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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
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 Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:38 pm Thousands Mark 33 Years Since Roe V. Wade |
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| Quote: |
Thousands Mark 33 Years Since Roe V. Wade
Sunday, January 22, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO � Thousands of abortion opponents shouldering signs with slogans such as "Peace Begins in the Womb" marched in protest of the 33-year-old Roe v. Wade decision, while abortion rights supporters along the march route waved clothes hangers and shouted "Bigots go home."
The dueling protests � marking Sunday's anniversary of the Supreme Court decision � reflected the growing tension at a time the makeup of the high court is about to change with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement.
"It's a crucial time," said abortion rights supporter Carol Norris, 43, who joined the counter-protest in San Francisco Saturday. "We have (Judge Samuel) Alito poised to be on the Supreme Court, and he's clearly an anti-choice person."
On the other side, college student Laura Arnold, 20, of Pleasanton, Calif., marched with her mother opposing abortion, saying: "We're here to stand up for the babies that don't have a voice."
"I know so many girls who did it and they are hurting every day of their life," Arnold said.
The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Roe vs. Wade on Jan. 22, 1973, and abortion has been legal in the United States ever since. But efforts to restrict or outlaw the procedure have been just as enduring; 34 states have passed laws requiring parents either to be notified or to give consent when their underage daughters seek abortions.
"Abortion rights have been slowly whittled away while we haven't even been looking," said Kitty Striker, 22, who decorated her hair with small coat hanger replicas for the counter-protest. "That's what's so shocking and so scary to me."
Many abortion opponents said they were heartened by President Bush's choice of Alito to replace O'Connor, a moderate who was often the court's swing vote.
Alito's refusal during his confirmation hearings to agree with assertions by Democrats that Roe v. Wade was "settled law" upset abortion rights activists.
The largest abortion demonstration was expected Monday in Washington, D.C., where anti-abortion activists planned to converge on the mall to hear speakers supporting their cause and march on the Congress and Supreme Court.
In Michigan, a group pastors and ministry leaders used the anniversary Sunday to launch a new anti-abortion organization, Michigan Chooses Life. One goal is to support efforts to get a measure on the 2006 ballot that would change the state constitution to legally define a person as existing at the moment of conception. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan has said that even if the measure did succeed, it would be challenged in court.
At the San Francisco protest, Archpriest Michael Regan of St. Michael's Orthodox Church in Concord, Calif., said it was important to show how mixed public opinion is on abortion, even in the liberal San Francisco area.
"You do get the impression that there isn't anyone here for the right to life, but look around," he said.
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Puck
The Texan
Joined: 05 Jan 2004
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| Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:47 pm |
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My opinion? There is not "choice" to be made. The problem with our society is that we are so used to having choices, that when we don't, we think our freedoms are being limited. Unfortunately, many people do not understand that some things are not supposed to be made into choices. Pregnant? Have the baby. There is no "choice". Abortion is wrong, all the time, everywhere, from every angle, in every case, it's wrong.
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Republican_Man
STV's Premier Conservative
Joined: 26 Mar 2004
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| Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:48 pm |
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I agree with Puck, for the most part. Only in certain instances should there be the choice to have an abortion.
But "Bigots go home." I mean, really. Come on!
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Puck
The Texan
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| Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:49 pm |
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| Republican_Man wrote: | Only in certain instances should there be the choice to have an abortion.
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Care to explain those situations?
Personally, I don't think any situation gives me the excuse to kill someone else, but whatever.
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Founder
Dominion Leader
Joined: 21 Jun 2004
Posts: 12755
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| Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:50 pm |
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Yeah you're a bigot if you don't want to kill a baby. Makes sense to me...
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Republican_Man
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| Sun Jan 22, 2006 11:55 pm |
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| Puck wrote: | | Republican_Man wrote: | Only in certain instances should there be the choice to have an abortion.
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Care to explain those situations? |
Sure. While I disagree with it personally, I'm leaning towards having the choice for rape and incest. I'm also leaning towards the choice for if the mother will die because of it. For those, however, I think the woman should either give up her life for the child or have the baby and put it up for adoption or live with it.
I'm also pretty much accepting it if there is a severe mental defect, such as being stillborn or a vegetable from birth, or if the baby will die shortly after birth (from some sort of pre-determined mental defect).
Otherwise, if it's because the child is autistic or, say, has Down's Syndrome, or the mother just simply doesn't want to have a baby, no. NO WAY.
Oh, and Partial Birth Abortion. No way. Never.
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Seven of Nine
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 4:19 am |
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I completely disagree with partial birth abortion. I have personal experience of one of the alternatives (drugs that make you abort) to know that it shouldn't be an option at all.
