Abortion: An Argument from Self-Ownership.

Neil, I am sorry about your wifes miscarriages. I am sure that that life changing event has made a huge impact on how you view alot of things.
I wanted to point out that we as humans change/control life and death every day. If God has a plan.. then when a woman has a heart attack should we not intervine? Medically speaking we change/ start/ stop/ prolong/ end lives daily. This is not about killing a child this is about making a decision on whether or not you choose to carry a pregancy to term. It is about your choice on whether you choose to become a parent. That is the most responsible thing anyone can do. We also use birth control, fertility drugs, medicines, iut devices etc..
When I question pro-lifers I am just questioning the hows and what ifs would there be if these people were forced to have children they do not want. Unfortunately, it is a reality in this world that there would be so many more children uncared for. Abortion may not be something that you believe in but because one does believe in that right; it does not make them any less human than you are. I too have had tragedies in my life. But having an abortion was not one of them. It was my choice and i still stand by that choice. I just mostly wanted to acknowledge the miscarriages and how hard that must be. Whether a person looses a child to death, abortion, miscarriage, still births; Some may be choices it does not make the pain any less.

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I have another example. I was raped by my ex-boyfriend when I was 17. We started to have sex and then I decided I didn’t want it anymore and I told him no, stop, but he kept going. I kept pushing and screaming for him to stop, and he finally sat up on the bed and started cursing and yelling at me. It looked like he was going to hit me. Luckily I got away.

So by your logic, that was my fault for putting myself into that position. With sex, when a girl says no, she means no. It is not okay to continue like that. But hey, I put myself into the situation so I deserved to be raped. By that logic, again, all rape victims deserved to be raped because they “put themselves into that position.” Whether it’s walking down a dark street or leaving the front door unlocked, by your logic it’s always the rape victim’s fault (when we know it is fact that rape is NEVER the victim’s fault).

When conceiving, there is only a small chance that it will happen. Having sex is not deliberately conceiving, so when two people have sex, they should not be responsible for carrying their pregnancy to term because they did not deliberately conceive. I think this seems kind of obvious, but apparently it’s not.

My point from before: as long as women own their own body parts (A.K.A. uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, EGGS…….) then they can dictate what happens to all objects within that body part. A fetus is just a part of the uterus and it cannot function without the mother. You can scream bloody murder all you want, it’s never going to change anything.

And if you’re going to say that women do NOT or should NOT own their body parts (and that’s basically what you’re saying when you argue the anti-choice argument) then by that logic, rape should be legal. Well, in some countries it is legal. Abortion was once illegal. We have come to see that is illogical. Times have changed. Get over it.

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[quote]No one can deliberately conceive, except through in vitro fertilization. That would be like saying people who win at roulette deliberately get the little ball to land on the number they bet on. All couples wanting to conceive naturally can do is play the game and hope. As pointed out by Arbourist, the chances of a sexual encounter resulting in pregnancy that is not spontaneously aborted are quite low. Add in things like contraception, as mentioned by Katie, and the chances are reduced even further. Your standpoint would mean that any accidental death should be considered first degree murder, “Well, they knew going in that there was 0.002% of someone dying, sounds like premeditation to me. They gotta take responsibility for the situation that they put themselves in.”[/quote]

Just to expand on this idea, consider that conception itself is an act of the closest single cells can get to free will: You have the sperm swimming to find the egg, which in turn may actually choose which sperm it wants by extending a tendril of mucus towards it, drawing it in. They do that all by themselves.

Then, joined, they are propelled down the fallopian tube and try to find a place to implant in the uterine lining. Implantation is another active process done by the fertilized egg (now described as a blastocyst) to its host, with no input from the host either way.

If everything goes perfectly, it does implant and starts growing. More often than not, though, the blastocyst doesn’t hit the uterine lining at quite the right time, either too early or too late; either it fails to implant, or it implants but the endometrium is already too “old” and either way, out it goes with the menses.

The best legalistic phrase I can come up with for what the participants in intercourse might be liable for is “creating an attractive nuisance” in that they gave the sperm and egg an opportunity to attempt something dangerous.

