Malachi89
I believe that abortion shouldn't be allowed
except if the baby will cause possibly fatal
harm to the mother,
All preganncies carry a potential health/life risk. Take solace in the fact that every pregnancy holds the risk of death.
These are the normal, frequent or expectable temporary side effects of pregnancy:
-- exhaustion (weariness common from first weeks)
-- altered appetite and senses of taste and smell
-- nausea and vomiting (50% of women, first trimester)
-- heartburn and indigestion
-- constipation
-- weight gain
-- dizziness and light-headedness
-- bloating, swelling, fluid retention
-- hemorrhoids
-- abdominal cramps
-- yeast infections
-- congested, bloody nose
-- acne and mild skin disorders
-- skin discoloration (chloasma, face and abdomen)
-- mild to severe backache and strain
-- increased headaches
-- difficulty sleeping, and discomfort while sleeping
-- increased urination and incontinence
-- bleeding gums
-- pica
-- breast pain and discharge
-- swelling of joints, leg cramps, joint pain
-- difficulty sitting, standing in later pregnancy
-- inability to take regular medications
-- shortness of breath
-- higher blood pressure
-- hair loss
-- tendency to anemia
-- curtailment of ability to participate in some sports and activities
-- infection including from serious and potentially fatal disease (pregnant women are immune suppressed compared with non-pregnant women, and are more susceptible to fungal and certain other diseases)
-- extreme pain on delivery
-- hormonal mood changes, including normal post-partum depression
-- continued post-partum exhaustion and recovery period (exacerbated if a c-section -- major surgery -- is required, sometimes taking up to a full year to fully recover)
These are the normal, expectable, or frequent PERMANENT side effects of pregnancy:
-- stretch marks (worse in younger women)
-- loose skin
-- permanent weight gain or redistribution
-- abdominal and vaginal muscle weakness
-- pelvic floor disorder (occurring in as many as 35% of middle-aged former child-bearers and 50% of elderly former child-bearers, associated with urinary and rectal incontinence, discomfort and reduced quality of life)
-- changes to breasts
-- varicose veins
-- scarring from episiotomy or c-section
-- other permanent aesthetic changes to the body (all of these are downplayed by women, because the culture values youth and beauty)
-- increased proclivity for hemorrhoids
-- loss of dental and bone calcium (cavities and osteoporosis)
These are the occasional complications and side effects:
-- hyperemesis gravidarum
-- temporary and permanent injury to back
-- severe scarring requiring later surgery (especially after additional pregnancies)
-- dropped (prolapsed) uterus (especially after additional pregnancies, and other pelvic floor weaknesses -- 11% of women, including cystocele, rectocele, and enterocele)
-- pre-eclampsia (edema and hypertension, the most common complication of pregnancy, associated with eclampsia, and affecting 7 - 10% of pregnancies)
-- eclampsia (convulsions, coma during pregnancy or labor, high risk of death)
-- gestational diabetes
-- placenta previa
-- anemia (which can be life-threatening)
-- thrombocytopenic purpura
-- severe cramping
-- embolism (blood clots)
-- medical disability requiring full bed rest (frequently ordered during part of many pregnancies varying from days to months for health of either mother or baby)
-- diastasis recti, also torn abdominal muscles
-- mitral valve stenosis (most common cardiac complication)
-- serious infection and disease (e.g. increased risk of tuberculosis)
-- hormonal imbalance
-- ectopic pregnancy (risk of death)
-- broken bones (ribcage, "tail bone")
-- hemorrhage and
-- numerous other complications of delivery
-- refractory gastroesophageal reflux disease
-- aggravation of pre-pregnancy diseases and conditions (e.g. epilepsy is present in .5% of pregnant women, and the pregnancy alters drug metabolism and treatment prospects all the while it increases the number and frequency of seizures)
-- severe post-partum depression and psychosis
-- research now indicates a possible link between ovarian cancer and female fertility treatments, including "egg harvesting" from infertile women and donors
-- research also now indicates correlations between lower breast cancer survival rates and proximity in time to onset of cancer of last pregnancy
-- research also indicates a correlation between having six or more pregnancies and a risk of coronary and cardiovascular disease
These are some less common (but serious) complications:
-- peripartum cardiomyopathy
-- cardiopulmonary arrest
-- magnesium toxicity
-- severe hypoxemia/acidosis
-- massive embolism
-- increased intracranial pressure, brainstem infarction
-- molar pregnancy, gestational trophoblastic disease (like a pregnancy-induced cancer)
-- malignant arrhythmia
-- circulatory collapse
-- placental abruption
-- obstetric fistula
And a few more permanent side effects:
-- future infertility
-- permanent disability
-- death.
