Why doesn't anyone ever discuss abortion in terms of what it's REALLY about?

It has nothing to do with the rights of the unborn child.
That's just a smokescreen to make the argument sound somewhat reasonable.

It is simply about discouraging women from having sex outside of marriage.

If a woman has a child out of wedlock that she doesn't want, it is considered punishment for her sin.
Contraception and abortion are considered evil because they neutralize the punishment for the sin of "illicit" sex.

Arguing that the life of the mother will be ruined ENCOURAGES support for anti-abortion laws
since this is the whole point in the first place.

The life of the child is completely beside the point and has no bearing on the real issue.
Many people consider "bastards" to be low class humans whose life has little value anyway.

(Kind of strange that anti-abortion Christians are fighting hard to increase the number of 'bastards' in the population.)

Why don't I ever hear people discussing things in this light instead of in terms that the anti-abortionists define?

stopping the woman from having control over her life.

It's all about control -- as if only unmarried women were getting abortions. Please.

That is exactly what this is about.

I recently had a woman in her mid forties tell me about how her first pregnancy when she was 22 ended in a miscarriage early on. Although she does not attend church, she is a believing Catholic. She told me how she had the miscarriage in the toilet and lifted the fetus out of the toilet and held it in her hands and wept. It was real to her and she considered it to be her child. There is no way I can ever understand how she felt, but her telling me of it was very moving and the discussion had nothing whatsoever to do with abortion, but there are people who have very strong feelings about such things and it is not up to me to belittle or to deny their feelings as to what is life. But each decision concerning an abortion is up to the woman and each is different and I don't think that any take it lightly. Also though, it is hypocritical to be against contraception and also against abortion.

I think the majority of people who are pro-life really do believe its murder after conception...

It's based on a simple minded view of good and bad, and the bad need to be punished.

I believe the murder idea was created simply to bring in people to their side that otherwise wouldn't join.

Understand, of course, that Woman is inherently "bad" under the talibornagain theology. Her nature is evil, which is why she must be constantly kept under the control of a man, whose nature is human but not evil.

Therefore, a pregnancy outside of marriage is a woman's shame and punishment for her sin; if she elects to abort, she is expected to feel additional remorse and guilt because she has tried to expunge the evidence of her sin. Abortion is therefore a double sin. To pound this notion home, the talibornagains have cooked up this idiotic connection between abortion and breast cancer, thus adding fear to the guilt and shame.

Essentially, the talibornagains cling to mythic concepts unchanged for millenia and unaffected by enlightenment principles of logic, critical thinking, empirical science.

Woman is evil because she has the capacity to conceal her sexuality. She is powerful, however, because she has the capacity to bring forth new life. She is mysterious because she has the capacity to bleed and not die.

Woman poses a threat because until the advent of modern scientific techiniques, she alone could know for certain who fathered her offspring. Look for correlations between concentration of wealth and the oppression of Woman: the more men seek to hold onto their material treasure and pass it along securely to their get, the more they will seek to control the woman who must bear the children. Woman becomes a vehicle for the transfer of wealth, less and less human and more like a piece of productive machinery.

Restriction of abortion, regardless of the marital status of the individual woman, is an exercise of property rights held by Man, not only to control the woman as a piece of property but also to stake his claim of ownership to her offspring. She will have children only when and if he grants permission, and upon birth those children become his property as well.

I am an atheist, but I have studied the evolution of "western" religion and see the metamorphosis of a life-giving great mother goddess into a death-dealing, blood-thirsty father-god as a destructive influence on human "civilization." The whole "pro-life" meme of the anti-abortion crowd is a feeble attempt to usurp the birth-and-nurturing power of traditional Woman-centered "religion" and replace it with an angry, hateful, grasping, greedy rationalization for capital punishment, wage slavery, and war.

Just the two cents of


Tansy Gold

minor points. There seems to be nothing being done to discourage MEN from having sex outside of marriage. Women cannot do it alone.

I strongly believe that this anti-choice movement is part of a much bigger, scarier and more evil program by Taliban-like Fundamentalist of all types; It is part of an attempt to control women in general. If they had their way, we would all be shoeless and pregnant in the kitchen. We would lose property rights, the right to vote, and all other legal options that guarantee our equal treatment under law.

If you want to see more evidence of this, check out any site that professes the principles of the Conservative Rightwing Fundamentalists, the Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists, as well as fundamentalists of many other beliefs.

Even Jimmy Carter has said this on his NPR interview TODAY.
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/jimmycarter/index.shtml



Check out
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Dominionism
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5646.htm
http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant05252004.html
www.theocracywatch.org

Here is more info.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/reconstr.htm

But the anti-abortion issue itself is directly related to controlling women's sex lives.

