[Phaze228]

Originally Posted by Selene To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Hi Phaze and Haumea, not sure if I can properly articulate this but I'll try again. Why must this be reduced to an if you are pro-choice you have no argument discussion? Why are we so caught up with labels? True there is hardly any doubt that there is something in the situation of being pro abortion and being against sex selection. But at this point, I will settle for it still being the woman's choice. Give her and give parents the privilege of choice and then address and refine these ethical concerns or need for moral education. Seeing this issue simply in analytical terms of black and white, and of exercising one's right or none at all is no longer the main issue. Other factors are now involved. Are there risks to the welfare of the child if sex selective abortions are banned altogether? How much care will the same child receive from parents who are coerced into giving birth? Parents are ultimately a child's primary socializing agents, by limiting their choices we create more hostile problems. Take it from the one child policy. Did banning and limiting choices stop the chinese from killing female babies that are born anyway? What are parents' motives behind abortion? What provokes their preference? Why are some valid or invalid? As more information and knowledge becomes available, regulations must then be revised. Until then I don't see how ignoring intermediary links and addressing only the issue of rights will avenge the problem in a practical way. ---------- Post added 01-18-2012 at 11:43 AM ---------- I cannot agree more.

I'm not saying if you're pro-choice you have no argument. I wasn't addressing ways to mitigate the female abortions. I was addressing the feminists who say it's wrong to abort by the means of sex.
For assuaging sex-elective abortions, ScottH is on the right track.

[Selene]

	Originally Posted by Phaze228 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I'm not saying if you're pro-choice you have no argument. I wasn't addressing ways to mitigate the female abortions. I was addressing the feminists who say it's wrong to abort by the means of sex. For assuaging sex-elective abortions, ScottH is on the right track.

I'm talking about gender preference/bias in general. It can be male over female in China or female over male in South Korea. Don't understand how that implies a feministic view.

PS: I rest my case if you're saying one cannot claim to be pro choice and disagree with sex selective abortion without identifying with feminist pro-choicers.

[Seablue]

	Originally Posted by Ravendicon To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Only the most insane pro-choicer would extend reproductive rights to allow for the potential elimination of an entire gender.

That's a bit far-stretched. We're far from having eliminated an entire gender on Earth. It's like being worried that homosexuality could make humanity go extinct "because if everyone was gay"...

Besides, if that's what people want, I think it's crazy and stupid but so be it, let human race go extinct because of stupidity.

Originally Posted by GSOgymrat To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Again, gender discrimination and abortion are two separate issues. You can be pro-choice and believe that aborting a female fetus is okay but aborting only female fetuses is wrong. Think of another separate issue: race. It can be argued that aborting a black fetus is okay but aborting fetuses because they are black is wrong. It has to do with intent and whether women are valued in society. I would hope a person who is pro-life would see the practice of aborting a fetus simply because they are female as a further degradation of human dignity. Of course since this topic has nothing to do with me personally my opinion is superfluous.

Well, personally i do think it's wrong, or rather I think it's weird and idiotic. But is that sufficient reason to make prohibited ? No.

[LadySpock]

Pro Life hypocrisy: Aborting pregnancies due to rape / incest is OK.
This assigns value to the life of a fetus based on how it was conceived.

Pro Choice hypocrisy: sex selective abortions are not OK.
This assigns value to the validity of a woman's choice & control over her own body based on your own ethics & morality rather than hers.

---------- Post added 01-18-2012 at 05:19 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Distance To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Reconcile what? As a first trimester pro-choice individual, people can abort in the first trimester if they want. That said, while I don't laugh at the poor men left in China with insufficient numbers of women to pair bond with, I laugh at the Darwinian irony of the situation.

Distance, it is patently bass ackwards that there are not enough women for the men in Asian countries yet they are aborting FEMALE fetuses...

*smh*

[Polymath20]

	Pro Life hypocrisy: Aborting pregnancies due to rape / incest is OK. This assigns value to the life of a fetus based on how it was conceived.

Hardcore religious zealots say that abortion is wrong even in cases of incest and rape.

	Pro Choice hypocrisy: sex selective abortions are not OK. This assigns value to the validity of a woman's choice & control over her own body based on your own ethics & morality rather than hers.

I think that a reason should be stated and recorded for medical purposes. However, I can never agree that a government should own a body, and I hold that standard far higher than the issue of what one individual does with her body. So, in this case, I am a hypocrite. Or not a hypocrite? Idk.

