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apooks15

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Help With a Position Paper Posted: 01-05-06 15:08pm


Hi, I am 18yrs old and I am writing a paper on abortion. The reason I have chosen this topic to write about is due to the fact that I had once thought I would make a choice like, abortion, but was thankfully not preg. I have been one sided on the topic, pro-choice. I was just wondering if anyone could give me some more information on the topic, more on ur sides, or experiences. I know this message may sound a little immature and un-educated but I really would like to know more about this topic due to the fact I am a passionate person who wants to be invovlved. So anything you could contribute would be appricated. Thank you so much

jenn_smithson

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Posted: 01-05-06 16:14pm


This might be moved to the debate forum since you are asking for opinions but I will reply while it is here. So much of the debate regarding abortion is skewed and biased due to emotion and passion that it's very hard to write an objective paper on it. (i tried several times and each time had to change my topic and write about something else). The only thing that I can tell you, and what you have asked for, is my experience. When I was younger, I was incredibly prolife. I lived in a house with an authoritarian father. My oldest sister became pregnant just after graduating from highschool. She seemed happy, at the time. Later, though, I was to discover that she was anything but happy. She had my niece and the guy split. He told her he wanted a boy (as if my sister was in control of sex selection). My father would tell her that a child was a gift and yet, at the same time, told her that she had to pay for her "sins" herself ('you've made your bed, now lie in it'). At 18, she neither had the skills or the experience to fully care for herself, let alone my niece. She never went to college even though she had been accepted and she has worked one dead end, no promotion job after another. It was her experience and the behaviors of people (my father, other family, and people who attended our church) that made me first question my beliefs. Eventually, after both she and my other older sister had unintended pregnancies, I completely changed. My other older sister had a miscarriage after her first child was born and she was thrilled. Why, if children and pregnancy were gifts, was she happier than I had seen her in a very long time after she miscarried? I began, slowly, to focus more on the .Woman and what she might be feeling. I tried to put myself in her shoes and ask myself, honestly, if I would choose the same if I were her. Then, about a month after my husband and I were married, I found out I was pregnant. I had taken a semester off from school to get married and didn't really feel in any hurry to go back. My husband and I had thoroughly discussed children but felt that it would be unfair to everyone to have them when we could barely afford to take care of ourselves. I was incredibly depressed when I found out I was pregnant. It was most definetly not a "joyous" experience. I felt angry at myself for getting pregnant even though I was on birth control at the time. I felt betrayed by my own body for doing something I did not want it to do. And I felt that I could not be any kind of a mother to anyone right now, having lost my drive to go to school, floating around doing nothing, unfocused, inefficient, not goal oriented, very poor. My husband and I discussed it and we both came to the conclusion that we were both not ready. We had decided to obtain an abortion before I discovered that the pregnancy was ectopic. I began having intense pains during the time we were gathering money together for the abortion and knew immediately that this was not normal. I went to the doctor who immediately sent me to the hospital. After the removal, I was incredibly relieved. The relief washed over me and that same afternoon I laughed for the first time since I found out I was pregnant. I was grateful to the doctor and the nurses and I was thankful that I was alive and was not pregnant. An unintended pregnancy focuses a lot of attention into areas of our lives that can make us very uncomfortable. What are we doing? Where are we going? Who are we trying to go there with? Can all be very scary to think seriously about. Most of the time we avoid them. My unintended pregnancy made me realize that I needed to go back to school and finish. It made me realize that I did want children in the distant future but that I had a profound desire to be able to provide for them adequately. To me, quality of life was much more important than anything else. So I went back to school. I now fully support any .Woman who feels that she needs to obtain an abortion. Every .Woman knows what her own life is like, what she has to deal with, what her responsibilities are, and if she can handle any more. I am in no position to tell .Women what they must do when I don't have to live their lives and I don't have to pay for their decisions. I hope you're able to find better sources than people's stories for your paper. For your own opinion formation, personal stories can be helpful but for a paper they are generally only used to give color and possible reasons. Best of luck and if I can be of any other help, just let me know. Peace, jenn

nightangel73

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Posted: 01-05-06 20:11pm

jenn_smithson wrote:

this might be moved to the debate forum since you are asking for opinions but I will reply while it is here.

