forum post "Pro choice or pro life?"

the truth is...there is no real truth....everything we see as a collective people must begin somewhere,,,thus making even a collectively conscious statement relative...we live each day to our own understanding and we do the things we do because of the experiences we have accumulated...or because of the lack of experience...the only way i can legitimize even having an opinion in this world is having an opinion conceived thru an open mind...and everything is pro choice no matter what kind of fetters the establishment tries to place around our decisions, laws and rules were made to contrive some sort of order within this world, but let me ask you this...do the laws and rules effect the confusion and chaos that goes on within ur mind every day? do laws and rules change the lines you have drawn and what you would do if those lines were crossed? it might broken the lines yes...it might temper our tolerance yes...but to each and every person in this world...no matter how deluded they are to there own existence...we no what we are capable of dealing with...even if we haven't been pushed to deal with it...yet...or we may never be pushed to deal with it...but the bottom line is when it all comes down to it...our own sense of right and wrong will drive us, no matter what laws, rules..or any one else for that matter...has to say about it...i hope this made sense ;)

Do we live in our minds or in a society of people with differing ideas? Everyone can believe something different, but when it comes to living with each other, the laws must accomodate all the people. If there is chaos in my mind, then imagine how much chaos  there would be in society if we had no laws at all. Even with the laws we have there is chaos, but there is also some level of order. People break laws, they had abortions before it was legal. Many died or were seriously injured. So it is my opinion that we have laws that allow us to make choices based on a collective belief system. We will never all believe the same things, but if our laws permit us each to live free and make it possible for human life to continue existing, I can live with that.
I never mentioned truth, truth is another topic all together. In a poem I wrote many years ago, I asked if we all have our own truths or if there is only one truth, the truth of God. If so, nothing else will matter, all the worlds truths will vanish. But we won't know that in life, so while we have life, we have to live together. The funny thing about people who say they believe in God is that all of them break God's laws, if they didn't, they wouldn't need forgiveness and Jesus would be irrelevent. At least people can recognize their imperfectness when it comes to asking for forgiveness, but man the hypocracy thing is the part that is confusing.

i meant broaden the lines...sorry for the spelling error

1) responce 2:
I don't want to go off topic, but you said that "after all that isn't the christian way."
Unfortunately, that is not true. During the period from 1492 through the 1500's, many came to America to be free from religious persecution, which Christians had a thick hand in before Columbus came to America. But after Columbus, he and Cortez and a few others, went all over North and South America, murdering and forcing Christianity down the throats of Native Americans and Aztecs, among others.

I'd need to reread some history myself to have all the facts, but I just recently saw a PBS program on how Native Americans in the 1800's were kept in Reservation encampments where their children were not allowed to speak their native language and were force taught Christianity. I wish I had more details, but this is already off topic. The point is, Christianity has ALWAYS been about forcing their beliefs on others and killing off those who pose a threat to their agenda. History is packed with examples. And it is not an exclusive Christian problem, all religions have used execution and the threat of it to control their followers, and those who didn't want to.
So abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, whatever it is, it's all about control and spreading the word. Our founding fathers included separation of church and state in the Constitution for a reason. History had already shown them how religion had controlled entire nations and brought war and slaughter to generation after generation.
The Bible is a good book, unfortunately, often, the people who read it are not.
Somehow murding doctors who provide legal services comes across as hypocicy to me. I don't believe in the death penalty, so even if I thought abortion was a crime, murdering doctors would not be an acceptable sentence.
Sorry for the late edit, I got sidetracked and left that out.

2) 3
It is still happening, that's my point. And I did not say "all" Christians. And as far as all whites being racest, I offer myself as an example of one who is not. Yes, many are, I know some and have met many a white racist. Many of them are Christians, by the way. But we should perhaps start another thread to discuss this, this is about choice in abortion and the use of contraception.
My views on race and racism are plentiful in my poetry. I believe in equality for everyone, not just races. If laws are made that restrict the rights of women, it affects me, it bothers me, it makes me speak out against it just as loudly as the injustice of slavery and the institutional racism that exists in America to this day.
We have slavery in America today. It happens every day and is ignored by mainstream America. Sex slaves are made pregnant and who is raising their children? Again, lets take this to another forum and keep this one about abortion rights.

