<p>
The only reason I can think of for having that belief is that you believe that life begins at conception. Therefore, aren’t there really two people involved with a decision to abort - the mother and the child? Why is it that the choice of abortion is given to only one of them? The typical refrain from the left is that the court system was set up to represent those with the least voice - which in this case is the child.</p>
<p>Being pro-choice myself, given the choice I will choose to allow all babies to come to term and live out their lives such as they are given a choice, that is.</p>
<p>My biological mother was not given a choice to abort, she was one of those poor women who could not afford to have an illegal abortion. So as a baby, I was allowed to live (which I feel certain I would have chosen to do at the time, given a choice) placed into a Catholic orphanage and allowed to raise two wonderful kids of my own with the life I was given, one child is a freshman in college and the other is a lovely 7 year old hockey player and writer, on top of all that I get to debate the issue that allowed me–and my children–to live, on CC. </p>
<p>What luck, eh!</p>
<p>Woodwork–I can identify very much with your story and if one could take a vote of all that were born under similar circumstances 99.9% would vote for birth.</p>
<p>Barrons,</p>
<p>I don’t think the cultural powers that be would like to see a poll like that done, or published, it would probably be considered to be in bad taste; don’t hold your breath. </p>
<p>Add to the poll numbers of non-aborted the children, grandchildren and perhaps even the people who’s lives were touched or helped by these non-aborted living people and the numbers would go up even more.</p>
<p>aries…</p>
<p>If I had to do it all over again, I’d become a constitutional lawyer. I took one course on the Consitution and fell in love with the in and outs and interpretations. You know that I am VERY liberal. But above all else (regardless of individual issues) I want to see a CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR on the Supreme Court (Alito may be; Thomas is not).</p>
<p>Given:
<p>So even though I’m a staunch Democrat, I’m witholding judgement on Alito. Even though I may disagree on many decisions that he might have the swing vote on, I do not think that rejecting conservative candidates will lead to Bush’s appointing a liberal one. My hope is that whoever is appointed will have a love for the Constitution and its intricate interpretive logical puzzles, yet can bring the dream embodied by the words (vs a literal interpretation) to today’s decisions.</p>
<p>So what would be red flags for me with Alito? …if his Senate responses indicate a broad rejection of individual liberties vs. government power. He’s never represented an individual in a case. Since the beginning of his career, he’s been on the government’s “side.”</p>
<p>I thought the nomination of Harriet Miers was wrong (qualification-wise), but I’m remaining open on this one…</p>
<p>Woodwork, don’t forget to add to the poll those people who have been mugged, robbed, abused or lost a love one to an adult who was raised in a household that didn’t want them. </p>
<p>If you want to take the moral high ground on abortion, get a universal health care program in our country, affordable housing in our cities and opportunities for young parents to advance through life. Let schools teach a realistic birth control and sexual education class. If you want to end abortions ,take away the reasons people give for having an abortion, just don’t force women to go through a pregnancy they don’t want. Women aren’t chattle or cattle. It is the the right of every woman to decide what they want to do.</p>
<p>
I suppose it is enough that you did not specify a particular race or ethnic group of muggers, robbers, abusers and murderers, but I personally find this argument horrifying, far scarier than the foolish aside made by William Bennett in a recent radio interview.
Eugenics, (the dark side of Darwinism) whether formal or casual, has been tried and discredited. Your argument, in ethical terms, offers no more than more of the same.
I have no interest in occupying any ground in this debate other than the one I was fortuitously born to stand on. The simple fact is that if abortion were legal in 1959, I would not be here to defend my existence. Neither would my children be, both of whom are very happy to be alive, moreover, all of us have given back a great deal to society in return for the opportunity we have been given to be alive. Some here on cc know my daughter and would also perhaps be saddened to think she never had a chance to become who she is.
While my mother was pregnant with me, she never informed the man who impregnated her. I got to know my biological father when I was in my late 20s. While I knew him, he had married, and asked me to be the best man at his wedding. I accepted with transcendent delight. He was one of the kindest most loving men I had ever known. He had been working with the homeless and drug and alcohol abusers in Denver for many years when I met him. He was quite happy I had lived through his mistakesadly, he died 7 years to the day after I met him.
