What you have to believe to be anti-choice

[texshelters]

What you have to believe to be anti-choice
My full article: http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/what-you-have-to-believe-to-be-anti-choice/

1. Women have little or no capacity to decide what to do with their own bodies and they need help.

2. Choosing to have an abortion is a decision that women callously make without delving into the ramifications of their choices. Thus, they need counseling.

3. Women get abortions “on demand”. First off, no one demands an abortion; they have procedure out of necessity. Secondly, no one just gives abortions on a walk in basis like order at a fast food restaurant.

4. Women would be better off if they kept their pregnancy. In 2004, 73% of the women in the study by Finer, et al said they choose an abortion because they couldn’t afford a child at the time. Having a child you cannot take care off financially doesn’t make your life better.

5. Women use abortion as birth control. Fact is, women have an abortion when birth control fails (58%). http://www.msmagazine.com/aug01/pas.html It is misleading to say that women use abortion as anything but and emergency measure.

6. Adoption is an option. Yea, if you can afford to carry a baby to term and disrupt your life. Sure, if you don’t have health issues carrying the baby to term. Sure, if you are having a white baby, because those are in high demand. Don’t get me wrong, I fully support a woman bringing a pregnancy to term if that is her choice and then putting the baby up for adoption. However, it is about her choice, not my or your feelings.

7. Abortion is America’s Holocaust. Comparing anything to the holocaust is ridiculous. Beside, you are equating the murder of millions of human lives with fertilized eggs.

8. Women who consent to sex are giving up their right to control what happens to them if they get pregnant. This ignores the accidental pregnancies when birth control is used.

9. You must believe in the fabricated diagnosis of “post abortion stress syndrome” given women who have terminated pregnancies by anti-choice activists. http://www.msmagazine.com/aug01/pas.html There is no such diagnostic in the DHM-IV. Presenting a couple of women who regret their decision to terminate their pregnancy does not prove such a syndrome exists. Having an abortion is stressful, but most women interviewed are relieved by their decision.

10. You must believe that a potential life, a fetus, is more important that a woman’s life. Anyone, like Christine O’Donnell among others, that believes it’s okay if a woman dies during pregnancy to save a fetus is not “pro-life”.

11. You must believe that rape and incest are no big thing and it cannot be used as an excuse to terminate a pregnancy.

12. You must believe that life begins at conception. This is very misleading. In fact, life begins before conception. With this logic, every egg not fertilized in a woman is a murder and all masturbation is murder. In addition, even if a man doesn’t masturbate, he loses sperm through his urine. Are we going to charge him with impraved indifference murder?

12. A fertilized egg is a human. If you believe the spirit enters at conception, then you believe a zygote is a human. There is very little human about it. Your dog or cat is more human.

13. You must believe that you know what is best for a pregnant woman.

14. You must believe in your own moral righteousness and infallibility.

There are laws against late term (after 22-25 weeks) abortions, and in most cases, I agree with these laws. There are, however, exceptions for healthy life that one must consider in all cases of pregnancy.

Most people in America want abortion available for health reasons. Some people want to ban abortion for unwanted pregnancies. The ABC polls shows that 57% of people think abortion should be legal in all cases. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/abortion_poll030122.html If more people knew the facts and effects of an abortion ban, fewer people would want to control women’s bodies. It’s up to you to educate people on the margins. The fundamentalist and myopic religious right is a hopeless cause. They are too self-righteous to let facts change their opinions.

Study on why women choose abortion
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/psrh/full/3711005.pdf

A summary of the study here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_why.htm

Go to the “Words of Choice” pages on how to counter the anti-choice rhetoric.
http://www.rcrc.org/pdf/Words_of_Choice.pdf

More on the rhetoric
http://www.philosophylounge.com/charles-rulon-asks-antichoice-americans-babykilling-rhetoric/

Abortion facts—reasons, demographics
http://women.webmd.com/tc/abortion-reasons-women-choose-abortion

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. Ever talked to a Quaker about this?

It was enlightening for me. They are the only part of the anti choice movement I have any respect for.

[Warpy]

2. You are, of course, male

Anyone who denies a living, breathing human being the right to protect her life as well as her health, employment, social support system and finances in favor of something which might or might not develop into an infant is simply not rational.