And I specifically mentioned women because I know men's sex lives are not viewed in the same
restrictive way.

And while keeping an eye on the big picture is essential, I believe the best way to resolve things is
to tackle them one at a time.

If one tries to take on all the issues at once, it's more difficult to resolve them.

MEN refusing to take RESPONSIBILTY for birth control. The onus is put on the woman to not only find and use birth control, but if they don't, and their partner doesn't, she then finds that SHE is the one who is put directly in the spotlight and belittled and harrassed, while the guy isn't given the same sort of treatment.

Men want to control women with this issue, while THEY refuse to take responsibility for THEIR actions.

It's about punishing a woman's sins. They believe the man didn't commit the sin, the woman did.
So the man is not encouraged to take responsibility.

as a game. And then they whine and cry about women picking on them when they are taken to family court and forced to support the kids they've created.

If they think THAT, they are clueless. My Aunt had an abortion as a married grandmother. She was going through the so called "change", hadn't had a period for six months, stopped using BC, and got pregnant -- with her HUSBAND. She was 45 and he was 50 (in early stages of cancer). They didn't want any more kids. She had an abortion.

I just had a conversation with a nurse I work with. She, too, was married. She found out late in her pregnancy, when other complications arose and had an ultrasound, that the fetus she was carrying had no brain, only a brain stem. She wanted to have a child, but she did not want to give birth to one that had absolutely no chance of surviving. She had that so called, PBA. As I said, she is a nurse. She said, when they "gruesomely" describe sucking the brains out, and crushing the skull, it most certainly doesn't apply in this type of situation. It has no brain (only fluid) to suck out and crushing the skull won't matter because it cannot feel anything without a brain. She went into all the medical terminology which I simply could not understand. All I can say was that she was very, very MAD as a health professional, and as a woman who had this procedure, about the recent SC ruling. Incidentally, do these people who advocate banning this procedure, but also are legislating ultrasounds, really think they could change the mind of this woman who was a NURSE and a mother ALREADY?????

I can remember when I had to sign a consent form, be "screened" by the doctor, and wait 24 hours for my husband's vasectomy. It was a complete charade and we both told this doctor so. I can only imagine having to go through this seeking an abortion.

Sadly, truth be told, we know that the upper class, well-financed women will be able to get abortions whenever they want them...as they did when abortions were illegal.

Period.

If you can force other people to have children when they don't want them, you can subjugate them so much more easily.

It would be lovely if they did have unsavoury ulterior motives, but I'm afraid I think it's fairly clear that the large majority of those favouring banning abortion do so because they genuinely believe that a foetus is a person.

The only way to defend abortion is to explain why that isn't true.

:shrug:

That's what it's about. If women have control over pregnancy and the number of children they have, they have the ability to rid themselves of abusive and insecure men. Men who want to be the "king of the castle" are terrified that women won't need them.

Otherwise, why would these same people start caring about birth control after all these years. And why don't they care about blastocysts washing away with menstrual cycles. Why don't they care that with every "snowflake baby", as many as ten "snowflakes" will be destroyed.

Because they don't care about the abortion - they care about women making THE CHOICE.

I think you are 100% wrong.

I am opposed to abortion because I think it is wrong. If a man could somehow do it, I would still be opposed. FYI, I have nothing against women. I actually am very fond of them.


*On edit: But I do think its not timely or wise for the government to get in the business of banning abortions. The best way to decrease abortions, no matter what the motivation, is to make them safe, legal and rare. Strongly discourage, not ban. That's my view.

Everyone has a right to their opinion and feelings and is free to follow them as they will.

I would think that everyone would consider abortion a serious decision and one not to be taken lightly both for moral and health reasons.

Pro lifers that pursuade others to adopt their view is is fine. If they convince someone, it's still that person's personal choice to
adopt the view.

What is wrong is for the government to force a single view on everyone.

I doubt I have to tell anyone here that adding that part of the augment to the mix confuses the fundies and it no longer fits on a bumper sticker, and that's exactly what the RWers want, easy, B&W issues.

I have a few more, even more obscure reasons that I could add, but they would most likely draw a lot of scoffing.

Someone should start a thread that asks for ALL the possible positive and negative reasons for being Pro-Choice or Anti-Choice, that would be very interesting. I bet it would weed out a few trolls too.

i will state the reason a person is against abortion is for punishment reason. they say no. then inevitably they say rape and incest should not deny an abortion because the female did not ask for sex. so... we are punishing the woman who embraced the sex. how is it anything but punishment that she dared to have sex.

Let's face it, there are millions to be made off of the self-righteous woman haters out there.

Julie

decisions than those who do.

Just my opinion.