Abortion is awful and traumatic
This line of bullshit needs to die. The most common emotion women report after abortions is relief.
Just because abortions aren't snap decisions doesn't mean they're horrible things.
Yeah. It's like a therapeutic massage. I personally know several women who get knocked up monthly, just for the abortions. I hear it's quite relaxing.
She should have the choice, obviously, but the question becomes who pays. If rapebortions are free, you'll have girls falsely accusing their boyfriends in order to avoid the bill.
Really? REALLY?
That's kinda like the argument that if gay marriage were legal, crooked businessmen would get married so they couldn't be forced to testify against each other. It sounds like you're just making up the most absurd scenario imaginable.
That marriage thing is a clever one... if polygamy were also legal, you could have the entire Mafia get hitched.
And, yes, I'll confess to watching too much Law & Order: SVU. That being said, I didn't make this up. If Google News would come up with anything unrelated to Sarah Palin when I put in the words "rape" and "abortion," I might have been able to give you examples. Suffice it to say, and you don't have to believe me, I've heard about this sort of thing before, and not just anecdotally or on TV. But I'll admit that it's uncommon, and I probably shouldn't have brought it up as an argument. I was tired.
I don't see it as a matter of fetal life. I think that's irrelevant. What it ultimately comes down to is rights, and I see the "right to life" as a more general "right to control over one's own body".
Maybe a fetus is human enough to have a right to life, maybe it's not. Doesn't matter. Even assuming it does, that right does not get to supersede the mother's right to control her own body. If a woman is pregnant and decides to stop being pregnant, at whatever time and for whatever reason, then she should be able to do so. And unless medical technology will allow for birth to occur right now, without significant mental, physical, or financial strain on the mother? Then abortion has to be an option, it has to be readily available, it has to carry no significant financial burden to obtain, and it shouldn't have any "have to take a sex ed class" strings attached. It's the women's choice, nothing else factors into it.
<guild> If she had controlled her body in the first place, she wouldn't need the abortion. </guild>
Seriously though, there's a good reason that sex ed classes should be part of the package. Abortion should not be used as a method of birth control, the way condoms are. The ultimate goal here is for every pregnancy to be intentional. Is such perfection attainable? Doubtful. But it's dumb to give up trying to educate people.
I'd also be in favor of full public funding for abortion. It is good public policy, and in the state's interest, to not force anybody to birth a child they don't want.
When did we start talking about China?
This goes back to my education angle. If people stop having unwanted pregnancies, they'll stop having abortions, and this stops being a problem. Cases of rape, obviously, excluded.
Let me just add here that education doesn't stop at "wrap the wiener." I've posted at length on the topic of motherhood before, and how some women have babies for extremely stupid reasons. A good program would make sure that intentional pregnancies are also responsible ones.
