Pro-choice and veg*n?
Hello VegWeb, it's been a while. I was reminded to log in the other day when I got into a debate with a friend about abortion. She challenged that as a veg*n I should also be pro-life by default, which led me into a pretty interesting examination of why I agree with these two philosophies.
I personally maintain that legalising abortion allows women to make important decisions regarding their bodies and futures, and brings the numbers of those seeking dangerous backstreet abortions down. In those countries which legalise abortion, such as my native England, I consider it a right of women in need, although never a method of birth control. Legal limits for abortion exist for a reason; if it isn't a viable foetus, I don't consider it murder.
As a veg*n, I neither support nor participate in the slaughter or torture of animals because I believe that compassion and right should not be extended only to those who have the ability to ask for them. I couldn't kill an animal (except in absolute, last-chance-to-survive emergency), and if I eat meat that's being done on my behalf.
Looking at the reasoning behind my support for legal abortion and veg*nism, I don't feel hypocritical for my decisions.
What about you, dear VegWebbers? Are you inherently conflicted? Which way does your allegiance lie on this tricky moral question?
Thought this was relevant: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html#r1a
Key Points:
Abortions rates are the same in countries where it is legal and illegal, if you count both safe and unsafe.
Total abortion rates decline quicker in countries where it is legal.
Contraceptive availability is a key factor in abortion decline (duh).
So the "Hollywood" clothes-hanger scenario saying that women will undergo unsafe abortions if denied the right to safe ones is absolutely true. A woman's likelihood of having an abortion is similar developed (largely legal) and developing (largely illegal) countries. The rates are 26 per 1000 women, and 29 per 1000 women, respectively. Bottom line: outlawing abortion doesn't save any babies--it kills women.
I am pro-choice with the assumption that pregnancy is detected ASAP. When someone tries to shove pro-life down my throat, I may ask them how many foster children they have taken in. If they feel so strongly against abortion, what are they doing to help all the helpless, parentless, abused and broken, living, breathing children, besides show have their own children hold posters of bloody dead fetuses in protest.
Thought this was relevant: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html#r1a
Key Points:
Abortions rates are the same in countries where it is legal and illegal, if you count both safe and unsafe.
Total abortion rates decline quicker in countries where it is legal.
Contraceptive availability is a key factor in abortion decline (duh).
So the "Hollywood" clothes-hanger scenario saying that women will undergo unsafe abortions if denied the right to safe ones is absolutely true. A woman's likelihood of having an abortion is similar developed (largely legal) and developing (largely illegal) countries. The rates are 26 per 1000 women, and 29 per 1000 women, respectively. Bottom line: outlawing abortion doesn't save any babies--it kills women.
The availability of contraceptives is a major confounding variable. I skimmed the Lancet paper. Not entirely sure they came to the same conclusion that you did. They mentioned increased safety with legalization and decreased incidence with increased contraceptive use. I didn't see anything regarding demand being inelastic, i.e. legalization/illegalization having an effect on rate of abortion.
It sounds more like a case for increasing availability of contraceptives than legalizing abortion.
Kinda wished they had done a proportional hazards regression using the legality of abortion and availability of condoms (per 1,000 people) as the variables...
I skimmed the Lancet paper. Not entirely sure they came to the same conclusion that you did.
That was the conclusion that Guttmacher came up with, not I. Those bullet points are the cliff notes from the article. I was summarizing it for people who didn't want to read the whole thing. I haven't yet looked at the citations. It is possible that the article I linked misinterpreted the findings. I'll have to see.
No, dienekes, I think that IS what the Lancet paper found. You mean this one, correct?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17933648
They found that:
It just really bothers me to see the unsafe abortion issue marginalized as some Hollywood scenario.
Another thing that the Guttmacher article mentioned was that, overall, the US has the major issue (compared to the rest of the developed world) of very poor health insurance coverage of birth control. I think that's also a huge consideration. As someone who stopped using the pill because I couldn't afford to keep filling the prescriptions, I resent the idea that abortion should not be an option for me.
And, along those lines, women of lower socioeconomic status are so unjustly affected by anti-abortion laws and even the current abortion laws that it's sickening. They have (1) reduced means of getting birth control (2) reduced means of raising a child, and (3) reduced means of paying for an abortion, often. Until that is fixed, it is so blatantly discriminatory to deny the right of safe abortion. Women are being punished for being born/thrust into low-income situations three times over.
