How is this relevant when Gallup surveys along with the poll from cbs are anonymous? A person doesn't have to provide their names, and answering the surveys is voluntary - your position that women are not being truthful on it is, once again, another dubious statement with which you have provided no backing. I have not and am not arguing that men and women will have different standards in how they view abortion - this is a straw man that you keep bringing up. What I'm saying is the conclusion you come to is baseless and doesn't hold up when evidence to the contrary is presented. As I've stated, it's one thing to state something as opinion, but quite another to pass things off as fact simply because it 'makes sense' to you.
I have never believed you can legislate morality. However, to have government sanctioned abortion clinics technically means the majority of people in the USA condone recreational abortion. The argument that if it is illegal then people would do it anyway is illogical. Stealing is illegal, and people do it anyway. Should we therefore make it legal? The worst thing is, the majority of people do not believe in casual abortions. The court has decided it is legal, and the people have no say in the matter. I wish people could see that wearing their pants halfway down their butts looks idiotic. It symbolizes sheep following a leader. Whatever the leader does, the sheep follow without thought. But I am not going to sponsor a law stating that anyone exposing their boxers be arrested and thrown in the dungeon. In the same way, our government and judicial system has told people it's okay to go get an abortion, and so over 48,000,000 people have in the last 33 years since Roe V. Wade in the USA alone.
Yeah, I know. I was just saying that I feel that you shouldn't have the option to abort an incest child.
Condone? No, not really. Sometimes things are legal and regulated only because the alternative is worse. Illegal abortion clinics used to operate with very high death rates, and the USA gave up on alcohol Prohibition only because we couldn't make it work. It was funding an explosion of organized crime. I doubt that as many as 50% of us think that smoking cigarettes is a good idea, but we know we could never get rid of them now. Let me tell you something that you need to know about American polls and surveys. In my career, I've had to deal with many business-related surveys on a variety of topics. The first thing I learned is that Americans love to lie. A lot. Especially about anything having to do with sex. The people who design surveys like to believe their own stuff, so they get fooled into publishing a lot of worthless information, which can lead businesses into wasting a lot of money. For example, I remember one famous anonymous survey that included a question about lifetime total number of heterosexual sex partners. The women's average was somewhere in the upper single digits, and the men were about 50% higher. Think about this for a second. Every time that a straight man has sex with a new straight female partner, a straight woman does too. That 50% difference can't possibly be anywhere close to right! Where were the men finding all these extra women? On spaceships from other planets? I always laugh especially loud at surveys on the sex lives of young teenage boys. I remember middle school. All those guys wanted to act like they were the hottest studs to ever hit town. You couldn't believe a word they said about their conquests. I don't think they have changed their dishonest ways. What can we learn from this? To lower our expectations about what we can learn from opinion polls pertaining to sexual topics. The margin of error is large. And common sense should tell you when a study has completely missed the target. If a number seems unreasonable, it is probably wrong. It is smart to be skeptical of data that you can't personally verify.
I didn't read most of this thread but I noticed it said that only males are outspoken on abortion. I don't think that's true. I know there is a heaping number of women who don't favor abortion many of whom had an abortion themselves; there was this superbowl commercial of a mother of a football player where the woman basically asks the question what would have happened if she decided to abort her now famous football player and that she was glad she choose to keep. A family member has had an abortion at late teens. Whenever this subject comes up in conversation at family gatherings you could see that she tries to find reasons why it's ok but quickly gives it up then feels guilty for rest of the day... I just say that to point out that women can have these strong feelings towards abortion and not just men. Actually, it seems that those that had one are more outspoken against it because they know how it feels after. In my experience it's those that never had this experience are most in favor of abortion. It just doesn't seem natural but I don't favor legislating morality.
I'm pro-choice. Obviously to a point. Like many important things (light is somewhere between a wave and a particle, as we currently understand it-neither camp was totally right) there's a complicated mix. I'm quite certain first trimester abortions should be legal, and the point should be somewhere between the start and finish of the second trimester. Third, however, should obviously be banned except for medical, life threatening reasons. 6 months is plenty of time for that choice. Basically if the child could be born at that point or shortly before it, and survive without serious deformities or other problems, it should be illegal. Before that, it's not the right of a child, as I view it something must have consciousness in a manner akin to higher life forms to have "rights", and there is nothing remotely close to that in the stages that I think are acceptable to have an abortion during. And of course, it should not be a regular thing, "birth control", what have you. But that should not be legislated. Time should be the only legal limit.