So much of the debate regarding abortion is skewed and biased due to emotion and passion that it's very hard to write an objective paper on it. (i tried several times and each time had to change my topic and write about something else). The only thing that I can tell you, and what you have asked for, is my experience.

When I was younger, I was incredibly prolife. I lived in a house with an authoritarian father. My oldest sister became pregnant just after graduating from highschool. She seemed happy, at the time. Later, though, I was to discover that she was anything but happy. She had my niece and the guy split. He told her he wanted a boy (as if my sister was in control of sex selection). My father would tell her that a child was a gift and yet, at the same time, told her that she had to pay for her "sins" herself ('you've made your bed, now lie in it'). At 18, she neither had the skills or the experience to fully care for herself, let alone my niece. She never went to college even though she had been accepted and she has worked one dead end, no promotion job after another. It was her experience and the behaviors of people (my father, other family, and people who attended our church) that made me first question my beliefs. Eventually, after both she and my other older sister had unintended pregnancies, I completely changed.

My other older sister had a miscarriage after her first child was born and she was thrilled. Why, if children and pregnancy were gifts, was she happier than I had seen her in a very long time after she miscarried? I began, slowly, to focus more on the .Woman and what she might be feeling. I tried to put myself in her shoes and ask myself, honestly, if I would choose the same if I were her.

Then, about a month after my husband and I were married, I found out I was pregnant. I had taken a semester off from school to get married and didn't really feel in any hurry to go back. My husband and I had thoroughly discussed children but felt that it would be unfair to everyone to have them when we could barely afford to take care of ourselves. I was incredibly depressed when I found out I was pregnant. It was most definetly not a "joyous" experience. I felt angry at myself for getting pregnant even though I was on birth control at the time. I felt betrayed by my own body for doing something I did not want it to do. And I felt that I could not be any kind of a mother to anyone right now, having lost my drive to go to school, floating around doing nothing, unfocused, inefficient, not goal oriented, very poor. My husband and I discussed it and we both came to the conclusion that we were both not ready. We had decided to obtain an abortion before I discovered that the pregnancy was ectopic. I began having intense pains during the time we were gathering money together for the abortion and knew immediately that this was not normal. I went to the doctor who immediately sent me to the hospital. After the removal, I was incredibly relieved. The relief washed over me and that same afternoon I laughed for the first time since I found out I was pregnant. I was grateful to the doctor and the nurses and I was thankful that I was alive and was not pregnant.

An unintended pregnancy focuses a lot of attention into areas of our lives that can make us very uncomfortable. What are we doing? Where are we going? Who are we trying to go there with? Can all be very scary to think seriously about. Most of the time we avoid them. My unintended pregnancy made me realize that I needed to go back to school and finish. It made me realize that I did want children in the distant future but that I had a profound desire to be able to provide for them adequately. To me, quality of life was much more important than anything else. So I went back to school.

I now fully support any .Woman who feels that she needs to obtain an abortion. Every .Woman knows what her own life is like, what she has to deal with, what her responsibilities are, and if she can handle any more. I am in no position to tell .Women what they must do when I don't have to live their lives and I don't have to pay for their decisions.

I hope you're able to find better sources than people's stories for your paper. For your own opinion formation, personal stories can be helpful but for a paper they are generally only used to give color and possible reasons. Best of luck and if I can be of any other help, just let me know.

Peace,
jenn

intersting reading jenn and I would like to have my opinion.

This is what should have happened. Your older sister should not had not been whoring around after she graduated highschool. That way she wouldn't have being pregnant of your niece and have had no trouble. I do wonder if your niece thinks it would have been a good idea if her mom aborted her?

As for you you should have waited til you finish school to get married. Therefore you would have been ready if a pregancy occured.