I don't think abortion is an easy issue for the women, in fact, I know it's not. There should be safeguards, but if carrying a child is going to make the mother seriously ill (mentally or physically), or kill her, then she should be allowed to have an abortion. It most definitely isn't the easy option.
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IntrepidIsMe
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 12:19 pm |
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I disagree with abortion in all cases, no matter what. However, if the mother is in danger, I don't think anybody has the right to say that she has to die for another life that doesn't exactly exist in our context yet. In a perfect moral society, she would, but we don't live there yet.
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"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
-Wuthering Heights
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TrekkieMage
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 1:05 pm |
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There was an article yesterday in the NY Times Magazine that I thought hit the topic perfectly. It's written by the son of an abortion doctor.
My Father's Abortion War - New York Times
Since it's so long I'm going to quote bits of it that stood out to me.
Background: Barnett Slepian was murdered by being sniped just outside of his own house.
| Quote: | | I found out about the murder the next morning, after having breakfast with an old friend from college. I was living in Brooklyn at the time. When I first heard the news, my heart stopped. I had never met Barnett Slepian, but I was well aware of who he was. I knew that he and my father shared something besides covering for each other on certain weekends: both were OB-GYN's who devoted part of their practices to performing abortions, which is why, for more than a decade, they had both been subjected to abrasive treatment - protests in front of their offices and homes, harassment of their patients, death threats. I had witnessed some of this firsthand while growing up. I'd like to say that standing there in the street trying to make sense of the fact that now someone had made good on one of those threats, the first thing I felt was anguish and sympathy for Slepian's family: his wife, Lynne, who had just lost her husband, and his four sons, who had watched their father bleed to death on the kitchen floor. But my initial reaction was more selfish. What I felt at first was fear - that the murder might upend my parents' lives; that another shooting might follow in its wake. |
This is one of my favorites:
| Quote: | | "No other nation obsesses about abortion the way we do," the columnist Michael Kinsley noted recently. Not Italy, home to the Vatican; not France, England or Germany. Only in America is a medical procedure that was legalized more than three decades ago at risk of once again being criminalized. Only here have doctors routinely taken to wearing bulletproof vests and hiring armed guards for protection. |
About his father's buisness:
| Quote: | | It wasn't an abortion clinic but a regular OB-GYN practice, and most of his patients came for routine gynecological checkups. Many were women whose babies he delivered. Abortions were performed on certain days. |
The father lived in Israel, where abortions are illegal, but it was an open-secret that they were still around:
| Quote: | | My father had seen that unplanned pregnancies were a reality. It made sense to him that given its intensely private nature, the decision to have an abortion should be left to the pregnant woman and her doctor, not to a government bureaucrat. |
| Quote: |
At one point a patient entered. "You O.K.?" a nurse asked her.
"No!" she exclaimed. "Outside, they were screaming at me!"
"Oh, don't worry about that," my father said, trying to calm her.
"Don't they realize we have a choice?" she snapped, unappeased.
"I'm just as mad as you," he told her. And he was. Nothing upset my father more than to see patients arrive in such a state. Nothing did more to deepen his resolve. |
One of my favorite parts:
| Quote: | | Had the women choosing to have abortions in Buffalo been free-love advocates for whom the procedure seemed a mere matter of convenience, he would not have been so angry. But few of the women he saw fit this stereotype. Some were married and living in the suburbs. Others were single moms juggling multiple jobs and struggling to raise families on their own. Some were white, others black; some well educated, others less so. They looked, in short, like a cross-section of Buffalo: ordinary people making hard choices in a world where opportunities were often constrained and not everything went as planned. It was no secret to my father that for many, the decision to have an abortion was a freighted, difficult one. Some cried afterward; others were deeply shaken. But many also thanked him. Not a small number said they had always been firmly opposed to abortion - until they found themselves in a situation that had led them to make an appointment to have one. It was precisely because choosing to have an abortion was difficult that my father felt that such women deserved sympathy and support, not scorn. |
I tend to stand by this opinion:
| Quote: |
"I respect people who are opposed to abortion," he said in an interview with Gene Warner, a reporter from The Buffalo News, in November 1988. "It's their view, their right. But it's unacceptable to me the way they're trying to impose it on other people." |
Due to length I'm going to stop there. I was on the top of page 5 of 7.
Very good article, they actually talk to a protester who stands outside of abortion clinics. She doesn't scream or yell, she's very softspoken and she explains why she does what she does. I don't agree with here, but I respect her beliefs.