Incidentally, if a woman has intercourse during the time the she is most likely to be fertile, and doesn’t get pregnant, it is more likely than not that an egg got fertilized and just didn’t manage to implant. Which is to say, trying to make a baby is the biggest killer of babies there is, if you believe that a blastocyst is a baby.

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Wow Monique, you’re a bitch. I honestly hope you get pregnant someday accidentally and then see how it is. Until you know the pain and anguish, YOU shut your mouth and don’t tell me how it is. I KNOW how it is. The reason I keep bringing up my experience is because it is a very crucial part of our side of the argument. Experience is everything. If you don’t know, you don’t understand.

I seriously doubt you read my whole post anyway. You are very mean and rude, and you have failed to make a single valid argument. In fact, is this the first time I am seeing you post something? Way to pop into the conversation with something so blunt and hurtful, and yet not make any logical or validating points. I am NOT PROUD, I am simply not regretting it. And I am using that experience to make my point: I had one and it was the right CHOICE for me, like it is for lots and lots of women. That’s what our “side” is all about: CHOICE, and that’s what your “side” is all about, NO CHOICE.

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Another day, another ad hominem. Last time I checked, it’s no more my responsibility to deal with people’s unwanted babies so they don’t kill them than it is my job to deal with people’s unwanted toddlers and teenagers so they don’t kill them.

Christine, take your “logic” to its rational conclusion. Do you think that the abolitionists should have had to compensate slave owners for costs related to emancipation, figure out how to quarter and feed those former slaves, and ensure that a plantation could still run smoothly before decrying the horrors of slavery?

Well, maybe you do, since you are oddly fixated on this “unborn babies are pro-lifers problems” meme. You don’t have an argument except to attack people out of anger for their pro-life views or out of jealousy. Get over yourself.

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If God has a plan.. then when a woman has a heart attack should we not intervine?

Christine: if you cannot distinguish between saving a person’s life and murder, then you have more problems than we can deal with on this board.

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Christine – I’ll take that as a concession speech. I proved my point (spectacularly) and you are left calling an engineer/lawyer (wait for it…) “stupid.”

ROFLMAO.

How ’bout this? You propose an objective measure of intelligence. We’ll each see how well we meet it. Sound good?

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A fetus is just a part of the uterus and it cannot function without the mother. You can scream bloody murder all you want, it’s never going to change anything.

Katie, if you are eight months pregnant and someone beats you up so that you miscarry, you’re not going to say that you, and only you, were assaulted; you’re going to say that your assailant harmed you and killed your baby.

As someone pointed out above, Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of murder. That statute had been in place since 1970, after the Keeler case, in which the California Supreme Court ruled that the previous murder statute did not apply to a five-month-old foetus. (Facts: a man found out that his ex-wife was pregnant. When he passed her on a road, he cut her off, forced her to stop, dragged her out of the car, said that he was going to beat that baby out of her, and assaulted her until she miscarried.) The outrage after that decision prompted the revised law.

The only way to reconcile that with the travesty of Roe and its progeny is to say that it’s only murder if the child is wanted, which is reminiscent of 19th-century laws in which killing was only bad if the victim was white, rich, and, often, male.

Hey, if you want to roll back civil rights, go right ahead, but at least acknowledge that you support a legal structure which allows the powerful to murder the voiceless and powerless for their own convenience.

Given the way that you try to shout down pro-lifers, you’re also endorsing a system that tries to silence those who dare stand up for the vulnerable.

Pathetic, really.

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My baby girl is now five and she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

You’re amazing. :) My best to you and your little girl. :) :)

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No one can deliberately conceive, except through in vitro fertilization.

It’s not about “deliberate,” but about having knowledge of the logical consequences of your actions. People who do all sorts of stupid things don’t intend the results of their actions, but, when those results are foreseeable, we always hold them civilly and criminally responsible for them. If you drive drunk, you might not deliberately crash into someone’s house or to kill a pedestrian, but you’re still responsible for the damages to a house and can still be charged with vehicular manslaughter.

