You're preaching to the choir. I am very much pro-choice. ^_^
My question was directed at those who would like to make it illegal. I would like to know what their proposed punishment for the WOMEN should be.

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Pleasure as a "side effect" is arguable. I'm sure one could argue (probably quite thoroughly) that sex for reproduction AND pleasure are nearly equal in social species such as human beings. But we won't get into that.

People deal with the responsibilities no matter which choice they make. And being "dumb" has little to do with getting pregnant. There are a myriad of reasons and ways people could get pregnant nowadays. I, for example, have been on birth control for over 8 years and have been in a serious relationship for nearly 4 years. I am on birth control for reasons other than planning parenthood but it works all the same. Would I be considered "dumb" if my birth control failed (fell into the 1% chance)?

My boyfriend's sister's husband got a vasectomy. The doctors messed up. They now have a third child which was completely unplanned, a financial burden, and causing an INCREDIBLE amount of stress in the household (I know because I live with them.. though not for much longer, praise be His Noodly Appendage) and she had to get her tubes tied which has caused her health issues and still has not healed after 5 months. They were dumb?

Everyone has an individual story as to how they get pregnant. Everyone's reasons for keeping their pregnancy are different as are everyone's reasons for choosing to end it. It has very little to do with being "dumb".

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I'm sorry, I overlooked a few things in your post.
It seems that most here are rather liberal on this issue.

Dumb was used for the sheer fact that I am at work and was typing quickly and could not think of a better word..

I was completely unplanned as was your friends 3rd child except that my mother was on birth control and my father wore a condom. So I know what you are talking about, there are circumstance where it is a complete accident even though percautions were taken.

Sorry if it was offensive to you

Im saying that if you have sex and do not take the percaustions, ie condom, birth control, whatever then no they should not get an abortion

And that statement was to say that in the natural order of things, Sex is our way of Reproduction, thats the Primary use for it, but the physical greediness of humans have used it as a form of pleasure, which is truely just a side effect to the process of having sex.

The vast majority of people don't want to break the law. If that were not true, society could not function. There could never be enough police to keep order if every citizen was willing to break the law. Most people police themselves.

When an activity is legal, society has placed its stamp of approval on that activity. There are a great number of people (perhaps a majority) who believe that if an act is legal it can't really be immoral.

When an activity is illegal, society official disapproves of that activity. There is a stigma attached to the activity because of societal disapproval. Many people will avoid the activity to avoid the stigma.

So if abortion was illegal, there would be fewer abortions, because the law itself (even with minimal punishment) would be enough to deter a great number of people from having an abortion.

The question, in and of itself, is a very vague one. Theoretically, if abortion were illegal, then obviously some bill would have had to be passed outlining the legal ramifications to both the doctor and the woman getting the abortion. In this scenario, there would be a general consensus over the populace over the moral repercussions of having an abortion and the problem itself would be the number of deaths caused by abortion.

The problem I have with this debate is, that like many others, my definition of a living being differs from others. I'm inclined to beleive that once the fetus has begun to develop within the woman, there is no transition from fetus to being because a fetus is essentially a bundle of rapidly replicating cells which eventually become a complex multi-cellular organism with a numerous different functions.

So essentially we're asking, at what point does the fetus become complex enough to be considered life. From that perspective, I see no critical transition point from "thing" to being, and as such, am with the idea that abortion is outright murder to any being. Which, to acknowledge the opposite view, is sometimes neccesary in times where the pregnancy is beyond the control of the woman.

However, inevitably creating legal ramifications on an abortions will create a chain effect in which careless sex practices will not be seen as frequently. Because, all forced pregnancies asides, there are a multitude of cases in which stupid teens get knocked up and will delibrately use abortion as their own personal birth control.

Making it illegal would be a terrible idea.

It would most likely lead to "backyard" abortions which could be done poorly and result in the pregnant womens death or injury.

Also it is taking away a persons right. A women should not be forced to carry around an unwanted parasite for 9 months. Women are not baby farms they are people (nobody disagrees on that). And by taking away their right to abortion they are having their lives severly damaged by unwanted pregnancies.

Not at all offensive.

It's just that a lot of the times people use words like "stupid" or "dumb" to belittle people who get pregnant unexpectedly. There is a website dedicated to stories from doctors at abortion clinics in which "pro-life" women come into to get abortions and ridicule the others in the waiting room... "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion". Then they hop back out onto the picket line a week later to preach to others about how horrible they are for "killing" their "babies".

"Dumb enough to get pregnant" is just a sentence that rubs me the wrong way because it tends to dehumanize those involved, make it sound as if everyone's situation is the same, and ridicule women (because men can't get pregnant.. they can never be "dumb enough to get pregnant"). That's all. ^_^

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There are plenty of countries (Ghana for example) which have illegal abortion that prove this statement wrong. By not educating the populace as to how to have CAREFUL sex practices you will continue to see CARELESS sex practices. Making abortion illegal will do nothing to stop this. It is education and the availability of contraception that is the key.

And "stupid teens" actually are not the majority of women out there having abortions. The number of teenage pregnancies have dropped significantly in recent years and the number of 20+ year old women hold the #1 spot for abortions in the United States (according to the last studies I had read).

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