Abortions for 3,735, minature flags for nobody

NachoBusiness wrote: »

You'd swear terminating pregnancies was the most natural thing in the world for women to do the way you, and others, speak about it. Nature never intended women to be be able to decide to stop being pregnant if that was their choice. It's part of the human condition, or at least it should be, that you get pregnant and you have a child. Now I am willing to wrap my head around early interventions in extreme cases like incest, rape and for reasons of health but beyond that I really can't.

You ask which is worse, the trauma for a woman that has a child she doesn't want or a man having a child aborted that he does want, well I would say the latter, as a child can be fostered or adopted and the woman can get on with her life, whereas the man may have spent months emotionally preparing to be a father, been in close contact with his pregnant wife or g/f believing that his child was right there and may even have felt his baby kick (if a late stage abortion is carried out) and he may never get that out of his head. Some people just see the barbaric nature of abortion and some don't. It's a violent act. Some would argue the most violent.

I appreciate that for some what I say might be hard to read but I genuinely don't believe some women understand what they are actually doing. I think discussions around it in our society, and the information delivered regarding it, is all done in such a clinical and sanatised way that I honestly feel that the growing human baby is quite often seen these days as nothing more than plaque build up and abortion clinic as a dentist office. It has to be though. This pretense is the only way I feel that millions of women could choose to abort so many babies each and every year around the world.

As for the aftermath and who is effected worse. It's not a competition.

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/9708407.Personal_trainer_killed_himself_after_abortion_row/

http://womenhurt.ie/

Well if you want things as nature 'intended' (not that nature can intend anything), nature intends for girls of as young as 10 to get pregnant, for women to have a baby a year, for many of us to die in childbirth. For most of humanity to die of treatable diseases, so lets go with nature?
For first trimester abortions there is no baby, and many women are very aware of this as so many of us have early miscarriages. Some women understand exactly what is involved, and do not have a problem with it.

inocybe wrote: »

For first trimester abortions there is no baby, and many women are very aware of this as so many of us have early miscarriages. Some women understand exactly what is involved, and do not have a problem with it.

That is a very good point. Between 10-25% of all -recognized- pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester and when you add in all the ones that weren't recognized, the number shoots up. It is impossible to say a precise number, because there are an awful lot of period getting delayed, then an extra-heavy period that may well have been a miscarriage, but then again, may have been chance, and are not added to official statistics ( I have heard estimates of up to a half).

(NachoBusiness) Nature never intended women to be be able to decide to stop being pregnant if that was their choice. It's part of the human condition, or at least it should be, that you get pregnant and you have a child.

Yet that has been going on since time immemorial. There have always been plants and potions that women knew about to deal with these things. And as for Nature intended...well, actually, you're not quite correct. Firstly, Nature isn't a concious force, but leaving that aside... miscarriages happen easily when the female isn't in optimal conditions. The stress factor can cause spontaneous abortions, which is the body protecting itself from the added dangers of reproducing in sub-optimal conditions, whether they be lack of nutrients (very common), stress (also prevents women from conceiving), illness (leads to "unfavourable conditions" in the uterine area). Early trimester abortions are actually surprisingly natural, but the female can also come to the intellectual decision rather than just the instinctive/bodily decision that conditions are sub-optimal and it is not the time for reproduction.

NachoBusiness wrote: »

You'd swear terminating pregnancies was the most natural thing in the world for women to do the way you, and others, speak about it. Nature never intended women to be be able to decide to stop being pregnant if that was their choice. It's part of the human condition, or at least it should be, that you get pregnant and you have a child. Now I am willing to wrap my head around early interventions in extreme cases like incest, rape and for reasons of health but beyond that I really can't.

Nature never intended you to be sitting in a dwelling made of brick and communicating globally using a machine made of metal, dead dinosaurs, and magic. Nature doesn't intend anything. There are, however, many natural plants which will induce labour/abortion, and there are animals, such as the rabbit, who can re-absorb embryos in times of stress. Abortion has been going on for millennia.

