<p>“OFTEN coerced into having an abortion they do not want”</p>
<p>Seems like you only think coercion is bad when people are being coerced into actions you don’t agree with.</p>
<p>No, coercion is ALWAYS bad.</p>
<p>It’s just that it’s a myth that abortion has given women this ‘freedom’ and ‘empowerment.’ It’s a myth that women have abortions out of choice. Some do, yes, but many have abortions because they were coerced, or they were desperate. Desperation is not a choice. Abortion is often used as another way to coerce women.</p>
<p>I would not call making abortion illegal coercion, though. Unless the woman was raped, she willingly had sex, and everyone knows that sex makes babies. Making killing unborn babies illegal coercion? Not anymore than saying it’s coercion to tell someone they can’t kill their husband. Aw, shucks, sorry, can’t kill your hubby. Will have to divorce him instead.</p>
<p>“Lealdragon, I just thought I’d share that a family member has an adopted child, through an open adoption. The birth mom was a college student, unprepared to take on the responsibility of raising a child. The adoptive parents were unable to conceive, and are both absolutely devoted to their child. The birth mother stays with them on occasion, although the contact has grown less over time. But the child will always know that s/he was loved and wanted by at least three adults and their extended families.”</p>
<p>That’s a heartwarming story, sjmom–and I love it when things work out like that. Would that they all ended so happily. I, on the other hand, have a friend who could not conceive and who, with her husband, adopted the infant son of an unwed college girl about 22 years ago. The child was subsequently diagnosed with fetal achohol syndrome and ADHD; he has grown into a young man who suffers from sporadic fits of rage and violence that meds have yet to cure. He’s a social outcast with no friends, who dropped out of school, can’t drive, can barely hold a minimum wage job, and is almost completely dependent upon his adoptive mother–a loving woman whose marriage fell apart a few years ago, in part due to the stress of raising this troubled child. The biological mother has never been seen or heard from, though we know she’s a local.</p>
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<p>Yes. </p>
<p>She’s pregnant. She keeps her own counsel and if she decides to have an abortion she has it. The consequenses of having to tell people and get them involved in the decision is what negatively impacts her choice to abort. </p>
<p>If she chooses to carry to term she may find that her H divorces her. That negatively impacts her choice not to abort. She always has a choice.</p>
<p>I’ve known two career women who got pregnant and aborted over the objections of their husbands and that too led to divorce. All these examples prove nothing other than it ought to be the female’s decision because which ever one she makes she has to live with the results.</p>
<p>“Unless the woman was raped, she willingly had sex, and everyone knows that sex makes babies.”</p>
<p>Well, that applies just as much to the woman in your example who was coerced by her ■■■■■■■ husband. Her choice was to have (probably unprotected) sex with an abusive jerk who apparently didn’t want kids. If she’d been a little more careful sexually, he couldn’t have coerced her into having the abortion. So you see, she wasn’t coerced at all. Right?</p>
<p>The problem with not giving a woman a choice is that her body becomes “possessed” for many months and subjects her to very real risks that are greater than the risk posed by a legal early abortion. These risks are real. Someone in my family who was very dear to me died in childbirth, under medical supervision, due to childbirth. She would be alive today if she had opted for an abortion.</p>
<p>Oh and BTW, she was coerced by her husband into keeping her baby, against medical advice.</p>
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<p>From ZM’s #241:</p>
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<p>No, I did not introduce the subject of making premarital sex illegal nor countenance it if it were the will of the voters.</p>
<p>The hyprocrisies of a GOP candidate like Rudy Giuliani doesn’t mean anything in terms of the would-be ayahtollahs pursuing their agenda and the Rudy as a candidate wooing them. </p>
<p>I see where the would-be ayahtollahs of Colorado have received state Supreme Court approval to place a proposition on the ballot defining a fertilized ova as a human being with full legal rights including due process, etc.</p>
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<p>I didn’t think I was lecturing you, but I certainly don’t see a problem with my arguing about an issue that arguably affects me and my generation more than it does to any of the menopausal women in this thread!</p>
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<p>I have also made that point. I think abortion should be rare because it is a difficult medical procedure and is ultimately preventable (or, to a large degree), just as I would hope any unecessary medical procedure be rare. And yes, some women will experience negative effects, abortions are expensive, and unwanted pregnancies are traumatic. Wanting abortions to be rare has nothing to do with the morality of them.</p>
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<p>I am not a doctor and don’t feel qualified to speak about this, but I was under the impression that late-term abortions were only available under special circumstances (ie for the health/life of the woman). Is this wrong? </p>
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<p>Why couldn’t life begin at the age of viability? Or after 30 weeks gestation? I believe that life begins at conception, but I still support abortion (though I wouldn’t consider abortion “right” - or attach any sort of moral judgement upon it). </p>
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<p>I think if they’re making laws concerning my body, I’m perfectly justified in doing so! (They may very well NOT be lunatics - I still don’t want them legislating on my bedroom concerns).</p>
<p>I’ll add to posts 286 and 287. I too know of a woman whose husband coerced her to carry to term.</p>
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<p>In the real world, those just born babys found in the trash dumpster came from just such a “woman.”</p>
<p>One of the horrible multi-children killing mothers did her deed because of the emotional devastation of having children.</p>
<p>Its tough being a woman in the real world. At least let her have control over her reproductive decisions. For heavens sake, pro-lifers get to choose.</p>
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<p>I would argue that legal abortion, by making it ‘ok’ to kill babies up until the moment of birth, has imprinted into their minds that babies are disposable.</p>
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<p>I would argue that the did her deed because of religious fanaticism. She killed them so they would go to heaven before they sinned. </p>
<p>Religious fanaticism, not mothering, caused her to kill her children.</p>
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Viability is a moving target – one that varies with each fetus and with medical technology. </p>
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I agree that this is a tragedy. One of the better developments recently has been the passage of “Safe Baby” laws.
