POLL: Pro-Life OR Pro-Abortion

FreedomFriend | 02/02/02 | FreedomFriend

[ConservativeTeen]

100% Pro-Life.

[bjcintennessee]

Wow! Loved your Mother Teresa (post #11) quote about abortion. She pretty much said it all.

The only exceptions to pro-life that should be allowed are rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life.

[J.R.R. Tolkien]

Pro-Abortion.

Why?

Anti-Government Meddling in People's Lives.

So you're for the most profound instance of meddling in U.S. history, Roe VS. Wade? For the federal government overturning countless state laws?

Anti-Religious Tyranny.

Abortion is a humanity issue. There are religious people on either side of it.

Defend your position.

If you can.

[mustapha mond]

Life. --mm

[J.R.R. Tolkien]

[JMJ333]

Thanks for the ping, and welcome to FR! Nice screen name! =)

[GovernmentShrinker]

Abortion is a humanity issue. There are religious people on either side of it.

People's positions on the issue are largely driven by their religious beliefs; the force of law should not be supporting one religious viewpoint while opposing another.

In my belief system, it is utterly immoral to devote time and energy to championing the rights of embryos and blastocysts while millions of children are literally being sold into slavery by their impoverished parents. The lucky ones (mostly boys) just get viciously beaten and underfed for a few years, until they're so weak that they're thrown out on the street and replaced with newly purchased slaves. The not-so-lucky ones (mostly girls) are sold into prostitution, sometimes as young as 8 or 9, and are thrown out on the street when they begin to show visible signs of AIDS, sometimes by the time they're 10 or 11. I can only imagine what these children would feel if they could hear American pro-lifers carrying on about how important it is that somebody's unwanted blastocyst be carried to term, and if they could know how much time and money is being spent on this crusade. Fortunately they can't hear it, while they're chained to a loom in an Indian "carpet school", or chained to a bed in a Thai brothel servicing 4 "customers" an hour.

[J.R.R. Tolkien]

While I disagree with your general premise, it still boils down to an argument against legally precluding the abortion of those prenates who would be destined to live the life of misery that you describe.

However, healthy American-born babies of all colors can be adopted into good families. How can you reasonably apply the "lifetime of poverty" argument to your opposition to laws against aborting them?

[GovernmentShrinker]

Easy. There are thousands of American children "aging out" of the foster care system every year, never having been adopted, most having been bounced around frequently between foster homes, often experiencing serious abuse in one or more of those foster homes. Why aren't they adopted? Some because they have serious mental or physical handicaps, but most simply because they are "too old" and/or the wrong color. While their misery is rarely on the level of what exploited 3rd world kids suffer, they are still a lot more important than any blastocyst. And every time someone adopts an infant or toddler, they are going to pour resources into its upbringing. Those resources ought to be directed to already living, suffering children. When you cause a blastocyst to be turned into a child by persuading its mother not to have an abortion, you are consigning an already living, suffering child to never be adopted. And it is certainly easier to guilt-trip a pregnant woman into having a baby she doesn't want, than to adopt and raise a 10 or 12 or 14 year old child with a background of abuse and neglect (perhaps one who arrives not knowing a word of your language). But is it more ethical to do so? No, at least not according to my belief system.

[J.R.R. Tolkien]

Yet that presumes a balancing act...more of one equals less of the other. There isn't justification for presupposing that such a balancing act is indeed an accurate description of the current situation in America.

Put another way, those who would adopt hard-to-place kids, and those who would adopt healthy saved-from-abortion babies may well be two distinct groups, with no real likelihood of them ever being anything but two distinct groups.

So if aborting healthy babies doesn't increase the number of adoptions of hard-to-place children anyway, how does the unwanted children scenario then justify the aborting of wanted babies?

[rdb3]

After reading your post, I'm sure some truly evil men are smiling in their graves.

Whew!

[J.R.R. Tolkien]

[Jagdgewehr]

absolutely, unconditionally pro-life.

[RLJVet]

Pro life, unconditionally.

And a bump for Salvation's post #205 re: the work that the good Fr. Frank Pavone ane Priests for Life are doing.

[JWinNC]

PRO-LIFE

[Jen]

Pro-Life. Abortion is murder.

[GovernmentShrinker]

There is a direct relationship between the rates of adoption of hard-to-place children, and the availability of healthy infants, though I'm sure it isn't a one-to-one relationship. Of course there are prospective adoptive parents who decide to do without children completely when they fail to secure a healthy infant. However, the vast majority of hard-to-place children who do get adopted, are adopted by people who are "settling for" one or more of these kids, after they found the process of adopting a healthy infant involved more expense or delay than they were willing or able to handle.

At any rate direct adoption isn't the only way to improve the plight of abused or neglected parentless children. There is something very disturbing about the mindset of many pro-lifers, who are willing to make a tremendous amount of self-righteous noise trying to persuade pregnant women to do something which they don't want to do and which will be very disruptive to their lives, but who aren't willing to undertake similar disruption to their own lives to adopt a hard-to-place child, or to raise h*** about the state of our foster care system and adoption laws, or to take any kind of action to improve the situation of children in the foreign world countries where they are most exploited.

[Judith Anne]

We were foster parents to six children, ages from 6 months to 17 years...All of the foster parents I know are really loving people, good families...where do you get the statistics to say something like this:

"often experiencing serious abuse in one or more of those foster homes."

What kind of abuse are you talking about? What state has these cases occuring? Who did any research? I can tell you right now that the foster parents I know have paid out of their own pockets for all the many expenses that the state allowance doesn't cover, that they have walked the floors and sat up nights with their children, whom many of us loved as our own...we've made Christmas, and Easter, and Thanksgiving, Fourth of July and a closet full of clothes, and a room of their own, and a peaceful, plentiful dinner table, night after night, sent them off to school with a prayer and a blessing, hugged and kissed them, and when they went back to their "real" parents, cried and prayed that they would be okay...

You know NOTHING about foster parents. NOTHING.

We were a couple who were meant to be parents of a large family...due to health problems I had in my pregnancies, we couldn't have as many children as we had love for...so we were foster parents...we would have adopted the children, but their parents felt they could take care of them just fine...all of them, when they were sent back home, went back into foster care within a year...that was heartbreaking, devastating, especially when we knew where they were coming from...finally, we couldn't take the heartbreak and loss anymore...

I know lots of foster parents, and former foster parents, just like us. You have to put up with a lot in any state's system just to be one...your bank accounts, your family history, your work history--everything is investigated...a criminal background check is done, home visits take place, announced and unannounced...the funds the state allows for the children's care are woefully short...you have to WANT to help children to be a foster parent.

Your throwaway remark was uninformed. You have no idea what you are talking about.

[Judith Anne]

And I am passionately pro-life.

[Southflanknorthpawsis]

Pro-life

Pro-capital punishment

Both positions are Biblical.