abortion

Doctor isn't there

She gives birth while waiting

Baby is snuffed by the staff

Is this murder, or just an abortion 'after the fact' ?

After all, she didn't want the baby and was going to abort it. Does the baby have any rights? Did anyone do anything wrong?

I think the answers we'll read are quite predictable, but..........you never know for sure.

If it happened exactly this way RL, and I was on the jury, I would go for guilty of murder, or at least negligent homicide on the part of the staff who "snuffed" the baby.
I imagine my position surprises you?

The True Face of Abortion Opponents
By fubar
Aug 25 2006 - 4:55pm

It will be most interesting to hear the reaction of anti-abortion groups to the FDA's decision yesterday to allow Plan-B "morning after" pills to be sold over the counter (limited to those over-18). The most often cited reason for these groups opposing anything related to abortion (clinics, pills, etc.) is that they are doing it to protect the life of a helpless child. But Plan-B contains doses of the hormone Progestin which prevents the release or fertilization of an egg. In other words it keeps a woman's reproductive system out of the reproductive lottery. Thanks to Science the whole raison d'etre of abortion groups is rendered moot.

No released eggs means no fertilization, no fetus, nothing. So this leaves these groups with three options:

Concede that science may have finally found a way to eliminate abortions, pack up their bags and go home.

Stick their fingers in their ears and go la la la la...

Admit that their objection isn't really to abortion, but to contraception -- or better yet, to people having sex.

Some of them are making a valiant attempt at a fourth option: to change the definition of an 'embryo' (i.e. what they're trying to protect) from a fertilized egg implanted in a woman's womb and undergoing cell division to a plain old fertilized egg, just floating around. The idea is that anything that gets in the way of this whole sperm + egg -> fertilization -> implantation -> cell-division process is tantamount to abortion and therefore qualifies as an object of their ire. But it's a real grasping at straws based on a single sentence in the manufacturer's fine print. Besides the FDA's decision to allow over-the-counter sales has let the cat out of the bag. Now they have to take a position that is consistent with the fact that abortion clinics may very well stop performing abortions altogether because nobody needs them any more.

That takes us back to the three options. I'm not holding my breath for #1 to happen any time soon and they can get away with #2 for only so long before they run out of air. Sooner or later they'll have to admit #3 -- that at the root of their objection is that they just hate it for unmarried people to have sex, that their blood starts boiling whenever they picture their daughter getting jiggy with the neighbor's son -- even if both of them are over eighteen.

That, of course, puts them on the same wavelength as the Taliban and the rest of the Sharia-loving crowd -- and if there's one thing that makes these people angrier than women exercising control over their own bodies, it's being compared to a bunch of Muslims.

So thanks Dr. Science, for driving a nice little wedge between these people and their nasty little judgemental causes and ripping away their thinly-veiled morality facade (oops, did I say veiled?) I don't like abortions either. Nobody does. I wish they could be avoided altogether -- and it looks like they very well may be.

Update: The far bigger impact of Plan-B and other non-abortive solutions is that they essentially render the whole Roe v. Wade debate pointless too. So what that you've got all your Supreme Court justices lined up? Go ahead and outlaw abortion. Nobody will care if they can just walk into the pharmacy and buy a couple of pills. It's like finally getting the courts to outlaw hand-crank starters on cars. Go for it. Have fun. Or not. Whatever.

Limited impact expected for morning-after pill
Experts in reproductive health said they don't expect easier access to the Plan B 'morning-after' pill to have much effect.
By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Wider but still restricted access to the morning-after pill may not have the dramatic effect on unintended pregnancy and abortion rates touted by some advocates, reproductive health experts say.

Expanded access should spur increased sales of the pills, called Plan B, but probably won't have a major public health impact, they said Friday.

''That doesn't mean zero, but it will be hard to measure because it will be so small,'' said James Trussell, director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. ``If you look at the number of acts of unprotected intercourse on one hand, and the use of Plan B on the other, it's like a cork on the ocean.''..............

ACOG and PRCH estimate that making EC widely available over-the-counter has the potential to prevent at least half of unintended pregnancies in the US (or about 2 million pregnancies annually) and half of US abortions (or nearly 500,000 abortions per year).

Increased use of emergency contraception would reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that emergency contraception prevented at least 51,000 abortions in 2000, and was responsible for nearly half of the ten percent decline in the abortion rate in the late 1990s.10 Increased availability and use of emergency contraception could reduce the number of unintended pregnancies by half, thereby reducing the number of abortions.11 In a California study, teenage mothers who had an advance supply of emergency contraceptives were one-third as likely to become pregnant during the following six months as mothers who did not have an advance supply.12

Isn't having a child you lack the wherewithal to feed and support just as "selfish"?

Regardless, your parents at least had a choice. It's really up to the individual to make that very personal, very agonizing decision. Thankfully, it's not up to either you or me to make it for them.

And since life is not presumed to begin at conception, only the choice of the man and woman apply.