[Safe</a> Place for Newborns - Minnesota](<a href=“http://www.safeplacefornewborns.com/statefiles/mn.html]Safe”>http://www.safeplacefornewborns.com/statefiles/mn.html)</p>
<p>I would really like to see more support for women who find themselves pregnant but unable to raise a child. There are about 1.5 million abortions in the US each year. Abortions cost anywhere from $500 to $800, according to what I found by googling. That’s $750,000,000 a year. Can’t we use that money more productively?</p>
<p>lealdragon said:</p>
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<p>Sorry but that doesn’t fly. As a young teen in the mid-60’s through and after Roe in 1973 dead dumpster babies happened (and still do). Particularly horrible were those in colder climes left outside to freeze to death. And, there was at least as active and avaliable adoption services. And, it happened with all races of babies.</p>
<p>As I said, being a woman is tough, being a mother is tough. I say let the female decide if she is tough enough to have a baby.</p>
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<p>The three sourses for legal abortions within 10 miles of my house listed an average cost of $315-$375 depending on medical or vacuum procedure.</p>
<p>How much of that money for abortions is government funded? Anything not government funded would not be available other than if the pregnant woman cared to donate the amount she would have spent for the abortion.</p>
<p>Also, I believe the long term societal cost of an additional 1.5 million US citizens per year would greatly exceed that amount. As is, the population is expected to gain another 100 million in something just over 20 years where the last 100 million took 40 years.</p>
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<p>OK then I stand corrected. I never heard of it before the last decade or so. I never heard of mothers killing their children, either, except for some extreme cases of insanity. Is it my imagination or do these atrocities seem more commonplace now? (religious fanaticism certainly is a factor in many of these cases.)</p>
<p>Perhaps back then the girls were afraid to face their parents, since premarital sex was considered so taboo.</p>
<p>At any rate, it’s still not an argument in favor of abortion. It just means that some girls are unfortunate to have stern, unsupportive, or even abusive parents. If those same girls had gotten love and support, they probably wouldn’t have thrown their babies into the dumpster.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, abortion would not exist. … We do not live in an ideal world. … Lealdragon–I’m not sure if these homicidal mothers are more common now, or if we just hear about them more.</p>
<p>[Abortion:</a> What do you want to know?](<a href=“http://www.fwhc.org/abortion/flyer.htm]Abortion:”>Abortion: What do you want to know?)</p>
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<p>Since Roe v Wade, there have been somewhere around 43 million abortions in the U.S. We have an estimated 40 million + illegal aliens in this country. Is there a relationship?</p>
<p>If we are just weighing the costs of any human, the cost/benefit ratio is really questionable. Like the mastercard commercial, a human is priceless.</p>
<p>Do you think there’s a relationship?</p>
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<p>I’m sorry to hear about your friend, but how rare is that? Very few women die in childbirth nowadays. </p>
<p>I have refrained from mentioning any of the women who have died from legal abortions, even though there are a number of cases listed on the FFL website (most of them got hushed up), for a very specific reason: they are RARE.</p>
<p>Deaths from both abortions and childbirth DO happen, but they are BOTH rare so should not really be a factor in this debate, beyond shattering the myth that they never happen at all.</p>
<p>“I have NEVER known anyone who was emotionally devastated by having a baby.”</p>
<p>I gather you haven’t spent much time in public psychiatric hospitals. But it’s also interesting to consider that you’ve spent your lifetime in a country where early abortion was readily available. Pregnant women who feel that they would be devastated, emotionally or otherwise, by carrying to term are able to have safe, legal abortions. So every mother you know had children by choice.</p>
<p>The odds are excellent that each of us knows many more women who’ve had abortions than we think we know. In the last 12 months, about 2% of American women of reproductive age had an abortion. About one-third of American women will have at least one abortion by age 45.</p>