It's about allowing the person who is threatened by an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy the human right and dignity to choose what is best for her and no one else is ever qualified to judge that.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. I did not say I agreed with them...just that they are the only pro lifers I have any respect for

Their beliefs are totally consistent (anti war, anti death penalty...) which is not true of the rest of them. They do not try to force their beliefs on others, so they deny others nothing.

[texshelters]

6. Hey wait

I'm male and agree with you.

So is it really about being male?

True, most anti-choice nuts are male, but not all. Look at Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell for two obvious anti-choice women. A female friend of mine is pretty anti-choice too. It's why I don't get too close to her.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Zoeisright]

20. And you, of course, are using the WORST gender bias.

Your attitude that women skip blithely off to have abortions is shameful. SHAME ON YOU. This disgusting attitude, which is prevalent among right wing and violent anti-choice groups, is a lie. And it's insulting. And it's despicable.

If you think that an abortion is the same thing as "ending a human life", you need to do some research on the topic. No embryo or fetus has human rights or is a full human until they are born. It's in the Bible. And it's in the constitution.

And again, mind your own fucking business.

[yurbud]

22. Men can say NOTHING about this? So Roe v. Wade should have waited for an all female Supreme Court?

In which case, you'd still be waiting.

If you think you have a good argument, don't fall back on the most pathetic of pathetic ad hominem attacks.

[Zoeisright]

25. Exactly.

Men can say NOTHING about this. Men have zero rights - ZERO, when it comes to abortion. Because their bodies are not involved. Why can't you people understand that? You really don't see a difference between judges interpreting the law and a man trying to force a woman to continue a pregnancy? That's really pathetic. Talk about a false equivalency.

I'll put it very simply: Your body, your rights. Someone else's body, someone else's rights.

[verges]

26. Thing is.....

the anti-choicers believe (very strongly) that it DOES affect someone elses body. And, therefore, by your own standards, someone elses rights. The unborn child's. They believe this with all their black coal hearts.

I, myself am pro-choice. But, I do understand, though I do not agree with the anti-choicers arguments. But your "simple" argument just vindicates their own misguided arguments.

[Zoeisright]

28. Wrong. That isn't a SIMPLE argument.

It's a complex legal argument. The SIMPLE argument is that you have any business at all butting into someone else's life. That is the childish attitude.

And it isn't an unborn child. It's a blastocyst, or an embryo, or a fetus. With no rights until it's born.

[verges]

30. I agree with you. But...

they misguidedly see it as preventing a murder! And because they feel that they have the moral high ground, the law doesn't matter.

You want to defeat these clowns, you need to understand where they are coming from.

[yurbud]

27. you missed my point, but thanks for the elaboration on a bumper sticker.

[Zoeisright]

29. That was sarcasm.

Not surprising you missed it. But then, you and your bumper sticker sentiments seem to think you know better than just about everybody else. Mind your own business.

[yurbud]

35. here's the problem with the ''men shut up'' argument: you need us to keep abortion legal

not all women are pro-choice, so if you only rely on the support of women, you lose.

So you have to win and hold the support of a significant number of men.

Generally, telling people their opinions and feelings don't matter and they should shut the fuck up is not a good way to get and keep their support, or at the very least you won't get their ACTIVE support.

We just saw a good example of this in the 2010 election: Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, and Obama himself shut out and insulted progressive (i.e. most) Democrats, and as a result, a lot of people weren't too excited about going to the polls, and the Democrats got their asses handed to them.

If there was a critical vote on pro-choice issues, you would probably want men calling their senators and congressmen, which would be kind of inconsistent with the shut the fuck up argument.

And as I mentioned originally, lawyers had to convince the then ALL MALE supreme court to legalize abortion with Roe v. Wade, and I doubt that the case was won with the shut the fuck up argument.

[verges]

31. I would suggest that if men

are expected to pay for the raising of the child or the abortion itself, he should damn well be allowed some input. Both parties decided to have sex.

[yurbud]

36. the reality is, we can at best have input in the political argument. When it comes to individual

pregnancies, women have a literal veto power--they can choose to abort or have the baby--and I can't think of a way to give a guy input that couldn't be abused.

