If you're pro-life, how far do you take that?

[Minimalist]

And when you run the medical professionals out of the business all you will succeed in doing is putting the coat hangar back in the mother's hands.  I guess you are okay with that?

[LadyForCamus]

@CL, I totes saw you kudos, then unkudos my post! Don’t mess with my fragil ego like that! 😛

Jk, you know I love you. Glad you’re finding some spare time to be with us again. ❤️

[Catholic_Lady]

No, obviously we don't want that either, Min. Which is why I said the goal of all this is to build a culture of life. That requires more than just banning abortion.

We need better care and support for women who find themselves in difficult pregnancies. Both during their pregnancy and after - whether they choose to keep the baby or turn them over to adoptive families, they should have financial help, medical care, and support every step of the way.

I suspect if these women dont feel so alone and dont feel like their pregnancy is an impossible situation, and if they think of their unborn babies as true human beings, the urge to abort them would greatly decrease.

It would be a process, but one worth striving for, and that should be the goal.

---

@CL, I totes saw you kudos, then unkudos my post! Don’t mess with my fragil ego like that! 😛

Jk, you know I love you. Glad you’re finding some spare time to be with us again. ❤️

Sorry... it's an extremely sensitive and personal issue for me and my family. I shouldn't be on this thread, but couldn't help it.

I appreciate that it gives you pause, which is why I kudos it.. but I guess felt discouraged when I saw another post after that. Please dont take it personally. ❤

[Angrboda]

The legalization of abortion also led to changes in when women sought abortions: In 1970, nearly one in four abortions were performed at 13 weeks' gestation or later, compared with one in 10 a decade later (Table 1). In addition, more than half of women obtaining abortions after 1980 did so at eight weeks' gestation or earlier. Obtaining abortions earlier in the pregnancy makes the procedure safer, because earlier abortion is associated with a reduced risk of complications. As medically induced abortions become more common, abortions are likely to be performed at even earlier gestational ages.

The Public Health Impact of Legal Abortion: 30 Years Later

[LadyForCamus]

No, obviously we don't want that either, Min. Which is why I said the goal of all this is to build a culture of life. That requires more than just banning abortion.

We need better care and support for women who find themselves in difficult pregnancies. Both during their pregnancy and after - whether they choose to keep the baby or turn them over to adoptive families, they should have financial help, medical care, and support every step of the way.

I suspect if these women dont feel so alone and dont feel like their pregnancy is an impossible situation, and if they think of their unborn babies as true human beings, the urge to abort them would greatly decrease.

It would be a process, but one worth striving for, and that should be the goal.

---

@CL, I totes saw you kudos, then unkudos my post!  Don’t mess with my fragil ego like that! 😛

Jk, you know I love you.  Glad you’re finding some spare time to be with us again. ❤️

Sorry... it's an extremely sensitive and personal issue for me and my family. I shouldn't be on this thread, but couldn't help it.

I appreciate that it gives you pause, which is why I kudos it.. but I guess felt discouraged when I saw another post after that. Please dont take it personally. ❤

Not at all, dear.  Just wanted to put a smile on your face.  I know I definitely have a different perspective on the subject after having kids.  Whether that’s right or wrong...I just don’t know.

[robvalue]

Depends.

If abortion became illegal tomorrow, the first step to enforcing it would be to very mildly prosecute the doctor who killed the unborn baby. Maybe pay a fine, or get his license to practice revoked for a time, etc.

Why such a "small" penalty for killing a human being? Because unfortunately we, as a society, are not at the stage yet where we fully see unborn humans as actual humans, deserving of the right to life just like all other humans. Making abortion illegal is a first step, but isn't, in and of itself, going to change people's hearts. Coming to that change of heart, that understanding and acceptance, takes time. It is a process towards building a culture of life and towards seeing ALL humans as having the inherent right to live, regardless of religion, race, sex, orientation, or age.

A doctor who performs an abortion isn't necessarily a bad person, because he probably hasn't reached the stage yet where he views an unborn human as the human being that he/she truly is. Therefore his culpability is greatly lessened, and so too, must his punishment.

In the future though, once it is fully understood and fully accepted that unborn humans are humans who deserve the right to life just like all other humans, the penalty should increase proportionally to that understanding.. as at that point it would take a truly evil person to kill an unborn baby, no differently from how it takes a truly evil person to kill a baby who was just born.

But right now, we are not at that point yet, and there are plenty of well meaning people doing abortions.

(With that being said, the mother herself should never be prosecuted. Only the abortionist. Again, due to a matter of culpability and taking into account the vulnerable and desperate position a woman is in when she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. In that sense, she is also a victim.)

Thanks for your answer

This leads to the question of pragmatism versus idealism. Let's assume for the sake of argument that implementing a system of punishing doctors wouldn't reduce the number of abortions that actually happen, but would instead cause more dangerous backstreet/self administered abortions. Would you still go ahead following the ideal, even though the outcome would be worse?

[Minimalist]

No, obviously we don't want that either, Min.

I'm afraid that what you want is for people to do what you tell them to because.......

Why do you care so much whether someone you don't know elects to have or not have a kid?

[pocaracas]

I consider myself pro-life.
However, I consider people who oppose abortions as anti-life.
Statistically, it is known that, under a legal framework that prohibits the practice of abortion, women will seek the clandestine path and a non-negligible number of them will suffer consequences from that. And the number of women seeking it is equivalent to the number of women seeking a legitimate abortion.
We're not just talking about the life of the fetuses, but of some women and their ability to produce more fetuses afterwards.

Of course, sexual literacy also helps in preventing the number of unwanted pregnancies... but it doesn't eliminate them completely. And usually, only when society is permissive about abortion, does it care about educating the people in this way.

Given that, the pro-life approach, being the one that minimizes loss of life, is the one that allows women the option of aborting.


I saw some of you go on about allowing abortions until viability... Personally, I'd be more comfortable with allowing them until the central nervous system is formed, at around the 10th~12th week. After that, it gets iffy.
Up until that stage, there's more than enough time for the grand majority of unwanted pregnancies to be identified and safely terminated.

[Little lunch]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels uncomfortable about abortions but does not condemn them either.
I predict that once the robots take over and a universal wage comes in, abortion rates will drop dramatically.

[Brian37]

My former girlfriend being an atheist was strongly pro-life. She was an obstetrician.

Not impossible for an atheist to be as stupid as a theist. It still remains it is nobody's business except the female considering it.