gadgetlady

Well, really, if you're concerned about overpopulation, you'd be better off killing the elderly, the diseased, the unproductive, and the disabled than perfectly healthy babies with the potential to be very productive members of society. Overpopulation is a rabbit trail. Scare tactics much? The justification has nothing to do with the quantity of abortions performed. It has everything to do with protecting innocent human lives. Another topic for another day, but I do oppose gun control. It's another one of those pesky personal-freedom issues, kind of like the right to not have someone else kill you.

You are so, so, so incredibly wrong and so irresponsible for propagating such diatribe. All pro-life laws in the past and all proposed pro-life laws have had an exception if carrying the pregnancy to term threatens the physical life of the mother. In that case, you are taking a life to save a life; self defense. Furthermore, the mother is very important to pro-lifers. That's why in addition to trying to keep babies from being aborted, we also offer post-abortion counseling and many resources to mothers who choose life -- all of this is generally done for free, as opposed to the for-profit business of abortion. Women deserve better than being told they have to kill their offspring to have successful lives.

Here's a statistic for you: Every year, more unborn are killed by abortion in the US than the combined total of Americans who have died in all wars in our history.

If you look at the number of abortions performed the year after Roe, it was relatively low and you will see that it steadily increased until the early 2000's. You could very legitimately surmise that the number of illegal abortions the year prior to Roe didn't exceed the number of legal abortions the year after Roe. And if you look at subsequent years up until the early 2000s, there was a steady growth. Further, if you look at the CDC numbers for deaths from illegal abortions and legal abortions pre-Roe, you'll find that the numbers have remained pretty steady. There was a dramatic decrease in the number of deaths from abortions in the 1950s and 1960s with the advance of things like antibiotics, but the number of both illegal and legal abortion deaths has remained pretty constant both pre- and post-Roe.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about trying to make the numbers larger. What I do know for sure is that the tide in this country is turning and has been for years. The number of people who support abortion now is lower than it was 10, 20, and 30 years ago respectively, and it keeps dropping.

We are all still developing. We don't ever stop.

The trend is well documented in one direction. Look at the numbers of the population who supported abortion 10, 20, 30 years ago vs. the numbers now; there's a clear trend towards more pro-life views.

Mothers die from both legal and illegal abortions now. The statistics for illegal abortions pre-Roe were grossly exaggerated, and it's been demonstrated over and over again. While I don't advocate anyone's having an illegal procedure, to justify the actual killing of millions of unborn babies by trying to prevent the potential of self-harm of an unknown but certainly dramatically smaller number of mothers is just wrong.

Depending on the dictionary, of course: the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus fetus or embryo, of course, being a developing human being.

People have been known to change their minds on this issue. In fact, Bernard Nathanson, who used to own the largest chain of abortion clinics in New York and was one of the co-founders of NARAL, is now pro-life. Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, is now pro-life. Nat Hentoff, a very outspoken liberal writer who used to be pro-abortion and who also used to write for the Village Voice, is now pro-life. There are many, many other former clinic workers and abortionists who are now pro-life, as well as many non-famous people who have also changed their minds on this issue.

No, BJean, despite all nefarious intent you ascribe to pro-lifers, our goal isn't to make women guilty. It's to open peoples' eyes and change their minds. The purpose of proposing the scenario is to point out the fact that abortion is not about a mother controlling her own body; it's about a mother being able to kill her child. . . . through all 9 months of pregnancy. Because you believe it is wholly a mother's decision up until the moment of natural birth, regardless of pesky little things like viability. When abortion is restricted or illegal, abortions go down. They don't cease to exist (all types of crime never cease to exist), but they are dramatically reduced. The movement isn't just about changing the law. It is about helping those who are pregnant when they don't want to be. If you think it isn't, you know nothing about the pro-life movement.

Do you also think no one should interfere when a woman beats her child? That it's just her belief as an individual and not the government and no one else should get involved? The termination of pregnancy is childbirth. Abortion is the terminating of a child.

Agreed. Wikipedia, for example, is a notoriously unreliable source. That being said, there are often many definitions for words within any dictionary, written or online. Many of these sources, both written and online, point to "mother" meaning a woman who is pregnant.

Not at all. What I didn't understand -- and still don't -- is why separation from the mother through labor and delivery produces a human being with the right to live, while separation from the mother through a surgical procedure designed to alleviate the mother from any obligation of being pregnant or having a child, doesn't.

mother - Dictionary definition and pronunciation - Yahoo! Education mother: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com Lots of entries have several definitions. I wasn't looking at wikipedia or freedictionary.