No, dienekes, I think that IS what the Lancet paper found. You mean this one, correct?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17933648
They found that:
It just really bothers me to see the unsafe abortion issue marginalized as some Hollywood scenario.
Another thing that the Guttmacher article mentioned was that, overall, the US has the major issue (compared to the rest of the developed world) of very poor health insurance coverage of birth control. I think that's also a huge consideration. As someone who stopped using the pill because I couldn't afford to keep filling the prescriptions, I resent the idea that abortion should not be an option for me.
That's the thing. They're the same... in spite of the difference in contraceptive availability, which they themselves say is very important.
I agree, that's why I listed it as the third bullet point in my post. I'm not sure what else to say about it, sorry! I already told you I agree.
I guess we would want to divide it up into countries with all four possible combinations of contraceptive availability and abortion liberalization. For a crude, quick analysis.
No, dienekes, I think that IS what the Lancet paper found. You mean this one, correct?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17933648
They found that:
It just really bothers me to see the unsafe abortion issue marginalized as some Hollywood scenario.
Another thing that the Guttmacher article mentioned was that, overall, the US has the major issue (compared to the rest of the developed world) of very poor health insurance coverage of birth control. I think that's also a huge consideration. As someone who stopped using the pill because I couldn't afford to keep filling the prescriptions, I resent the idea that abortion should not be an option for me.
And, along those lines, women of lower socioeconomic status are so unjustly affected by anti-abortion laws and even the current abortion laws that it's sickening. They have (1) reduced means of getting birth control (2) reduced means of raising a child, and (3) reduced means of paying for an abortion, often. Until that is fixed, it is so blatantly discriminatory to deny the right of safe abortion. Women are being punished for being born/thrust into low-income situations three times over.
You're absolutely correct that increasing the number of safe vs. unsafe abortions will decrease maternal morbidity and mortality.
It's also correct to say (based on the study's findings) that increased contraceptive use will decrease abortion rates.
However, the mere statement that the rates are the same doesn't meant that they are impervious to the effect of illegality. They don't say that. They just point out that the rates are similar without saying that legality vs. illegality has no effect.
I agree, that's why I listed it as the third bullet point in my post. I'm not sure what else to say about it, lol, sorry! I already told you I agree.
I think you're just overstepping the bounds of your evidence to say that it illegalizing abortion would do nothing to save babies, i.e. suggesting that demand is inelastic.
Being involved in research, it really grinds my gears when people do that.
OMG, ok, I'm done. I agree with you! And I'm familiar with the statistical methods of controlling for multiple variables in an experiment and the differences between causation and correlation. I worked in a lab for 3 years at a pretty prestigious research university.
Again, if you read my original post you will see that I agree with you.
Peace out! Calm yo' self. Just thought it was some interesting reading.
OMG, ok, I'm done. I agree with you! And I'm familiar with the statistical methods of controlling for multiple variables in an experiment and the differences between causation and correlation. I worked in a lab for 3 years at a pretty prestigious research university.
I'm not questioning your intelligence.
However, this quote is overstepping the bounds of your evidence, and not what you agreed with me about:
"Bottom line: outlawing abortion doesn't save any babies--it kills women."
I'm calm.
It wasn't presented as just interesting reading, you used it as a means to persuade people of your point.
A fetus has a beating heart at 3 wks after conception.
I am pro-life but I was strictly pro-choice before my son. Since I saw his beating heart on that ultrasound when I was 7 wks pregnant (which is 5 wks after conception) I was blown away. I came so close to getting an abortion but I believe that God stopped me, helped me to be strong though I was terrified at the prospect of being a single mother, now I have my son, and he is the most wonderful, most beautiful, the best thing that ever has happened to me, and I cry and cry and cry at the thought of all those babies who are killed in abortions, all those lives terminated when their lives are only begining. Abortion is so so so sad. :'(
Also, a fetus is not a part of a womans body, they are completely independent, with their own beating heart, and own blood, own everything, there is no mixing of blood between baby and mother, only a transferring of nutrients and oxygen through cell walls in the placenta.
I have to ask, for those of you who are pro-choice, do you have children?
when I was 7 wks pregnant (which is 5 wks after conception)
Sorry, what? Last time I checked, 7 weeks pregnant is 7 weeks after conception. Huh??? Why the missing two weeks? Conception is the beginning of pregnancy, by definition.
when I was 7 wks pregnant (which is 5 wks after conception)
Sorry, what? Last time I checked, 7 weeks pregnant is 7 weeks after conception. Huh??? Why the missing two weeks? Conception is the beginning of pregnancy, by definition.
