the case of savita- i am a bit confused

michaelm said:
You can't always get what you want.
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Im fairly mind boggled by your response. I actually find it frightening to think that someone would be happy to force me to endure an unwanted pregnancy. I mean that, it frightens me to consider that.

Its strange to me that you seem to have a lot of empathy for an unborn child, but none for a living woman - at all. I cant quite seem to square that circle in my mind, it just doesnt connect for me.

michaelm said:
The solution is the same.Indeed, maybe you just can't help yourself.
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I dont know what you mean by the bit I bolded?

I asked an honest question, do you have any thoughts or comments on condemning women to do things they dont want to do? I mean that genuinely? Its surely impossible that you just think 'She has to have the baby' and dont think any further than that. What about the emotional impact on the woman? What about the socio economic circumstances? What about her career? What about her body and the permanent changes to it as a result of a pregnancy?

I mean, do you think its best that the woman has the baby and raises it, but is miserable and resents the child? Surely that cant be a good outcome for either her or a child?

Do you think its best that she has the baby and gives it up for adoption and suffers emotionally as a result of that?

I accept that you think abortion is wrong, so what then about the consequences of that - as in, the questions above?
 
truthseeker said:
Im fairly mind boggled by your response. .I dont know what you mean by the bit I bolded? I asked an honest question . .
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Perhaps you boggle too readily. Yours was an entirely loaded question, throw in a couple of straw men, the odd ad hominem and pepper with personal incredulity . . maybe you just can't help yourself. If you are interested in my views on the subject (and I doubt it) then just go back to 2008 and read mine and your posts on this AAM thread.
 
michaelm said:
Perhaps you boggle to readily. Yours was an entirely loaded question, throw in a couple of straw men, the odd ad hominem and pepper with personal incredulity . . maybe you just can't help yourself. If you are interested in my views on the subject (and I doubt it) then just go back to 2008 and read mine and your posts on this AAM thread.
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Extreme reluctance to engage yet dogmatic views. Odd.

Love it, been reading the thread you linked to and see you got personal with me there too!!! And you didnt enlighten on what you think about the consequences of a pro-life position. Just a lot of nonsense about how people dont know what abortion is and would we be prepared to do it ourselves. And a lot of repetition about how you are against abortion in all cases, oh, except when its necessary to save a womans life, but then its not really an abortion. OK.

Thanks for that link michaelm - now to find my ignore list and edit it ;)
 
(breaking my promise to move on but...)

The logical conclusion of being a pro-lifer, & I can only speak for myself here, is to continue the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption. I accept that that's easily said, and that it is by no means easy or practical etc, but the alternative is the termination of a life and isnt a life worth some inconvenience?

I was considering a glib comment involving "knocked" and "put" but I thought better of it.

Very hard to adopt in Ireland, very good couples trying to adopt (horrendously strict to be approved I believe - and that's fair enough), so your child would have a better chance than average, you could have that peace of mind. Maybe after carrying full term you'd want to keep the baby and maybe you'd cope there too. But if you decided adoption was best for the child I think that would be responsible. There is also fostering if someone felt they needed to finish a degree or something - normal people get through extra-ordinary stuff all the time.
 
Thanks Betsy Og. Just to apply that conclusion to a global mindset (on the basis that if abortion is wrong its wrong everywhere), UNICEF estimates that there are 210 million orphans in the world right now. If they have no one willing to be their parent or guardian, why would another baby have a better chance?

And it doesnt deal with the changes to a womans body, some of which may be permanent and have psychological effects (I know more than one person who has suffered a permanent negative health consequence of having a baby, from a burst blood vessel in the eye that caused partial blindness to nerve damage causing partial incontinence).

Im not disputing your pov at all btw, Im just wondering how you square up the consequences.
 
I'll be a bit cute hoor in my response :D and say - are we not talking about Ireland??, are there loads of orphans in Ireland??

Its a bit like the "the planet is overpopulated dont have kids" argument - I say - tell it to the Chinese and the Indians, round where I live there's reeks of room for people.

