This debate will be on abortion. Is it right, or wrong? Good, or bad? Immoral, or Moral?

All Sal's rules apply, please keep this debate civil.

~John

I think abortion is the coward's way out. If you do something, live with the consequences.

Since I place little value on Human life, I support abortion.

And if you're raped?

Blanket statements don't work with abortion, imo. I feel like there's some times where abortion is appropriate, there are others where I think abortion is selfish.

Two partners in consent sex have a 3% of pregnancy.

Rape/incest account to 1% of total abortions.

I support abortion but I don't recommend it. A woman should make sure there is no other possibility and should make sure she definitely does not want the baby before going through with it.

To me, if your opinion on abortion can fit on a bumper sticker, you haven't thought about it enough. (eg, either pro life or pro choice)

I believe there are times when abortion is appropriate and others when it is just unnecessary. Rape would be appropriate in my opinion.

I also don't consider a fetus a human until it's born =\. It is physically a part of the mother, so regardless of anyone's opinion, it's up to the mother. :|

This. I feel that it's best that abortion stays legal, but I definitely do not think it's moral.

You see, consider this. Let's say abortion is illegal. The kid is born, and his parents don't want him. A kid's gonna grow up an orphan, or if not, the kid's most likely gonna end up in a terrible childhood with parents who don't want him. I think I'm confusing a few people, but... it won't turn out well. And don't forget that many people will illegally abort children, and that's pretty dangerous too...

Yeah, well. I don't support abortion and think that if you get pregnant, you should do your best to take care of what's inside you, and continue to do that after it's born. But this is not something that should be under the law. It's the woman's choice, and she can do that, even if it's the wrong choice.

I'm on the center of a very wobbly see-saw when it comes to the topic of abortion, or in a more optimistic tone "a neutral stance", I always have been, which is why you'll probably find the following a jumbled mess of contradicting ethics.

As i value the freedom of choice, personal values, and own personal well being (being the pro-abortion aspects of my coagulated ethics of an outlook) I also respect common morals, the spirit in all beings (if you as a person have room in your mind to believe in such things as i do), the life force of all forms, and the simple humane decency that all human life deserves a chance at existence (being the pro-choice side).

In a more simple and honest approach I don't see it as either right or wrong, nor good or evil, simply as a choice, and like all choices in life you pick either one or the other that results in a following consequence, a consequence, either good or bad that you must live with till the end of your days and beyond. Life looks so much more less gloomy when you look at things that way, just as a side note.

I've never been pregnant, ive never been pregnant with a child I didn't want. So i dont doubt that my opinions would change if i was actually facing the circumstances.

I think there should be a choice. And for all the reasons I can think of none of them come close to a decent reason for ending a life should such a reason exist.

A child should be loved and cared for and supported, physically, emotionally and financially. If a mother dosen't feel she is ready to provide these things isnt it fairer to abort before it becomes a sentient being? (and theres another debate about that).

And for all those who say put the child up for adoption... The mother would still have to go through 9 months of pregnancy, she might not be able to do her job or earn money for those 9 months. (again not really a valid reason for ending a life...)

And if abortion in the early stages is so bad, then surely contraception is bad. Condoms, the pill, the morning after pill etc...

And what about all the sperm that dosen't make it to the egg? They are dieing too. Does this mean that men shouldn't be able to ejaculate due to the massive loss of life?

or every time a woman ovulates but the egg dosent get fertilised? Is this a loss of potential life too?

Ok so i took it a bit too far

Abortion= the womans choice, the baby isnt born yet, it cant even move on its own.

I support abortion because I believe that women should not be forced to have a child. Accidents happen and having a child can destroy the parents' lives. In addition, there is always the possibility of becoming pregnant as a consequence of being raped and forcing them to have the child would only cause further psychological harm to the victim. However abortion is not something I believe should be considered lightly.

And why should it be illegal?

You get pregnant from some party your friend threw. You're young. Basically, it ruins the parents, they haven't finished their education, preventing them from getting a good job. The child grows up in a ghetto. They live poor, eating what they can, the child grows up stealing, being selfish.

And I don't freaking care about you guys who says that the poorer are the selfless. No! They have the same chance of being evil as the rich. In fact they are more likely to commit crime because of their state of life.

The child grew up to be a criminal, spending his life in jail. What a waste. Say that he murdered a few people here and there. People lost there loved ones because of one little child that could have been prevented.

Abortion should be legal. Moral, that is to the woman.

My mom works on a school for handicapped kids. Most of these kids will always have the mental capacity of a 5 or 6 year old for the rest of their -short- life.
Most of them go through a lot of emotional and physical pain every day, and so do the parents.
The parents have to try to give their child an as valuable life as possible for the rest of their life.