Source: http://www.gate.net/~liz/liz/004.htm
That's the unabridged version, if I'm not mistaken.
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if the mother was raped
or if the mother was molested.
Rape exceptions
Such a rape exception can enforced one of two ways:
1.) The rape case can be tried in court. However, you DO realize how hard it is to prove rape in a courtroom, right? The victim is usually slut-bashed by the defense, and her sexual history is brought up in an attempt to make it look like she wanted is/was asking for it. Plus, by the time such a trial is over, the girl may be too far along in the pregnancy to legally get an abortion. And that’s only if the rapist is found right away.
2.) Rape abortions can be given out on an honor system. This would result in many women faking rape just to get their free abortion and later dropping the charges. A side effect of this would be that actual rape cases would be even harder to take seriously, and the abortion clinics would be just as busy as before. In short, nothing would be helped.
Why make that restriction in the first place? Not only is it hard to enforce, but it shows you really don't care about fetal life as much as you care about punishing the mother for consenting to sex. And why is a rape baby biologically different from a fetus conceived from consensual sex to the point where it's less worthy of life?
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I also think that it should only be available in
the first 4.5 months of pregnancy, and there
should also be a waiting period of, say, 10
days, unless the abortion absouletly can not
wait.
And why exactly should bodily integrity rights run out at 4.5 months? Some women never discover their pregnancy until late term.
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This is so that the mother considers the fact
she is terminating something that would have
eventually become a human being.
Should we get an equal restrictions on whether or not we should menstruate? (Yes, there are ways to inhibit that nowadays) Or to stop men from masturbating? Both have the potential to become human beings.
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I have known
people who got abortions that have, afterwards,
considered themselves murderers. They couldn't
forgive themselves even a couple decades after
they aborted.
Most likely due to the fact that they had abortions against their better judgement or had people finally brianwash them into thinking they were "OMG MURDERERS!!"
Besides, there are just as many women who have abortions without regret.
I also think that the mother who files for
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an abortion should be watched if she isn't allowed
one.
What?
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Another option
would be to offer to take the child into foster care
if the mother still doesn't want the baby after s/he
is born.
Adoption is a sorry excuse to ban abortion.
Problems with Adoption
Moniquill
Adoption is the solution to unwanted parenting, not unwanted pregnancy. In order to place a child for adoption, one must first carry it to term and undergo all the physical, psychological, and sociological ramifications of that process. It?s generally a very much life-altering experience, it makes you undergo physical changes, many of them permanent, it alters your brain chemistry, and don?t forget, unless you cloister yourself away for the entire duration, it causes all kinds of social speculation among your friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, strangers on the street, etc. Imagine being pregnant unintentionally with every intention of forking the infant over to waiting adoptee parents upon its birth. What do you think every time some random person lays their hand on your abdomen on the subway and congratulates you?
Adoption is viewed, by many, as a very socially irresponsible act. I personally think that it is far more wrong to bring into the world a child that you do not want and cannot care for, expecting others to bear the expense (mental, physical, financial) of raising it, than it is to make sure that the child never exists in the first place. Adoption doesn't necessarily assure you the knowledge that the child that you created will be cared for and provided for and raised in a way that you would agree with. You might never have contact with the child again, knowing only that you created one, not whether it is well, or whether it is even alive. The current system of Adoption in this country is deplorable, and until every single orphanage and foster home worldwide is empty and there's still a massive demand for children, adoption has proven itself not to be the end-all-be-all fixit solution. While I feel for the plight of the childless who seek offspring, it is not the job of the unintentionally pregnant to play broodmares for them.
Also, there is the argument that the existence of another human being at all is a problem. I personally could never live with myself knowing that I had created a new human, one that would continue to consume resources long after my death and one that would in all likelihood breed and continue the cycle, no matter WHO was footing the effort and the bill.
Racism in adoption
There is no lack of unwanted children in this world. If parents are awaiting a child to love, it?s generally because they have criteria that aren?t being met.
Take for example, this:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/19821/
?So. It wasn't about babies after all, but about white babies. They didn't tell us that in religion class, nor did they mention it at the march. But wait! Open any newspaper and you can find couples advertising, selling themselves as loving parents who wish to complete their lives with your baby. Yes. Your white baby.?
Don?t believe the article? Check this out: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/profiles.html
Choose any family, then click the ?learn more about our family? link. It?ll send you to a chart outlining the family and the criteria they seek in an infant. Here?s the most common answer: http://www.lifetimeadoption.com/for_birtmothers/families/danny_michelle/our_family.html
Newborn. Caucasian. No special needs.
