hbhluytu…

I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

Once more, ( and for the 85th friggin’ time) I support abortion remaining legal, available and free.

That’s *my way*, and I’m not kidding….I do not want to see abortion criminalised.

Hang on just a minute. Enthusiasm for abortion? I’m enthusiastic about choice,

Choices can be made at anytime, both before and after intercourse.

One can make a choice about monogamy.

One can make a choice about celibacy.

One can make a choice about contraception.

Choices are everywhere and can be acted upon at any time…..not just after the fact.

May I suggest that YOU suggest to women that they get a little more “choosey” before they do it. SOME men won’t hesitate to leave you in a lurch, you know.

Your *choice*, and the only one you ever seem to cite, is often, though not always, the sigh of the sexually irresponsable creature, katy.

I’m, glad you like children, by the way.

Hang on just a minute. Enthusiasm for abortion? I’m enthusiastic about choice, not abortion. What do you think, that I go around handing leaflets out with “Never Keep Your Baby” written on them? There is nothing on this thread that I have said which could possibly lead you to think that I’m enthusiastic about abortion itself. The fact is that, at 31, with a flexible job and independent means, there’s no way I’d have an abortion if I fell pregnant whether the father was around or not. I’ve always liked children and always planned to have them. But it isn’t a moral decision for me. It’s about what I want. I want children so I’d hardly have an abortion if I got pregnant. But if I didn’t want children, or if my circumstances meant that I couldn’t look after a child properly, and I got pregnant, I would have an abortion. There is no issue of conscience here for me, only one of personal preference and freedom of choice.

Unlike you, I don’t think that having an abortion is copping out or ducking responsibility. I understand that not everyone is in my position and also that not everyone actually wants to have a child, and I think that anyone who doesn’t want to keep their baby shouldn’t have to.

Unbelievable that you can misrepresent my views like that and yet I’m the one accused of distorting yours. If people like you had their way then women would still be slaves to their reproductive systems, and yet you call MY attitude to women retrograde? You’re nothing but a good old-fashioned male chauvinist, Soso. Don’t kid yourself.

And what would that be? That I’m awake enough and honest enough to call them as I see them? My mindset is one that wishes to see women being more pro-active and responsable for their own reproduction. I had no idea that encouraging women to be self-reliant and autonomous is now male chauvinism.

In your mindset I suppose Heidi Fleiss was just a misunderstood Mother-Superior, and her stable of unveiled vixens mere novitiates in The-Little-Sisters-Of-Perpetual-Indulgence.

Your image of women is completely retrograde, and your defence of their reproductive irresponsability is just a rehash, a make-over for CONNIE FRANCIS.

Yes katy, women are innocent, hapless, helpless waifs sporting saddle-shoes and bouncy, flouncy crinolines.

Femininity as high camp.

Now, not wanting to deflate you bouffant, ‘n stuff, but the observation that SOME women, a MINORITY of women, are fond of reproductive irresponsability (sluts) is a truism. That irresponsability is probably the source of 90% of the abortions being carried out in the UK.

I’ve the courage to see that, whereas you don’t.

And have you forgotten that I’ve stated several times on this thread that I support abortion remaining LEGAL, WIDELY AVAILABLE and FREE?

I’m not in the Pope’s pocket, you know!

What I read between your lines is this; your conscience is beginning to tug at you enthusiasm for abortion, and you fight back by lashing out at anyone or any argument heightening that sentiment.

And yer darn tootin’ Red Maria has you on the ropes!

Hence your heated rhetoric.

The pro-choice movement is focused on preserving the hard-won rights we have, and on fighting off attacks on the existing limits from the likes Anne Winterton. As Katy has pointed out, the focus on late-term abortion just detracts attention away from this, and is a standard pro-life tactic designed to muddy the debate.

Katy, is this the mainstream position of the “pro-choice” movement? Because when people in this comment box say it is a women’s body and she can do whatever she wants, they seem to imply that it is ok to perform abortions at any stage of the pregnancy.

Red Maria, it is indeed a fact that abortions are increasing. And also a fact that birth control methods such as pills and condoms are widely available. But your inference insinuates that teenagers make a conscious decision to use abortions as birth control.

And I don’t believe this is the case. I would argue that the problem is that a lot teenagers do not think about birth control, because if they did, they would use alternative methods. And I am not talking about morals… but of practicalities here: between popping a pill/using a condom, and going though an unwanted pregancy and abortion, it is a no-brainer even for a teenager.

