All the abortion news lately has got me thinking.
While I am opposed to abortion in general and absolutely believe that a baby that hasn't been born should have the same rights as a baby who has, I am not completely blind to, or hardened towards, the point of view of mothers who don't want to be mothers.
I can sit around all day and say that if a woman is raped, that doesn't make it the baby's fault, and the baby shouldn't have to die because of it. And I do believe that. But that doesn't negate the fact that the woman has been violated and may very well not want a reminder of that violation growing within her. She may want nothing to do with the baby whatsoever.
So I was thinking today, surely there is a solution to that sort of problem that doesn't require the death of the baby. Would it be possible to "harvest" a child from an unwilling mother, and either grow it in a test tube or implant it in a surrogate? Is anyone doing research into this?
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So I was thinking today, surely there is a solution to that sort of problem that doesn't require the death of the baby. Would it be possible to "harvest" a child from an unwilling mother, and either grow it in a test tube or implant it in a surrogate? Is anyone doing research into this?
Probably not. There is a substantial dollar value attached to such an idea. Just look at how difficult it is to get a premature baby out of the woods. All those months of intensive care don't come cheap.
But surely abortion opponents are willing to shell out the funds.
Are you willing to, as an abortion opponent?
You do realize you're trying to solve one of the smallest percentages of abortion cases out there, right?
The biggest factors aren't rape or incest, they're "not ready for the responsibility" and "can't afford baby right now". I believe that "Already had all the kids I want" or "Kids are already grown" is another one that's fairly close.
For there to be a winner, there has to be a loser. For there to be an average, there have to be lows and highs. For nature to work the way its supposed to, we can't all succeed. Rape does happen, and it's terrible that it does. I don't know that it'll ever be stopped 'cause you can't just "stop" that.
In those few cases where rape impregnates the victim, it's a tough call what to do.
If you want to take the outside look at it, some women will be raped and impregnated, and it sucks for them, but that's the way things work.
Now you add in what we can do - the power to change things, to "fix" things - to even the playing field.
That's the approach you have to take when it comes to abortion. Don't look at it like "well, we already have it, so let's fix it to where it doesn't do as much "wrong" as we believe it does.
If you don't agree with it, look at it from the approach I'm talking about. Pretend there was no such thing as an abortion - there was no option for that. Babies are the miracle of life, right?
Is it our place to stop a "miracle" because it was conceived in a way we didn't want? That's what makes this sort of thing so hard to decide. Everyone sides with a rape victim and rightly so. But it gets tricky when you start saying that abortion is wrong, but it's right for this case or another.
Here's a compiled list of statistics for some survey that some fellow did. I'll post the link below. Don't know how accurate their test results are, but compared to other things I've seen they don't appear to be too far off.
Reasons for abortions:
Rape: 0.3 percent
Incest: 0.03 percent
Life of mother: .2 percent
Health of mother: 1.0 percent
Fetal health: 0.5 percent
"personal choice": 98%
Personal choice including but not limited to:
-too young/immature/not ready for responsibility: 32%
-economic: 25%
-to avoid adjusting life: 16%
-Mother single or in poor relationship: 12-13%
-enough children already:4-8%
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html
Like I said, I aint gunna guarantee the facts, but they show a pretty fair split from the more "common" reasons and rape/incest. So if you want to look at abortion, and how the "treatment" is being used, look at that.
The heart in me says that those women in the worst situations shouldn't have to live with the child begotten from a horrifying experience. The mind in me is saying that if you let one person have a cookie, you're going to have to let everyone have a cookie.
It's like McDonald's monopoly game - No Purchase Necessary. You don't have to actually go there and buy the food in order to win their prize money. Because otherwise it isn't "fair" to people who don't buy the food.
So if we allow women to have abortions because they were raped or became pregnant through incest, then it isn't "fair" to the women that found some other way to end up wanting one.
"It's a woman's right to choose" is the great "No Purchase Necessary" in the abortion business. So long as women keep saying that, then we aren't ever going to be able to limit abortions to certain statistics. They don't have to be raped in order to decide the same outcome. That wouldn't be "fair". They have it hard too, right? They just had sex 'cause everyone else was doing it. They didn't use protection that night because they were drunk. They used a condom on their one night stand, but it broke! Last I checked, just about every giveaway includes that "No Purchase Necessary" clause these days. Like it or not, that's the way we as people are headed with everything.
This is the sort of post that could make a lot of ladies mad. Sorry about that. I can't get into all of my feelings on the issue here, but maybe sometime I'll try. Abortion isn't something that can be summed up in a post or response. It's much bigger, much more difficult, and ever-evolving.
One last thing - the answer to this and everything else isn't going to be "couldn't the guys that support this just pay for it so it could be fixed?"
I told my son that if he kept throwing a certain toy around it'd break. His response was, "Then we can just buy a new one." Of course, I cleared that one up for him. You break it, you live with it. That's life - better to be careful with what you've got than be reckless and expect someone else to shell out the cash for fixing it.
But then, just as something to think on: when he had a friend over that broke one of his toys, I did replace that one. So what does that say?
AJ, your post kind of reminds me of Sunday's Winger.
In the last panel, Minion says, "Fight crime? Crime is a social problem! If you want to reduce crime, eliminate social injustice!"
Your position seems to be that if abortion opponents want to stop abortions, they should eliminate the phenomenon of sex in people who aren't ready to have children.
I don't know if that's even possible...but assuming it is, it will take a lot of time, and I don't think that trying to save the babies who will be aborted in the meantime directly enables irresponsible sex.
And yes, if there was a charity specifically for research into how to save babies from abortions, I'd donate.
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