Is the abortion issue only about religion?

I really want to know what people think about the abortion debate. Are pro-lifers only the religious right? Anyone have statistics to show otherwise? What arguements are there for banning abortion that are not motivated by religion?

 

I wrote an essay on it long ago:

The abortion topic strikes a raw nerve with a lot of people, especially those who tend to be highly religious or emotional types. The main issues of abortion seem to revolve around human rights and religious beliefs. Here we will attempt to separate our emotions from the topic and look at this issue as logically as possible. I believe abortion should be an option available to all women. This option should exist without fear of being shunned by family or attacked by society.

We’ve all heard stories about activists bombing abortion clinics, the shooting and killing of doctors and people associated with abortions. These stories did not taking place in the Middle East. They are from here in North America, a place where we pride ourselves on freedoms, such as freedom of religion. Freedom of religion can not exist when ideas and practices from one religion are imposed on all people. When laws are based more on religion and emotions, you can be sure that certain freedoms will be sacrificed.

Abortion is the termination of a Human Being’s life and therefore murder. This is not true, the Pregnant woman is the only human being in the picture. The brain of a human being takes years to develop, this is a medical and scientific fact. Our minds are what make us an individual person with all of our thoughts and dreams. We are not preset, predetermined beings, we are products of years of development. You can’t sell a blank canvas as a masterpiece just because it could be a masterpiece some time in the future. And you can’t charge a person for murder of a human being that could have existed some time in the future.

If you do believe that some higher power has predetermined all life, then you must believe that this higher power has predetermined three quarters of human beings on this planet to exist, starve and suffer in miserable poverty. So who it the real monster, the abortion doctor or your God? There is absolutely no logic in bringing an unwanted human being into this world of starving beings. To force parenthood on an unwilling person will only produce more misery and abuse in a world already filled to the brim with misery and abuse.

Every pregnancy has it’s own story. Conceived from love, rape or foolish mistake, children should be wanted and loved. They should not be used as punishment for mistakes or reminders of painful experiences. Giving up a child is not easy, it can be enough to break a person. We should not look at abortion as the act of terminating a human life. We should look at abortion as a tool that is sometimes necessary to avoid adding misery and abuse to a human who is already “being”.

 

Go over to the Protest forum click on the Abortion thread, it's a pretty hot debate going on with all that stuff you're asking about.



Bustramp

 

find work by Judith Jarvis thompson - she is not exactly pro abortion but not exactly pro life - she leans more toward pro abortion but she is anyway a very educated, highly original, and talended thinker. Her arguments put all the pro life aspects into perspective
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Jarvis_Thomson

you might also want to read perhaps the most significant book (its in paperback ) on the subject of abortion - its called "causing death and saving lives" By Jonathan Glover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Glover
the book succinctly, and simply gives the arguments for and against abortion. He does this by highlighting several prominent thinkers from all sides of the debate - you will find what you are looking for there

 

If you read Don Marquis's argument against abortion in "why abortion is immoral" you can see a view against abortion that is definately not religious. His whole argument attempts to argue without appealing the whole idea that abortion is wrong because fetuses have the potential to become human. Whether or not he actually accomplishes this is still up in the air

 

precisely why some sexually retarded religious fanatics believe masturbating or birth control is a sin. "potential" is meaningless, real valuable human life takes years of effort, devotion and development. That's what makes a person, not a 30 second shot, not even 2 weeks of cell multiplication. A worthless fly has more self awareness.

the whole concept of human brain development and the many years it takes conflicts with the whole religious concept of spirits. If our minds are spirits why should it take 3 years to complete the wiring of 100 billion neurons inside a persons brain?

 

for many people the abortion debate is really about their conflicted views of sexuality. much of the intense anger is coming from repressed anger at the what they consider the sexual freedom of others resulting in an unwanted pregnancy, and abortion represents the slut getting away with it. religion may be their rationalization so they don't have to face their irrational emotions.
Some pro-lifers do have consistant religious objections, but these aren't the people expressing rage and bombing clinics.