3) 4
The fact is, I believe that abortion is wrong, though not in the case of rape, incest or when the mother's life is in danger. I would prefer that no abortion was necessary or even wanted. But I also feel very strongly that even when it is simply a matter of choice, the right to choose must be available. That is as much a matter of of faith as it is anything else. If God's judgment is not good enough for those who believe in God, then perhaps it is their faith in God that needs saving.

4) 5
Oh, I just knew the world population was going to rear it's ugly head. My fellow environmentalists abandoned the world population problem and now it has been adopted into the abortion family plan. I happen to be greatly concerned by the fact that we have more than tripled the number of people on the planet in 50 years, and the fact that because of global warming, there will be no fresh drinking water left in less than 20 years, but I am not for having abortions to stop population growth. Contraception is a good idea, but the Catholics call that a sin.
Is having a vasectomy a sin? I guess it is still killing off millions of sperm. There is just no getting around these dam sperm. What if I just had the parts removed. Sure it would kill millions all in one shot, or not a shot, but it would never happen again, even on lonely nights all by myself...

I don't believe there will be an end of days or an end of calenders.
I just think people must have choices to make so that if there is some kind of judgement after life, each person has had the opportunity to sin and repent, thus be forgiven. My Christian upbringing is not my faith, but it serves as the basis for my views on right and wrong. Religius practices in the various Christian religions varies considerably, but the idea of forgiveness, the laws Jesus laid down and the concept of the soul going to heaven are often on my mind. I don't know what is going to happen and neither does anyone else. So when I see how many people decide the fate of others or impose their religion on people who do not believe the same things they do, it bothers me deeply. If I decide to use contraception and God sends me to Hell because of it, then that is my fate, I made that choice.
When it comes to abortion, that same concept applies. There are many opinions about when life begins, when a baby is a baby and when a baby is imbued with a soul. Many people don't believe a baby has a soul at conception and there are a variety of opinions on exactly when that happens. Many don't think there is any such thing as a soul. In our society, we have to make laws that are fair for everyone.
One thing we can't do is make laws that say women should die if they have a medical problem that will likely cause her death if she has a child. Also, another thing being shoved down our throats is that if a woman goes to the emergency, even with health benefits, she should be allowed to bleed to death if she is having or has had a miscarriage. It might be possible to save her and the baby, but these lunitics want the law to be written to assume that they are bleeding because they have had or attempted to have an abortion. So it would be illegal for doctors to help them. Can you imagine, your wife wants to have a baby, but something goes wrong inside her and she miscarriages. So rather than help her, doctors and nurses leave her standing there, or likely laying there, bleeding to death on the floor of the emergency room. This is how insane these religious fundementalists are, this is why we need laws to stop them.

There have been many times, down through history, when religious beliefs caused people to act in histerical ways, burning people at the stake as witches, killing people who were believed to be possessed by demons, making war... history is rife with examples on what religious extremists will do in the name of God.
Humans have not evolved past the hysteria, they have just modified their method of killing. And so it goes with modern day inquisitionists. It's not just abortion, it is every aspect of life. Cut off the poor and minorities from health care and food sources and they will die off. Prevent them from getting care when they are sick, even if they have benefits and more will die. Keep them from voting in any way possible so they can get the majority in Congress and get their choice for President, then make the laws conform to the Bible. With the military power America has today, I cannot imagine how far they would go and it would most certainly lead to another civil war here.
So while we talk about abortion, that is just the tip of the iceberg. They won't stop at the American borders. And then it may very well come to pass that the end of days will come in just a few short years. God won't have anything to do with it, just those who kill in his name.
jj

Before there is a brain, there is no awareness. Before there is a soul, there is no sin. A reflex to physical contact cannot be perceived as pain until the brain has developed more than a fetus has. I know tests have been done to measure this, and though I don't have the data, I have seen programs that discuss it. You are creating non-existent conversation to prove a hypothetical point.
You could ask yourself all those same questions every time you masterbate for all the sperm you have murdered in your life. Do you go to confession everytime you jerk off and ask God's forgiveness? I don't, they are my DNA from my body and I abort them daily.