	Distance, it is patently bass ackwards that there are not enough women for the men in Asian countries yet they are aborting FEMALE fetuses...

It will just make a lot more pussy-whipped men.

[LadySpock]

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What you have here isn't some coherent moral or legal framework, but two feminist memes butting heads.

Not exactly.

Feminism: The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Pro Choice: Legal & safe abortions should be available and pregnant women should have a right to decide to have abortions.

Pro Life: Abortions should not be available and pregnant women should not have a right to decide to have abortions.

------------------------------------------------------

"Feminism" and "pro choice" are not necessarily linked.

There are people who believe in the principles of feminism who are also pro life. Google "pro life feminists." You will get almost 5 million results ... approximately the same number you'd get if you google "pro choice feminists."

To assist with a deeper understanding - this summarizes pro life feminist reasoning:

Pro-life feminists want REAL choice for women. A REAL choice where women have the option to *choose* effective birth control, effective being the key word. A REAL choice when it comes to having a career and a child - women should not be in the situation where they either have an abortion or risk losing their job. What kind of choice is that? And this sort of thing does happen. What does this say to women? That a pregnant woman isn't as valuable in the workplace? How is that showing a respect for women? How does that type of attitude "liberate" women? Pro-life feminists reject abortion because they reject the use of violence to solve a problem. They want more than to just settle for mere equality of opportunity -- the opportunity to contribute equally to violence and human rights abuses in society. Pro-life feminists seek to transform society to create a world that reflects true feminist ideals.

I believe in the principals of feminism. That is to say that I believe males & females should have political, social, and economic parity. I am also pro choice - meaning that I believe legal & safe abortions should be available despite the fact that I would not choose to have an abortion myself. Interestingly, I am in agreement with the thinking expressed in the quote above. I think that abortions do a disservice to women and society at large. I think that abortions do not translate into parity for women. What I struggle with is removing the choice itself because of the current state of society. You see, the larger & more important question is - Can we create a society where less and less women would make the choice to have an abortion? And that is the question which feminism should work to answer...

Thinking about why women choose to have abortions - If males and females actually had social, political, and economic parity - it is highly likely that few women would choose abortions. In such a society male on female rape & other forms of male on female violence would be greatly decreased and a variety of other things which translate into female vulnerability & devaluation would be gone. This would eliminate women being faced with Hobson's choices.

So while I am a person who believes in the principles of feminism and I also believe in CHOICE - legal & safe abortions should be available. There are some people who believe in the principles of feminism who are also pro life - meaning they do not believe that abortions should be legal & available.

With regard to whether Asian women aborting female fetuses is the result of two feminist meme's butting heads: I say no. What you have is a culture which values male children more than female children - which is not unique. This is probably true for MOST cultures - including mainstream US & Canadian culture...In fact, it would be difficult to identify a culture where this is not the case. The difference here is that this condition exists in Asian cultures to the extent that pregnant WOMEN will actually choose to abort female fetuses. This is an issue which should be addressed by feminism because the perceived value of female children is so out of proportion to that of males that it results in people choosing to abort large numbers of fetuses and it also results in a male - female ratio so out of whack that Asian men do not have enough Asian women to form pair bonds with. If the chief problem is addressed ( the relative value of female children to male children), then the resulting actions & issues will disappear. This loops back into the comments I made above about male - female parity.

---------- Post added 01-18-2012 at 06:10 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by dsobryan To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I just don't understand why people have sex knowing full and well they might get pregnant.

Answer: Sex, when done properly, feels really really good.

---------- Post added 01-18-2012 at 06:14 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by newtome To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The boy can care & provide for the parents when they get old where the girl may not.

Not to derail the discussion, but I have to correct you here: Caregivers for elderly parents are almost always their FEMALE dult children.

[Seablue]

	Originally Posted by LadySpock To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Answer: Sex, when done properly, feels really really good.

That's not even the proper answer. It's just that (most) people have sexual urges and for (most) they can be very difficult or unhealthy to resist. After you've stopped resisting then you can discover if the sex is good or not... And caution and rationalization work only to a certain extent to resist these urges. Simple as that...

[LucidLegend1984]

This is exactly why I'm not bent on having kids.

Another 500 years of ignorant decisions and its hello Idiocracy.

[LadySpock]

	Originally Posted by Seablue To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That's not even the proper answer. It's just that (most) people have sexual urges and for (most) they can be very difficult or unhealthy to resist. After you've stopped resisting then you can discover if the sex is good or not... And caution and rationalization work only to a certain extent to resist these urges. Simple as that...

