Bonding With Baby; Why Ultrasound is Turning Women Against Abortion

Have you heard that there is a higher than normal incident of breast cancer in women who have had abortions? My husband & I adopted 3 children. I was never able to get pregnant. I will be eternally greatful to the 3 girls who chose pregancy & adoption over abortion.

I'm sure the majority of the woman have no problems...but just like some vaccines...there is a risk.

Sort of like eating, huh? There's a risk of choking to death on the food. And you could slip while shoveling the walk and fracture your skull or break your wrist. Or have a heart attack. Better to have that heart cut right out before attempting anything that will exert strain on it.

There are very, very few medical conditions in which an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. The chief use of these rare instances is as something that people appeal to who want an excuse and a salve for their conscience for going ahead with what is a matter of convenience rather than a matter of survival.

Have Crisis Pregnancy Centers encourage male participation with respect to volunteers/counselors and those given services

That is an interesting idea. I wonder if they concsiously made the decision to NOT involve too many men, since most women in this predicament are probably a bit self-conscious and would rather talk to women about it.

It is an idea that warrants further exploration.

Have the pro-life movement abandon the Harlequin novel idea that unexpected/unplanned pregnancies involve some cad who deserted his female partner.

? I don't get it. It happens that way a LOT whether or not the woman is a good girl or tried to trick him.

If they are not married, then the man did not provide a home for the child he risked creating. = somewhat of a cad

Same difference to me.

Include dads at church social/family functions (which are often scheduled mid-day).

Hm. I have never seen this NOT encouraged.

Encourage the pro-life movement to support fathers as childcaregivers.

I think they have. I don't know where you're getting your impressions from, but I have not seen men excluded.

Better to have that heart cut right out before attempting anything that will exert strain on it.

Oh gosh... I'm a bitin' my tongue... hard.

That's why I think preaching and teaching abstention is the best and wisest way to go.....start at the beginning instead of the end.

I'll leave the definition of "Human Life" to those much smarter than me. At this point, some of those people (The Supreme Court) have decided that women have the right to have an abortion. That's why I argue that we need to "Change the Hearts and Minds" of women who do want to have an abortion...Teach them that the right thing to do is to not have one.

Screamng at them and calling them baby killers is not going to change their minds...Just scare them. And you want to know the bottom line? The right of a woman to have an abortion is NEVER going to be overturned. EVER! Thus, the NEED to "Change their hearts and minds". The Pro-Life movement simply does not have enough support...And NEVER will. People in general may not like the idea of abortion but they do like the idea of having it available as an option. Therefore it will NEVER be "Outlawed". And anyone who is honest with themselves will agree with that.

I so remember guys like you back in the Eightys. The got themselves so confident in Soviet detente, and were so convinced we could never actually beat the Russians, they actually fought against the Ronald Reagans for trying. It might make their Soviets buddies mad at us.

Well the truth of the matter is this: such quizlings just didn't have that much of a problem with our enemies.

You are content to leave definitions to "those much smarter than" you, so long as they don't conclude anything that contradicts you or your world-view.

Are you familiar with the term solipsism?

SUPERMARKET MORALITY
or
"If I don't like it, I can always take it back."

Abortion is not a matter of "reproductive rights" or "women's issues" or "constitutional safeguards". It is a matter of selves grown so introverted, of wills of either gender become so fixated on their own fulfillment that the biological, social, and moral consequences of their own actions are set upon by them as infringements on their belief that the vine of reality ought to grow exclusively up the trellis of their own will. It is a matter of selves under the delusion that they are most fully "human" when they are most fully freed from nature's and society's demand that they be either male or female, enjoy (or at least acknowledge) the difference, and accept the consequences.

For them reality therapy is to throw everyone else onto the couch.