NachoBusiness wrote: »

You ask which is worse, the trauma for a woman that has a child she doesn't want or a man having a child aborted that he does want, well I would say the latter, as a child can be fostered or adopted and the woman can get on with her life

Because the damage that can be done to your body by pregnancy such as episiotomies, diabetes, blood pressure, mastitis, depression etc. are something you can just walk off, yeah? Not to mention up to 9 months of vomiting, being unable to tie your own shoe laces, piles, and insomnia all topped off with up to days of labour. Sure she can 'just' give birth and 'just' get on with her life.

I suggest you study up on what pregnancy and childbirth are actually like because you seem woefully uninformed. It's not like shelling peas, you know.

NachoBusiness wrote: »

, whereas the man may have spent months emotionally preparing to be a father, been in close contact with his pregnant wife or g/f believing that his child was right there and may even have felt his baby kick (if a late stage abortion is carried out) and he may never get that out of his head.

Okay..... I am really confused here. Why would a woman just decide to have a late term abortion for no good reason? I can think of nothing other than mental illness that would make that happen, that or something like a fatal foetal abnormality. Where are these women who are happy to be pregnant for 6 months then just going 'na'? I simply do not believe that it happens.

The vast, vast majorities of terminations are carried out before 12 weeks because women who don't want to be pregnant don't want to be pregnant. They don't hang around for months hemming and hawing about it. So how could a man spend 'months' mentally preparing himself?

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Some people just see the barbaric nature of abortion and some don't. It's a violent act. Some would argue the most violent.

I would argue that rape or actual murder are much more violent. I would argue that forcing someone to undergo life changing events and great pain when they do not want to is much more violent. I do not believe that ingesting a tablet which will cause a foetus with no functioning nervous system, no brain, and no consciousness to be disengaged from the wall of the uterus is a violent act.

NachoBusiness wrote: »

I appreciate that for some what I say might be hard to read but I genuinely don't believe some women understand what they are actually doing. I think discussions around it in our society, and the information delivered regarding it, is all done in such a clinical and sanatised way that I honestly feel that the growing human baby is quite often seen these days as nothing more than plaque build up and abortion clinic as a dentist office. It has to be though. This pretense is the only way I feel that millions of women could choose to abort so many babies each and every year around the world.

Women have been aborting for millennia, loooooong before clean, hygienic clinics drastically lowered the death-toll for these women. Our grandmothers shoved knitting needles into their cervixes, threw themselves down stairs, or took scalding baths while drinking a bottle of gin. What abortion clinics has done is to save the lives of women who don't want to be pregnant, not make abortion less 'real'. Women will abort or attempt to abort whether it is legal or not. Having it legal just means that they're much, much less likely to die from it.

The Corinthian wrote: »

In that scenario they remain legally financially liable. They can try to avoid this liability, even succeed in doing so, but if you think that this equates to not a second thought, you're living in fantasy land.

In that scenario if he has any second thoughts they are "I hope they don't find me", not guilt for walking away from his pregnant gf.

The Corinthian wrote: »

And if the roles are reversed and the man wants the child but the woman aborts it, how does he walk away from that without a second thought?

I feel very much for any man in that position. I really don't see how a relationship could survive it, and I would recommend to that man that he gets professional counselling because I really can see how he would be massively effected by it.

However I don't believe that the effect on him would be great enough to be equitable to what a woman would go through if she were forced to remain pregnant against her will.

The Corinthian wrote: »

And then some people get upset if someone suggest that a woman could have an abortion without a second thought.

I'm sure that there are some who could, but they would be a tiny minority. A smaller minority, I think, than the deadbeat dads dodging making child support payments.

The Corinthian wrote: »

But the comment I responded to specifically said that men always have an option they can take without a second thought. Regardless of whether they want or don't want the child, this is demonstrably false and paints men as both irrelevant and little more than sperm doners with some magical means of always having the option of walking away without any legal, financial or psychological repercussions whatsoever. Such a claim would be laughable were it not so offensive.

