Be Me, 20 years old. Psych Major. Rocking the blue hair (and would totally do it again, fyi....)
Get red pilled after the election in 2016 (I didn’t vote.) Lurk on the Donald, start seeing the bullshit the mainstream media censors Get somewhat alienated by very well meaning but brainwashed loved ones. You know, the ones who honestly want the best for humanity and have been brainwashed by the commies. Obtain Trauma. Go to counseling, etc to try to process/bury feelings about this. Stuff them deep down and try to move on.
Be Me in 2020. 24. The world is on fire. Person in my life gets red pilled. Person starts sending me red-pilly stuff. Feelings re-surface. See how badly America looks like it’s falling to globalism and communism
Fuck it. See you fuckers in November.
I see a lot of people have toxic ideas about women (such as women belong as wives and mothers, single and childless women are always miserable, women can’t be trusted with positions of power, women lose their worth as they age, etc. and I simply can’t agree.)
Also, and this is not going to be popular, but:
I’ve had an abortion.
I was 21. My boyfriend and I were dumb college kids who didn’t use protection. I had told him that If I got pregnant, I’d get an abortion. We did. I did (he was, for the record, 100% supportive and grateful.)
I’m on birth control now. I get the arguments for wanting a cutoff date, but I don’t support outlawing abortions entirely. Countries which outlaw abortions don’t see fewer abortions: they see more dead or injured women from unsafe back alley abortions.
Furthermore, let’s look at some examples of how the pro-life argument parallels some things. You cannot be a donor (OG an organ, blood, etc) to somebody if you do not consent. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to die without your surgery: if you don’t consent, nobody can make you donate. We also cannot harvest organs from the dead if they didn’t previously give their consent. I see pro-life arguments as arguing women should have less consent than dead people.
So yeah. I’m pro choice. That’s a biggie.
For me, the biggest problem is that leftists are no longer about "safe and rare" abortions. The "rare" part has been forgotten and is now essentially being used as birth control. A lot of leftists have legit started to fantasize abortions. Things like abortions unto 9 months (NY and Virginia) and the Virginia governor talking about abortion even after birth (infanticide).
Imo, if abortion really needs to stay, it should have a cut off date and that should be when a heart beat can be detected (I think it's 6 weeks). I understand that some would say "life starts at conception" and I get it - that's why even if abortion is to be allowed up to 6 weeks, people need to be taught that "we shall allow abortion but remember that it IS taking a life". I think people have forgotten that.
I just had this conversation. I think it should be 12 weeks.
Enough time for the woman to realize she’s pregnant, decide she doesn’t want it, make arrangements, and get the procedure.
After 12 weeks, whatever.
Do you think over the counter birth control would have helped you?
Republicans have repeatedly pushed for OTC birth control, but every politician taking money from Planned Parenthood votes against it. This no compromise attitude and their mishandling of patients is why I'm mostly against abortions.
A reasonable debate about abortion? What is this, bizzaro world?
I had Plan B a different time when I was in high school. That did help me. I’m grateful I had access to it.
For the record, my abortion wasn’t done with Planned Parenthood.
For the record, this post isn't directed at you so much as everyone else who may be reading this thread. I went through a change of mind on this subject over the years and wanted to add my own thoughts.
This is a 12 week old. I don't think it's unreasonable that some people consider that to be a person, with the legal protections of one. A common retort to this I see is, "it's not a person because it isn't done developing, and if it were prematurely born outside the womb it wouldn't be viable."
To the first argument, what determines if something has developed fully? Is a dwarf ever fully developed? Is a person under 25 fully developed if their brain is still undergoing changes? What about someone with autism or mental retardation? Are people missing limbs, hearing, sight, or suffering from dementia no longer developed and therefore worth less to society over time? If I kill a senior citizen rather than a healthy adult, should I be sentenced to less time in prison? Really, what I'm trying to say is why is someone's state of being or stage of development even a factor in this one particular case when it's (hopefully) not considered in others?
To the second argument, I've never seen a baby that was able to pop out of its mum's womb fully developed and start taking care of itself... Newborns are entirely dependent on their parents to feed, change, wash, and protect them so that they can continue developing. This is what I found so disturbing about the Ralph Northam audio referring to a non-viable fetus outside the mother's body. Literally all babies could be classified as non-viable if it just means that they need to develop further before they can reach "autopilot" mode outside of the uterus. And what if they get old and become non-viable again due to health issues that require intervention (say, by a machine)?
Finally, there's the consistency issue... if a pregnant woman is stabbed and her fetus dies, was that a murder? Was the mother-to-be not robbed of a son or daughter?
That's a very practical point. 6 weeks, many people simply wouldn't notice, or even think they might be pregnant. Double that and don't notice? Hmmm ...
12 weeks would be FAR more restrictive than usual practice. These are the conversations the Nation should have on the topic.
I'm personally against abortion, but realize I live in a country with 330M other people who don't see it the same way.
I'd agree to a 12 week compromise as well, on the condition that we fund research into more BC that is more effective and long-lasting.
12 weeks seems like the best compromise. Thanks for being open minded.
