BellaOnline Forums News and Politics Pro-Choice What does "pro-choice" mean to you?

OK, this is back to the original question "What does pro-choice mean to you?"

The terms all got mixed up and tossed around by people arguing their own points years ago.

Pro-life
Pro-choice
Anti-abortion

I've as yet to see anyone claim to be "anti-life" or "anti-choice".

Pro-choice is literally the advocacy of all the choices available to women who are pregnant: having a baby, adoption, abortion, and the right to borth control before hand (or not as is forced on women in some countries)

Now for the record: I am not for abortion, I do believe that the possibility for life is enough to justify giving a chance. My last child was born prematurely, and spent a lot of time in the NICU. Had he been born many years ago, he would not have survived, because medicine was not capable of keeping him alive. He would not have been "viable" - which is the argument for when life begins.

On the other side of the coin - it is very easy to judge other women who choose to make the decision for abortion.

There are more women in this country that go about day to day having multiple children on welfare, with no thought as to how to provide for these children - except thast one more child means more food stamps. Yet I've as yet to talk to a woman that has gone through the decision of having an abortion that did not agonize over that decision.

And I have thought long about the rape/abortion issue. I was raped in college, but lucky that I did not become pregnant, so never was faced with that decision. I would love to say that my conviction about abortion would have stood up to that trauma, but I can't say for sure I would have. That was the worst experience of my life - to this day I am still affected by it (20 years later). Add to that the fact of how ashamed I was about the rape itself (I didn't tell my parents until 5 years ago) - and it is very possible that i would have been desperate for a "quiet" abortion - or suicide.

When I refer to the pill, I refer to this kind:

"A reversible method of birth control that is over 99% effective in preventing pregnancy, when used correctly and consistently. Also known as oral contraceptives (OCs) or the Pill, birth control pills contain hormones that prevent the ovaries from releasing an egg. If an egg is released, however, birth control pills also make it difficult for sperm to fertilize the egg." -yaz-us.com

I share your friends belief. Once a human life.... he/she is a human life with the right to live and flourish. The shared chromosomes from the egg and sperm, is the birth of that life.

The cost of a tubal ligation (99% effective) is around $1,000- $2,000. In my view,a small price to pay, and a better alternative,than leaving the option open to kill an unborn child. And yes, I believe under no other than unavoidable life threatening circumstances should that little human life be aborted. (Self-defense) So many couples are dying to pay huge bucks to adopt a newborn baby. A huge sacrifice on the biological mother's part, yes, but that is how valuable a human life should be.

Curious....do you think all human life is sacred? Do you think all persons have the right to live? If so, when does human life begin? If not, who is exempt and protected from being seen as obsolete and killable?

"Curious....do you think all human life is sacred? Do you think all persons have the right to live? If so, when does human life begin? If not, who is exempt and protected from being seen as obsolete and killable?"

1) Human life is sacred...define "sacred".

2) All persons have a right to live....would you then agree that the death penalty should not be applied to...oh, say serial killers and mass murderers? What about radical religious terrorists who do things like hijack planes and fly them into buildings? Or those who plot and carry out such things? What about the person with a terminal illness who's living in agony and is begging to be released from life? Do you believe that a pet should suffer in agony or would you "put it to sleep"? Don't animals have souls?

3) I believe that human life begins when the soul enters the body and that that takes place when the first breath is drawn. Until then there is no life, only the potential for life.

4) Who is killable? a.) Those who think they have the right to do serious harm to others - mass murderers, serial killers, those sentenced to death by the legal system. b.) Terminally ill people who specifically ask to be helped to die or those in vegetative states or comas who's families request that life support be stopped. c.) Fetuses, provided the host requests termination. Fetuses are not living human beings. Exempt: a.) Terminally ill people who do not specifically request help in dying or those in comas/vegetative states who's families do not request that life support be stopped.

Reminds me of a debate I had to do in college regarding the death penalty. At the time I believed in a woman's right to choose to have an abortion and the death penalty. When I actually had to do research and hours of reading and studying on the subject, I changed my view, much to my teachers disappointment, I think. It was in trying to decide what qualifies as a human life and if all human life has a right to live. To the best of my understanding human life begins when sperm and egg meet. And I decided that no human being should have his/her right to life taken away by another. Which is why self-defense is the exception. You have the right to kill, if necessary, to protect your own life, not a way of living, but life.

The welfare system is horrible, just as our prison system. We encourage those on welfare to have more babies. And prison is more like a criminal academy. But two wrongs don't make a right. The topic should be on how our society can reform these broken systems. Not whether we should have the option to kill our unborn.

