When's the baby born?

VictoryGin

CorporateWhore wrote:

Women tend to be pretty broken up from having abortions. Dr. Lillie Epps visited my campus recently. She had 2 abortions and has offered counselling to many women who have had abortions. She is now pro-life, but she has said that women almost always feel like they've had a great loss. They feel bereaved.

When I had my wisdom teeth taken out (surgical procedure), I didn't feel bereaved. I didn't feel bad at all about the procedure. Why? Because a living, growing organism wasn't ripped from my body and tossed in a zip-loc bag.

Abortion cannot be simply understood as a surgical procedure. For the women that have abortions, it is most certainly more than that.

I don't really have stats on the 90%, but I heard it from a friend. It could be completely bogus, but I don't think that's the point. I think if a woman had to see an abortion before she did it, then she wouldn't want to do it.

i don't think i can even begin to respond to all of this. do you really think that women would have absolutely no feelings at all after they have a surgical procedure in a climate in which they are made to feel so guilty about it? a society in which women are criticized for pretty much anything they do or don't do sexually? a climate in which they are sometimes called baby-killers when they go for a procedure? did you have your wisdom teeth out in that kind of environment?

oh and those prolife people who show abortion videos. well, if it's the silent scream then this will have to stop there. that video is bullshit.

newagehippie

soulsinging wrote:

95% of humanity.

Not to be a dick, but which percentile do you fall in? I just think it is funny that everyone thinks everyone else is an idiot......but they never think they are one of them. I do agree people have issues, but I wouldn't say 95%.......

farfromglorified

VictoryGin wrote:

i don't think i can even begin to respond to all of this. do you really think that women would have absolutely no feelings at all after they have a surgical procedure in a climate in which they are made to feel so guilty about it? a society in which women are criticized for pretty much anything they do or don't do sexually? a climate in which they are sometimes called baby-killers when they go for a procedure? did you have your wisdom teeth out in that kind of environment?

These are all valid questions and concerns, but please keep in mind that we can't have it both ways. We cannot demand a woman's right to have an abortion based on a "her body, her choice" platform of individual freedom but then protest when people speak up against such choices using their own freedom of choice.

A person who truly believes that their individual sovereignty to control their own body using their own mind is a fundamental right is not someone who is going to be enslaved by the guilt others may attempt to place on her for her choices.

I have little more than disdain for those who actively attempt to inflict guilt on a woman who chooses to have an abortion, but I also have little sympathy for a woman who says "my body, my choice" while at the same time allowing that guilt to play a role in the way she views herself or her decisions.

angelica

farfromglorified wrote:

These are all valid questions and concerns, but please keep in mind that we can't have it both ways. We cannot demand a woman's right to have an abortion based on a "her body, her choice" platform of individual freedom but then protest when people speak up against such choices using their own freedom of choice.

A person who truly believes that their individual sovereignty to control their own body using their own mind is a fundamental right is not someone who is going to be enslaved by the guilt others may attempt to place on her for her choices.

I have little more than disdain for those who actively attempt to inflict guilt on a woman who chooses to have an abortion, but I also have little sympathy for a woman who says "my body, my choice" while at the same time allowing that guilt to play a role in the way she views herself or her decisions.

You're certainly entitled to your point of view. I can very easily see a person believing in the right to control their body in terms of having an abortion, and at the same time having emotional issues on an entirely different level that are out of synch with the person's general stance--emotions that are devastating. This is the problem. We've got numerous levels operating inside going on at one time--some conscious, some less so. And yes, I realize you said "someone who TRULY believes that their individual sovereignty to control their own body using their own mind is a fundamental right is not someone who is going to be enslaved by the guilt others". People don't operate as purely logical beings, though, even the most seeming logical of us.

