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I might post less frequently for the next few days - I'm not queening out and leaving, but it takes a lot of time and energy to formulate responses for this thread, which I find are both in short supply right now. I daresay that the resolution to stop posting will last for less than twenty-four hours, though. I don't pretend to have much willpower when it comes to staying out of this sort of discussion, and I'm not even going to try.

I wanted to thank Athrabeth for sharing her story - it was so moving that I read it at least six times over the course of today. vison, Jewel, Wilma, Cerin, Frelga, SM, Eruname, Teremia, thank you.

Idylle - I want to clarify, again, that I never have believed that only women can have an opinion on this subject. To be 150% honest, I do think that abortion affects us more, but everyone has a right to express their view. Also, I'm fully behind the idea of personal responsibility, but I think that abortion fits into such an idea differently than Hal does. Still, if I end up in an opposite-sex LTR, I would be sure to take all contraceptive precautions, and ideally make sure that either I received a tubal or the SO received a vasectomy. Although I disagree with Hal's strict sex --> procreation idea, I think that it is quite reasonable to ask people (normatively speaking) who do not want children to take every measure available to them to avoid conceiving. [We should note, however, that based on geographic location, financial means, and more, not all women and men will have the same options available.]

As yov points out, though, there are certainly other forms of intercourse than penis --> vagina. I have pointed that out many times. Some are open to heterosexuals, and a great deal more are available to non-heterosexuals. All provide a blessed respite from the difficult issues we tackle in this thread, although, of course, personal responsibility issues will continue to arise with regard to STDs.

hal - never would've imagined, while we were both posting on TORC, that we'd disagree this strongly. It still feels odd to me - I had gotten used to seeing a post of yours and thinking, "Oh, good, I don't have to bother to respond, because my thoughts exactly will already have been posted." I guess, all I have to say is, I'm sorry if this thread is affecting you badly, and I respect your conviction in this area even as I strongly disagree.

In general: When I started this thread, I was in a slightly argumentative mood, and truthfully, I didn't actually expect anything good to come of it. Not to say that I was trying to troll, but I expected that we might have a few good posts before it degenerated into abortion bickering. Instead, for the first time ever that I've seen online, at least 15-20 posters have come together, representing a spectrum of views on this subject, spanning multiple generations and races, both male and female, etc - and have begun to engage in constructive dialogue. Some people have shared personal stories, some have shared statistics, and others have shared a range of potential scenarios that should be considered. I am not sure whether anyone has had this productive a discussion on abortion elsewhere, because I've never seen it happen.

I said at one point that I did not expect my beliefs on abortion to change. That is true insofar as I expect to remain pro-choice at the time that we ultimately let this thread drop to the bottom of the page. But, I think that some of the snap answers and rhetoric that I've previously used are gone for good. I think that I will be much less likely to oversimplify these issues, and when I discuss abortion, I will be likely to think to the stories and impassioned arguments made here. When one is surrounded only by people who see eye-to-eye with oneself on this question, it is easy to oversimplify the issues. I think this thread serves to counter that trend.

I guess I'm just thanking everyone for this discussion so far, and I'm looking forward to it continuing. I hope I'm not the only one who has taken something meaningful from it.

[delurk] No, you're not. [/delurk]

*~Pips~*

Far from it. I have never seen a thread like this one, either. Though I will not be contributing, I feel enriched by the thoughtful, eloquent posts on both sides (all sides) of the issue. And I deeply appreciate the civility.

All I have the energy to say right now is "me, too". Take that as you will. I'm too busy at this time dealing with real life and death. What do you do if your deeply depressed son wants to die, and has already tried "unsuccessfully", twice? How many of his rights do you violate to keep him from "succeding"?

EDIT: Sorry, I'm not trying to derail this thread.

That's awful laureanna. Warmest hugs in this tough time for you.

laureanna wrote:

All I have the energy to say right now is "me, too". Take that as you will. I'm too busy at this time dealing with real life and death. What do you do if your deeply depressed son wants to die, and has already tried "unsuccessfully", twice? How many of his rights do you violate to keep him from "succeding"?