The problem is sex education. Teenagers are incredibly ill-informed, specially in matters of STDs and birth control. If the Catholic Church wanted to stop abortions, then it should be actively promoting sex education, because in a way, it is empowering teenagers to be responsible, which includes not having sex, and not being peer pressured to do stupid things.

1. I did not deny that the abortion rate has risen. What I disagreed with was your reading of what that rise meant. I’ve made that very clear. I’m sorry you don’t get it.

2. I haven’t misrepresented pro-life arguments at all. They do generally concentrate on late-stage abortions: that’s where they get the films of the foetuses as they’re being aborted. And like Soso, they do often imply that sexually active women are sluts. I’m afraid his stance on this thread has done the pro-life cause no favours in my eyes.

3. I’m sorry you’re still trying to avoid answering the points that I’ve made. The fact that I’ve expressed myself in strong terms does not detract from their validity and it will not do to just pretend I haven’t made them, but I accept that you are not going to answer them.

I’ll just finish by saying that if you are trying to win people over to the pro-life cause, you won’t do it by pretending that they haven’t made any arguments against it or refusing to answer them because you don’t like their tone. And that’s my final word on this.

Kulvs, killing someone is against the law unless a jury is satisfied that you acted in self defence. It is never “perfectly fine” from a legal point of view. It is defensible in very rare circumstances, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing.

I’m not sure what your trying to say. By definition killing someone in self-defense is fine from a legal point of view assuming the CPS decides to pursue the case and a jury find you guilty.

The few “alarmist” headlines as you have described them are from stories which have accurately reported the consistently rising number of abortions performed annually. They are sourced from official figures, released annually by the ONS. No one – except perhaps you – doubts their veracity.

What the figures show quite unambiguously is that abortions are being increasingly used and increasingly used by women at ever younger ages. At the same time we know that birth control has never been more promoted or freely available to teenagers. Since modern hormonal birth control methods are a highly reliable means of preventing pregnancy and since we are always being told that increased provision of birth control will inevitably reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions we can venture some reasonable inferences about the trend. We can reasonably infer that teenagers, who are now the highest aborting group, are not using birth control but instead are relying on abortion. If you have an alternative explanation I would be interested to read it.

Incidentally, when I referred to boring anti-Catholic prejudices I was replying to a different poster, not you. Thus far, I have not read any anti-Catholic sentiments from you.

Its difficult to address what you call the arguments against my stance, presumably ventured by yourself. Thus far, your arguments seem to have consisted of peculiar denials of verifiable facts ie that the abortion rate has increased, rude remarks to your interlocutors “stupid, stupid man”, “demented” and crude caricatures of Pro-Life positions – the notion that Pro-Lifers portray women as promiscuous drunken sluts, though I have not used any such terms. I submit that the person avoiding discussion of the substantive issues is you.

Kulvs, killing someone is against the law unless a jury is satisfied that you acted in self defence. It is never “perfectly fine” from a legal point of view. It is defensible in very rare circumstances, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing.

Red Maria:

It’s not my job to prove your case for you. You assert it – you prove it. And you’ll have to do better than a few alarmist headlines that say abortion rates are rising. All that means is that more women are choosing not to have children. It doesn’t begin to prove that women have, en masse, eschewed all forms of pre-conception birth control and taken to having completely unprotected sex on the basis that they can just get an abortion later, which is what “using abortion as birth control” means. If women were doing that the abortion rates would be many, many times higher than they are.

Before you question my wit, lady, grow some of your own. And as for “boring prejudices”, you and your new mate Soso are full of them.

Ah, Soso, there you are. Now you.

Some women are sluts, Katy.

The mere fact that you feel able to use the word “sluts” as freely as you do tells me everything I need to know about you and your mindset.

In any case, Red Maria pretty much has you on the mat.

No, she doesn’t, as you would know if you weren’t as demented on this subject as she is. She hasn’t even begun to address the arguments against her stance and nor have you. You think she’s right because she thinks the same as you do. It’s as simple as that.

One more thing, some medical ethicists are now suggesting that all handicapped foetus’ be aborted, and they are suggesting that this be done even if both father AND mother wish to keep the child.

That’s a lovely straw man you’ve got there. Did you make it yourself? Why, yes, you did – because no one on this thread has come anywhere near to suggesting that special needs children (we don’t say “handicapped anymore, by the way, it went out around the same time we stopped calling sexually active women “sluts) should be aborted at all, let alone against their parents’ wishes.