I personally have much sympathy and empathy towards a person who says "my body, my choice", and who also feels guilt and pain. It's a very, very human way to be. These situations are immensely complicated. Particularly since women tend to operate in predominately emotional ways with decision making (70% are "feelers" according to the Myers-Briggs personality typing, meaning they tend to base decision making on emotional issues.) What I see as very difficult is that even if we provide women a non-judgmental place to accumulate information and within which to come to their very personal decisions, we can't overlook that these same women have all been wired emotionally with the general morals we all have. We can logically override our emotional wiring to make decisions. But we can't logically override our emotional programming in terms of what we feel about the decision, based what has been ingrained in us througout our lives. Rather, we must deal with the emotions, in order to resolve them. Yes, I definitely have empathy for anyone who has come close to this type of decision and has felt the pain and guilt along with the decision making.

farfromglorified

angelica wrote:

You're certainly entitled to your point of view. I can very easily see a person believing in the right to control their body in terms of having an abortion, and at the same time having emotional issues on an entirely different level that are out of synch with the person's general stance--emotions that are devastating. This is the problem. We've got numerous levels operating inside going on at one time--some conscious, some less so. And yes, I realize you said "someone who TRULY believes that their individual sovereignty to control their own body using their own mind is a fundamental right is not someone who is going to be enslaved by the guilt others". People don't operate as purely logical beings, though, even the most seeming logical of us.

I don't disagree with this at all. However, I do have one question. I have little doubt that the anti-abortion zealots act largely on their emotions regarding abortion and are often wonderful examples of those who hold contradictory moralities. Should I give them a similar pass or sympathy for their shortcomings?

I personally have much sympathy and empathy towards a person who says "my body, my choice", and who also feels guilt and pain. It's a very, very human way to be. These situations are immensely complicated. Particularly since women tend to operate in predominately emotional ways with decision making (70% are "feelers" according to the Myers-Briggs personality typing, meaning they tend to base decision making on emotional issues.) What I see as very difficult is that even if we provide women a non-judgmental place to accumulate information and within which to come to their very personal decisions, we can't overlook that these same women have all been wired emotionally with the general morals we all have. We can logically override our emotional wiring to make decisions. But we can't logically override our emotional programming in terms of what we feel about the decision, based what has been ingrained in us througout our lives. Rather, we must deal with the emotions, in order to resolve them. Yes, I definitely have empathy for anyone who has come close to this type of decision and has felt the pain and guilt along with the decision making.

You're absolutely correct -- we cannot override our emotional wiring, nor should we ever seek to do so. However, we can control how it affects our decisions and, more importantly, we must recognize that our emotions are no one else's but our own.

angelica

farfromglorified wrote:

I don't disagree with this at all. However, I do have one question. I have little doubt that the anti-abortion zealots act largely on their emotions regarding abortion and are often wonderful examples of those who hold contradictory moralities. Should I give them a similar pass or sympathy for their shortcomings?

I'm anti-abortion, myself (although pro-choice). I think you well know that I am held accountable for my own contradictions in each moment of each day. I personally feel empathy towards people struggling with their problems, specifically ones I can relate to and understand. I do understand struggling with contradictions on many levels. I understand being closed-minded, intolerant and judgmental, personally, by my own direct experience.

You're absolutely correct -- we cannot override our emotional wiring, nor should we ever seek to do so. However, we can control how it affects our decisions and, more importantly, we must recognize that our emotions are no one else's but our own.

When we recognize how our emotions affect our decisions, yes we can learn to gain control over our decision making and for many it can be a long, painful growth process with peaks and valleys. And yes, definitely, our emotions are ours to own, fully. On all sides of any fence. The bottom line, again, is if a woman is struggling with her emotions, particularly in a case like abortion, whether she knows her rights or not, I would have empathy for her, not disdain.

farfromglorified

angelica wrote:

I'm anti-abortion, myself (although pro-choice). I think you well know that I am held accountable for my own contradictions in each moment of each day. I personally feel empathy towards people struggling with their problems, specifically ones I can relate to and understand. I do understand struggling with contradictions on many levels. I understand being closed-minded, intolerant and judgmental, personally, by my own direct experience.

Cool.

When we recognize how our emotions affect our decisions, yes we can learn to gain control over our decision making and for many it can be a long, painful growth process with peaks and valleys. And yes, definitely, our emotions are ours to own, fully. On all sides of any fence. The bottom line, again, is if a woman is struggling with her emotions, particularly in a case like abortion, whether she knows her rights or not, I would have empathy for her, not disdain.