To deal with the worldwide point I'd say, ye lot over there, could ye invest in some contraception, how are ye going to mind all the kids ye are about to have? I dont think anyone makes a realistic point that abortion is a necessary means of population control.
 
OK, grand, just talking about Ireland then.

Do you still think its a good thing to be encouraging the births of unwanted children? Presumably initially there would be plenty of prospective of adoptive parents. But given the 5000 or so women who seek abortions each year, dont you think we'd run out of adoptive parents pretty quickly? What then? Dont laugh, but do you think the HSE could cope with 5000 odd new orphans a year?

And what about the actual pregnancy and its effects on the body?
 
What can one say.

I suppose you'd be shot down nowadays for saying a) stop bonking, b) bonk away but use protection/contraception.

Of the 5,000 how many tragic stories are there compared to flippin idiots??

Re changes in a womans body - ok, I know its not fun - but you're about to terminate a foetus (insert any more emotive term you prefer) - dont they deserve a life??, is your stretch mark more worthy than a child living.

Why is the 5,000 a year society's problem?, why cant 4,000 of the 5,000 "woman up" and deal with it.
 
Betsy Og said:
What can one say.

I suppose you'd be shot down nowadays for saying a) stop bonking, b) bonk away but use protection/contraception.

Of the 5,000 how many tragic stories are there compared to flippin idiots??

Re changes in a womans body - ok, I know its not fun - but you're about to terminate a foetus (insert any more emotive term you prefer) - dont they deserve a life??, is your stretch mark more worthy than a child living.

Why is the 5,000 a year society's problem?, why cant 4,000 of the 5,000 "woman up" and deal with it.
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I think that stop bonking is not a realistic option. And contraception fails. I mean, we do need to be realistic. 5000 is the number that seek safe abortion abroad (or approx). Im just trying to tease out the logical consequence of the position that women should just have the baby and give it up for adoption.

Im not sure it matters about people being flipping idiots tbh. If the answer to the problem is 'you were a flipping idiot so just deal with it' I think we have an even less compassionate society than if we legalised abortion!!

I thought the pro-life position was that it is societies problem as opposed to a womans problem? The point on womaning up is that these women dont want the child. I dont think that womaning up and raising a child you dont want is a nice life for either.

I had a look for some adoption numbers. Just on a cursory look I found [broken link removed]. 400 adoptions a year currently.

Allowing that there are long waiting lists, even being generous and more than doubling that figure, say 1000 adoptions were to happen a year. Say 2500 women 'woman up', that still leaves a lot of orphans. And a lot of unhappy women with stretch marks.
 
truthseeker said:
Allowing that there are long waiting lists, even being generous and more than doubling that figure, say 1000 adoptions a year. Say 2500 women 'woman up', that still leaves a lot of orphans. And a lot of unhappy women with stretch marks.
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I know, sure as someone said earlier life just isnt fair. But personal responsibility has to come into play, none of us has a magic wand. I suppose my ultimate is - if you cant have your child adopted just get on with it - and in your next life be a bit smarter.

There are loads of problems where not having people exist would be a 'solution', should we round up the homeless?, the junkies?, the bedblockers?, the old?, arent they a drag on society too?, could we just, I dunno..... 'terminate' say 5,000 a year, keep the thing manageable. That darned womb is a dangerous place to be, why do you cry after being born??, at least from then on someone will cry foul if there's a 'procedure' to end your life.
 
Betsy Og said:
There are loads of problems where not having people exist would be a 'solution', should we round up the homeless?, the junkies?, the bedblockers?, the old?, arent they a drag on society too?, could we just, I dunno..... 'terminate' say 5,000 a year, keep the thing manageable. That darned womb is a dangerous place to be, why do you cry after being born??, at least from then on someone will cry foul if there's a 'procedure' to end your life.
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I dont really see how adding to the problems of society is an improvement on things!!