Maybe when we can grow babies in tanks like BRAVE NEW WORLD, fathers can ask that the fetus be tanked instead of aborted, so he can keep it.

[texshelters]

5. Yes

I work with some Quakers.

One is completely pro-choice and the other is mixed.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[ZombieHorde]

3. I think they believe God gives people souls at conception.

Other anti-abortion people believe fertilized eggs and fetuses are humans with the same basic rights as human infants and children.

That is my interpretation of their argument.

[texshelters]

7. Right, they just skip

the part where the souls of children go to eternal bliss in heaven.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[ZombieHorde]

13. I once told my Mormon boss women should get pregnant and then have abortions

over and over again so the souls will go to heaven. If the souls are allowed to mature, they may make poor decisions and then go to hell. He seemed startled by my joke argument, but he really didn't have anything to say.

[texshelters]

34. Way to show them

the illogic of their argument!

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[HockeyMom]

8. There must be a whole lot of fertized egg babies in heaven

since "god" is the biggest murderer of those.

[ZombieHorde]

12. I have wondered about that myself. nt

[Name removed]

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[Kurmudgeon]

32. And yet this thread wasn't removed, I guess bias against God and believers is A-OK here.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. I would add to this that a ban on abortion will only push it underground.

Abortion has been around as long as humans have been here. And if the circumstances are such that a woman would consider an abortion, she will find a way. The days of the back alley clinics and coat hangers will return, because there will always be a demand for it. I do not want to go back to those days.

[texshelters]

10. True, and

I was trying to focus on the illogical belief systems.

Perhaps: "You have to believe and abortion ban will ban abortions."

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[Zoeisright]

19. Damn straight. One of the more inconvenient truths about abortion is that

making it illegal doesn't reduce the numbers at all. Making abortion illegal means more women and girls will die. But the "pro-life" crowd thinks they "have it coming" because they dared have sex in the first place.

Pro-life my ass.

[slackmaster]

37. History shows the Curmudgeoness is correct, and that is sufficient reason to keep it legal

No matter what else anyone believes, or what anyone believes anyone else believes.

[MineralMan]

11. Simple. You have to believe that your opinions are more

valuable and correct than those of others, and that others should be coerced into following your views.

That's all that's needed.

[ZombieHorde]

14. Doesn't your description fit most of us?

Smoking in restaurants, zoning laws, speed limits, taxes, public nudity, environmental laws, property rights, age of consent, etc.

[MineralMan]

15. No, I don't think so. I have many opinions. I don't believe that anyone

should be required to share them or agree with them. My opinion about reproductive choice is that people should have that choice. Since I can never become pregnant, my opinion is not required. My choice has been not to procreate, and that choice is shared by my wife. Reproductive choice.

I smoke. I don't subject non-smokers to it. That is also my choice. Other areas of law are decided through a process that is agreed to by those who live in this society. If they disagree with the law, they have a perfect right to work for its change. That's how reproductive choice became the law of the land. People demanded it, and it happened. Same with the right for women to vote. Same with the civil rights act.

If I, as an individual believe something, I have the right to so believe, but I have no right to impose my beliefs on others. No right whatsoever. The converse is also true.

[Bluenorthwest]

23. What do you think 'Sanctified' means in a civil context?

That is one of the liturgical words the President uses when he stands against equal rights for others due to the beliefs he has. I say it is gibberish, nonsense without meaning in a secular context, but many of you stand by him in his 'one man, one woman, Sacrament' talk.
How do you prove that you are 'Sanctified' and that I am not? Or is all of that law from the heterosexual community based on the beliefs and faith of that community, silently upheld by those members who claim to know better?

[JeffersonChick]

21. I think #12 is the crux of the issue k&r

[urgk]

24. I don't know if it's a "must," but pro-lifers also tend to believe...

...in a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible. Which, in my opinion, means being taught to secondhand judgments and the scientifically unverifiable over reason and moral understanding.

[Kurmudgeon]

33. You couldn't have asked for a better straw man comment than yours.

Simple fact is, you have to be ok with ending human life to be willing to abort any unborn human, any time, anywhere, for any given reason.
That isn't moral behavior, as for reason, it varies from person to person, it's hardly something you should worship.