Too bizarre to be mistaken for anything else but the condition of a diseased spirit is the dichotomy of thought manifested in the appeal, on the one hand, to the poor, illiterate, unloved, socially-disadvantaged, abused and abusing bastard of incestuous rape who will only be an additional drain on an already overpopulated planet unless he/she/it should first agonizingly die from a genetic defect inherited from parents too selfish and insensitive toward it, toward themselves, and toward the welfare of society to prevent its suffering by means of a "therapeutic" abortion; and, on the other hand, to Noble Woman, guardian and embodiment of Constitutional virtue, struggling to protect herself from the advances of a rapacious, patriarchal religion and society, to cast off the biological shackles slapped on her by a cruel and unjust evolution.

It is a rationale designed to justify any choice and to silence any criticism. It is an awfully big gun to pull out for something they allege to be merely a medical decision between a woman and her physician. To remove or not to remove a wart is a decision on that level.

And here is where the slip shows--although they claim (or want to believe) that doing it is nothing, attempting to prevent, to limit, or even to talk first about their doing it is everything.

"Hey! Get the hell off of my will! Just who do you think you are to attempt to even think about imposing your morality on me? Besides, can't you see how much I'm suffering?" they say while imposing something far more severe than morality on those who literally depend on them for life.

To put it even more into perspective, imagine a bumper sticker reading:

My fetus was chosen Unviable Tissue Mass of the Month at the Me-First Womyn's Health Center.

Even lab rats get more consideration.

Abortion is a denial. It is a denial of nature, of responsibility, of self-sacrifice, of love, and of life. And what is left? A will whose choices are unobstructed by any of the above.

"Well, that's done," they say, turning to pat and admire the shape of their uncoerced will. "Maybe I'll take this sweater back today, too."

Here is a letter to the editor from 1985 that touched on the issue of ultrasound. It's nice to have been at least a little prescient.

September 16, 1985

Dear Editor,

In the abortion debate many pro-abortion and not-quite-anti-abortion proponents have said the humanity of the fetus is “the central question”, “the central issue”, but never define humanity or human being except as something that is sentient, the killing of which would be murder. And? By their own words sentience does not define humanity for cows are sentient and humans may feel no pain if certain nerves are severed.

In the above context the case for first trimester abortions depends upon the experience of pain. Are they saying that denying life is not to be permitted if the experience is painful? For whom? Surely after the fetus is dead it will no longer feel or remember feeling pain. This reminds me of the question of whether one would rather be given a drug before an operation that would prevent pain or be given one later that would erase from the memory the pain experienced during the operation. Such questioning is secondary to the fact of the operation. What will be its result? In the case of abortion the result will be the death of the fetus whether it feels any pain or not.The experience of pain, then, is not bad in itself if its cause brings about a better state of being or prevents a worse one. To grant or deny a fetus (the term here used generically) a future life outside the womb as a sentient human being by its present ability to experience pain seems more than bizarre--It’s okay, you know, it didn’t feel a thing because it wasn’t sentient. Yeah, which is better, to exist having felt no pain of abortion or to not exist having felt no pain of abortion? To be or not to be, that is the question, isn’t it?

Some have said “The case against abortion in the first trimester must rest entirely on metaphysics and philosophy.” I think the case for or against abortion at any time must rest entirely on metaphysics and philosophy. It appears that for many who wish to have nothing to do with metaphysics and philosophy “empirical reasons” are what they get when they pass the point at which they are no longer aware of (or have successfully forgotten) their philosophical and metaphysical reasons for selecting them.

The “empirical reason” appears to rest on cold fact, but the reason for using it rests on something entirely different. Any time one moves from the descriptive of “This is” to the prescriptive of “Do this”, one moves through the moral world of “This ought or ought not to be.” This is the world of motives and beliefs. It’s the world in which people actually live. It cannot be described in the same way that physics describes solar flares. This is central to the absurdity of “experimental” psychology’s attempts to explain human behavior by dissecting rat brains and measuring dog spit. There is that in human behavior which is man’s distinguishing characteristic which transcends the physical processes of reproduction, nourishment, and death.

