RentCavalier wrote:My post was ignored....
No, I read it. I just didn't feel like dissecting it when Seeker proved such a tempting target. But I'll reply to your post (the parts that matter at least):
My basic stand on abortion is that I don't measure life by it's length, I measure life by what the person living it does with it. A person can die at twenty but still have led a full life if they dedicated themselves to accomplishing something, or died being true to themselves.
Sounds like a 'what if' stance to me, which is about as useful and relevant as using last weeks lotto's numbers to predict next week's. Flowery and deep sounding, but ultimately entirely vacuous. If this is your philosophical outlook on "life", it's all good - you don't appear to be trying to pass it off as an argument for or against abortion anyway.
*snipped a bunch of "both sides are stupid" comments*
Both sides are ignoring a basic fact in the matter, and that is that, ultimately, it is the choice of the woman who is having the abortion and no one else's.
I agree with you partially here. I do happen to think that the male, in some situations, should have a say in the matter (I won't expand, I'm sure you can think of many examples where this might be applicable).
I think, personally, we could silence the whole debate if we just made it a little harder for people, in general, to have abortions. Make it a slightly more rigorous process. In this day and age, we feel as though we can streamline everything, and that if everything is convieniant, then everything is better for it. But that's a way of thinking that cannot possibly be applied to every situation. With more and more people being able to have casual sex, and with the general mood of society being accepting of casual sex, then the risks of pregnancy are just going to get higher.
We need to accept that, with the risk of pregnancy being higher and higher, we cannot just simply make it an easy process for women to terminate their children. That's going to cause a lot of real bad problems real quick, both ethically and socially. So, really, there are two solutions that really aren't being addressed properly: One is, as I said, the need to make it more difficult to get abortions. I mean, it is harder to become a naturalized citizen then it is to kill your baby. That's about three kinds of fucked up. Two, we need to research and develop better contraceptives. I think, since the condom has become so popular, people have become complacent about the need to make sex safer. If we, as a society, want to continue having casual sex, we need to develop a 100% condom--or, at the very least, develop a contraceptive that has about the smallest margin of error possible. I mean, if we can break down the atom, we should be able to easily develop something to prevent sperm from entering an egg.
Couldn't disagree more, on your flimsy arguments ("both ethically and socially"...</END>) and your assertion it would end the debate. Proposed solutions I've read in this thread (better contraceptives, making the abortion process more inconvenient and cumbersome, etc) do absolutely nothing for what lies at the very core of the debate -
whose choice is it? That doesn't go away no matter how much you dilute the issue.
Further, your solutions (especially the "make abortions harder to get") are flawed unto themselves. Abortions used to be extremely difficult - rather than making the obstacle a back alley, you'd stick up a wall of bureaucracy. Neither do more than marginalize and endanger women that want to end an unwanted pregnancy (for whatever multitude of reasons).
You stated before, your stance is "it's the women's choice". That's your stance...and I happen to agree with it. Everything else you wrote just mucks up and confuses the argument (and I think, confuses yourself...if the way you seemed to drift between pro-life/pro-choice verbiage is any indication).
"Oh, sure, it's the women's choice..but let's make it as difficult as possible so that hopefully she decides it's just easier to have the kid."
/sigh