 

a lot of it coming from the religious side is hypocrisy. they go on about the rights of the unborn and then send their warplanes to bomb children in Iraq and Somalia.
I agree with the poster above who said

only thing I'd say is that the rationalization is itself another level of irrationality.

 

Life is beautiful and we should cherish it no matter what it's the result of.

 

firstly, if self-awareness is what determines value, then we might as well kill all children under one year of age, the very old and senile, and the mentally retarded. in a word: those who are not self-aware. secondly, no one claims that the mind is a spirit. i don't know where the heck you got that from, cause if you went insane, you'd have a defective spirit, and i don't even want to go into that now. the spirit is human life. intrinsic, essential, human life. self-awareness doesn't come into it at all.

 

abortion is a bunch of crazy monkeys with knives!!!


(i am not at all religious!)

 

I think it would be more immoral to just give unwanted babies up for adoption... I was on an abortion debate board on a different site a while ago and this pro-life chick quoted that if there wasnt any abortions, there woluld have been 45 million babies 'saved'. If that source was correct, thats more than half the US population! There would be that much unwanted childeren in orphanages and foster homes, and thats not all that moral. I think we should care more about the childeren allready here. But it seems like the religious people only think about the unborn... I have seen some young kids say they are against abortion, and they even admit that they dont know much about it, but they say its wrong just because they are told to by their preists..

 

I am against abortion and I am by no means religious. I have simply studied the history of the abortion movement and the people behind it, and I know what it's really about. It's not about a woman's right to choose, but that's how these malthusian cretins will sell it to the public so it will be accepted in a positive light. If you look at the history of those behind the abortion movement, they were all pro-eugenics. Margaret Sanger's racist views were not far off from Hitler's if you actually do the research instead of buying into the media talking points which serve only to condition you.

 

No offense, but why, in your view, is abortion confined to only the context of eugenics?

I can see why some eugenics advocates would want to promote abortion, but on the other hand, that doesn't mean that we should dismiss it simply because some people who believed in something we consider horrific nowadays believed in it.

The problem with abortion is that it applies to so many different individual contexts that it's impossible to rule it out as wrong and evil and at the same time impossible to completely accept it as something we should be doing.

Of course, no one is really pro-abortion... they say 'pro-choice'. The argument isn't about whether abortion is a good thing or not, it's always horrible. The argument is whether or not a woman should be trusted to have a good reason for aborting her baby.

 

I don't think all your opinions on issues like abortion should be based entirely on whether or not the issue is designed as part of a government agenda. I would like women to have the right to abortion while we fight the New World Order. Even if the abortion issue isn't really about a woman's choice, it is still a valid point to be considered.

 

if its in my body, its in my domain, my business, period.

 

I find with abortion the options seem to be all yes, or all no. I see early term abortion as acceptable. But, late term? If you've been pregnant for 7 months and suddenly decide it's a bad idea, I don't think the fetus should have to pay for your stupidity.

 

Here's my take on abortion and the legality of it in the U.S.

#1 Until Christians manage to settle upon one universal sect AND manage to convert every U.S. citizen to this one universal Christian sect, or somehow, every U.S. citizen is somehow proven to be a believer of a religion that does not condone abortion - then the issue of abortion's morality as it relates to state or federal law is irrelevant. In this country, under this constitution, no one has the right to enforce their religious beliefs on another. The notion that life begins at the moment of, or even before, conception, is a religious believe. You cannot prove it with science, because truly science isn't even capable of settling upon a universally accepted definition of what "life" is. Religious freedom includes the ability to not participate in any spiritual/religious belief. No where in the Christian bible does it say that God demands that Christians enforce his laws on non-believers. It may be said that Christians are compelled to bring the word of God to non-believers, but it's not a Christian's duty to pass judgement or exact punishment on non-believers - that's God's job. The separation of church and state is the very root of this nation from which everything that is American springs. Like it or not, the U.S. government is secular in nature, and it was intentionally created that way. The fact that this nation won it's independence through violent revolution is evidence enough that the United States is not a Christian state. Our government executes criminals, not sinners. Our government murders people, legally through the justice systema and via military action. There's no exception to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill", but our government kills people everyday. Every single day. A Christian who denounces abortion, but says nothing, or thinks nothing of the murder of innocents, criminals, civilians or enemy combatants is a hypocrite.