The “deliberate” requirement is a red herring. If we ignore the issue of rape (which is, after all, only 1% of abortions), we can easily see that the “deliberate” requirement need only extend to the act of sexual intercourse; you’re responsible for foreseeable (and, from a biological perspective, intended) results.

Treating women like adults is not anti-feminist; it’s pro-feminist. The pro-choice position, which infantilises women, is the anti-feminist one.

Final question: if you don’t accept my rationale, how do you justify forcing men to pay child support after a one-night stand? After all, if women have the option of abortion, men, too, should have the option to not be legally responsible for the logical results of sexual intercourse.

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Using biology as an excuse for bias and oppression is…..well “unjust” barely begins to describe what it is, but I can’t come up with a word for the gross amount and many levels of wrong it is.

I have news for you and other anti-feminists out there. Feminism is about legal, economic, and social equality, not biological equality. Obviously, women and men are different, biologically. That women live longer than men does not justify wife-murder to even things up. Equality does not mean “the same,” and it’s very misogynistic of you to imply that women’s bodies, with their capacity to get pregnant, makes them inferiour to men’s bodies. (Chauvanist!)

Furthermore, feminism does not allow women to murder people in order to even things up. If you think it does, then you’re not a feminist; you’re a sociopath.

Ditto to the idea that there is “bias” and “oppression” in not allowing people to kill their babies. Seriously sociopathic.

As for the idea that abortion was anything dreamed up by women… ROFLMAO. It’s about as misogynistic as you can get.

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Christine, act your freakin age and stop acting like a mean girl in high school! What are you teaching your kids?! How to act like an ass? For your information, the daddy didn’t want to have any part with our baby. And no, I didn’t live with my parents or on welfare. I worked two jobs and I supported us. I’m now married to a fantastic man that I didn’t meet till my Brianna was three.

Here’s the thing, Katie, you find the term “baby killer” insulting? Well so do we. That’s the problem that we pro lifers have with you pro choicers. Humans, animals, trees, etc. can all only be in two categories: alive or dead. Things that are alive grow and things that are dead decompose and wither away. If your baby wasn’t alive in your belly that what was the baby? We know the baby wasn’t dead because it was growing. If the baby had been dead, your body would have had a heavy period to remove the child. I think you’re confusing pain with death. Your “little clump of cells” as you so motheringly like to refer to your baby was only the size of a peanut so honestly, I don’t know if the baby felt any pain at that size. But the guys that help with assisting suicides may have made it to where the old or sick person doesn’t feel any pain but they still killed them.

That’s my big beef with you abortion people. Yeah, as of now, you have the ability to get abortions in the U.S. and even though us pro lifers don’t like it, it’s the law. But what burns me up is that you won’t just call a spade a spade. You’re KILLING the babies. Doesn’t matter how big they are or whether or not they felt any pain. You killed them. Hitler called killing all of the jews “terminating the problem.” Terminating is just a word to cover up the real word: murder.

So Katie and Christine, you two have just told yourselves over and over that you didn’t KILL your baby because it was so little and didn’t feel any pain. You got YOURSELF into a situation that you didn’t want to be in and the easiest way out for you was to kill your baby but you can’t call it what it is because that would make you a murderer.

And yeah, the baby at that size needed his or her’s mother to keep the child alive because that’s our job, our responsibility. To do our best to bring a healthy BABY into this world.

So you both had abortions and there ain’t a damn thing that I can do about that. I let that go. My thing with you two is that you’re condoning your actions and that you’d recommend that “remedy” to other teenage girls.

Christine, don’t start with me bitch. From what I’ve learned about your personality on here, it ain’t no surprise to me that you’re divorced. Who the hell would want to live with you and have to listen to you?