I agree with your basic point, and I do feel deeply for a man who is devastated at the thought of his partner aborting a pregnancy which also has his DNA in it, particularly if he deeply wants children.

Unfortunately, there have been cases beyond number of a male being able to just walk away without much issue, sometimes not even having to pay upkeep*, and the mother being just expected by society to raise the child alone, while also being vilified as a single mother. I don't think we can really argue the point that this outlook does exist. Not for all men, certainly not, but over time, it IS usually the mother that takes the worst heat. To then also argue that for the sake of the men involved, they SHOULD remain pregnant against their own will, is a bit frustrating for those who have ever been in that position or seen it happen.

*Sometimes getting away with not having to pay upkeep, shall we say, rather than "not having to".

Interesting facts to ponder.

Over 25% of familes in Ireland are single-parent units.

308,109 children in single-parent families (87.5%) living with a lone mother; 2/5 are single, 1/5 are widows, 2/5 are separated/divorced.

43,887 children in single-parent families (12.5%) living with a lone father; 2/5 are widowed. I don't know the facts for lone father vs separated/divorced.

Now, is this particularly the fault of "the male"? No, it's the fault of a society that puts the onus of child-rearing, even in our Constitution, on the female far more so than on the male. While our society is like this, yes, I believe that the main part of the decision of whether or not to have a child, should be on the female that will bear it, and the female that society will condemn for not raising it far more than on the male whose DNA is in the child, but who has far more freedom, in a social sense, to choose where they want to go from there.

Is that fair on all fathers? No.

Is the current situation fair on mothers? No.

But evening things up for fathers right now at this moment, in terms of whether or not to be able to force a woman to bear a child she doesn't want, is swinging the scales even further against the female in the situation.

I am currently ignoring any issue as regards the morality of abortion, since I've already made my views clear on that.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Well, it's a bit more complex than that, otherwise the same would not exist in nations without such provisions in their constitutions. How it's been dealt with has been pretty appallingly by feminism that has preferred to seek protection against the negative consequences of parenthood for women, without diluting their control of the role. Seriously off-topic though.

The same concepts exist, even if not all of them enshrine it in their Constitution. But if you glance at any culture with a Christian ethos, you will find those same ideas. At best, you may just find the ethos not so long ago. Same goes for China, which isn't strongly Christian, India, Muslim countries.

In terms of blaming feminism for it, well, you fight a battle at a time, and honestly, one of these is about protecting a party that has more trouble with the status quo without trying for a full-on social revolution, which is what is actually needed. It's small steps. I personally want the same rights for fathers, and the same RESPONSIBILITIES for fathers. That is not the situation at the moment.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Did anyone suggest that?

In short, yes. The father should get equal say and a veto on whether or not a woman should carry his baby if they make a mistake. In the vast majority of those cases, I would sincerely hope that the father would be around and even willing to raise the child alone with payment from the female. However, the statistics I listed up above suggests that that is something our culture as a whole is not that keen on. And I don't even want to begin to think of whether this argument holds for rapists as well. I really hope not. It's an extreme, but just one case of that happening (and people are right assholes at times), and you can bet there'd be a major explosion.

I am not bigoted against males. I am not bigoted against single fathers. I am not bigoted against single mothers or separated parents, where both male and female are presumably taking a roughly equal and consensual role in bringing up the children. But there is still a very dangerous undercurrent in society about who has the rights and who has the responsibilities. At the moment, the female tends to have both more rights and more responsibilities. This debate is to pass on more rights to the father - in a way that could very easily be a bodily infringement on the female -, but there is little to no talk of more responsibility passing. That's my issue.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Based on what you wrote, and repeated again just above, you gave a bigoted opinion. That makes you a bigot.

No your comment was about how men always have an option to walk away without a second thought. It is this and only this that I have cited, the context does not change its meaning or prejudice.