Religion also plays a role. It's this sort of doublethink: even though lying is a sin, and sex is a sin, if you convince yourself you didn't really have so much sex, you're neither guilty of the sex OR lying about the sex. If you say you'd never have an abortion, you'd just worry about convincing yourself of that when you needed an abortion, not when you checked the "never' box on the scan-tron. Even if you know you're lying, it's somehow virtuous to make it look like bad people like you don't exist.
Oh, I see, I was thinking more in the case of incest where it was forced incest, which would probably fall under rape, rather than adult and consensual.
I feel bad for women who have a bunch of pro-life relatives that know she has had an abortion. You know they are forever going to pressure her to feel bad about herself. A supportive family has to make a huge difference. You seem quite interested in this subject, so I would recommend that you check out the business section of your local bookstore. There have been many entire books published on the subject of surveys and opinion polls, and the many complicated social and psychological factors that tend to ruin their accuracy. If you ever find a way to solve this problem, you could make a lot of money. And then there will always be the issue of how to make use of the information after you collect it. After all, statistical studies are only tools. When used perfectly every time, the accepted failure rate for condoms (in terms of birth control) is 2% per year. So it is mathematically possible to get all the way to menopause without a failure. Congrats on your self-discipline! Teenagers experience annual failure rates of up to 15% because they do such a terrible job of following the directions. (The numbers are worse for STD prevention.) For the most fanatical hard-core pro-lifers, who think every conception is to be treasured, I wonder if they spend much time feeling sad about the huge number of miscarriages each year, which is many times greater than the abortion totals. My gynecologist told me that it is widely believed in the medical world that less than 50% of all fertilized eggs are around for as long as a month, but they can't get exact numbers because so many of the women never knew they were pregnant. And there is no evidence left behind. If you believe that every miscarriage is a soul that will go to heaven, you could be in for a big shock in the afterlife! Imagine a small group of smiling strangers running up to you at the Pearly Gates, shouting "Daddy!" "Hello! Who are you?" One woman steps forward. "I'm your oldest daughter. I was only 18 cells when Mom lost me. I was a tiny smudge on her underwear. I came off in the washing machine and went down the drain. My body ended up at the sewer plant. I've been waiting here for 52 years, waiting for you or Mom to get up here and give me a name. What do you want my name to be?"
That may be true, but you seem to think I'm promoting polls as statements of incontrovertible fact, when in reality my entire point has been your making certain statements as fact when their validity is far from certain. Even still, a single poll is certainly suspect - but when different polls from various organizations show a trend is something else entirely - something worthy of consideration.
That is a very good story, amusing. Quite the imagination you have. I believe the soul dna is contained in the egg and sperm, the same as our body and mind. When the egg and sperm unite, the soul begins to form with the body. I am not going to commit myself to say at what point the soul would be big enough to go to the afterlife if the body dies. That is a question for people with much more boring lives than mine. I would have to say though that at the 8th week the body is pretty much a perfect image of a little person and I have to belive if the body dies at this point the soul would go to the afterlife. So yes, I believe there are 48 million souls in heaven from the aborted babies in the US alone who will be united with their parents when they die, if the parents go to heaven. I was thinking about this last night in my La-Z-Boy recliner while watching "Sanctuary". There is only one logical conclusion to the assumptions Darwin makes in "The Origin of the Species." The logical conclusion of life happening to be here by some major accident is that life has no value. It has no purpose, therefore how can it have value? If you claim that life has value, then you would have to agree that the life of animals has the same value as the life of people. You would have to be a vegetarian in order to hold true to your beliefs. Animals and people are both here by accident, they are both alive and reasoning. If you say animals don't reason, I will write you a book about my German Short Haired Pointer dog. So of course, with that belief system, abortion would not be any sort of problem. Neither would murder, or theft, or rape, or even more devious things the human mind is capable of. As a matter of fact, the more people believe and are indoctrinated with the concept of Evolution as an explanation of the human race, the more crime would increase.