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I seriously think that the fight against choice is all about taking the women’s rights away. I’m beginning to doubt that most people really care for the unborn fetus. If they did, they’d care for it as a born child too, but they don’t. Of course they deny it, but it’s true. I asked a guy in a Facebook discussion (a pro-lifer who came into the group solely to annoy us) who was going on about abstinence-only if he thought it was fair to say, “If women have to keep their pants on, the men do too!” Guess what? Abstinence-only is abstinence-only ONLY if both women and men do it. It’s not called that if it’s just women. Besides, if women can’t have sex and men can, wouldn’t that be rape? We have gender equality in this country for a reason. Of course, this PLer told me to get back in the kitchen where I belonged, so his opinion really doesn’t count as he is living in the 1700s.

Monique, as I said before, I respect your opinion to keep your baby. I am glad you have made the correct CHOICE. That was what was right for you based on your CIRCUMSTANCE, your money situation, school, where you were living, father of the child, ETC. I did not THINK at the time that having a child was something that was right for ME AND THE CHILD, therefore I CHOSE to abort. That was what was RIGHT FOR ME AT THE TIME. Since I was the one living through it, not you or anyone else, only I could decide. You don’t like someone telling you you need to abort, don’t tell me I can’t abort. It feels just as bad. We should be able to make decisions about how we use our bodies.

I have to go babysit now. Remember I said, I love babies and children? There you go. :)

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fe•tus
: an unborn or unhatched vertebrate especially after attaining the basic structural plan of its kind ; specifically : a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth

em•bryo
plural em•bry•os
1 aarchaic : a vertebrate at any stage of development prior to birth or hatching b: an animal in the early stages of growth and differentiation that are characterized by cleavage, the laying down of fundamental tissues, and the formation of primitive organs and organ systems ; especially : the developing human individual from the time of implantation to the end of the eighth week after conception2: the young sporophyte of a seed plant usually comprising a rudimentary plant with plumule, radicle, and cotyledons3 a: something as yet undeveloped b: a beginning or undeveloped state of something <productions seen in embryo during their out-of-town tryout period — Henry Hewes

baby
1 a (1): an extremely young child ; especially : INFANT (2): an extremely young animal b: the youngest of a group2 a: one that is like a baby (as in behavior) b: something that is one's special responsibility, achievement, or interest3slang a: GIRL, WOMAN —often used in address b: BOY, MAN —often used in address

1kill•ing
1 : the act of one that kills

re•spon•si•bil•i•ty
plural re•spon•si•bil•i•ties

1: the quality or state of being responsible: as a: moral, legal, or mental accountability b: RELIABILITY, TRUSTWORTHINESS 2: something for which one is responsible : BURDEN

1bur•den
1 a: something that is carried : LOAD b: DUTY, RESPONSIBILITY2: something oppressive or worrisome3 a: the bearing of a load —usually used in the phrase beast of burden b: capacity for carrying cargo 4: LOAD 11

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Christine,

This so called 100% birth control method you have been using for decades must be not having sex. I would imagine it is because your are ugly, fat, stupid, or just plain retarted. NOTHING IS 100%. YOU WILL NEVER GET ME TO BACK DOWN EITHER YOU ARE THE DUMBEST PERSON ALIVE!!

There are pictures of me on my website. I’m young, slender, educated, and smart – that which should be obvious to anyone. I don’t sleep around, though, because I have self-control and standards (i.e. a ring on my finger).

I’m sorry for you that it offends you when women have actual standards, instead of acting like the sexual playthings of men. Yes, some of us could have sex – and lots of it! – but choose not to. Does it irritate you because chastity not only shows more self-control than society tells us that we have (let alone are capable of exercising), but is a way to show a man that he is truly special? What a sad way to live your life.

No matter – even ugly, fat, stupid, and chaste people can make valid points. What seems to burn you is that we aren’t caving to your normal set of anti-pro-life ad hominems – Monique has been in the tough situation of having faced a teenage pregnancy; my parents faced that situation; neither one of us are crotchety old men or religious zealots; I live the life that feminists supposedly want women to lead and have never needed an abortion to get there. So you start in on a different set of personal attacks – equally baseless, equally stupid, and totally irrelevant to justice (or total lack thereof) of abortion.