I think you may have misread my earlier post. I don't feel disdain for a woman struggling with these kinds of choices, regardless of how conflicted her mind may be or why that may be the case. I certainly see where she is coming from. I do feel some disdain for those who actively attempt to infect the mind of that woman with guilt, but I also understand where they're coming from to some extent. Empathy is deserved for both. But sympathy, for neither, IMO. But I certainly don't pretend to have the right to be an arbiter on you where your (or anyone else's) sympathy should lie.

angelica

farfromglorified wrote:

Cool.



I think you may have misread my earlier post. I don't feel disdain for a woman struggling with these kinds of choices, regardless of how conflicted her mind may be or why that may be the case. I certainly see where she is coming from. I do feel some disdain for those who actively attempt to infect the mind of that woman with guilt, but I also understand where they're coming from to some extent. Empathy is deserved for both. But sympathy, for neither, IMO. But I certainly don't pretend to have the right to be an arbiter on you where your (or anyone else's) sympathy should lie.

You are correct--I did blur your comments in that post. I apologize for my misunderstanding. I agree with the "disdain" part in theory. What I actually did disagree with is that you were pointing to the conflicts of the person considering an abortion as though they are a "flaw". I feel those conflicts are completely, entirely normal, "flawed" or not. If a person were in there and felt totally behind the "it's my body" thing' on one level and felt swayed and affected by guilt on another hand, I can understand that, based on what I understand of our brain functioning. The thing, too, from my understanding is that the woman may make an intellectual decision, based on information, and yet later have to face the emotional aspects she was not initially aware would be an issue. People can't really cope with what is unconscious, until it becomes conscious. I'm not sure of your line between empathy and sympathy (nor my own) and of course, as I said before, you're entitled to your view.

soulsinging

newagehippie wrote:

Not to be a dick, but which percentile do you fall in? I just think it is funny that everyone thinks everyone else is an idiot......but they never think they are one of them. I do agree people have issues, but I wouldn't say 95%.......

im in the 99th percentile.

hippiemom

CorporateWhore wrote:

Women tend to be pretty broken up from having abortions. Dr. Lillie Epps visited my campus recently. She had 2 abortions and has offered counselling to many women who have had abortions. She is now pro-life, but she has said that women almost always feel like they've had a great loss. They feel bereaved.

When I had my wisdom teeth taken out (surgical procedure), I didn't feel bereaved. I didn't feel bad at all about the procedure. Why? Because a living, growing organism wasn't ripped from my body and tossed in a zip-loc bag.

Abortion cannot be simply understood as a surgical procedure. For the women that have abortions, it is most certainly more than that.

I don't really have stats on the 90%, but I heard it from a friend. It could be completely bogus, but I don't think that's the point. I think if a woman had to see an abortion before she did it, then she wouldn't want to do it.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/3/gpr090308.html

MakingWaves

I have a simple but serious question that I would like a female point of view on. Why not just put the baby up for adoption instead of having an abortion?

hippiemom

MakingWaves wrote:

I have a simple but serious question that I would like a female point of view on. Why not just put the baby up for adoption instead of having an abortion?

Because it's a year out of your life, because pregnancy and childbirth carry all sorts of risks ... those are the first things that come to my mind. Obviously, every woman who has ever had an abortion has her own reasons.

MakingWaves

hippiemom wrote:

Because it's a year out of your life, because pregnancy and childbirth carry all sorts of risks ... those are the first things that come to my mind. Obviously, every woman who has ever had an abortion has her own reasons.

Thanks.
I have just always been curious as to why you don't hear this mentioned more. It just seems like such an obvious alternative.

Scubascott

victorygin wrote:

CorporateWhore wrote:

I'm sure you've seen an abortion occur.

It's disgusting, yes?

not moreso than other surgeries.

Come on. Nobody really believes that do they?

I don't understand the people here who keep asserting that an abortion is just a surgical procedure. The implication seems to be that if it wasn't for the pro-life camp campaigning to make women feel guilty about having an abortion they wouldn't have a problem with it.