For my wife and me there would have been no first words, steps, bedtime stories or Christmas cards from or too either of our children had I been aborted, rather than lived. No first steps, first words, winning goals, science fairs, graduation speeches, or first dates. There would be only a dead fetus back in 59, me.</p>
<p>Perhaps you figure that it would be okay to kill the babies of the poor, because a percentage of them will grow up to be criminals. Its been tried. You might suggest that it would be OK if the mothers were sympathetic to killing their own potential criminals, for whatever reason they prefer. That seems cynical, morally corrupt and disingenuous to me.</p>
<p>Ask a woman who, for whatever reason, in the end did not have the abortion we wish upon her, if she still wishes she would have aborted the child she has now given birth to. Its an honest question, but I dont suppose we would have to ask because it would be impolitic and we know what the answer would be.</p>
<p>I can speak for one of them. My mother. She suffered for my existence but latter in life we became quite close and we now have a very good relationship, more importantly, she loves her grandchildren very, very much. My son receives a package or card from her at least once or twice a week. Hes absolutely crazy about her. She flies down here from Michigan on occasion to stay with us and see her grandson play hockey. My daughter is the intellectual pride of the whole family and my mothers house is decorated with clippings of her childhood achievements. </p>
<p>As to the moral high ground, you get to stand your abstract ground and argue that abortion is a social good, to accept your argument I would have to give up my actual ground and say I would have been one of those abortions; that is, I would have no firm ground to stand on at allhigh or otherwise. The high ground, here, is occupied by those who get to decide who lives and dies amongst those soon to be born scattered and lying across the low-ground of non-being.</p>
<p>Its 7:00 a.m.
I have to go wake up my 7 year old son for school. Every morning I climb into his bed, hug him and whisper in his sleeping ears, I love you, son. Had your form of social engineering been in place 46 years ago, on this morning there would be no one there to say, or hear, I love you.</p>
<p>Its not all politics.
Sometimes its life and death.</p>
<p>Woodwork, I wish every woman contemplating abortion could read your post.</p>
<p>Woodwork, I am glad you have a son you love. No one has argued for social engineering here. I only gave the alternative side to your absurd suggestion that every fetus that has been aborted would grow up to be loved and be lovely as an adult. </p>
<p>Abortion rights are of course about women having a right to decide what to do with their bodies. To take a way that right is to enslave women, to treat them like some breeding device. </p>
<p>Some people want to take a moral highground by exploiting the horrific side of the decision, that some child will not be born. People who contemplate abortions do understand that fact, thank you. </p>
<p>Of course reducing the reasons women choose abortions is fought tooth and nail by the same organizations that would ban them, and who would label the doctors and nurses who have performed an abortion as murderers. I am also aware that one organization that fights women’s rights the strongest…moved their pedophile priests from one community to the next, keeping their secret safe until the press and lawsuits brought them to light. That speaks volumes about how they feel about children and their rights.</p>
<p>Denying women their rights is not a solution, encouraging intelligent birth control and sex education for every child is a step in the right direction.</p>
<p>A fetus/embryo/baby is not part of the mother’s body. It contains only half of her DNA and does not even share her blood. The arguement “I can do what I want with my body” is false because the baby is not a part of the mother’s body. It is shameful abortion has become an accepted form of birth control by many on the radical left.</p>
<p>Woodwork, you speak with the wisdom of one who has a unique appreciation for your own life that could have so easily been snuffed out if abortion was acceptable in 1959. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I hope everyone will take the time to read your post #147.</p>
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<p>I never said anything like that, and thats the problem with these sorts of arguments. They inevitably involve nothing more than boilerplate ideology, often from both sides. I gave you a real example of a real person and real children that I know, that is, my own experience; you offer, in return, political slogans and tired diatribes. </p>
<p>Moreover, that they would grow up and have the choice to be loved or lovely at all is what is at stakenot whether they will be, but whether they are allowed to chose: choice.</p>
<p>The person you are insulting here, on cc, wouldnt be here to insult if your deadly way would have prevailed when it mattered to this particular life and the life of my children and their children to come and those that love and need them and the woman who is now wonderfully happy that she could not have that abortion in 1959.</p>
<p>Not every child born turns out to be a responsible and good person, whether an abortion was at issue or not. Some of them will selfishly go on to commit crimes, be unwanted, have irresponsible sexual encounters where no love or commitment is involved and then kill their baby that would have been born and given the chance to do the right or wrong themselves, that is, to be human; though in this last act, amongst all the others (aborting), I suppose they would have been being socially and politically responsible–in their irresponsibility–in your eyes: their one noble act.</p>
<p>I am not dogmatic on these points; I am speaking out of my own experience here, as I have no other to speak from. People will do as they please, as they always do. But as long as anyone is asking me to make a choice, I will speak from my own experience of life and death and I will choose.</p>
<p>so I have a question
Since every child is a wanted child-why is it that we have so many children living in poverty?