A Christian who denounces "socialized" medicine, is in effect condoning human euthanasia. Hypocrisy. People will die, and do, everyday, because healthcare in this country is privatized and profit driven. You don't need anymore proof then to look at the average life span of those who live in poverty and those who are wealthy. Yes you can blame McDonalds, but plenty of rich people are also killing themselves with fast food. The difference is health care and the ability to afford health care, and the ability to access health care. Yes there are free clinics, but that does not mean that poor people have universal access to the same level of care. Any city of over 500,000 people has at least one poor person's hospital and one rich person's hospital. Which one do you think has a higher death rate?

Finally, I'm going to say something very controversial, but it's something that I believe wholeheartedly. There's absolutely no rational or justifiable reason for an unwanted pregnancy to ever occur in the first place.

I've been having sexual intercourse for most of my life. I have always used a condom, I have broken them many times and I knew it the instant it happened and since, up to this point in my life, I haven't wanted to conceive a child, I took the appropriate action - in other words, I stopped and pulled out, replaced the condom. I've never trusted birth control pills, or any partner who was on birth control to not forget, or to not use it correctly. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the pill, because I'm not convinced that it's as safe for women as the pharmaceutical companies and the FDA would have us believe.

I also generally pull out at the moment of or before ejaculating even with the condom. It hasn't wrecked my sex life. I think the odds of me getting someone pregnant are astronomically low. I do this because, I know that I haven't historically wanted to get someone pregnant (not saying I won't in the future), but the point is, it's my fucking choice. It's my behavior and my responsibility.

I've never been anything but upfront about my reproductive choice with the women I've slept with (yes, before I slept with them), and I've had a few who have intentionally tried to trick me into getting them pregnant, knowing full well that I did not want to impregnate them. I immediately ended those relationships. Clearly those women held me in such low esteem that they would steal my right to choose, my reproductive right not to conceive - clearly those women misjudged me and thought I was stupid enough to not know I was being manipulated. Why on earth would I engage in any kind relationship with a person who thought so little of me - yet how many men do I know who have wives and families - all based on some trick or manipulation. I don't want my children to be conceived via deception and I'm sure as hell not going to allow myself to become and unwitting sperm donor. I have the ability and the right to determine whether or not I want to be a father. I would never try to impregnate someone who didn't want to have my child - that's psychopathic and monumentally irresponsible. I'm a huge fan of a child having two responsible, capable parents. I think it's ideal. I was raised well enough in a single parent home, but I still think two is best - especially when the two have a healthy relationship with each other and with their child(ren). I don't think that's possible when one of the parents is taken out of the decision to conceive process.

So back to the original question - is the controversy over abortion a purely religious issue. No. It isn't. But I think the controversy is as needless as abortion. I think it's entirely possible and even quite easy to avoid ever having to be faced with the need or desire to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, short of rape. Christians shouldn't be having sex without intending to conceive, and for the rest of us, there are very good and effective birth control choices.

By the way, how do you think the world would change if there was a male birth control pill?

 

I support abortion - but with that being said, i feel bad about it.

I think every person has a right to do as they wish, so if one decides to get an abortion that is their decision. Also, the majority of people getting abortions are teens, prostitutes, and people living in poverty... So in my opinion, they're better off getting an abortion.

If they keep the baby, that's one more broken family, one more child growing up in poverty, one more childhood ruined, one more menace to society... So, why not end it before it begins?

If i were a female and having a baby i for some reason couldn't take care of, i would much rather have an abortion than give it up for adoption, i wouldn't be able to live knowing apart of me is out there that i have never met (yes, i realize that may be selfish)

 

While some of that maybe true, that doesn't mean that abortion in itself is wrong. It should still be up to the woman. Anything less would be a violation of her rights. I'm all for abortion. It prevents us from having more damaged children who will most likely grow up in horrible surroundings. It also helps with the overpopulation problem, which is something that needs to be addressed more often.