Abortion; Why?

Looking at the Carnegie stages, I wouldn't call them "baby looking things" until damn near 2 months in. Just sayin'.

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Quite true. I was mainly making a sarcastic point about the kind of tortured language that the debate has resulted in. And abortion is still very legal well after that.

It really is difficult to get into this discussion without potentially coming across as certain way. I'm not interested in whether a child is alive after 2 months and all that rubbish, but I will say that ultimately, I am against abortion. In fact, me and my girlfriend are against it, but we can understand why somebody, under certain circumstances, would get an abortion, i.e. rape victims and such.

Religion or no religion, people have to have free will, especially when it comes to something as big as abortion, which, I can imagine, is never an easy thing for a woman to go through. There are always going to be huge repercussions for it.

The sarccastic point was right. Keep making those sarcastic points.

This from the last exit poll do not show most Americans supporting more restrictions on abortion:

On social issues, six in 10 voters said abortion should be legal in most or all cases; Obama won them by a 36-point margin, the best showing by a Democrat in available data back to 1992. (As has long been true, there was no gender gap in overall abortion views.)

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Nothing you quoted shows this at all, seeing as how it currently is legal in "most or all cases. And actual polls (which exit polls are not) make the matter quite plain. For example, this one from Gallup, which shows that more than 6 in 10 thought abortion should be legal in only "a few or none" situations. Or this one, which shows that a slight majority of people who even identify as pro-choice support making it illegal in the second trimester. Or this one, which shows half of respondents think abortion should either be illegal in all cases, or permitted in only a few extreme circumstances (rape incest, life of the mother).

When asked about specific regulations, polls consistently find the public--even many people who identify as pro-choice--as supporting more regulation than is currently codified in law. Like I said.

Those are all older polls.

Hardly. All are within the last two years, and the last is barely over a year old. And they're all actual polls by reputable pollsters, not a lone exit poll, which is not nearly as methodologically rigorous and uses much vaguer language, to boot.

The general trend is clear in more recent data, too. This poll is from May and shows the number of people identifying as pro-choice at an all-time low. I can find more if you like, but there really isn't any disputing it. Even anecdotally, in this very thread, we find pro-choice people who're actively defending abortion who still support more restriction on the practice than the law currently contains.

Ok and if another sperm fertilized the egg, or something went slightly different in the genetic process, you'd have a completely different baby.

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Correct, but I'm not sure why that matters. I didn't make the argument that it's imperative that a specific sperm be the one to fertilize the egg. I said that the idea that you're just "delaying" the child doesn't make any sense. That strikes me as a psychologically pleasing way to think about it, but the reality is that it results in a completely different child.

And yet state initiatives to restrict abortions fail even in red states.

You'll have to be more specific if you want a reason why, but the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are the "personhood" amendments, which go further than the restrictions these polls show support for.

But if voters support restrictions that are narrower than what the pro life side finds acceptable, is the fact they support some exceptions to existing law relevant when asked about it in a poll? They aren't writing or lobbying their politicians for them. They seem more supportive of the status quo despite arguments they hear in an abortion poll.

Its relevance is determined by what you're trying to demonstrate with it. In this case, you cited exit polls, presumably with an eye towards establishing what is and is not "extreme." Obviously, I've pointed out many times that opinion polls have no bearing whatsoever on which positions are logical, consistent, or moral. But insofar as you want to use them to establish what kind of opinions are typical, yes, what they say when asked in a poll is the most relevant way to determine that.

what is considered a child? there are plenty of things that we (as humans) don't understand and may never truly understand.

seems like it's just easier for people to just think that whatever is growing inside them isn't human... guess it makes it easier to abort the child.

if no one can properly deny or prove when life starts, your argument doesn't make any sense. if you think about it, leaving (for lack of any other appropriate word, i will use child) the child alone for the entirety of the pregnancy would most likely result in a full term with a child born. what i can't understand, is how anyone can think that interrupting that anywhere down the line would not be considered some type of atrocity?

How is it relevant if there is no existing groundswell of opinion to alter those rules.? Voters oten say inconsistant things in polls. That poll shows it on other issues. But clearly a majority of Americans when given the opportunity to vote on restricting abortion support status quo.

What on earth are you asking me for? You're the one who brought it up, and I was the one who suggested it had no bearing on the discussion. Now you're asking me why what you said matters?

And yet again, I say that if you want to know how I reconcile some specific voting result, provide me with a specific example. If you're just talking about personhood amendments, then there's nothing to reconcile.

You bring up that there is this great opposition to existing abortion law. And i am saying it is more like apathy, a general acceptance of the status quo, but when asked about specific examples of existing law there is a mild disagreement with specifics, but it doesn't add up to much because there is no pressure on legislators to make the type of changes that those polled say they believe in.

If you are talking about specific voting results not directed at abortion, there are examples galore from that exit poll. Like voters in that exit poll saying they trusted Romney on the economy over Obama. But they didn't vote for him even though the economy was ranked as the most important issue. Why? Probably because he also polled as the least popular presidential candidate since 1984. But it is still an amazing inconsistency.

What's being "delayed" is the time to be a parent. And to whom you want to be a parent to. Yes, there should be abortion, because if I got raped by somebody I didn't care for, I probably wouldn't want their child. Now, if someone gets raped by someone and they're okay with having that rapist's child, that's fine. But I don't think everyone should have to be forced to deal with it. We live in a modern society with advances and such so that we can now postpone our time to be pregnant and start being a mother when it's convenient.

The terror of abortion is that now women have the power to stop themselves from bringing life into this world -- when before, if they wanted that power, they'd have to somehow harm the baby up inside themselves with something. Now they can go and have a procedure done. They probably always could, perhaps, in the past -- I'm not an abortion history expert -- by going to abortion witch doctors and so on. But now it's a lot more clean and sanitary, I imagine.

There is a force in this world, I think, that wants us to keep procreating -- that's what we're designed to do. That's why women have periods every month and why guys, if they're not having sex, are on PornHub masturbating furiously. Mother Nature wants us to get it on with each other. Everyone needs to come to terms with the fact that they are simply sex machines. Just as we need to eat and sleep, we also need to throw our goodies out there and exchange them with goodies coming from the opposite sex. It's a food fight.

So, if you end up with egg in your face, you can either have breakfast or wash it off. Perhaps you can skip breakfast and wait till lunch to eat, or maybe dinner, but at some point, you're gonna have to eat. And if you don't eat, then you're either gay or nobody wants you, and you're gonna starve to death. Actually, gay people make omelettes, but that's a separate story.

I can understand this line of thought. Being against a hot topic, but understanding that people should have free will and not forcing them to have no control over it.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I think you should link this on the "Stupid Things You've Said On MoFo" thread. Seriously. There's a long list of reasons why some people never become parents and for many of them it's by choice. For others it's a matter of infertility. Your statement is both ignorant and insensitive.