As for my personal opinions on abortion. I think that the agony of having an abortion - physically, mentally, and emotionally - is enough punishment for women who have them. They don't need people screaming at them telling them they are wrong, that they are murderers, or that they're going to hell. This is a very difficult thing, and most women walking through those doors have made a very difficult decision about their lives and what their baby's lives would be like. I believe abortion should be legalized, but that doctors should discuss all alternatives with their patients. Make sure that this is the only choice.
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Republican_Man
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:13 pm |
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Hmmm...The only big protests revolving around abortion I've heard yelling at are the democrat ones.  Remember Hillary Clinton screaming that they have a "right" to "choice" or whatever this day last yera? The anti-abortion advocates didn't do that.
Now, considering that it is the law, however, I don't agree with those who yell at those receiving an abortion, attacking them unnecessarily. While I disagree with abortion, I do not believe that people should go up and do what some people do at some abortion clinics--harp on and attack those having abortions.
Now, with that said, no, the psychological, etc. effects of abortion aren't punishment enough. It's murder, plain and simple. Unless certain criteria are met (and that's NOT doctor notification and approval) abortions should not occur. Period.
Punishment for the person who solicits murder isn't what we should be thinking about, in any way, here. Instead, we should be thinking about whether or not the baby has a right to live--whether or not abortion should occur, period.
And so, I must respectfully disagree with you there.
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Lord Borg
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 6:20 pm |
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I agree that it should only be allowed in extream cases. I know that I would NEVER ask the woman to die for someone that is not condiard alive yet. Sadly, a life goes either way. but to ask a member of socity to die for one that will be born months from now is not right. And no, I dont think Partial birth abortions should be allowed, I saw diagrams for that. It.. scared me.
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IntrepidIsMe
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 7:05 pm |
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I read that article yesterday after getting the Times. Hypocrisy as far as "right to life" and then murdering doctors and clinic workers is always pretty pathetic. But yeah, the author is probably right, that changing Roe vs. Wade may result in more chaos than already exists upon the subject.
-------signature-------
"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
-Wuthering Heights
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LightningBoy
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:02 pm |
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If the mother's life isn't at risk, there's no excuse. :period:
Murder is never justified.
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Republican_Man
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:21 pm |
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But the question arises: Should the mother have to go through the pain and agony of birth if the baby was conceived by rape or incest?
And another question arises: Is it better for the baby, if he/she may be born stillborn or a vegetable for his/her entire life, etc, if it is aborted before birth?
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Puck
The Texan
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:26 pm |
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| Republican_Man wrote: | But the question arises: Should the mother have to go through the pain and agony of birth if the baby was conceived by rape or incest?
Is that the babies fault though? No, it isn't, and the abortion is not right.
And another question arises: Is it better for the baby, if he/she may be born stillborn or a vegetable for his/her entire life, etc, if it is aborted before birth?
Is it ethical to kill a vegetable who is an adult? (The answer is no, btw.) |
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Lord Borg
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:28 pm |
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^ Some of thoese Situations are tricky. There should of course be a severe limitatons on Abortion, but it shouldnt be out right illegal in every case. If serious harm or death was going to happen to either the mother or the baby, or both even, then the pregnancy needs to be looked at objectivly and decided if it's neccesarry for the baby to be carry to term. Obviusly, this would all need to be done when the baby is still a group of cells, as partial birth abortions sicken me.
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Republican_Man
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:32 pm |
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I agree with LB.
Kevin, I agree that it's not the baby's fault, and that people shouldn't have an abortion simply because they were impregnated through the means of rape or incest. However, I am leaning towards it being the mother's choice in that situation, even though I personally think she shouldn't have the abortion.
As to the other case, there's a difference. That adult has already lived a bulk of their life, and to end it prematurely is wrong.
However, to spare the baby a lifetime of pain and inability to do much of anything (if that) for his entire life...Perhaps it might actually serve the greater good of the child, I don't know.
Not that I would necessarily want my wife to do that, but I think there should be the choice in that matter, because of the very question that arises, and should, perhaps, be up to the woman AND HUSBAND to decide whether or not it serves the greater good of the child. I mean, being stillborn and all that, from birth, or maybe dying right after being born (due to a pre-determined disorder)...
While partial birth abortion is horrible in EVERY sense, there are certain circumstances in which the woman should, perhaps, have the choice after it's been determined early enough--before the three month mark.
Otherwise, no abortion.
Last edited by Republican_Man on Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:38 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Puck
The Texan
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:35 pm |
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| Republican_Man wrote: | I agree with LB.
Kevin, I agree that it's not the baby's fault, and that people shouldn't have an abortion simply because they were impregnated through the means of rape or incest. However, I am leaning towards it being the mother's choice in that situation, even though I personally think she shouldn't have the abortion.
Why exactly? What about the childs choice?