This is the kind of constructive debate that should occur around such tense issues. Good on you for speaking your mind, and entertaining the other side. I so badly wish the 'liberal' side of arguments were delivered with the levity you've shown here!
Thanks. I’ve responded in a childish way to some assholes who hate the idea of a woman who thinks for herself and finds fulfillment without birthing kids or getting married.
But I find a lot of people here also just have different ideals and are up for conversation.
Viability outside the womb is likely the only cutoff that leftists may agree to. The average is 26 weeks for viability outside of the womb. However, the earliest premature birth was actually 21 weeks.
As medicine improves, we are likely to see that number go down.
21 weeks is still pretty damn far along and 6 weeks would never get through congress because a not so small number of women are not even aware that they are pregnant until ~6 weeks.
6 week cutoff IMO (and I'm no fan of abortion at all), would never get passed. 12 weeks would likely be the earliest achievable cutoff allowed.
"Liberals" will never consider a reasoning which originates from religious values, or doctrine. Medically, they are still WAY THE FUCK over the line by even thinking 9 months is okay (E.g. the fucking psychotic governor of Virginia), but as of now, we may be able to get to 21 or 20 week cutoff.
Interestingly, there is a lot of research (which is coming along quickly) regarding artificial wombs. Before we know it, women will likely be to get have an "extraction" instead of an abortion. Where the fetus can be moved into an artificial womb.
As our medicine improves, so does the possible of making abortions a thing of the past. That technology becoming fully developed, and widely available, is the only real chance of effectively putting an end to abortion.
Is an astronaut not viable without a space suit?
Of course not.
Though a bit of a non sequitur, I do understand your point. This doesn’t need to devolve into a discussion of purity tests though.
My point is this; in terms of realistic expectations, this is what we can expect to get from legislation, per our current routes of affecting change.
Take roe v wade for instance. If we are able to overturn roe v wade, abortions won’t become illegal in the US. Decisions of legality just get going passed down to the state level.
Im talking about this in terms of practicality and what we can reliably expect. If we want to see change, we can’t be willfully ignorant of this fact.
Tbh I’ll say I don’t think Plan B should illegal. Also, though I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot, I don’t think 1st term abortions should be illegal either.
Currently, I loathe how abortions are seen as birth control now on the left. And it’s clearly being fetishized by the more extreme progressives too.
If we hope to change any of this shit though, the argument against abortions has to start from a stance that is articulated outside of religious context.
Liberals will never accept any argument or viewpoint we make if it based around Christianity or religious texts, in general. It means fuck all nothing to them.
Abortions past the age of viability IMO, and from a medical standpoint, is an ignorant and immoral thing to support. You are effectively killing a baby but calling it an abortion because the baby is inside, instead of outside the womb.
There are other arguments for earlier restrictions, but they are not nearly as strong.
Sorry for the long winded essay-length response but hopefully it clears up what I mean. My point obviously is not to change anyone’s mind that abortion is okay at any stage. It’s to show that there is a pretty damn good chance that we can prevent late-term and potentially mid-term abortions in the US. Idk, that’s just a way I think we could convince people to a more pro-life view.
I love your comment so much I want to make babies with it, which seems appropriate
I was replying to YOU!
I don’t believe in pushing dumbass teens with a baby. It’s a terrible idea for everybody involved.
Sometimes it’s better for the child not to exist. There are children abused, abandoned or neglected because their parents resent them.
some day in the future you will realize how incredibly incorrect this statement is.
Some day in the future abortion will be as appalling as slavery is now. I can see both sides but could never be convinced that murdering an innocent baby is ever the right choice. We should protect the innocent and defenseless.
Nah....how do you think we get abused, neglected kids? Kids who will never take care of themselves because of birth defects?
We were college students. We had no stable life and I would’ve resented the child.
Tell that to my son who is around your age, he was born when I was a teen.
Good that it worked out for you guys. You made a difference decision than I did.
There are loving parents ready and waiting for that child. My friends have adopted in China and Central America because of the waiting lists here. Shouldn't a pregnant teen know all of the available choices?
Here's the rub, do you really think someone who is considering abortion would risk stretchmarks and take a baby to full term?
My take is that abortion, early on, should be legal, but that we should do something very clever to make abortion much less common: match abortion and adoption demand. This is easy to do: setup a fixed pile of cash to be used to induce abortion clinics to match customers with an adoption agency. Because the pile of cash would be fixed and slightly less than what is needed to match all adoption demand every year, this would not cause women to get pregnant on purpose to earn money. Also, the clinics would be the ones who'd have to negotiate with the pregnant women and adoption agencies. The critical fact here is that abortion and adoption demand in the U.S. are very similar!
How about just having them watch an abortion before having one? Seeing how brutal it is would change most people's minds!