You could say that even these kids deserve a chance, a life.
But do they also deserve to go through so much pain for the rest of their life, because some stupid government decides that it's 'immoral'? Those people will never have to go through any of that.

Abortion could've prevented all the pain and sorrow. Mental disabilities can be detected very soon before childbirth.

You can't generalize such things. Not because some irresponsible mother is so selfish and can't bother to take care of her child, you should make it illegal all the way.

This, along with other previous points stated makes a good argument, I believe. If you call yourself 'pro-life', then be it. Go for letting kids have a valuable life. Because what this is, is not a life.

Abortion is only acceptable if one of these conditions are met:

The mother was raped/some other crazy incident that was not her choice.
The baby/mother will have physical/severe mental health problems (I don't want a baby does not qualify as a severe mental health issue).

If you go out and have drunk sex, it's your own fault. You fully understand the consequences (or should), so deal with it.

Aren't you concerned about giving control of women's bodies to the state?

And you seem to be imagining that abortion was invented in 1973, when in actual fact it has always existed, only previously more dangerously. Just banning abortion won't stop people from having them, nothing will, it just means that more women and girls will die in back alleys.

Why is it that when ever I think "hmm, we haven't had an abortion topic in a while," it comes back.

My stance is that it should be kept legal. I don't like abortion, but I just don't think the government should control what women do to their bodies. I also only support early pregnancy abortions as well. Once the fetus had a working brain than forget it.

Do to recent experiences and ability to understand this better my views on abortion have changed from the last thread.

I believe abortion is okay up to a certain extent and circumstances.


A certain period of time before the child is developed and should be okay for victims of rape and people who are genuinely using contraception.

Although I do not support abortions of fetuses in advanced stages.

Actually John, everyone who has discussed this topic before on this forum already knows your point of view.

Fascinating - you're all against trying to affect change on people who abduct women in other countries, but you're all for trying to enforce your sense of morality upon women in your own country.

Says a lot, doesn't it?

Why is it you think women have late-term abortions?

I think if you make the choice to have sex and you don't want a child, you should live up to the consequences and shouldn't be doing it in the first place. Why would whatever "creator" you believe in have given us this and intended for us to use it for nothing more than pleasure. SEX IS FOR HAVING CHILDREN PEOPLE, it always has been and always will be. However if you were raped/forced to go unprotected, I'm all for it. If you get drunk and have sex you should accept the consequences of that aswell, you shouldn't have been drunk in the first place.

Why would you assume that sex was "given" to us by this "creator"?

You make it sound as though sex between consenting individuals is something dirty or unsavoury unless it's performed under a certain set of restrictions ...

I can tell you're gonna be a 30 year old virgin.

So you'd rather have a kid go through 16 - 18 years of living with his parents that don't give a fudge about him or her, and live with the thought he or she was 'just a drunk accident' and feel unwanted?

Yeah, that's really a nice life.

Yeah, that's a great argument... IF you assume God exists, and if you assume then that everyone believes in Him, etc etc. But then, that makes it a bad argument.
So, if you get pregnant, or get your girlfriend pregnant, and you don't have the means to have a child... You should just go and have him, just because of that? Vera is right, the kid will probably have a bad childhood with parents that weren't prepared for him.
Plus, I assume you're a guy, and we guys usually stand from the easy view of things on this matter. After all, we don't get pregnant, we don't get raped, we don't give birth, we don't get hormonal complications afterwards, we don't get abandoned by our partner (it's usually we who do that).

Better than no life.

Are you sure about that? Just picture it, a crappy childhood in poverty with parents that didn't want you.

Then the kid can go commit suicide.

So let's say that 50% of kids who grow up in the slums commit suicide/stay slums/be gangsta, but the other 50% want to get out of the slums and have a good life. That's 50% more than the original 0% an abortion would have yielded.

No it isn't right but people make mistakes, big or small. This is basically for the women who are to young to have a child and would die from it. Also for other thing's, trying to keep the language down but I'm sure you can all come up with a reason why someone would do this.

Because they don't know they're pregnant. That's not an excuse for me, however, because now there are cheap pregnancy tests readily available, that can detect if your pregnant even before you miss your period.

"Let's say".

Fifty-fifty, awesome. So fifty percent of them have a crappy life with no value whatsoever.

"Then the kid can go commit suicide."

WAIT WHAT. I thought you were debating on a "pro-life" side.

Maybe i'm weird but I think alot of us just like that physical and emotional pleasure that sex gives. But I may just be the odd one and didn't get the memo.

I already stated my views, but advanced fetus abortion= bad.