<a href=“http://www.nccp.org/[/url]”>http://www.nccp.org/</a></p>
<p>I know many children who have been adopted into wonderful, loving, financially stable homes, including members of my own family. I wouldn’t have wanted that changed for anything. </p>
<p>But Mr. B is correct in that there is another side of the story, e.g., women who died trying to abort before abortions were legalized and the children who will not be placed into loving, financially secure homes. </p>
<p>And this is not a right or wrong issue - which is one of the reasons I think a woman should have a right, without government interference, to choose for herself. There is a difference of opinion about whether a fertilzed egg is a “child.” For example, do people consider the frozen fertilized egg, that is about to be discarded when unused as part of in vitro fertilization, as a “baby”? (Our current government won’t allow them to be used for medical research.) Should women be forced to have all that were fertilized implanted and carry them to term? What if the egg has a donor mother - who is responsible? Should the DNA be the overriding factor?</p>
<p>I was appalled at the Teri Schivao matter. A difficult situation all around. But I do not think that the government should be legislating end of life issues. And the case had court after court review and evaluate the evidence. Many of those who want judges who do not legislate from the bench certainly tried to have judges deviate from the normal judicial process in order to obtain their preferred outcome. And don’t get me started on Bill Frist’s medical diagnosis based on a videotape. </p>
<p>Just my opinion, but I want to retain a right to privacy in family matters.</p>
<p>Perhaps it has less to do with every child being a wanted child (I myself was not wanted) and more to do with every child preferring to live (as best they can) rather than not live at all, or to be given the choice to live.</p>
<p>My guess would be that most babies are pro-choice and would choose to live, given the choice–wanted or not.</p>
<p>It would otherwise follow that all unwanted people would have no reason to live at all. This is clearly not the case. Keep in mind, suicide is almost non-existent in the most impoverished countries on earth: born into abject poverty, but still choosing to live with every fiber in their body against all odds.</p>
<p>The fortunes of libertines and moral-relativists are far more circumscribed: they are immensely more likely to choose death for themselves (suicide) and for their future children (abortion).</p>
<p>I’ve been lurking in this thread for a while but felt the need to comment about the recent turn into abortion. While I understand where Woodwork is coming from, I think he is steamrolling over the complexities of abortion with his posts. I don’t consider abortion a good thing; I think that in a perfect world it would neither exist nor be needed. However, we don’t live in a perfect world, and I cannot in good conscience place a bundle of cells above the health of a living human being and what she wants for her own body.</p>
<p>What bothers me the most though is the rhetoric on “saving children.” I will not delve into the fact that the majority of the pro-life movement can rail against abortions, while at the same time stifling the gov. assistance programs, sex education, and other outlets that can help mothers avoid abortion. That is terrible in itself, but what’s even worse is how people like Woodwork talk about “potential” human beings as if their nonexistence is a trivial matter.</p>
<p>Woodwork, there are an infinite number of potential human beings. Anyone who is ever born has basically shut out the trillions of alternate genetic combinations that are their potential brothers and sisters. You might as well call ever single person born a murderer, if stopping a nonexistent person from coming into being is somehow murder. My mother hasn’t had an abortion, but she also hasn’t cranked out 15-some-odd kids like she “potentially” could. Apparently, she should have stopped being so damn selfish and let all my imaginary siblings have the “choice of life.” Potential humans are nothing but abstractions until some actual development occurs.</p>
<p>If you’re going to argue about the rights of a zygote, then you should treat them like zygotes, not 2-year-old Timmy’s who just happen to look more like bacteria than actual people. Just because a zygote can turn into a person after many transformations does not make it a person. I’m going to die and eventually decompose into the ground; I hope that doesn’t give the government the right to start treating me the same as dirt.</p>
<p>I apologize for the length of my post, but the “think of the children” line annoys me to no end for its hypocrisy and philosophical slop, and I had to get it off my chest.</p>
<p>I notice that the Republicans are trying to reduce funding for foster homes, food stamps, and other nutrition programs. Under this administration poverty is rising. If you want to discourage abortions, help us to reverse this trend. Support assistance to those in need, and honest scientific based birth control and sex education in schools.</p>
<p>What you suggest Mr. B. would/could create, promote a moral hazard. ?</p>
<p>To have or to avoid sex, when and where is certainly a moral issue, to understand modern devices and procedures to avoid pregnancy or disease is a reasonable public health topic.</p>
<p>What am I hearing about a Vanguard owner not reclusing himself from decision(s) involving the company…oops</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001433869[/url]”>http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001433869</a></p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/13086806.htm[/url]”>http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/13086806.htm</a></p>
<p>The White House says it was a computer glitch that gave Alito the case, but don’t you think you would remember that you owned a half a million or so of the company?</p>