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I LOVE how Christine and Katie can’t answer any of my questions or address any of the points that I’ve made in my posts. But of course, that’s what they done throughout this whole blog is not address any points that pro lifers bring up. You avoid the issues and change the subject because you don’t know what to say, other than the stupid crap you’ve been saying.

And Christine, you pig, if I had wanted that guy to stay with me, I’d have gotten an abortion because he wanted me but he didn’t want to be a dad yet. But he knew that if he stayed with me, he’d be a dad because I only came with a BABY now. And I’ve only had sex with two men in my life so I really don’t think that that makes me a slut you stupid bitch.

So, if any of you are reading these comments and you’re not sure whether you think abortion is killing babies or not, just look at the points of the pro-choice people and the pro-life people here. You’ll read that the pro lifers have good, solid points and that the pro-choicers don’t ever address their points, keep repeating the same stupid shit, do much more character attacking and refuse to accept responsibility. So, think what you want.

Well, I’m leaving for the beach in just a couple of hours for family vacation so I won’t be able to check back in for a week. So bitch (Christine), don’t you dare think that your dumb mouth scared me off. I’ll just relaxing and spending time with my wonderful husband and beautiful baby girl.

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you go monique! monique is my little sister and i am SO proud of you girl. and I can vouch for everything she said. when she got pregnant, she wouldn’t accept money from any of us in the family. she said she got herself in this situation and she handled it. mon, the only reason these two girls are hating on you is because you and bri represent everything that they keep telling people don’t exist. you represent a mother that made it and can do it. and that other girl, obromophile, they hating you because you show that the babies that they’ve aborted could have grown up to be intelligent, professional, good people. that’s why they’re hating. anyway, mon, you said it best about how babies are alive. that was so smart how you worded it girl. proud of you.

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Hi, my name is Paige. I’ve been following this blog on abortion since it was posted because I’ve been looking up info on abortions for a couple of weeks now. I’m 17 years old and I found out a couple of weeks ago that I’m pregnant – I made a mistake. My mom and dad always taught me no sex before marriage and now I know why.

I’ve always had a bad feeling about abortions because they just seem wrong but I must admit, the thought of having one has been pretty tempting because even though it’s wrong, it would seem to “solve” my problem. So last week, I was almost certain that that’s what I wanted to do. But after reading all of these comments, I’ve now decided that I will NOT get an abortion. I don’t want to grow up and be like Christine or Katie. I want to be like the lawyer girl and Monique – minus the language :o) I think, however, that I should give the baby up for adoption to a good home. I want to be part of picking out the family. I’m thinking this because I’m about to be a senior in high school and I’m not ready to be a mother. Also, my family doesn’t really have a lot of money, my dad lost his job a few weeks ago. I think the baby would be a lot better off with a christian couple that is married, financially better off, and ready to be parents.

Thank you all for helping me make up my mind. I don’t want to kill my baby and after the points here that I’ve read and thought about, I know that’s what it is now – killing a baby; I’m certain of it. So, please pro-choice people, don’t attack me. I CHOOSE to believe that abortion is wrong and kills babies. MY choice.

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ou are trying to take away the civil rights of women? So the fetus rights are more important that the womans? Since you are so smart what is your idea of a plan to care for all these unwanted babies? If you were raped would you want to keep that baby?

No; abortion is not a civil right. (Take a history lesson and learn about what civil rights are. One of them is to not be murdered.)

Analogy: lung cancer. Most people get it from smoking. Most people agree that it’s not your business or my business whether people smoke. Everyone has the right for the government (or others) to not give them lung cancer. However, if you smoke and get lung cancer, you’re entitled to normal medical care, but you aren’t entitled to kill a matching lung donor and harvest their organs to save your own life. Abortion is like killing other people so that you can have your lifestyle, free of consequences.

The analogy falls apart because elective abortions do not threaten a woman’s life. Her rights that are on the line are extremely limited: basically, it’s to not have her body work the way that nature intended it to work. At most, even if you were to stretch the definitions of civil liberties (i.e. rights granted by the civitas, such as voting), the woman’s right at stake involves a temporary deprivation of liberty.