That answer was "simple"? LOL!

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by Haumea To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	What you have here isn't some coherent moral or legal framework, but two feminist memes butting heads.

Or, more specifically, the OP conflating two issues that have nothing to do with each other. There are some feminists who are pro-life and some who are pro-choice. Some feminists may say the issues are correlated, but there's no need. Unless someone is trying to play some sort of silly gotcha game, or point out how being pro-choice is a position steeped in some sort of fictional pc nonsense.

	Originally Posted by Seablue To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I don't care if a woman gets an abortion because she got raped by her father or because the baby is going to have green eyes. I'm pro-choice, the reasons why the choice is made are not my concern.

This is really the only answer here. We've more or less limited (appropriately, in my opinion, but that's a separate issue) abortion to the first trimester in the US, unless the health of the mother is in question. (Feel free to put "health of the mother" in quotes should you so choose, if just to indicate how low that actually is on the list of concerns for some who are pro-life.)

If it's legal, it's legal, no matter the reasoning.

[Seablue]

	Originally Posted by LadySpock To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That answer was "simple"? LOL!

I thought it was... Didn't mean to completely disagree with you though, I just meant that sexual urges can be powerful even when the sex is bad.

Originally Posted by larkin

This is really the only answer here. We've more or less limited (appropriately, in my opinion, but that's a separate issue) abortion to the first trimester in the US, unless the health of the mother is in question. (Feel free to put "health of the mother" in quotes should you so choose, if just to indicate how low that actually is on the list of concerns for some who are pro-life.) If it's legal, it's legal, no matter the reasoning.

Yup. Of course we don't have to agree with other people's choices and why they make them, but that's no ground for making it illegal.

[Feral]

Pro choice does not mean pro abortion. I am pro choice because I don't think anyone should tell another person what to do with their body, and because I believe that prolonged suffering is worse than death. It's still a terrible thing that happens, and always for terrible reasons, but the reasons for bringing a child into this world aren't any better for those who face that choice.

Mistakes happen. Sometimes people turn out different than expected, and leave pregnant girls alone to fend for themselves and another life. Sometimes its rape or incest, or a birth control failure, or just a failure of judgement. I wouldn't punish a child for what the mother did.

But that doesn't mean I support abortion as a form of birth control, or as a convenience. I am against sex selective abortions just as much as I am against IVF, which are both unnatural, unnecessary wastes of life.

[ischuldt]

	Originally Posted by darynthe To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I am listening here to pro-choice people. How do you reconcile this?

To me abortion is not a question of right or wrong. It's wrong, but the question is whether or not it's more wrong than the wrong that would be necessary to prevent the abortions?

I would love a world where abortions never happened, but realistically think about what would be necessary to enforce a ban on them regardless of what the mothers motives are. Every single solitary miscarriage that took place in the united states would have to be considered a potential homicide. Police detectives would have to get involved to determine if it was truly an accident or if the woman did something intentional to cause it.

Approximately 1/3 of all pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage. Many times before the mother even knew she was pregnant. If the mother didn't know she was pregnant could you fault her for getting really drunk the night before?

What type of regulations would be required on the activities of women who are pregnant? Would we need to make it illegal for pregnant women to walk up and down stairs in order to insure they don't "accidentally" fall and land on their stomachs or something?

Only 51% of all murders in the U.S. get solved every year, and that's with an actual body being found. Most women know their pregnant before anyone else does. As long as they performed the self abortion on themselves nobody but her would even know there's a person to report missing. Given the size of the body disposing of it would be insanely easy.

You'd have to require women to submit to a pregnancy test on a month to month basis just to know there's a person inside them who's life needs protecting. In order to ID a fetus found in a sewer or dumpster you'd need a dna sample from every woman in the country.

When you really do the math the reality is that the amount of freedom and liberty that we would have to take from ALL the women in this country in order to impose an abortion ban that would prevent a tiny amount of actual abortions is so unbelievably not worth it compared to the tiny amount of overall good it would end up doing that it's just not worth banning it at all. Especially not early term, and it doesn't really matter what the mothers motivations are.

[scorpiomover]

Denying women the right to choose, and denying people the right to abort only females, have one thing in common: they both don't help women.

I wonder if this would be considered a problem, if Asians were only aborting boys.

	Originally Posted by Polymath20 To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Hardcore religious zealots say that abortion is wrong even in cases of incest and rape.