Who can answer such a question except by saying, fight for his life.
Sending strong and loving thoughts your way, laureanna.

laureanna,

Laureanna, I'm thinking of you and your family. I so hope your son finds the strength to hang in there -- how hard this must be for you!

laureanna:

Oh laureanna, as parents we have to fight so many different battles, for so many different reasons. And often our children seem to believe we are fighting against them, not for them. It can be so very hard sometimes to keep finding the strength to go on. I very much hope that you will be able to find that strength, for both yourself and your son. All my best wishes go out to you tonight.

And many, many thanks to those who have offered me their kindest and warmest thoughts in this thread. Although I wrote my way through the loss of my daughter in a journal of sorts, I have never shared those difficult words with anyone, not even my husband, who shared and still shares my sorrow, and understands the loss better than anyone. This place, and more precisely, the people who gather in this place, continue to be a wonder to me. Thank-you.

My dear Anth, you touch me in so many ways. There are simply no words to fully explain how I felt when I read about your brother, but I felt closer to you today than ever before.

laureanna, . Your son and you are both in my prayers.

Like Frelga, I stay out of this thread, because I fear I might not be civil, but there are a few posts to which I cannot restrain reaction.

Lhaewin... for your words about the desire not to be born - I wish my mother had avorted me... I know this feeling. I wish at least, my mother would have had the choice, so that I could have grown up with the illusion of being somehow wanted.

Athrabeth... my son had a meningitis on his fifth day of life... all ended well, but I remember the bleak nights and the moments of fear and the baby with all the strings entering his tiny body, and the fear... What courage have you shown!

vison - this world you're talking about, it's not far away for me, who could be your daughter easily. I never want it back either. And I would not have wanted to live in this world.

Hal - I disagree about everything you say. I don't want another child, so I use birth-control -what would I do if I fell into those famous 1% - well, I don't know. But I know if I stop having sex, this would also mean very quickly the end of my marriage. Besides the fact, that I cannot imagine life without having sex, I think this is an excellent reason. Many of the arguments you use are biased: the countries which have low abortion rates and low rates of teenage pregnancies, are those who teach young women birth control and not abstinency and who send them to school, counries, where there are in high positions of society, countries, in which the moral is not based on religion. Sorry - but for me that's the only solution, especially in the long run.

Laureanna... ... I have no words for you.

I'll go back into lurkdom, not because I don't read or think about this thread, but because it makes me reach a level of agressivity that I don't want to put in my posts.

Quote:

Then forget about them when they are left pregnant totally on their own and you ignore them after telling them what the Right thing to do is. There has to be follow through, you can't just say have the baby and forget about them. It seems to me that not helping the poor is contradictory to saving an unborn child. I know it's considered a leap by some but it there

Hal, your key point seems to be that making abortion illegal and hard to obtain would force people to be more responsible. However, people are sometimes irresponsible, particularly when they are young. As Vison pointed out, even in the straightlaced 1950s there were plenty of irresponsible men who left their families and women really suffered. I'm not sure that making abortion illegal will drastically cut down on unwanted pregnancies. People here in the U.S. have known about AIDS, they know how to prevent its transmission. It is a direct threat to ones OWN life, yet still they are irresponsible about protection and people continue to contract AIDS.

Every time women or men use birth control they make a decision about not allowing a potential life to be born. Every cell in your body has the potential to act as the springboard for a new life since it has a complete complement of DNA. The only thing that prevents a finger cell from becoming a brand new baby is multiple repressor proteins turning off most of the DNA. Yet scientists are learning how to turn off that repression and allow this cell to revert to a more primitive, less differentiate state and allow a new being to grow. Your definition of "life" doesn't seem to take these biological realities into account. We the living make decisions about life and potential life. It seems like you dismiss egg and sperm, specialized cells whose only purpose is to spark new life, too easily. The Catholic church recognizes the "specialness" of these cells when they forbid birth control.