Have you ever gotten a blow job or had sex in such a way that no child could be born? How many sperm have you aborted in your life? Ya know, I have heard you will go blind if you keep touching yourself, so maybe that's why you can't see why you are wrong to judge others.

my experiences are private and not for your judgment, as are those of people who have a different belief than yours.
I seperated the physical from the spiritual when talking about pain. We do not know when a soul is embued in a fetus, but according to the bible, it is not at conception.
The body cannot experience pain until the brain is capable of perceiving it. That is biological fact. It has been measured. Physical pain is something the brain detects and simply cannot be detected as pain if the brain has not developed. That is not an opinion, it has been measured. I am absolutely certain it can be searched on the internet. I happen to have seen a program on it, but I have not researched it thouroughly. You might consider doing so before telling people how it is when you don't know how it is. What experience do you have as a fetus that was aborted?
Your poem accuses many things that are hypothetical. I see it as an attack on those who have had abortions, but you have no experience to make that judgment. That is what Indie was saying, you created words from your imagination, not your experience. If you are going to attack people with words, expect to be attacked in return. Abortion is the denile of life, not the taking of life, and there is a difference that must be recognized.

Men do not have th right to decide that any woman who they want to get pregnant will have to endure having the rapers child. If that were true, I could just go around raping the wives and daughters of men who would object to my sexual rampage, but then they would have to accept the fact that they are the grandfather of my child or the husabnd of a woman I just felt like f**ing cos she was hot, and too bad if you don't like it. Now you have to tell your wife to have my baby. This is great, now I can have as many babies as women I can rape and pass on my DNA to an entire generation. Might as well make rape legal, women's rights are poiintless after all, this is a man's world... Pardon my sarcasm, but beliefs are not facts and should not be laws.

Pain is very easily measured in a number of ways. In anyone outside the womb, MRI's can be used to see pain in all parts of the body and where it is experienced in the brain. and MRI is capable of showing changes in real time. It has other capabilities, like an X-ray, but it can see inside at every level of tissue. It can see injuries to muscle and other tissues that X-rays look right through. Another thing it can do is see temperature changes and electricle impulses in the nerve endings in the brain. So when they prick you with a needle in your foot, they can see the pain registering in your brain. It is unfortunately very expensive, so it doesn't get used as often as it should. But it has been used to measure pain. Ultra sounds have been used to see babies inside the womb for a loong time, but they have noticed reactions by the babies when they are older. Further tests show the unltra sound was causung pain in the unborn babies. apparently the sound vibrates in the amnionic fluid and causes a loud trainlike noise that the babies react and even can be seen gimicing in pain. I don't recall how old the babies are when they first show this but it is all connected to the formation of the area of the brain that experiences pain. I am not goiing to teach a medical class here, that's the basics. Your response makes it sound as though you have never heard of modern medicine. I am no genious but I do pay attention when something is right in front of my face. We do know what parts of the brain are responsible for most of our bodily functions. Recent developments in technology even allow for ultrasounds to be done in the field with a portable device that looks like a Star Trek tricorder. Anyway, your poem was a guilt laiden diatribe that was clearly designed to make those who have had abortions feel miserable and keep others from doing it. You have never been in the position of being pregnant with an unwanted child. You have no idea what it feels like and how it would feel for you to be forced to spend 9 months waiting to expell Satin from your stomach.

this is my point, they can see the magnitude of pain. please research this. they can see what hurts and how much it hurts. they can tell when a person is faking pain, when it is real and what is causing it. they have even been using this technology to develop new lie detectors because they can tell what part of the brain fires when someone is making up something as opposed to rcalling a memory. It is possible to see this in an MRI. Unfortuantely, it is not yet known if it is safe to use on developiing children in the womb, so for now, we can only see reactions in the womb that are not as clear. But they do have enough resolution that they were able to see an expression of pain on a babies face when an ultra sound was used. So they looking at when this begins, but it is controversial because they don't want to cause harm to the fetus and make them experience pain unnecessarily. But they do know that early fetuses do not display this reactioon, so somewhere in the middle, the brain developes enough to detect and experience pain.

An MRI can see if a broken arm hurts a little bit or alot. I do not understand exactly how it works, but from what I saw, there is a certain amount of heat and electrical activity that is normal and that increases when there is an injury to a particular area of the body. At the same time that is happeneing, the brain is registering that pain, and a change in the brain can also be seen. This is not science fiction, we have the technology.

no matrix, and it's all out there on the internet. if you can get on this website, you must be able to go to Google and type in "MRI measuring pain" or something like that and then read what comes up. I have had the opportunity to see an MRI work 10 years ago when they weren't as advanced as they are now. I worked in a medical facility and one of the patients that had undergone a operation to remove a brain tumor had an MRI to find out why he was no longer improving. Turned out he had a very tiny bleed at the point of the removed tumor. It was dead center in his brain and was causing brain damage. They could see that without even opening his head back up. Unfortunately the area where the bleed was was in control of controlling whatever the brain makes to tell the bodies organs to work. A few months later he was dead because his body shut down one organ after the other. They knew when they saw the brain damage, from where it was, that he had almost no chance of surviving because they knew what the affected part of the brain was in control of. That was 10 years ago and there have been so many advances in the tecnology that we can see when someone is telling a lie and if they are in pain, how much pain they are in.
I don't remember when the first Matrix movie came out, but think about how much movies have advanced in the past 5 years, and that's just entertainment. Medical technology is evolving every day.
No machine can tell you what you are feeling, but if you are feeling pain, it can see it even if you don't believe it. And you can't lie to a machine that can see it happening.