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Staying on the sanctity of life issue, pro-choice also means that health care professionals who perform abortions should be safe from physical attacks, bombings, and death warrants. Their lives are worth protecting. Pro-choice further means that women should not fear honor killings, genital mutilation, forced sterilization, or sexual or other slavery. Granted, those atrocities happen overseas, but they still happen. Finally, pro-choice means that personal belief systems should never trump science when it comes to governmental decisions on women's (or anyone's) health care. Condoms are effective against preventing sexually transmitted diseases no matter how many people may say otherwise. Abortions are not linked to breast cancer. Abstinence is not a healthy state of being for adult humans - don't believe that one, try asking the Catholic Church about their troubles trying to enforce it. Lying about public health issues surrounding women's and men's sexuality is anti-choice - and it is deadly.

1) sacred -unassailable, inviolable b: highly valued and important
-Merriam -Webster

2)Tough situations that you bring up.... Self-defense, I agree, is an exception: you have a right to your life. So if somebody,anybody, even an unborn child is threatening your life, than if unavoidable, you have a right to kill in self-defense.

Serial Killers and Mass murderers once caught, should be imprisoned....solitary confinement, food, water, and possibly a passage of any book (of their choice) read to them once a day. They relinquished their right to freedom, not life. We are not in charge of their soul... we can only be responsible for protecting ourselves. Fixing the prison system is what is needed, not killing.

Radical Terrorists: They believe and have claimed that we should all die because we are infidels. They are happy to do the killing of anyone for their cause. They sneak, and come unannounced. I believe killing them falls under self-defense.3

No, I don't believe in "mercy killing"... wow...I respect the life of all people and would never think a society should adopt a policy to allow it. However, there are drugs to give those in pain, comfort. I know. I've been with both my dad and grandfather when they were dying from cancer.[Since the topic is on human life ....I'll leave out the animal issue, that would be a whole other issue, possibly another forum.]

3) Well, that's where we differ the most. On what basis do you find that "life begins when the soul enters the body and that that takes place when the first breath is drawn" other than your wanting to have the choice to rid of the life while in the womb?
So a baby is not a human life while in the mother, even full term? It has to breath oxygen in it's lungs before you consider it a valuable human life? So if a baby is due on a Friday and dies in the womb three days after his/her due date....it was never a human baby? Boy, convince all those moms who have lost their babies in the womb that they never really had a human life in them worth valuing.

If the brain is dead and has no chance of reviving: that is death...naturally. No machine should be keeping the organs alive.

Okay, I think I touched all addressed.....

I think I agree with everything you just said:

So I guess I'm pro-choice, and in the right forum after all!

However, abortion whether it causes breast cancer or not, is irrelevant, I think. It's the right of the little human life living inside the womb that seems to be our disconnect.

Oops, sorry I didn't see that response of yours!

The thing is, the mother IS the life support for that fetus, if you took it out it's not going to survive, at least not until much later in the pregnancy.

As for the brain dead thing, well, remember that woman in Florida that her parents wouldn't let them pull the plug because they claimed she was still alive, while her husband disagreed?

I'd still like to know at what point you consider it a "human" and not a cluster of cells, since some pro-lifers I know claim that the second the sperm and cell meet it's a baby and that the chance that the pill doesn't allow that zygote to attach to the uterine lining is abortion. (never mind that the body naturally does that quite often) Where do you draw the line? My line is for the brain thing, but obviously others disagree with me on that.

And sorry again for missing an entire page of comments. >_<

"Curious....do you think all human life is sacred? Do you think all persons have the right to live? If so, when does human life begin? If not, who is exempt and protected from being seen as obsolete and killable? "

In a word, no. Sacred denotes religion, that we are here for a PURPOSE, and we're not. We're animals, same as the rest of the creatures on this planet, we just happen to be able to communicate and alter our environment more than other animals, and cause far more destruction as a side-effect of that.
Also, I noticed mercy killings came up, I do fully support them as long as the person who's asking fully knows what they're asking for.

Even though abortion saddens me, I will always defend any woman's right to have control and choice over her own life. It scares me that if we give in to the pressures to take the choice of abortion away from women, we open up a Pandora's box of authoritative intervention in our lives.

The most important thing to me is that "choice" can also mean the right to choose to have a child. Imagine living in a country where you are not allowed to have a baby and you want a baby more than anything. Or you're allowed to have a baby, but only if it's a boy.

Choice also includes things like the right to choose between having a natural birth and going into hospital - that freedom to choose is being eroded very subtly right under our noses. There are some places where I understand it is illegal to be a midwife! Here in Australia homebirth midwives have had their public indemnity insurance pulled. In some other places natural birth is labelled "child abuse".

This is happening because governments and authorities believe that women don't want choice; that we want the experts to make the decisions for us and tell us what to do. So we have to push at every turn for the "right" to control our own destinies, because there are those who sit poised to whip it away from us at the slightest sign that we're "giving in".