Correction: Hardcore religious zealots of SOME religions, in SOME countries.

	Originally Posted by LadySpock To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Feminism: The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

	I believe in the principals of feminism. That is to say that I believe males & females should have political, social, and economic parity.

Then you are not a feminist, by your own definition.

It would be advocacy of women's rights, to fight for rights of women to be equal to men in every measure. It would also be advocacy of women's rights, to go beyond political, social, and economic parity, in some areas, in order to redress some other right of women in which men are currently advantaged over women in other areas. The combination means that some rights of women will be furthered over men, in order to achieve balance in the meantime, and in other areas, women's rights will need to be furthered to achieve parity with men in those areas. So by the time that parity is achieved in all areas, it then will practically result that those areas in which women's rights were furthered over men, would then need to be curtailed, or men's rights furthered, to achieve parity with women, and both of those would be advocating against women's rights.

Moreover, women already have some advantages over men in some areas, even before feminism began. In order to achieve parity in those areas, men would need their rights advocated, or women would need their rights curtailed, and that would be advocacy of men's rights, or non-advocacy of women's rights.

Parity between genders is incompatible with the notion of fighting for the rights of only one gender. Theoretically, it sounds nice. In practice, it is just unfeasible and practically impossible.

This is not YOUR problem. It has been a problem for ALL feminists, ever since feminists first started embracing feminism, and there is no way around it.

Feminism cannot achieve parity, ever. It's just not fit for purpose.

Humanism, or equalism, could achieve parity between genders, because it's notion suggests parity between genders, but not fighting for the rights of any one gender, rather, fighting for the equal rights of both genders.

[ischuldt]

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


This pretty much sums up most of the stupidity that pro-lifers seem to want to ignore.

[Dru]

well... better sooner than later, eh?

it's far worse to bring a child into the world unwanted than not to give it life at all. trust me. trust me, god damn it. i am a wimminz.

[topquark]

I am absolutely ok with abortion on the grounds of sex. If a woman does not want to continue playing host to a foetus, for any reason whatsoever, she should be allowed to terminate the pregnancy.

Sex-selective abortion does lead to problems in terms of gender imbalance in society, but the way to address that is to tackle differences in attitudes towards men and women and inequality of opportunity between the genders.

[Sumwun]

I'm only for abortion when it's something like a teenager getting pregnant. At that point, I don't think the child would have a real shot in life to be much more than a strain on the prison system, at least statistically. Sure, there are exceptions, but it's not logical to prevent irresponsible people from aborting their kids if they're kids are 90% likely to be criminals, 9.9% likely to be mediocre, and .1% likely to change the world.

As for people who abort based on the gender of their child, I don't think they should be having children in the first place.

[SelfMadeBum]

To me there's a major difference between deciding something is wrong and deciding another person shouldn't have the right to do it.

I guess you can label me a pro-choicer (meaning the woman should have the right to choose to carry to term or not) yet I personally think sex selective abortions are wrong (I would not do it and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone) but this doesn't mean that I feel the right to restrict another's freedom in this regard.

From what I understand, what feminists and others are fighting when it comes to sex selective abortion is not the female's right to do it, but the underlying male-centric social constructs that create the value distortion in the first place.

[Miryr]

To quote George Carlin "I'm in favour of anything which will get me faster through the freeway"

Moreover, to be honest about the matter, I genuinely do not care. A fetus under around two and a half months is not a human, it is a collection of cells. As such, I do not care whether that collection of cells has the potential of becoming a female.

[Storm]

I think sex-selective abortions are wrong, discriminatory, and a sign of a deeper social issue.

I do not think they should illegal as I do not think the government has the right to invade one's body and privacy in such an intimate way.

I know, weird, right? That I could think something is wrong without thinking the government should be dictating to people the right way to live.

[themuzicman]

I once heard someone say that every homosexual activist in America would instantly become pro-life, if the "gay gene" were ever found.

[Seablue]

That someone was wrong.

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by themuzicman To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I once heard someone say that every homosexual activist in America would instantly become pro-life, if the "gay gene" were ever found.

Seriously, who the fuck said that, and why would it be remotely relevant to a gay person's stand on abortion? (Especially given the fact that there's simply no reason to suggest that there's anything like uniformity of opinion on abortion among gay people.)

[Sumwun]

	Originally Posted by themuzicman To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I once heard someone say that every homosexual activist in America would instantly become pro-life, if the "gay gene" were ever found.

Did your pappy tell you that one?