I have borne one child and I'm pregnant with my second. Hell yes, it is especially discomfiting and disquieting to realize that I aborted an embryo now that I have living proof of what happens to these embryos when given a chance to live.

But I believe that my choice when I was 20, pregnancy as a result of 2 weeks of irresponsibility (not getting my pill prescription on time, I didn't have credit and I was a college student with no money, and I had to pay $20 a month for my pills), was the responsible one. Now that I have a child, I realize the incredible responsibility and financial obligation. Could I have been able to do that at 20? I was still dependent on my parents for money, and did not even have my college degree yet. As Wilma points out, society does not rush out to offer single moms with little education high paying jobs that allow them to support their families. Because I was childless, I was able to finish my degree, focus on job experience, return to law school. Now I earn enough money to comfortably support my children. And it is me supporting my child and my child to be--my husband has been employed 7 months of the last 3 and a half years. He's a devoted father and good husband, but can't support us financially. All women need to be prepared for that eventuality in today's world.

Laureanna--please take care of your son and yourself.

Athrabeth, you are a treasure.



laureanna... I can't even type the hug emoticon here, because it seems so much less than I want to give you... I want to give you a real hug, I want to stand there with you, I want to let you know in every way I can that I am awed by your strength and am inspired by you! Unfortunately, Alaska and Phoenix are not close, so all I can offer is my words... and my sympathy for your struggle. Your son is lucky to have you as his mom!



tolkienpurist, I apologize for derailing your thread yet again. It really has been an interesting read!

~Anth

halplm wrote:

Either you think the unborn child is alive and should be allowed a chance at life, or you think it is tissue the mother should have the choice to get rid of.

It isn't that simple. Probably each person would define the issue a bit differently.

Obviously the gestational-age human being is alive (though not able to live apart from the mother). It is a question of how one qualitatively assesses that life.

It is one thing to think a gestational-stage human being should 'be allowed a chance at life'; it is another thing to believe our laws should guarantee a gestational-stage human being a chance at life over the wishes of the woman whose body it will be living inside of for nine months with permanently life-altering and possibly life-threatening consequences to that woman.

That scenario creates a direct and irreconcilable conflict between the rights of women to self-determination and personal sovereignty regarding their own bodies, and the rights of gestational-stage humanity. It would mean the rights guaranteed under the Constitution would apply to men and embryos/fetuses, but not to women (a seemingly convoluted construct to many, except perhaps to those who regard women primarily as incubators, and secondarily as persons).

The only difference between my view on abortion, halplm, and yours, is that I don't see how I can expect that people who do not share my beliefs, be required to live their lives as though they did.

IdylleSeethes wrote:

We should be able to agree on how to keep the question from arising so often.

I don't know. That seems pretty optimistic to me. I think a huge part of the problem is the popular culture, which bombards young people with pornographic images and sets up the casual sex model as the norm, and pinnacle of self-actualization. But how many people would agree with me, I wonder?


Oh, Laureanna. I wish I had some wisdom to impart.

I want to thank everyone for their contributions to this thread. Although it's impossible to respond to everyone's comments, they are all appreciated.

Quote:

I think a huge part of the problem is the popular culture, which bombards young people with pornographic images and sets up the casual sex model as the norm, and pinnacle of self-actualization. But how many people would agree with me, I wonder?

Courtesy of horny young men, horny young women have been getting pregnant before they were ready/out of wedlock/before a hastily arranged wedding as long as concepts like marriage have existed. It just wasn't talked about during the period that, for some reason, people choose to use as a reference: the post-war era. Heck, both my wife and myself were born five months after our parents got married, in the early 60's...

As far as pop culture goes, getting laid has been the heart of it since at least the Middle Ages.

Long before that, surely, Axordil. On a complete tangent, a book I read mentioned that it was a common practice in Middle Ages for priests to perform marriages with the bride's pre-wedlock child (a child, not a pregnant belly) concealed under her skirts. After the ceremony, the child would come out, symbolically born to his just-married parents.