Actually no, I had to explain this a zillion times to BD (he is an idiot and was trying desperately to varify in his mind that he was not the daddy, but a DNA test stopped that).
When they say "I am 30 wks pregnant" that means that it has been 30 weeks since the first day her LAST PERIOD STARTED. But women are not fertile until two weeks after their period begins when ovulation occurs. So for two weeks after you start your period you are not fertile, and when you are feritile it is only for about 3 days or so, when the egg is released from the overy, travels down the falopian tube and then arrives in the uterous, then if it is not fertilized quickly it dies and two weeks later you have a period and the whole process repeats.
It is amazing to me that I had sex ONCE, and I hadn't had sex in 3 years and haven't had sex again since and I got pregnant. I think for me it was totally fate.
So when you have your baby at 40 weeks, it is actually 38 weeks after conception. Wierd, I know.
Yes conception is the beginning of pregnancy but when you conceive your child, by the counting of the weeks you are already 2 wks pregnant, that is how the doctors do it.
I have three children.
Huh. Who knew. That's very interesting.
Anyway, I do not have children, of course, but I don't think that has any bearing on the validity of my opinion. Just like I don't think that the opinions infertile women, menopausal women, women who choose not to reproduce, and men are invalid.
Only stated that because snowqueen asked if any pro choicers had children, just responded...
Oh I know. I was doing the same. My "huh, that's very interesting" was in response to that pregnancy/conception thing.
A fetus has a beating heart at 3 wks after conception.
I am pro-life but I was strictly pro-choice before my son. Since I saw his beating heart on that ultrasound when I was 7 wks pregnant (which is 5 wks after conception) I was blown away. I came so close to getting an abortion but I believe that God stopped me, helped me to be strong though I was terrified at the prospect of being a single mother, now I have my son, and he is the most wonderful, most beautiful, the best thing that ever has happened to me, and I cry and cry and cry at the thought of all those babies who are killed in abortions, all those lives terminated when their lives are only begining. Abortion is so so so sad. :'(
Also, a fetus is not a part of a womans body, they are completely independent, with their own beating heart, and own blood, own everything, there is no mixing of blood between baby and mother, only a transferring of nutrients and oxygen through cell walls in the placenta.
I have to ask, for those of you who are pro-choice, do you have children?
I forgot to click to stop getting notifications when I resolved to stop following this thread... I'm repeating myself, a sure sign I was right that I need to move on, but-- again:
1) First of all, a beating heart has nothing to do with identifying a sentient being (which requires some type of rudimentary brain/ central nervous system), which to me seems much more relevant... and if the embryo and mother were 'completely independent' of each other, it would be possible for it to be removed to gestate elsewhere, and we'd be having a whole different ethics discussion here... and where do you think the fetus's 'completely separate' blood and everything comes from?! From mom! It's blatantly inaccurate to say that the mom & the embryo/ fetus are completely separate... there are too many problems with this statement to adequately summarize.
But-- to go along with your argument, if it's the 'beating heart' guideline you want to talk about... Most women are about 2 weeks pregnant at the time of their first missed menstrual period; so, if you're in circumstances desperate enough to make you consider termination, assuming that (safe/ legal) abortion is actually available to you based on your economic status, etc., it is perfectly possible to make that decision prior to your 3rd week of pregnancy.
2) Had you read the prior posts on this thread, you would have seen that, yes, there are pro-choice parents here. The broad strokes for me: I was 5 months pregnant on my 21st birthday, and knew from the start that I'd be on my own. I wouldn't change a thing, & never considered any other option, because I was emotionally (if not financially) ready to try to be the best mom I could be to my kid... including not letting my sweet bright boy become homeless and placed in foster care, which would've been a real possibility had I become pregnant again while raising a child by myself/ going to grad school/ working two jobs to support us. A family's first obligations are to existing, not hypothetical, children.
The way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the demand, not the supply. So let's educate young people about birth control, make birth control accessible regardless of socioeconomic status, subsidize child care and scholarships for pregnant women and poor parents going to school to try to pull their families out of poverty...
No one likes abortion; we are in agreement there. The issue people are usually arguing is whether it should be legal or not.... and the bottom line is that legally forced breeding will not end well, for anyone, period.
After reading this thread, I would like to chime in and say that I think men who like telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies should be sterilized. Or, at the very least, should wear a big scarlet O for "oppressor" to ensure that they never get laid.
Ok, that was my two cents. GNARLS OUT. :)
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