It?s not that there aren?t hundreds of thousands of unwanted and unloved children already existing in the world, desperately needing homes? it?s that they don?t fit the acceptable profile.
For every shiny new baby you add to the system, another existing child doesn?t get adopted.
Meet Dominique and Ivy.
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3396.html
http://photolisting.adoption.com/children/3395.html
They need a family. If I give birth to a perfect, healthy, white newborn, and a loving family adopts it, that's one less family who will consider adopting Dominique and Ivy.
..Le Chat du Noir..
And I'd like to add that the Adoption System is already overloaded worldwide. I'd rather just abort than shoving another and another baby into the adoption system.
If you think adoption is a good alternative, go to the slums of China. Thailand. India. Ethiopia. Third-world countries. Developing countries. The children there are sentenced to a life of poverty, hunger, sexual abuse, and abuse overall. The 'Orphanages' there are little more than whorehouses for child molesters. Trust me or not, I've been there. I've seen it.
I think that rescuing a child from that dark life and giving him or her a future that doesn't involve prostitution just to get by each day is saving a life, not banning abortion.
Nethilia
My bit on adoption, which discusses race:
Adoption doesn't end a pregnancy; it only makes it so that the woman who plopped it out doesn't care for it at all. And adoption is a fuctioning solution for
white women birthing
white babies with no problems for
white couples with the money to adopt. Go open a website on parents willing to adopt, or flip open an ad about adoption. Go ahead. I'll wait. Here, let's make it easy, and give you a link or four:
http://adoptionnetwork.com/
http://www.adopthelp.com/
http://www.courageouschoice.com/
http://www.americanadoptions.com/
All I did was plug adoption into Google. What do you see? That's right. White couples, white babies, white families. I saw one family that might have been Asian, and a few brown faces on http://www.adoptuskids.org, which is national. On every private site I saw more white than a blizzard in Denver. So what are people like me supposed to do? I am not going to birth a white baby. I am not going to birth a pretty white cherub with soft hair and light eyes. Anything that fights out from between my legs is going to be brown and nappy headed. Adoption is warped from what it was supposed to do--get parentless children good homes. Nowadays it's a business designed to place white babies with white families--and as for the little brown ones and old ones and sibling grouped ones and sick ones, we'll think getting homes for those later if the white couple can't get the white babies first. ******** adoption as a solution until it's not just a solution for the pretty white girls, like everything else in America.
Also:
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[The writer of the article] recently requested an adoption application from this agency called "American Adoptions." (For research purposes only I assure you.) They give you a bunch of information along with the application form. Here's how they break things down in terms of race:
They divide their programs into "Traditional" and "Minority." "Traditional" includes all "healthy, non-African American" babies. They state that "Traditional" program races "include, but are not limited to, Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, etc. or any non-African American combination of races."
What it boils down to is that "African-American or Bi/multi-racial (any race combined with African-American heritage) newborns/infants" in the "Minority" program cost way less than babies in the "Traditional" program, anywhere from $4,000 to $16,000 less, with no up-front fee required. The average wait for a "Traditional" program baby is months longer than the wait for a "Minority" program baby, which can be as short as 1 month, and the rules regarding age of parents and number of children who can already be living in the home are less strict for "Minority" program applicants. While reduced fees and fewer restrictions on parent eligibility (combined with other anti-racist, anti-classist strategies) can make adoption more accessible to people of color, "Minority" programs like this one are not focused on recruiting and approving people of color to adopt.
Agencies are able to subsidize "Minority" programs in part because they do not spend lots of money advertising to pregnant women to give up their "minority" babies for adoption; instead, they focus their attention on recruiting pregnant women who can help fill the demand for white babies. Also, many agencies use a "one drop" kind of rule to draw a strict line between African American and white, while quietly ignoring all other "minorities." The argument that "Minority" programs exist to make adoption more accessible to people of color is often an attempt to mask white-run agencies' complicity with white-dominated society's general devaluation of African American children. Most agencies don't care about recruiting parents of color or making their programs more accessible to people of color in general. The pictures of angelic, blonde-haired babies advertised by agencies like American Adoptions make it clear that they're primarily concerned with matching up white people with white babies, and when that isn't possible, convincing whites to settle for a "less desirable" child.
http://www.transracialabductees.org/politics/budget.html
I'd like to add to this.
Kids in foster care were used as lab rats, according to this article:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/01/279578.shtml
My apologies for the long read.
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Oh, and another thing I think I will throw out there:
many people, especially Christians, say that abortion
at any point is taking a life. However, the Bible says
that blood is the giver of life, and blood doesn't enter
the developing child until, I believe, day 40.
What scripture says this? (curious)