I firmly believe that I have no right to tell a woman whether or not she can have an abortion (unless the child was mine, then I'd like a say in the matter), so I don't ever want to see abortions banned. But even as a male I can appreciate how terribly traumatic it must be to go through. For any normal human being, ending another human life is still a big deal. How can anyone really see it as just another form of surgery?

You may be pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that you have to be blind to the reality that abortion is a terrible thing to go through.

hippiemom

Scubascott wrote:

Come on. Nobody really believes that do they?

I don't understand the people here who keep asserting that an abortion is just a surgical procedure. The implication seems to be that if it wasn't for the pro-life camp campaigning to make women feel guilty about having an abortion they wouldn't have a problem with it.

I firmly believe that I have no right to tell a woman whether or not she can have an abortion (unless the child was mine, then I'd like a say in the matter), so I don't ever want to see abortions banned. But even as a male I can appreciate how terribly traumatic it must be to go through. For any normal human being, ending another human life is still a big deal. How can anyone really see it as just another form of surgery?

You may be pro-choice, but that doesn't mean that you have to be blind to the reality that abortion is a terrible thing to go through.

An unwanted pregnancy is a horrible thing to go through. No matter how you choose to deal with it (abortion, adoption, keeping the baby), there are going to be both positives and negatives. Each woman has to weigh the positives and negatives for her situation and make her decision accordingly. For a woman who believes that what she's carrying is an organism with the potential to become a person (as opposed to someone who belives it's a full-fledged person from the moment of conception), it may not be all that traumatic. It wasn't the worst surgery I've ever had, I can tell you that much.

Scubascott

hippiemom wrote:

An unwanted pregnancy is a horrible thing to go through. No matter how you choose to deal with it (abortion, adoption, keeping the baby), there are going to be both positives and negatives. Each woman has to weigh the positives and negatives for her situation and make her decision accordingly. For a woman who believes that what she's carrying is an organism with the potential to become a person (as opposed to someone who belives it's a full-fledged person from the moment of conception), it may not be all that traumatic. It wasn't the worst surgery I've ever had, I can tell you that much.

Ok, but surely it wasn't a walk in the park either. My point was just that some of the pro-choice people seem to consider it such an inconsequential thing. I don't know. I've never been close to anyone thats had an abortion, so I'm not really qualified to discuss how it feels to have one, but I just imagine that it can't be easy.

hippiemom

Scubascott wrote:

Ok, but surely it wasn't a walk in the park either. My point was just that some of the pro-choice people seem to consider it such an inconsequential thing. I don't know. I've never been close to anyone thats had an abortion, so I'm not really qualified to discuss how it feels to have one, but I just imagine that it can't be easy.

No, of course it isn't, but most surgeries aren't easy, and giving a baby up for adoption or attempting to care for a child you're not prepared for can't be easy either. I don't think anyone tries to pretend it's as simple as going for a manicure. What we're saying ... at least what I'm saying ... is that given the range of options for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, it's certainly not always the worst or most difficult one.

Scubascott

hippiemom wrote:

No, of course it isn't, but most surgeries aren't easy, and giving a baby up for adoption or attempting to care for a child you're not prepared for can't be easy either. I don't think anyone tries to pretend it's as simple as going for a manicure. What we're saying ... at least what I'm saying ... is that given the range of options for dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, it's certainly not always the worst or most difficult one.

I agree with you. Its just that the tone of a few of the posts that I've seen on these boards in the past seems to suggest that some people are so eager to fight for a woman's right to choose that they're happy to gloss over the emotional and physical realities of the procedure. Maybe it really is less traumatic than I imagine it would be. But surely it wasn't an easy decision for you to make?

hippiemom

Scubascott wrote:

I agree with you. Its just that the tone of a few of the posts that I've seen on these boards in the past seems to suggest that some people are so eager to fight for a woman's right to choose that they're happy to gloss over the emotional and physical realities of the procedure. Maybe it really is less traumatic than I imagine it would be. But surely it wasn't an easy decision for you to make?