Terminology isn't always accurate. Interestingly, a woman who's carrying another person's baby is called a "surrogate mother", not a "surrogate mother-to-be". Mother is defined as a woman who conceives, gives birth to, or raises and nurtures a child. The answer I knew was whether a mother has a right to kill her child 3 months after birth. Not "by what criteria do we determine precisely when a baby has a right to live and not be killed by someone else?"

I didn't answer my own question. That's why I was asking you to answer it. So it is the physical act of giving birth, whether induced, emergency, c-section, natural, etc. that bestows the right to life on the baby? And prior to this method of delivery, whether natural or not, the baby has no right to live and is at the total whim and mercy of the mother? The government doesn't dictate when a women becomes a mother. She is a mother when she becomes pregnant. What I'm advocating is the protection of the baby she is pregnant with, not forced motherhood. Motherhood exists at the time of conception. Absolutely not. The government has no right to intervene in a woman's decision about her own body. The only time they have the right to intervene is when another person's body is involved.

Since the scenario is hypothetical, we can assume those protections will be guaranteed. In the scenario, what I'm trying to get at is motive, not specifics of how it would work. What you're saying is that the mother's right isn't to be unpregnant, but to have a dead baby. The problem is, you can't wipe the existence of the pregnacy and the baby off of her history. A mother who has aborted was pregnant, had a baby, and now has a deceased baby. She isn't in a state of never having been pregnant, and she can never be in that state. Just like someone who has cancer will always have had it, even if they beat it. And someone who owned a house will always have had it, even if they lose it. Abortion doesn't reverse or negate motherhood.

Then when does the baby cease to be the property of the mother? Does the mother have the right to kill her child 3 months after birth if she can't handle having a baby? I know your answer to that will be obviously no, so I'm asking the question: by what criteria do we determine precisely when a baby has a right to live and not be killed by someone else? You previously indicated that this happens once the baby is born, but now what you're saying is that it doesn't matter if the baby can be physically separated from her body with no affect on her; she still has the right to kill the baby. So my question is when does her baby's right to live begin and her right to kill him or her end? Given the scenario above, it can't be "separation from the mother" -- then when is it?

No problem -- I understand doing 12 things at once! This question gets to the heart of motive. I know everyone didn't answer it (just you), but I hope everyone at least thinks about it in their own mind because it really speaks to a big issue. What you're saying in your answer is that a mother owns her child and can do with him or her whatever she wants, even to the point of death. That if she wants to take that child's life, even if it's at zero inconvenience to her, she will have zero medical issues, zero financial obligations, and zero legal obligations, it is still her right to decide whether her child lives or dies. Basically, what you're saying is that a mother's "right" to abortion isn't a right to be "un-pregnant", but rather it's a right to have a dead baby. The arguments made previously center around her having the "right" to do whatever she wants because the baby is connected to her body. But if she has the right to do whatever she wants even if the baby can be easily "dis-connected" from her body at zero inconvenience to her, then the crux of the matter isn't really the connection; it's her motherhood. And the problem is, no matter what, abortion or not, a pregnant mother already has a baby; her only decision at that point is the fate of the baby.

The question is whether you (not you specifically but whoever answers the question) would accept a law that made it mandatory for the life of the unborn child to be preserved, assuming the procedure to preserve that life were just as invasive as the procedure to kill that life. The mother would have no further legal or financial obligation to the child.

Here's a question that I'd love to hear an answer from -- from anyone. If/when medical science advances to a stage where an unborn baby can be removed from the mother's body in a procedure as "easy" as abortion, and placed in another person's body or sustained with machines, how would you feel about requiring the preservation of the unborn's life (instead of destroying it through abortion)? I know you think this question is "out there", but remember that doctors are in the process of working on an artificial placenta right now.

If you say that the government should have no right to intervenne in any decision a pregnant mother makes about her baby, then you are de facto saying abortion should be legal through all 9 months of pregnancy. I know it's not a particularly pleasant thing to advocate, but that's absolutely what you're saying.

So what defines or constitutes a fully "produced" human being? Where do you draw the line between a baby who should be protected against killing and one who shouldn't?

The problem with the analogy is when do you consider the baby to be "produced"? A newborn still has a lot of growing and developing to do. As does a toddler. Heck, sex organs aren't fully developed for another 15 or so years! "Produced" isn't a good adjective to apply to a person because a person isn't just a sum of parts.