The right of the unborn child is to avoid a permanent deprivation of life. We are not balancing life against life, or liberty against liberty, or permanent deprivations against permanent deprivations; we are balancing a temporary loss of “liberty” (in a strained sense of the word) with a permanent loss of life.

You tell me, Christine, which one is more important.

As per above, I don’t need to come up with a plan for unwanted babies any more than abolitionists needed to come up with a plan for freed slaves. Duh.

Yes, if I were raped, I would keep my child. Nine months of pregnancy is a small price to pay for avoiding a lifetime of the guilt of having killed one’s child. (Do you know that a lot of post-abortive women, even those suffering from illness or after rape, say that they could have dealt with the pregnancy but not the pain of abortion? Again, that gets back to my point about the permanency of abortion being the very thing that makes it so wrong: pregnancy is a temporary state; abortion is a permanent “solution” to that temporary problem.)

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Actually, Christine, there is a several-year-long waiting list for adoption. Many couples would love to adopt children, but, because of abortion, there simply are not any available in America. (That’s why so many people get baby girls from China.)

That all said, why not do the same thing for adoption that has been done for abortion? It’s very easy to get an abortion, but the hurdles to adoption are immense. (It doesn’t help when the anti-lifers do things like prevent Catholic Charities from participating in the adoption services industry because they refuse to give babies to gay couples.) Why not change that, rather than killing the babies?

As a practical matter, if abortion were illegal, women would take birth control a lot more seriously than they do now. All it takes is a few girls who get pregnant and are walking around a college campus with their bellies out-to-here for people to realise that yes, condoms fail, the Pill fails, and maybe they should think twice before having semi-unprotected sex.

Heck, Seinfeld did an episode wherein Elaina wondered if a guy were “Sponge-worthy.” How about wondering if a guy is “morning-sickness worthy”? Is our society messed up or what?

Finally, your bleating about how to pay for these babies says a lot about you and not anything about the pro-life movement. America is the wealthiest country that the world has ever seen, with more than enough space for babies. It is the only developed country that is not in a population death spiral; even so, we’re barely breeding at a replacement rate (i.e. 2.1 babies per woman). Besides, China is a great example of what happens when you try to institute population control. In twenty years, that country is going to be an even bigger mess than it was before.

There’s something truly perverse about seeing human life as a problem and not as an asset….

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Theobromophile – You are a well educated female that is a virgin by choice. I did look @ your profile your are slender, and not ugly. Point taken.
Your whole theory is if abortions were illegal (because of course it is killing babies as you so eliquently put it) it would solve the problems of couples that cannot have them?

Note: Get out your dictionary this is how it goes
Sex – Act for both reproduction and pleasure for both man and woman. Kinda hard for anyone to take your advice on birth control or sex considering you have done neither one of them.
Embryo a vertebrate at any stage of development prior to birth or hatching
Fetus an unborn or unhatched verebrate usually 2 months after conception to birth
birth – the delivering of a baby into the world
child – young human referred to as fetus/embryo before birth
Baby killer – someone that kills a baby
Pro-life – oposing abortions/ pro-choice with no choice of abortion
Pro-choice- A womans right to choose to how to handle an unexpected / unplanned pregnancy

Theomophile – It is not the responsibility of the Pro-lifers to come up with a plan to take care of all the unwanted babies. May not be your responsibilty but if you want to take away choices for woman; a plan would be the moral/ethical thing to do.

I am of course on the other end EXTREME pro choice. Pro-choicers should not be responsible for coming up with a plan to help the people who cannot have children or want to adopt. If prolifers cannot be held accountable for the unwanted babies then the prochoicers cannot be held accountable for the unfortunate people that want children and cant have them.

Families of course should help each other. I did not say that was a bad thing; I just simply said that your mothers sex acts resulted in a pregnacy that your grandparents had to finance. Okay not until they got divorced; but still the ‘burden’ responsibility was not only on your mother. Not terrible or illegal but a choice. What if your grandparents we not alive when they got divorced? Welfare maybe?

