On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:20:00 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"JoeSpareBedroom" wrote in message
...

If your daughter was raped and you started talking to her about
statistics, I wonder how she'd react.


See? The rape thing again.

Eisboch

It's important because there are cults which think they can dictate the
options available to a rape victim. You can't exclude inconvenient facts
from the discussion, unless you'd like to say it's over for now.


My point is that the majority of abortions, I believe, are performed not
because of a rape, but because a resulting pregnancy following voluntary sex
where no precautions were taken happens to be embarrassing or inconvenient.

Rape is a different issue and much more difficult to resolve in my mind,
although I'd probably go along with having abortion a legal option in it's
case or in the event of a problematic pregnancy whereby the mother's life
may be in danger.

But to give everyone via legalized abortion, (call it pro-choice or
whatever) a free pass because they didn't act responsibly is not right in my
mind.

Whatever happened to the fathers with shotguns?

Eisboch

I do not understand that response. Either the fetus is a human or it
isn't. If it is not a human, but simply an accumulation of cells like
an appendix or a mole, then why would you be against abortion? Clearly
in that case it is the woman's right to decide what to do with that
inconvenient lump of cells. You don't need reasons to admit to that
right. Whether there was a rape or not is immaterial. Whether the lump
of cells is wanted or not is immaterial. Whether the lump of cells may
some day be retarded is immaterial. However, if it is a human being
then what does the rape of the mother have to do with it? If the baby
had already been born and the mother said she had been raped would you
allow her to kill the baby? There is only one question surrounding
abortion in my opinion. That is whether or not (and possibly at what
point) the lump of cells is a human being and not an appendix. The
answer to that question fully drives the answer to virtually all
subsequent abortion questions. My problem with defining my own
position on abortion is trying to come to grips with the "when"
question. Clearly it is a human a second after delivery. I can find
nothing that changes that 5 minutes earlier, 5 hours earlier, 5 days
earlier or 5 weeks earlier. Yet by the same token I can accept that
upon fertilization but before attachment to the uterine wall it is not
human (which conveniently allows me to fully accept the Pill which
keeps a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall) but I find
myself without any rational basis for making a distinction past that
point, as much as I want to.

What I do know, for reasons I won't go into too deeply, is that if
abortion was legal and readily available for rape victims in 1928, I
would not exist since my mother would have been aborted. I also know
that if abortion was legal and readily available in 1957, I would not
exist as I was a bit of an unplanned inconvenience. Obviously then my
beautiful children and grandchildren would not exist. Some may say
upon reading this that my non-existence would have been a boon to
humanity - oh well. Enough from me.

Dave Hall