But yes, the popular culture today takes the concept way overboard, IMO.

Sex before marriage, and even children before marriage have been acceptable in many eras and places of our history.

But women have usually been powerless in reproductive matters, under Church law a woman was required to submit to the demands, both sexual and other, of her husband. That being so, abortion was always a sort of sidebar to the lives of women. Abortions have always been more or less common, and always dangerous.

In our modern culture, abortion is no longer so dangerous. Death from abortion is no longer so certain to punish the evil woman who essays it.

13 years or 14 years seem very young to us, but in fact they are the common ages for marriage, and for childbearing, for most of our history. Women of that age have routinely borne children. It's just that we don't like it now. We have other ideas about what 13 and 14 year-old women should be doing.

To require that a woman bear her child as punishment for her sexuality solves nothing, and betrays a deepseated contempt for women. What is being punished is her daring to have a sex life at all, even if it was forced upon her. All the blathering about the "rights" of the unborn rings very hollow when the truth is that IF a woman has a child alone, she's ON HER OWN, with the precious baby that so many people weep and moan over, then ignore.

No doubt there are people who will disagree with me. Indeed, I disagree with myself much of the time. Nothing is that simple.

It is also very true that American pop culture is pervasive, and powerful. The images projected on TV screens are of rampant and thoughtless sexuality: exactly the sort of fantasy that teenage boys (and maybe some older boys) like. And also for teenage girls. Kids that age aren't very good at seeing consequences, their brains are not yet wired for it. They are prey to their hormones more than they ever will be again.

So, do we censor their music, their movies?

The other truth is that many parents have abdicated childrearing to TV and schools and "the peer group". Many parents are afraid of their teenage kids, resent them, don't want to be involved with them. This cuts across all social levels: kids are given STUFF when what they need is a parent.

And even good, well-brought up kids have sex with each other. Always have, always will. Better to face reality than attempt to return to some mythical Arcadia where all girls were virgins until their wedding night.

My dear Ninnie it seems uncanny that your thoughts seem, again, a reflection of my own. I find it very difficult to remain calm and objective on such topics.

Vison, I admire you - your strong mind, your forthrightness, your commonsense, your capacity to find the core, your compassion, the woman that you are - beyond anyone I've known, I think. Truly. I would like very much to meet you. You speak for me. So often your words manage to put shape to my thoughts and instincts which I seem to lack the capacity to shape. Or perhaps I simply give up too easily and don't engage adequately with the world.

Cerin wrote:

... I think a huge part of the problem is the popular culture, which bombards young people with pornographic images and sets up the casual sex model as the norm, and pinnacle of self-actualization. But how many people would agree with me, I wonder?

While I agree that popular culture in western societies has defined the sexual self as the most important one, I can't agree that this is a significant factor in the abortion issue.

As others have said - and you also have done so - sex outside marriage and all that follows goes back forever and I won't iterate on that.

I would say - look outside western societies. Look at Pakistan, look at the more repressive moslem countries, look at Africa. The problem there is not the aggrandizement of sexual identity, but the status of women and their lack of power.

Unwanted pregnancy in so many instances is a direct consequence of women lacking control over their own bodies and their own destinies, in combination with ignorance of and lack of acess to alternatives, not simply irresponsibility.

I don't deny that there are some women (mostly the very young) who abort without real thought to what they are doing, but I would say this callousness or thoughtlessness is also borne of ignorance - and fear, fear of how society will judge them as young mothers, fear of what their parents, friends, community, husbands/partners will say, fear of how they can possibly cope physically, emotionally, psychically, financially. This is SOCIETY's failure and yet it is the women who must pay for that failure.

I had typed up here a huge ream of passionate argumentation but I deleted it; there's no point. It's all been said before, by others here and in so many other debates I've been involved in on this issue.

Abortion is a necessary evil; a last resort when all else has failed a woman - society mostly.

Excellent post, Impenitent.

And thank you for the compliment.

You do very well yourself.