When I was about five years old, I was taken to The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and ushered through the hall enshrining Human Reproduction, The Miracle of Life. On one wall I saw encased specimens (whether potentially human or just clever reproductions, I don’t know) arranged developmentally from conception to birth. I started at birth and asked my father if the baby, dying at that stage, would go to heaven. As I approached conception asking the same question, the answers changed from “Yes” to “probably” to “I don’t know” to “Probably not” to “No”. It gets down to the question of whether being human is something you are or something that you have become. I suspect that something akin to ethnocentrism (ontogenocentrism?) is involved here--those folks running around with bones through their noses aren’t like us and we’re civilized, so they probably aren’t, yet. Some say the fetus is “much more actually human after the first 12 weeks of gestation” and that it “little resembles a human being” during the first few weeks of gestation, meaning that it does not look much like, well, a post-birth body. It doesn’t look like me and I’m human, so it probably isn’t, yet.

It’s interesting how closely the question of the origin of man as an individual resembles the controversy about the origin of man as a species. Did man come fully human from the hand of G-d or was there a point at which, during eons-long evolution, the genetics defining the species Sapiens appeared? Was it “fully human” or was it merely human in appearance? Did there appear at the same time or later those characteristics which could be called “spiritual”? The first view holds all men of different languages, races, and cultures to be members of a common humanity. The second view makes possible all sorts of interesting self-justification from members of master races, true humans as opposed to sub-humans, for individuals personifying the new socialist man or the master race. And just as that distinction has made possible the genocide of whole groups who fell outside the official classification, so, too, have millions of pre-birth lives been defined into oblivion.

Over the years, I have heard people struggle with the question of when the fetus becomes a “human being” or an “individual” or a “person with Fifth Amendment rights.” Their error lies in attempting to make the term equivalent to some developmental stage. Really, for a long time I think it has been more a matter of "out of sight, out of mind" coupled with lack of thought than anything else. Before birth it was an “it”, after birth “he” or “she”. But sonograms and other technical means have extended our sight to the living pre-birth and have forced us to change our ideas of it.

Genetically speaking, there is a time before which an individual of a sexually reproducing species does not exist and after which it does, be it ever so humble. From that moment to the moment of its dissolution it passes through definable stages of development and degeneration. Here are some that apply to us: zygote, embryo, fetus, newborn, infant, toddler, child, pre-adolescent, young adult, mature adult, old-aged. Upon this continuum of development place an asterisk where “it” becomes “human” and perhaps another where its humanity ceases as far as the empirical world is concerned. Many would place the asterisks at conception and death (death defined as the irreversible disruption of the continuum). I do. It is this creature appearing at conception and disappearing at death that is human. Against this, talk about seeds not being trees and fertilized eggs not being chickens shows itself for the silly ontogenocentrism that it is-- the full-grown chicken is not a fertilized egg, but both are developmental stages of the same being. An acorn is not a tree, but both are equally oak.

If “human being” is a later stage of an individual’s existence, then what is the name for the being started at conception and ended at death? On the individual level the first view calls it human whether conscious or not, cripple, retarded, senile, diseased, sinful, intelligent, female, or male. The second view permits “quality of life and “value to society” to define the parameters of being human and those who have the power to do so to define those terms, whether a woman and her physician, N.A.R.A.L, or Big Brother.

The bottom line is that there is a struggle between equality under law and power as the law, between doing what we ought and doing whatever we can get away with, between submitting our desires to a higher moral law or enshrining our desires as the only moral law.

One will never find the answers in the charts and tables of science. And, for the modern man, that’s scary.

Ping for a later read - skimming the first few paragraphs, it looked good!

Thanks for posting this aruanan. It's very provocative --in a good way.

Yeah, some of the previous statements justifies abortion, I don't think I'm misinterpeting it. If I am, explain it to me. Now if it we're someone dropping a bunch of unwanted puppies into a bucket of water to get rid of them, there'd be an endless thread with newpaper articles on how horrible it is to treat a innocent buch of puppies in such a manner, and how the individual (her) would love to get her vengence of the person dropping the pups. Priorites reversed...yawn...

SOR

I place very little value on children born into these circumstances.

Do you place very little value on Jack London and Ludwig van Beethoven? Just two examples, off the top of my head, of the kind of people you put ``very little value'' on.