Betsy Og said:
I know, sure as someone said earlier life just isnt fair. But personal responsibility has to come into play, none of us has a magic wand. I suppose my ultimate is - if you cant have your child adopted just get on with it - and in your next life be a bit smarter.
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I dont disagree re personal responsibility at all, but it must be acknowledged that contraception fails, people get raped, people get sick and their pill doesnt work etc... With all the best will in the world, unwanted pregnancies happen.

Thanks for a pleasant exchange Betsy Og.

I will leave it on this:
Betsy Og said:
..if you cant have your child adopted just get on with it..
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If it was as easy as the above we wouldnt have the 5000 eh?

(next life? Are we Buddhists now? :D)
 
truthseeker said:
I dont really see how adding to the problems of society is an improvement on things!!
)
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Yes indeed it was good discourse. My point above was that killing people could solve at lot of problems if you thought that was acceptable, but i dont think so.
 
Great tweet recently from Roger Parrow (@NaasPreacher) 7:30 AM on Tue, Nov 20, 2012:
We have lost two grandchildren to miscarriage - we have not lost two grandfoetuses. Tell our children the babies they lost were not babies
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.
 
Gosh, I'd swear I'd never get involved in this but the last post pushed me.

In Mr Parrow's example a babies were dearly wished for. They did not survive. So naturally they are to be regarded as dearly lost children.

Exactly the same as happened to my wife and I - she miscarried. We also regarded it as the loss of a child.

Eventually, we managed to adopt a baby girl (Impossibly difficult to do in ireland as I was "too old" at 42 when we applied -so we went thru UK channels. We so regret that we had delayed adopting and thus were not able to adopt more).

If my daughter ,now 19, was raped and had no desire to bear the foetus/baby/child of the rapist, or if her life -even her health - was at risk I would move heaven and earth to procure an abortion for her if that was her wish.
 
Mr Parrow is free to use whatever terminology he likes. A one year old is called a one year old because their existence as a person started a year beforehand. See how I can play the linguistics game too?
 
@DrMoriarty
Just a brief catch up.
Morality didn't come into my argument. What I said was quite simple is that there comes a stage in a pregnancy when it is virtually certain that a live baby results. There is no moral statement in that. In point of fact the right to choose is a moral statement.

What it simply raises on a constitutional basis - because its in there - that there is an equal right to life of the mother and the unborn.

This rules out a termination other than where the Mother's life is in danger. Thats law not morality.

The X case presented suicide as such a risk -and hence etc.

So forget the morality - stick to the law. If the suicide case gets rerun again it will likely fail.

And as the law currently stands - there in no provision for any other termination.
 
truthseeker said:
Of course foetuses arent people.
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Serious question; Do you not consider any ‘unborn’ a child? Is it ok to terminate a pregnancy right up to birth?
If a mother had an elective c-section 4 or 6 weeks prematurely would it be ok to terminate that foetus outside the womb?

I agree that it’s a terrible thing for a woman to have to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term but it is my opinion that killing a child is worse.
 
Purple said:
Serious question; Do you not consider any ‘unborn’ a child? Is it ok to terminate a pregnancy right up to birth?
If a mother had an elective c-section 4 or 6 weeks prematurely would it be ok to terminate that foetus outside the womb?
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No, and I dont think anyone is advocating late term abortions. You have asked me this before. There is a point (Im happy to let doctors and scientists decide this) where a foetus will not survive outside the womb even with massive medical intervention, mechanical breathing etc...

It is the dependency on the mothers body where I have the issue. I think that abortions are terrible and I think that unwanted pregnancies are terrible, but I think the worse moral wrong is to force someone to have a baby they dont want and all the consequences of that.

If you needed a kidney or you would die, and mine was the only kidney match - I dont think I should be forced to give you my kidney. I dont think that people, conscious, sentient people, should be forced to do things that they dont want to do with their bodies - the risk of massive mental upset and an entire life of ptsd is just too awful to contemplate.
 
So at some stage a foetus becomes a baby, even within the womb. Is that correct? I’m just trying to understand your views, I’m not score points or trying to catch you out. If that is your view then I agree on that point. We differ in whether the woman’s right to control what happens to her body trumps the right to life of the unborn, or at least when and under what circumstances.
 
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