Committing suicide will yield the same outcome as being aborted. The fact is that sure some people will, won't make a difference because they would have been aborted anyways, but for the percentile that could be something better and further their life, an abortion would knock that percentile out, too.

I don't agree with suicide, but someone who was going to be aborted (who then isn't aborted for one reason or another) that kills them self is like the abortion that would have happened prior.

And 50% success rate is better than 0%.

A fetus can survive on it's own after five months in the womb, yet in some states abortion up to nine months is permissable in cases of health of the mother (which is utterly false, considering an abortion at that stage is just as harmful as birth would be). Also, starting at the second of conception, a zygote has it's own DNA. It's not physically part of the mother.

That's a strawman argument, and wrong anyway. Late term abortions are carried out when the fetus is either dead or will be unable to live long after birth. If anything late term abortions are the most necessary and sympathetic, since they are for women who wanted the baby but had no choice in the matter.

A 50% success rate is much better than a 0% rate, that I agree. But the other 50% who failed - you've put them AND their parents through 18 years of crap - just to get them where they could have been if their parents aborted them.

As for the actual debate, like most people, I'm in the middle. While I think that every bit of life deserves a chance to live, I wouldn't want to put someone in a situation where their parents hate them, treat them like a pile of dog shizzle, and consider them as a "drunk accident."

I don't like abortion altogether too much but the same as my opinion on gay marriage i believe i have no right to judge them. because I have no idea how they think.

Wow. First of all, if the fetus is dead already it's a miscarriage. Second of all that wasn't even my point, and any amount of common sense could infer that. Why would anyone be against removing a dead baby from the mother's womb? Is that even an argument? I was talking about fetus who are still alive and healthy. Also, why did you even ask me that question if you were just going to dispute my answer?

Then again, it's the parent's choice (not a good one) to be an ass to their kid. The parents should be mature enough to not take their anger out on their children based on their mistake.

That doesn't mean that they don't.

I'm talking about the kid, though. A kid having parents like that, parents who take out their own anger on an innocent kid, must make the kid's life stink miserably. I would NEVER want to put a kid through that. Now this goes back to the matter of abortion, and like I said earlier, I'm for every bit of life getting a chance to live. But if that bit of life gets a life like this... This is why I'm never really one-sided on abortion. I'm always in the middle.

So the kid's should suffer for their parent's mistakes?

If anything, killing the parents being like that would make more sense, they're the ones guilty.

The kid shouldn't suffer from their parent's mistake, I never said that. That's why in the first place I was talking about the amount of crap that the kid would go through if they lived a life like that. As I said earlier, I would NEVER want to put a child through crap like this or even see a child go through it.

And kill the parent for what? Neglecting the child? Not having an abortion when they had the chance (not saying that I'm pro-choice)? Don't kill the parent for that. And even so, the legal system wouldn't allow it. They'd only send them to jail.

So if instead of killing the parents, taking them away is better, right? Why not just put the kid up for adoption then?

That's the best solution. But does everyone do that? No. Why do you think you see people charged with child neglect?

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174508
http://slate.msn.com/id/33569/entry/33571/
http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Pap...teGoetz2006.pdf (PDF)

Abortion lowers crime rate. No man, no problem.

IF it were only that easy.

No it's not a miscarriage, that's only in the early stages. If it's very late term it needs a medical procedure to be removed. Do you have a problem with aborting fetuses that wouldn't survive more than a few hours/days outside the womb? Because like it or not that is what happens in the vast majority of cases. People don't just get to 32 weeks and randomly decide to have an abortion, so saying it should be banned in those circumstances is pointless because it doens't happen.

Does a woman have the right not to have a child she never wanted? I'd say women should have the right to have an abortion, as Jack-Nicholson said and I agree "I place little value on human life". I might look at it differently if it was more personal to me, but to be honest what a woman does with her body is her business, I don't think science ever pushed this to far, and perhaps men could have more of a say but in then end it's just a life that never happened. Would I hate to have been aborted myself? Of course, but I wouldn't have had a clue.

The worst part of abortion is the pathetic decisions that people make. If your raped then go abort the baby if you do not want it, if you use it as an excuse or are careless and don't use contraception to stop yourself having a child then to be honest why should hospitals waste their time treating you. Especially in the UK, having free health care. I know some people who have used abortion as a back-up if they do get pregnant. Now I said I agreed with Jack's quote about value to human life. But this is one thing I'd consider going to far, using abortion as "contraception", if you will.

Birth control pills have risks you know. And condoms don't feel as good as the real thing.

Birth control pills have little risk and just because you don't want to use a condom is no means to use it as a method of contraception.

I support abortion but using it as contraception is a bit too far.