In that case so can women. Hop on a plane and off you go.

What you said was that men can walk away without a second thought and that is never the case, no matter what. I've already stated why this is nonsense and unless you want to rebut what I said, all you're doing is repeating the same offensive bigotry.

But they can if that's how they feel - some may give it more than a second thought but it's a damn sight easier than the effects that the woman has to face. I was responding to a "wont somebody think about the MEN!!!!" type comment regarding mental health and negative effects and the context is important here because if the man doesnt like the situation he can very easily get the hell out of it and not look back if he doesnt want to. He has that freedom and its a CHOICE for him. A woman has to deal with so much more and be castigated for whatever choice she makes - keep it = sponger, abort = heartless baby murderer.

Why is it nonsense? Have you spoken to every deadbeat dad that ever existed and asked their opinion?

And by the way just hopping on a plane isnt that easy - it shouldnt be the case to travel anyway - and many many women are unable to do so due to finances, age, being in state care, having other responsibilites, visa issues etc.

The Corinthian wrote: »

I thought feminism was about equality? Well, if it's not and it is clearly there to protect and promote only the interests of one gender, then it is against equality in this regard as it seeks to protect and maintain a privilege.

If you support that, then you've pretty much lost all credibility where it comes to your claims of sympathy for men.

Bull**** right back. The general concept about feminism has been about raising the status of a minority group to the level of the "majority" group. This has consistently met with fighting back from elements of a majority group. The rowing is not "men" and "women", precisely, this is the loudest elements on all sides.

What is this privilege that you claim I fight for? The privilege to decide whether or not to carry a child in my body that I do not want? What I have said is that while SOCIETY as a whole demands that I take the most responsibility for that child, yes, I should have the final say on whether or not to develop the fertilised egg - zygote - foetus and give birth to it into a society that will put much more pressure on me than the male partner to raise it. Once that issue is dealt with - and that is the social revolution I spoke of, a social revolution that will be beneficial to BOTH males and females, then, yes, that is the time to have a more serious debate on the ethics of destroying something that contains the DNA of another person too. Hell, I'm just fine with it being PART of that social revolution, deal with two birds in one bucket. I have made it clear time and again what my arguments have been on that point, and I have argued from both sides. I have clearly accepted the unfair aspects to males in this. But you do not seem willing to accept that there is anything unfair about the current situation towards the mothers. More rights. No responsibilities. Is that right?

I don't want your sympathy. I want equal rights. And I will fight for yours too. Hell, I've spent quite a lot of time the last while fighting for gay marriage.

My arguments up above will actually benefit you too. What I have little patience for in this particular argument is the demand for more rights for males in one of the few areas they are discriminated against (although I do have sympathy for that) while ignoring that this issue has come up due to a severe imbalance in gender roles in our society. This demand is for a greater right for men, while ignoring any negative aspects towards women that will make the current imbalance even worse. Do you get what I'm saying here?

YES IT NEEDS CHANGING. But please, please accept that right now, if it was changed tomorrow, males would get a greater right at the expense of females who will still be accepted to bear the cost of that right - they will be far more expected to raise the child they did not want as well as give birth to it.

The Corinthian wrote: »

You've been defending the credibility of a clearly misanderist view. Were someone to write all blacks are stupid and I were to defend that view, I could hardly complain if someone accused me of racism.

The Black Rights movement should apparently have fought more for the rights of poor whites too. *throws up hands*

TL:DR - In a perfect society, women and men would take on absolutely equal roles in raising a child. Lone fathers and lone mothers would be roughly equal. There would be no discrimination against a father that chooses to raise their children .There would be no expectation that my genitals should automatically mean I give up career for family. I would be far more sympathetic to the whole business if there was at least a decent chance that the man demanding I carry his child to term would then take it off my hands and raise it. At the moment, that is highly unlikely, albeit not impossible.

Until then, I want the choice of what I do or do not carry in my body, thank you.