Monique choice to have her little girl! Awesome! Honorable working two jobs and all, not accepting $$ from her family. Again, good for her. Her choice/ Not the dads. Just her choice. But who raised the baby? Babysitters or the mother? Again, nothing against baby sitters/ but may not have been the choice of all pregnant teens.

I am not at all stupid. I chose to have an abortion and I do not regret it. I love the children I have had with all my heart. I am a good mother, bitchy yes, just because I do not believe the same way as you. Does not make me a totally bad person. I am independent, educated, funny, aggressive, and many other things. Divorced by my choice; and I do not regret that either.

Have a good weekend! I am really going away from the computer now!!
Laughing!

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“Well as soon as they can exhibit signs of autonomous behaviour they certainly can have the rights”

My grandfather had several strokes when he was 74. A World War II veteran, he did not have to lay his ‘self-ownership’ on the line to destroy tyranny. He did, and many people living in the Netherlands are still in touch with my family because of his contribution to liberating their towns.

When he had his strokes, he did not exhibit any signs of autonomous behaviour. I guess he no longer owned himself. However, if no one looked after him or took responsibility, the government would have charged us with negligence causing death. That is, btw, illegal.

Your whole argument is groundless and based on some ethereal concept of human rights that isn’t at all agreed upon. The country I live in has a drastically different idea of human rights than does America. Are they wrong here? Would you use your morals to tell them here, in the Middle East, that their morals are incorrect?

Humans are killed during abortion. Full stop. Your argument dies the minute you deny that basic scientific fact.

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The following textbooks generally imply that abortion is terminating a human life (while they do not claim it to be murder, as murder is a moral claim, not a medical one, they do claim that medically, life begins at conception).

So much for your ‘argument from emotion’ quip. Please admit your scientific proof that human life begins at birth.

Can you provide me some statistics on the numbers, out of 1,000 healthy, normal pregnancies, regarding the ‘potentially dangerous growth’ from a womans body that every medical text on the planet refers to as a human _________ (as opposed to your philosophically laden term ‘growth’)?

See “Developmental Biology” 8th edition, by Scott F. Gilbert.

Also, see William J. Larsen, Ph.D, “Essentials of Human Embryology”

The Developing Human, 6th Edition Clinically Oriented Embryology Keith L. Moore, Ph..D., FIAC, FRSM T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., FRCPath W.B. Saunders Company (Philadelphia), 1998

Fetal Behaviour: Developmental and Perinatal Aspects. Edited by Jan G. Nijhuis, Oxford University Press (Oxford) 1992

Human Embryology and Teratology
Ronan O’Rahilly, M.D., D.Sc., Dr.h.c. Fabiola Muller, Dr.habil.rer.nat. Wiley-Liss (New York), 1994

Embryoscopy: A Closer Look at First-Trimester Diagnosis and Treatment. E. Albert Reece, M.D., American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, March 1992

Langman’s Medical Embryology, 8th Edition
T.W. Sadler, Ph.D. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (Baltimore), 2000

Williams Obstetrics, 20th Edition
F. Gary Cunningham, M.D.
Paul C. MacDonald, M.D.
Norman. F. Gant, M.D.
Kenneth J. Leveno, M..D.
Larry C. Gilstrap, M.D.
Gary D.V. Hankins, M.D.
Steven L. Clark, M.D.
Appleton and Lang (Stamford, CT), 1997

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You don’t travel much, do you? Most abortions are performed in Russia, China, and India. China’s one-child policy enforces abortion on pregnant women once they have had a child. In India, females are far less valuable to males. It matters not that they don’t happen within a 2000 km radius of your present location – the moral repugnance remains regardless of where they are carried out.

You had an abortion because you didn’t want to look fat. Oh. My. You poor thing. Please don’t expect sympathy from me if you got pregnant doing something that is supposed to cause pregnancy. If you didn’t think you could support the natural outcome of sex, why have sex in the first place? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Also, I didn’t realise that size determined value (referring to your ‘clump of cells’ canard). I’d wager that I am much larger than you, Katie. Does that give me a stronger right to life?

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