As to the other case, there's a difference. That adult has already lived a bulk of their life, and to end it prematurely is wrong.
However, to spare the baby a lifetime of pain and inability to do much of anything (if that) for his entire life...I think that may serve the greater good of the child.
You think it may service the greater good of life? I was under the impression that God was the only one who was to give or take life?
Not that I would necessarily want my wife to do that, but I think there should be the choice in that matter. |
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Republican_Man
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:38 pm |
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I edited my post there...
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"Rights are only as good as the willingness of some to exercise responsibility for those rights- Fmr. Colorado Senate Pres. John Andrews
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Lord Borg
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:39 pm |
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^My point exactly, It's wrong to tell someone who has lived like 20 odd years at least "Oh sorry, you gotta die because it's illegal to abort the baby"
Catch my drift? I WILL agree that abortion becuase you didn't use... avoidnce measures is not an excuse.
For some of the other things? the baby being a vegtible? That's also tricky, because it's not ethical to "kill" an adult with it, but look at the recent news with people like Terry Schevio (sp) and that little girl who was beaten by her step father, differnt situations of course, but still, vegitbles who couldnt take care of them selfs. It's.. conflicting to me.
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Puck
The Texan
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Posts: 5596
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:42 pm |
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Let me restate something I posted earlier.
There is no "choice" to be made. Where we got the idea from that abortion was a choice to be made, I have no idea.
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Theresa
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:44 pm |
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Yeah, from a female perspective.
Abortion as birth control? Just take out the mother while your at it, won't you? Show some restraint, keep your legs shut, or be prepared to deal with consequences.
Abortion due to rape or incest? Nope. There is again, like Kevin said, no reason that the baby should have to pay. And do we realize how rare this is to begin with?
And partial birth abortion? Someone ought to post a vid for this. And they also should make every "mother" view this procedure repeatedly. Bastards.
And abortion if the mother's life is at risk? How do you really determine that? Isn't that little girl who was taken off the respirator supposed to be dead? Medicine may have advanced much, but they aren't gods, or God.
It's not up to me to end another life.
Kevin, what was it fetus meant?
Done, 
Last edited by Theresa on Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:45 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Republican_Man
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:44 pm |
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That's why I'm still "in the 'perhaps' stage," because it's so touchy. If we can tell ahead of time that the baby's stillborn, or that the baby is going to die right after birth or something, then I would almost definitely say woman's choice. Also, if the woman's life is in danger, okay.
However, if it's for any other reason, then no, although I think I might--again, notice the words "might" and "perhaps"--lean towards the choice on rape/incest, even though I think it's wrong.
But like I'm trying to say, I haven't entirely decided yet, and certainly think Roe should be overturned. I just believe that there is definitely at least one instance (mother's death) in which the choice should be allowed, after the doctor's consent, but may be fine with those certain other instances.
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LightningBoy
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:47 pm |
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| Theresa wrote: | Yeah, from a female perspective.
Abortion as birth control? Just take out the mother while your at it, won't you? Show some restraint, keep your legs shut, or be prepared to deal with consequences.
Abortion due to rape or incest? Nope. There is again, like Kevin said, no reason that the baby should have to pay. And do we realize how rare this is to begin with?
And partial birth abortion? Someone ought to post a vid for this. And they also should make every "mother" view this procedure repeatedly. Bastards.
And abortion if the mother's life is at risk? How do you really determine that? Isn't that little girl who was taken off the respirator supposed to be dead? Medicine may have advanced much, but they aren't gods, or God.
It's not up to me to end another life.
Kevin, what was it fetus meant?
Done, |
Great posting, T. I'm inclined to agree with every word.
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Theresa
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| Mon Jan 23, 2006 11:48 pm |
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| Republican_Man wrote: | That's why I'm still "in the 'perhaps' stage," because it's so touchy. If we can tell ahead of time that the baby's stillborn, or that the baby is going to die right after birth or something, then I would almost definitely say woman's choice. Also, if the woman's life is in danger, okay.
However, if it's for any other reason, then no, although I think I might--again, notice the words "might" and "perhaps"--lean towards the choice on rape/incest, even though I think it's wrong.
But like I'm trying to say, I haven't entirely decided yet, and certainly think Roe should be overturned. I just believe that there is definitely at least one instance (mother's death) in which the choice should be allowed, after the doctor's consent, but may be fine with those certain other instances. |
If you know the baby is going to be born stillborn, that's not abortion. And the most they'd do is induce labor.
And you can't tell the rest of it. Weren't you the one who said that it was the mothers obligation to die for her child? Quite sure that was you.
Like Kevin said, there is no "choice". Well, there is. The one I mentioned in my first post.
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