Don't you wish there was a way we could know for sure? Don't forget the microscopic miscarriages. I hope your kids will like their new siblings. We have the power to assign value to anything, while we are alive. Don't forget, there is the whole system of Eastern religion and philosophy to consider, which neither affirms nor contradicts Western thought. You are using the word 'purpose' in the Western sense. We have animal cruelty laws, because we have used accumulated centuries of human reasoning and wisdom to determine that their lives should have some value. It is a compromise, at best. You can't walk outdoors without stepping on ants, and you can't let termites eat your house. (Henry David Thoreau wrote extensively about this.) I strongly believe that livestock should be treated humanely. Intelligent hedonists should be able to see that all actions have consequences, and living in chaos is not good for anybody. The Golden Rule (karma, in Eastern thought) is good because it works. I don't want to live in a world where everybody does whatever crosses their minds, so I'm in favor of law and order, for pragmatic reasons. I don't need for a supernatural god to say that it should be that way. I can figure it out for myself. You can too.
i don't understand what the whole problem with this issue is. or how it even has become an issue. the western world has long acknowledged the right to terminate unwanted pregnancy. there are many reasons why a person/couple would do that, including having no money to raise a child. all legitimate reasons. it's not your life, not your say, is my opinion. you can argue against your fiancée wanting to terminate her pregnancy if you are ever in that situation and want the baby, but if it doesn't directly involve you it's none of your damn business. all these people here going how unnatural it is, and how abortion deprives the world of the great saviors and what not, what a bunch of hypocritical crap. so overpopulation, teen pregnancy, etc are all better alternatives? you don't have the right to say what other people do with their lives. period. get that through your thick skull already.
completely laughable. this isn't even a resemblance of an argument. the aborted baby could also be the next Hitler, or a person who pulls the nuclear trigger on this whole planet. point is, you have no way of knowing what kind of a person they would be. and we are not a nazi regime that decides what kind of characteristics should be let to live and which should be terminated.
Wasn't really an argument. Just a thought. It's obviously no reason to outlaw abortion. It's just why I personally wouldn't want to. And yes, the person could also be the next hitler. Other than that, I didn't see any real good points in either of your posts, and some of it was just hypocritical; for instance, where does your professed personal choice come in for the actual person in question? Abortion is unnatural, the Earth is not actually overpopulated, just vastly overwasteful, and teens getting pregnant is only a problem because our way of life is already incredibly unnatural. Teen pregnancy is supposed to be the norm. Our bodies aren't just somehow wrong. People are.
Huh. Please explain what exactly was hypocritical in my posts. A very good point that i made, but one you obviously don’t get, was that we have no right to tell how other people should live their lives. If you don’t want to get an abortion then don’t, that is your right. What is not your right, is to tell other people that they can not. Just like other people don’t have the right to bust into your life and tell you that you have to have an abortion, just the same you don’t have the right to tell other people that they have to have the baby. That’s a lesson in hypocrisy, by the way. Also, you preach this whole ’unnatural’ agenda. I assume you’re a chick so hair dyes, nail polish, makeup...you don’t use any of that? Medical treatment and surgeries are also unnatural by the way. We should just let everybody die and provide no help, cause hey they should have been informed enough not to get sick in the first place and it’s the natural way to go. what a load of crap. And go venture out beyond the strip malls into the real world for a while and then come back saying the world is not overpopulated. Why do you think China has population control and fines unauthorized births? Just for fun of it? Just because it isn't happening in your village yet doesn't make it any less true for where it is happening. and it will eventually even reach your village by the way this world is going. and since you think teens getting pregnant is not a problem at all, I rest my case.
Just because I am dopey. When i look at life at large on this planet I see an organization that relies on the giving of life, one to another. A fish lays a thousand eggs and of those thousand maybe ten survive to reproduce. The ones that do not survive perish at various stages of development. Sometimes the parent fish eats its own eggs for various reasons, environmental stress, not the least among them. However, not one of those that perished did so in vain. Each one contributed wholly and completely to the fabric of the phenomena of life. We do the best we can.
You're doing it wrong. Nothing is unnatural. Humans are a part of nature, and so nothing we do can be unnatural. Some things, like A-bombs, may be unwise, but abortions are NOT unnatural. This applies even if you're christian. God made it, and made it possible.
