[dzrose93]

Originally posted by justamom
dzrose, if I may share the other side. In 1971 there were 5 of us who came to school as virgins. (Of course there were more, I'm refering to our circle) Within 2 years 3 had had an abortion. It was illegal then, and the risk was high. These girls NEVER got over it, never... They have since married-one has died but at those moments when you are just talking, it has been mentioned.
It's tough either way.

Justamom, I respect your beliefs, and you do bring up some good points here. I realize that the decision to have an abortion is a very serious one, and is something that must be weighed carefully. You're absolutely right - It is DEFINITELY tough, either way. However, did these women you speak of ever say that they regretted their decisions -- that they could look back on the situation and say, without a shadow of a doubt, that they could have cared for their child well and provided him or her with everything that the baby would have needed back then? That they would have been able to be as good a mother back then as they would in later years?

I can tell you that none of my friends regret the decision they made. Of course, if you ask, they will mention that they think about how their lives would have turned out if they had decided to go through with the pregnancy. But there is not a single woman who has expressed regret to the point where if she could turn back the clock she would change her mind. All of them are content with the road they took and not a one feels that she made a poor decision...except for the girl who gave her baby up for adoption at the direction of her mother instead of following her own wishes and having an abortion.

Originally posted by justamom
As far as the government not being able to have control over the body of a woman, why do we place more value on the "spotted owl" or the habitat of the snail darter than we do a human life?

The difference is simple: the spotted owl is an animal that is in danger of becoming extinct. That's why our government has passed laws to protect it. The human being is nowhere near extinction. If it were, then there probably would be laws against abortion because we would be doing everything in our power to keep the human race going.

Originally posted by justamom
If you think about it-I KNOW YOU WILL HATE ME FOR SAYING THIS- a lot of this boils down to morality and premarital sex- kids having sex without the sense to protect themselves or knowing what to do if something does occur, young adults getting tanked OR swept up in the moment. Haven't you heard, it's the nice girls who get pregnant. There will always be those situations like dzrose mentioned, where they thought they were doing everything right, but by far the greatest number of abortions do not reflect that scenario.

I don't hate you for saying that at all! I really do understand what you're saying. However, you can't pass a law that allows one group of people to have an abortion and not allow the others. And if you ban all the abortions, there will be many, many women (including nice girls who got caught in a bad situation) who suffer because their right to choose has been stolen from them.

Originally posted by justamom
Picture someone taking a sack full of puppies and drowing them. Imagine taking your female baby and throwing it down the well, or taking the placenta from the late term aborted baby and selling it for food or hair products. At 6 weeks, a baby will feel pain. Pain from a decision made by the very person who should give her life to protect him. Which of the above situations causes you the greater "discomfort"?

Quite honestly, the puppies and the female baby, who have both experienced their first unassisted breaths of life, cause me the greatest discomfort. Let me explain why I feel this way. First, a 6 week old embryo is so tiny that I find it difficult to even think of it in terms of a baby. Pro-life protesters place such emphasis on the pain that an aborted fetus suffers. They try to paint a picture of a child that is being tortured to death, but the truth is that any pain the fetus feels is so quick that it barely begins before it ends. A two year old child who falls off her tricycle and scrapes her knee will feel more trauma than a fetus who is scarcely the size of a butter bean.

But aside from all that, I personally feel that if a pregnant woman knows that she doesn't have the means to give her child the quality of life that it deserves, then it is better for that unborn embryo, who has never taken a breath or experienced real life outside the womb, to feel a moment of pain rather than a lifetime of unhappiness and suffering.