Actually, in my case it was an easy decision, but there were extenuating circumstances. For most women it's not so cut and dried and I'm sure that it can be an agonizing decision for some.

angelica

CorporateWhore wrote:

Women tend to be pretty broken up from having abortions. Dr. Lillie Epps visited my campus recently. She had 2 abortions and has offered counselling to many women who have had abortions. She is now pro-life, but she has said that women almost always feel like they've had a great loss. They feel bereaved.

When I had my wisdom teeth taken out (surgical procedure), I didn't feel bereaved. I didn't feel bad at all about the procedure. Why? Because a living, growing organism wasn't ripped from my body and tossed in a zip-loc bag.

Abortion cannot be simply understood as a surgical procedure. For the women that have abortions, it is most certainly more than that.

I don't really have stats on the 90%, but I heard it from a friend. It could be completely bogus, but I don't think that's the point. I think if a woman had to see an abortion before she did it, then she wouldn't want to do it.

http://www.abortionfacts.com/reardon/post_abortion_syndrome_character.asp

"In a study of post-abortion patients only 8 weeks after their abortion, researchers found that 44% complained of nervous disorders, 36% had experienced sleep disturbances, 31% had regrets about their decision, and 11% had been prescribed psychotropic medicine by their family doctor. (2) A 5 year retrospective study in two Canadian provinces found significantly greater use of medical and psychiatric services among aborted women. Most significant was the finding that 25% of aborted women made visits to psychiatrists as compared to 3% of the control group. (3) Women who have had abortions are significantly more likely than others to subsequently require admission to a psychiatric hospital. At especially high risk are teenagers, separated or divorced women, and women with a history of more than one abortion. (4) "

If one looks at the sources of this information, one might note that all such information is from 1979, or 1980 or some other early stage of the game. Why would that be? I found this article explains very much. http://afterabortion.com/pmdd.html

"Yet with Post Abortion Stress Syndrome, it's very different. If a woman suffers from PASS after an abortion, the concern for her actual health problem disappears, and she becomes a pawn in the rhetoric of the abortion war. She gets no official treatment or support for her health problem. She gets told what she is experiencing does not exist, or 'only happens to women with previous psychological problems'. (As if having a previous psychological problem would suddenly mean that you wouldn't need treatment, support or help for your new problem!?)

The prochoice majority says PASS 'does not exist', and that anti-abortionists are using it to try and scare women away from abortion, and to try to influence lawmakers that abortion is dangerous. The prolifers agree that PASS exists, but they use it (as the prochoicers fear) as a way to discourage abortion, and as a way to help revoke abortion rights. The woman who is suffering is left alone, as the two sides argue, and the medical community stays out of it.

The medical community does not acknowledge PASS as real, because they don't have enough scientific information from research. Where does the money to do research come from? Grants from pharmaceutical companies. The drug companies that fund medical research that allows a disorder to be diagnosed and 'medically accepted' will not go anywhere near research for PASS. Why? Because they don't want to touch the political suicide that anything related to abortion is. RU-486 is being manufactured in China, because no American drug company even considered making it.

There is such an uproar over anything related to abortion, that drug companies don't want to fund any research into anything abortion related. Why jeopardize the profitability of all their base drugs, by looking into something controversial, that may bring them protests and boycotts from both sides of the abortion war, regardless of how their research turns out?

So without research dollars to fund the studies, the medical community must keep to it's current theory, that PASS 'does not exist'. Numerous medical illnesses never existed until companies thought they might be able to create a drug to treat them, and therefore make a profit. Once enough money was spent on research for them, the diseases became 'real', and were accepted and promoted as such. PMDD and PPD were two such illnesses. As in the past were schizophrenia, manic depression, high blood pressure and AIDS. But when these illnesses were not 'recognized' by the medical community, and did not have an official name or recommended treatment from the medical community yet, did that mean these diseases did not exist? Does that mean no one suffered, before an official name, treatment and official diagnosis was announced? Of course not".

The above information (second link) is from a site that is politically neutral pertaining to abortion. The site is dedicated to picking up the slack from the gaping holes in the medical health system regarding offering help and support for women post abortion who have nowhere else to turn for support and healing.