You sound like you want to push your moral beliefs on others. Why do you care what others do with their lives and that future child? If you want to remove the public option you create a reality which will have more health issues due to illegal abortions. This is fact. You know banning abortions creates a society in which illegal abortions are prevalent. You also force your moral belief system on another free human. What makes you the imperial enforcer of whatever moral belief system you adhere to? You should understand humans are sexual by nature and if you choose to suppress your impulses because of your moral belief system that is fine. If you want to oppress others lifestyles. I.e. sexually active, promiscuous, now you're a moral fanatic oppressing others in a free society, having a negative effect on people's freedoms and situations. Finally, raising a child is extremely difficult and if someone decides for whatever reason that they do not want to face the consequences of their promiscuity then so be it. Safe 3 to 4 month professionally assisted abortions should be available to people. It may be amoral in your view. But your feelings on abortion is not looked down upon as badly by enough people in enough places. If your beliefs had the support it needed it would have the ability to change the law.
Don't force your moral code and belief system on others.
Keep in mind that some of the stuff here is just shitposting.
And not everyone here agrees with the most extreme positions.
Should the SC make the abortion law or or just STFU and leave it to the states?
No one is going to be outlawing abortion in states like CA.
My life too would have been real different had abortion not been available when I was in college.
But some of this shit like harvesting live baby parts is just too much even for me.
Regardless, notice no one has yet called for your head?
You can disagree with people, and we (I) will still talk with you.
FYI, always loved real redheads.
From a pro-life Christian, thank you! I respect our differences, and differences of opinions, but I still love you and welcome you aboard! I appreciate your honesty, intelligence, and willingness to think for yourself!
You see a lot of people, or a few people and a lot of strawmaning leftists claiming that's our ideology. It's not really, the core ideology is individual liberty and freedom. When you have that, it's actually okay for people to have different beliefs about other things, because they can't force their beliefs on you. Unlike the backward leftist ideology.
Pro life people get a bad rap because they've been effectively smeared as religious nutters and hypocrites. All reasonable arguments against abortion have been silenced, and replaced with a few flimsy or religious based ones, and moreover all pro life people are stereotyped as having all these other beliefs which they claim are not pro-life (e.g., they don't care about babies after they are born).
All lies and slander. The most pathetic one is the typical leftist argument that if you don't agree with them to the letter on exactly what they want to do or the exact amount of money they want to give people, then you hate people -- you hate poor people, babies, sick people, etc.
It's totally arbitrary. A leftist could propose giving 10% of your tax to welfare and they call themselves saints for being so generous with other peoples' money, but if a conservative says 8% is more reasonable, they're the devil. Why is 10% the "right" number? Why not 15%? Surely the leftist who advocates 10% is the devil compared to the super-leftist who wants 15%? And then the ultra-leftist wants 20! Where does it end, and why is the left's opinion of the month always the de facto "correct" thinking?
Anyway back to abortion. I'm atheist but I can see how the abortion issue has been twisted. There is nothing religious about considering a human life to begin at conception. It's actually a very good scientific basis -- the cells have been given their genetic material and begin their process of autonomous replication until the end of the person's life. A baby passing out of the woman's body, or some arbitrary number of weeks after which current medical science has a reasonable chance of keeping the baby alive, are far more arbitrary and unscientific measures.
And if you think that a state and its laws' most fundamental function is to protect the right of people to live, and to protect the people who can not protect themselves, then it's not at all hypocritical to believe abortion is very problematic. Maybe you can tolerate it in some situations, but it's not some celebration like the left treats it. You have to be under no illusion that you are choosing to end the life of another human who quite likely would have lived long enough to be born and learn to walk and talk and open birthday presents and go to school and get married and have their own children, if you had not made that choice. It's a tough burden to accept, but it's even tougher for the other person involved.
And if you believe that, then of course it's not just about women's choice. The left have smeared pro life people as having no motivation beyond "hating women" and wanting to punish sluts for having sex out of wedlock because of some alleged religious fundamentalism. These are yet more horrible, nasty lies and slander. Again, if you think a living human fetus is a person, then you now have two people's interests to weigh up, the mother's and the baby's. So in that case, pro-choice people are actually anti-choice when it comes to the baby's choice, aren't they? Just saying the baby isn't human and it's a clump of cells like a tumor is just a weak, pathetic cop-out, in my opinion. It's certainly a living thing, and it is distinct from the life of the mother (proof: it's possible for a woman to die while pregnant yet her baby be delivered alive or vice versa).
And you don't harvest organs without consent because 1) potentially extending or improving someone's life is not at all the same as choosing to take a life, and 2) more than one thing can be important, and the integrity of the human person is such a strong and old concept in law that it's very difficult to even interfere with their dead body. So you can imagine why people who agree with that protection to a person would also want a living baby to be protected as well. Not necessarily any hypocrisy there.
For what it's worth I don't think you're a bad person, and I'm not entirely pro-life (I realize that does make me inconsistent and hypocritical in some beliefs). I do think the left are bad for bullying slandering lying and disenfranchising and deplatforming the pro-life people, shutting down debate, refusing to compromise, and for lying and misinforming people about abortion issues and about the life of the fetus.
EDIT: I'm not telling you this to change your mind, I'm telling you this because there are millions of genuine, sincere conservatives for whom abortion looks like a holocaust because they see millions of people being slaughtered, butchered, experimented on, harvested of their organs and cells, and will never get a memorial in Poland or be mourned by history books or be remembered by their children and grandchildren. They're not out to get you, they don't hate women, they aren't backwards, they're upset about the issue and don't know what to do.