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Originally Posted by 34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j
For the record I think that cacaphony brought up some excellent points, albeit in a very smug and condescending way that nearly made me skip over most of it. Constantly attacking the other person is not as civil as you think it is. Also I'm not sure what your argument is here; abortion should be legal through all trimesters because fringe cases like that could happen? That's like arguing against traffic fines because people can have seizures while they're driving.
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smug and condescending is how i roll. this forum used to be active and fun because people weren't afraid to lay it out on the table. folks had thick skin and i never saw an argument taken personally until, say, the last year or so. things have changed, i suppose. except me, i'm not interested in change.
and frankly i don't think i made an argument. i'm not going back to re-read but i'm fairly certain i made no statements about my personal beliefs when it comes to abortion rights. i presented a scenario and asked those who think all abortion should be illegal to explain how the issues would be handled in a no-abortion world.
i certainly don't believe abortion should be legal at any point during pregnancy. frankly, having experienced pregnancy myself i'm actually very uncomfortable with the legal limit being set at 24 weeks. i felt one of the boys move at 16 weeks and at that moment i knew he was a separate being who wasn't just a cluster of cells, but my child. i didn't feel the other baby move until later because of where he was positioned, but i felt the same way about him, too.
unfortunately as much as i'm uncomfortable with the idea of legal abortions up until 24 weeks, i have to think through what i now know of the pregnancy screening process. for most pregnancies 20 weeks is the earliest you can do some crucial testing to tell you whether there are developmental or chromosomal abnormalities. if you wait until 20 weeks and get bad results, retesting would push you out to at least 22 weeks for confirmation. like if you ended up needing an amniocentesis, for example. in situations where there may be serious concerns about the development of the baby, i can see needing to allow for action to take place at that stage.
i know too many girls from the twin groups i'm a member of who delivered at 24 weeks to feel comfortable with that as a cutoff. and a week doesn't make a damn bit of difference to me, 23 is too early. which means 22 is too early. so my gut says fuckit, let's just say 20 is your last chance.
but here's the thing. there's a difference between what i believe in terms of a baby's viability and what i believe should be established as a legal framework around the procedure.
in my perfect world there would be no abortions after, say 12 weeks. that, in my opinion, is long enough to realize you've missed a period, pee on a stick, visit a doctor for confirmation, and make a decision about your pregnancy. after 12 weeks, in my opinion, cold feet should no longer be a valid excuse for abortion. only personal hardship and medical reasons should apply after that point.
but see, that's me superimposing my personal beliefs gained through my personal sense of connection to my own pregnancy. when you start talking about bringing government into it you cross a line that i don't think should be crossed. there's a danger in applying your own emotional baggage to society as a whole and trying to craft laws (which inevitably must apply punishment for violations) to the rest of the population. so while i feel strongly that my babies were people from the moment they were conceived, i refuse to force the rest of society to create a law based on that. hell, i also believe my dead mother visits me in my dreams. shall we create laws around that, too? my personal beliefs concerning the existence and persistence of the soul belong about a thousand lightyears away from any governing body.
So then i come back to rationalize it again. 24 weeks makes sense as a cutoff because at that point there is a small but real chance of viability, that the baby(ies) could survive outside of the womb. for medical emergencies the procedure should be on the table after that, but not for any other reason. i don't like it, not one itty bitty bit. i don't like the idea that someone would go 16 weeks (4 months!!) into a pregnancy and suddenly go, "you know what, i changed my mind." i don't like the idea that people aren't keeping their goddamn knees together or using appropriate protection and preventing themselves from making babies in the first place. hey, it ain't hard. i did it for 31 years, never even had a scare.
but i'm not going to advocate the idea that we make laws to punish people who aren't as paranoid about pregnancy as i was. i don't drink either, and you don't see me out campaigning to make booze illegal. when you weigh out the consequences of the two choices, terminating unwanted pregnancies versus forcing women to bear unwanted children, i think the second choice is a worse crime.
this probably reads like a disjointed string of gobbledygook because i'm up way past my bedtime thanks to two cranky boys who didn't ask permission to split their egg into two 19 months ago.