We have a growing crisis among the nation’s children, yet our policies ignore that reality at best and exacerbate it at worst.Which babies, Charles? Can you point them out? Would you like to sit down with each one and explain How Things Should Be to them?
According to a report issued this week by the Guttmacher Institute, the unintended pregnancy rate has jumped 50 percent since 1994, yet a July report from the institute points out that politicians are setting records passing laws to restrict abortion...Add to this the assault by conservatives on Planned Parenthood, and what are we saying?
This is what we’re saying: actions have consequences. If you didn’t want a child, you shouldn’t have had sex...
This is insane.
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Sunday, August 28, 2011
So, Charles, Who Would You Like To See Dead?
Charles is unhappy. He is unhappy that more babies haven't been slaughtered.
I've long wondered what would happen if someone tried this line on a friend of mine... she was born of rape....
ReplyDeleteBoth of my kids are "unplanned"-- we were open to life, something made obvious by the, ahem, act my husband and I were doing, but we weren't "trying" because that's a very good way to raise stress to no good effect. We have children, not reproductive items on demand.
Yeah, my family is in the same boat. Both my daughter and I were top-tier candidates for abortion.
ReplyDeleteMy new niece was unplanned, but very much welcome. Unplanned doesn't mean unwanted.
ReplyDeleteKT, I can see where you would come to your position. But from the point of view of the person-who-will-not-exist, how is abortion different from standard birth-control methods, or simple abstinence? Or from their hypothetical parents never meeting in the first place?
ReplyDeleteAnd from my point of view, my brothers and I were all intentional births, as was my wife, and as are our daughters. There are enough tribulations of being a child without adding on the possibility that one or both of one's parents may actively resent one's existence. Granted that a lot of unplanned children turn out to be wanted after all, it's hard to deny that a lot of them *are* unwanted, and remain so. And have miserable lives as a result. Do they deserve that?
Being killed is different from never living in the first place.
ReplyDeleteDefinite death vs possible bad childhood is a pretty big difference, too. Anybody can have a bad childhood, or a miserable life-- it's not OK to, say, kill a woman in Africa who lives in an area where she's less than an animal just because her quality of life isn't as high as mine.
Heck, my mom wasn't much "wanted" by her mother, for utterly unrelated reasons. Didn't get along with her so long as they lived in the same house. My mom would assure you that she's glad no-one "saved" her from that.
Why do people deserve the death penalty for the possibility of having a miserable life?
Foxfier: But, that is not what I'm talking about. I am not talking about killing actual people who are aware of their own existence.
ReplyDeleteI'm talking about people who never existed as conscious individuals. Who could have potentially existed, but never actually did for whatever reason. The number of things that could have prevented any one of us from ever existing are astronomical. Are those things all bad because they could have prevented us from existing? And, to the person who never existed, does it matter *why* they don't exist?
If I never existed, it wouldn't matter if it was because I was aborted, or because my parents used birth control, or because my mother died in childbirth with my older brother, or because my father was killed in Korea, or any of a million other what-ifs. Never existing is never existing.
And before you say "abortion is killing", you may have a point after several months have passed and there is some discernable brain activity, but I hope you wouldn't claim that thisnotices its own existence in any meaningful way.
I am not talking about killing actual people who are aware of their own existence.
ReplyDeleteSo sleeping people are OK? Babies? Sedated? Comas? (We don't have proof that any of those know they exist... of course, we don't have proof that I know I exist, either; I could be lying.)
"Actual people" and "who are aware of their own existence" are two different classes. If you don't accept that, I don't think we're going to get anywhere-- the distance between our world views is simply too big.
Even inside of your view, there is a difference between "never existed" and "did not reach a state I consider aware."
I follow the basic scientific definition of life-- it's a new organism, it's alive. I don't try to tie a personal definition of what makes someone a "real" person into life-and-death situations for helpless people. On religious grounds, as a basic act of charity in the ignorance of when a person starts; on rational grounds, because that has historically always lead to horrific acts against those that don't "measure up."