JJ, I must say that this is truly a thought provoking write that I'm not sure I can agree with 100%.

I want to say that I am Pro-life, because I believe killing a child is morally wrong (even if the child is unborn, not fully developed, and still considered as just a fetus). To prevent a child from coming into this world is something I could never do or fully understand. Every child has a purpose. No child is a mistake.


But then on the subject of rape. That is confusing. Yes a woman would have to relive the torture she went through... but I don't know. That is where I get beyond confused. If a woman gets pregnant through rape, what should she do? What would be the right thing to do? I honestly could not tell you what I believe is the right thing, because I truly don't know... I think I would have to say that it would still be wrong.

But to kill an unborn baby, because you carelessly had sex with someone should not be aloud. They should have to live with that... If you're not ready to have and raise a child, then you should not have sex.

If you could get people who should not have sex to stop having sex, that would work. But people living in the worst conditions in the poorest countries where Aides and other sexually transmitted dideases are at epidemic levels are still having sex and making babies who often starve to death or die from disease. So that's never going to work.

You said:
"But then on the subject of rape. That is confusing. Yes a woman would have to relive the torture she went through... but I don't know. That is where I get beyond confused. If a woman gets pregnant through rape, what should she do? What would be the right thing to do? I honestly could not tell you what I believe is the right thing, because I truly don't know... I think I would have to say that it would still be wrong."

My whole point is to offer them a choice. Not just because you or I might disagree, or millions of people might disagree, but because I feel that it is a personal choice made by a woman who is in that situation. We can't force our beliefs on her. She might choose to have the baby and keep it anyway, or give it up for adoption, but she also might not want to give birth to a child concieved in violence against her. So I think she should have the right to choose. Many teenage girls have been made pregnent by their fathers or brothers, both incest and rape all rolled into one. There are many issues to deal with in such family situations. I just can't see how making a young girl who is not ready, willing and probably not able to raise a baby, give birth to one conceived in violence and betrayal.

I wish there was another way. I wish there were no rapes, I wish that people who don't want to have babies could abstain, but that has never been the case. Even Catholic Priests can't control themselves and they took a vox to God not to have sex. People have sexual urges all the time and if you look at how many people break laws to do it, who break abstinence vows, marriage vows and cheat with multiple partners, even prostitutes who are more likely to have STD's than not. Sex drives our society and it is used to sell everything. The sex industry makes more money the world over than any other industry. So if we cannot get people to stop having sex, maybe we should consider preventitive measures for the aftermath of it.

Abortions are not the byproduct of marriage, unless they happen because someone in the marriage has been cheating and doen't want their spouce to find out. That's how alot of women died in the 60's and 70's before abortion was legal. They went to back ally doctors who weren't even doctors often. We cannot go back to that, it's horrible in so many ways. People who are determined to have abortions will do it even at the risk of their own lives. That's why it was legalized. Not because people were having an abortion frenzy, but because all too often, the women who got them died horribly in their desperation to hide the pregnancy. That is what we will go back to if Roe V. Wade is overturned. And in the end, the babies will die anyway.

jj

This is definitely a sticky one and causes a great deal of stress to people, doesn't it.  As a 16 year old rape survivor who found herself pregnant, being able to choose was a blessing for me.  I would never tell another woman what to do with her body. It's a deeply personal decision.  But this...for me...was absolutely essential to my survival and sanity.  And though this post came long before my arrival at DUP, thank you for taking it there.

Willow, I must be true to my feelings. I believe that people must be free to choose. Being forced to have a child under those circumstances would be a crime. If the girl/woman chooses to have the child, there also should be a law to prevent parents from forcing her to abort. Choices must be for the individual, not for a those not experiencing the dilemma and especially not by men who cannot conceive of it or of a child.
[[hugs]] thank you!
JJ