Urania: AbortionI'll just address my responses to Urania.
...I want to say that Patricia Heaton's quote on the front page is just...very scarily uneducated: Women who are experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy.
Seriously, that's what it says. That's what she said. Can I just point out that that is so NOT what the abortion issue is about?? Most women who get an abortion do so out of desperation. I realize that shows like Sex & the City have made it seem like people just flippantly get abortions without ever really thinking about it--but that's not usually the case.
Obviously you don't get that the unplanned joy is
the baby that the woman will have to love if she doesn't cave into the desperation and fear that the abortion workers are exploiting to make a sale.
There are a lot of people who get abortions because of mom and/or baby health issues.
Yes. And they are
just as entitled to joy as healthy mothers of healthy babies. Should we abandon women to the
despair of an abortion just because they, or their unborn children, have health issues?
And, more to the point, having abortion framed as a "right" rather than as a crime brings pressure on these women to abort when they don't want to. Should women who love and want their unborn babies be pressed into unwanted abortions, or
forced to fight tooth-and-nail to get decent medical care, in order to placate the minority, who want abortions? Some women even learn, too late, that
their health problems, or
their unborn babies' health problems, were not so serious -- or were even figments of their doctors' imaginations. Some women have
died as a result.
Others do it because their pregnancy is a consquence of rape--be it date rape, incest, whatever.
Yes. And these women and girls are again,
entitled to love and support. Scraping her out doesn't erase the abuse. In fact, it makes it
easier for the perpetrator of ongoing abuse to hide his handiwork.
....Roe v. Wade did not come about as an Administrative decision to 'condone' abortions. Rather, it came about because the Justices of the SCOTUS, in their wisdom, realized that women had been getting and would continue to get abortions, regarldess of the ruling. The decision to make abortions legal was done in the interest of saving more lives, not in the interest of ending lives.
Well, that may have been their intention. Only the Justices, and God, can know what their intentions were.
How can this be? Well, if abortions are legal, they they can be done in sanitary and safe environments. They can be done by doctors with the actual know-how. Science can research new technologies to make the procedures used even less painful and even cleaner and safer.
Well, when abortions were illegal, they could be done in sanitary and safe environments. Most illegal abortions, after all,
were done by doctors or other health professionals, and they had more motive to be clean and safe than does a legal abortionist.
The technology and know-how were saving women's lives long before legalization. If you look at
maternal deaths from abortion over the 20th century, you'll see this for yourself.
If abortions are not legal, doctors who perform abortions risk losing their licenses to practice. This leads to doctors not performing abortions.
Indeed, I'm sure the risk of prison or losing a license stopped more than one doctor from doing abortions before legalization. But what is it that's stopping them now? Regardless of legality, abortion doesn't attract the best and the brightest, because it's destructive.
Legalizing abortion didn't make it any more tempting to those who see it for what it is. All it did was remove the risk of prison or disciplinary action for botching abortions from over the heads of those inclined to do abortions anyway. Hence, we ended up with doctors like
Jesse Ketchum and
Milan Vuitch -- who had clean records before legalization -- going on to kill women after legalization.
Women will still seek abortions, and in desperation, they will go to 'chop-shop docs'--people with unsanitary and unsafe enviroments and without the education necessary for such a delicate procedure.
First of all, only
some women will seek abortion regardless of its legal status. The abortion rate increased tenfold with legalization. Women who don't want abortions, who never would have sought them out on their own, are coerced, pressured, and sometimes tricked into unwanted legal abortions. Some even die as a result. How is subjecting ten times as many women to the risks of abortion any kind of improvement?
Also, many women will revert to the 'coat-hanger' or 'crochet-hook' procedures--trying to perform their own abortions.
The motives for
dangerous self-abortions are mixed, and
not as simple as "Well, it's not legal so I'll just ream myself out with a rusty coathanger." Even the Centers for Disease Control was forced to conclude that women seek self-induced and illegal abortions for "
ideosyncratic reasons." Women continue to die from
self-induced and
amateur abortions. Legalization led to these women's problems being swept under the rug rather than addressed.
What makes me angriest about people who want Roe v. Wade overturned is that they can't seem to think past their particular religious/philosophical/political viewpoints.
The same could be said of those who want it to stand.
....I DO NOT BELIEVE that the Federal government, State governments, or city governments should have the right to take away safe and clean abortion possibilities for women.
You're working on the assumption that the situation right now is simply one of making clean, safe abortion available for women who would otherwise be reaming themselves out with rusty coathangers. I've covered this assumption already, and I really suggest that you learn more about the
status quo before assuming that women are being served and protected.
Be against abortion, if you like. Pledge not to have an abortion yourself. Work for education about rape, sex education for youths, sex education in churches, health consequences surrounding abortion, adoption facts courses, unplanned pregnancy counseling services. If you have a friend who is considering abortion, talk with her about the options--adoption, motherhood, whatever. If she opts for abortion anyway, love her and be there for her throughout the ordeal--before, during, and after.
Gotta give you credit for recognizing the positive things we do.
But don't take away from her the possibility of a clean and safe--a sanitary--abortion. If you do, she has a MUCH higher risk of ending up dead due to desperation.
Again, you seem to be operating from the assumption that regardless of abortion's legality, the same number of women will be getting pregnant when they don't want to be. Christopher Tietze laid that myth to rest back in the early 1970s.
You're also operating from the assumption that once the woman in pregnant, the only possibilities are a nice, safe, clean, sanitary abortion (if abortion is legal), or a nasty, dirty, dangerous abortion (if abortion is illegal).
But there are so many mistakes in the underlying assumptions.
1. The only choices aren't safe abortion versus dangerous abortion. Joyful motherhood is an option, as is the difficult choice of making an adoption plan.
2. Just because the abortion is clean and sanitary doesn't mean the woman has walked away unscathed. The
Silent No More movement, and the problem of
suicide after abortion, show otherwise.
3. Just because the abortion is legal doesn't mean it's going to be safe and sanitary. Even high-end, trustworthy organizations such as
Planned Parenthood and the
National Abortion Federation, have been caught in behaviors you'd not tolerate in a veterinary clinic.
Fly-by-night abortion mills are
even worse.
Just a few thoughts.