I never had to think of going throught any trouble of having an unintended pregancy because that is what I did I waited until I was ready to have a baby to have sex. I always thought there will be plenty of time for sex in the future but I needed to study and have a degree first. I studied up to a master's. I had a bf when I while at school but I did the .Choice of not having sex with him because I knew a pregancy would screw up my high ambitious goals. So after I graduated and had a good job, a car and money in the bank I did make the .Choice to begin a sex life. This is how it should look like.

Abortion and legalization of abortion is there because of the too much promiscuity around us. Should people make correct .Choices regarding their sexual behavior at the correct times we wouldn't need to have 40 million babies killed by abortion since 1973. And this is why I am pro-life.

Feel free to ask anything you need for your paper. Good luck and welcome to abortion debate forum :)

Tylanas

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Posted: 01-05-06 21:13pm

nightangel73 wrote:

jenn_smithson wrote:

i would like to add that legal abortion is nothing new at all. It has been legal for centuries; herbs and other medicines have been known for centuries that induce abortion. It is only recently in the last century of modern america that "victorian age" americans became super-prude about sex. Even wanting to have sex with your husband in a position other than missionary was considered odd sexual deviance!

Sigma

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Re: Help With a Position Paper
Posted: 01-06-06 01:45am

apooks15 wrote:

so anything you could contribute would be appricated.

there are many aspects to the argument. Judith thompson's violinist argument is a good place to start on the moral aspects:

the details of judith jarvis thompson's argument are important, so I will quote her illustration in full. Entitled "a defense of abortion," it first appeared in 1971 in the journal of philosophy and public affairs.

Quote:

i propose, then, that we grant that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. How does the argument go from here? Something like this, I take it. Every person has a right to life. So the fetus has a right to life. No doubt the mother has a right to decide what shall happen in and to her body; everyone would grant that. But surely a person's right to life is stronger and more stringent than the mother's right to decide what happens in and to her body, and so outweighs it. So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.

It sounds plausible. But now let me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the society of music lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of the hospital now tells you, "look, we're sorry the society of music lovers did this to you—we would never have permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and the violinist now is plugged into you. To unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months. By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

Is it morally incumbent on you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine years? Or longer still? What if the director of the hospital says, "tough luck, I agree, but you've now got to stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide what happens in and to your body, but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be unplugged from him." I imagine you would regard this as outrageous,[2] which suggests that something really is wrong with that plausible-sounding argument I mentioned a moment ago.

some legal aspects to consider are covered under roe v wade, which establishes that the gov't cannot invade a woman's "right to privacy" in this manner under substantive due process, citing that states do not have a compelling reason to restrict her "right to privacy".

The due process clause of the fourteenth amendment states "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . " meaning the gov't has to use sufficiently clear and fair procedures to lawfully take these away. Because a woman has sex is not a sufficient justification to deprive women of their liberty in this matter.

Mr. Justice harlan once wrote: "[t]he full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the due process clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the constitution. This `liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints . . . And which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment."

justice potter stewart, a judge on the roe v wade case said in his concurring opinon: "several decisions of this court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. . . . As recently as last term, in eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 u. S. 438, 453, we recognized "the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child." "

that right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

nightangel73

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Re: Help With a Position Paper
Posted: 01-06-06 07:18am

sigma wrote:

apooks15 wrote:

so anything you could contribute would be appricated.

Quote:

that violinist argument is bs. When it comes to get pregnant, nobody is imposing to you anything. You asked it yourself when you decided to have sex. What a load of crap is that.

Sigma

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Re: Help With a Position Paper
Posted: 01-06-06 09:39am

nightangel73 wrote:

that violinist argument is bs. When it comes to get pregnant, nobody is imposing to you anything. You asked it yourself when you decided to have sex. What a load of crap is that.

pregnancy is always non-consensual, which is what the violinist argument attempts to show. Sex can be consensual, but a woman has no control whatsoever over whether or not sex results in pregnancy.

Women can indeed wake up surprised that they are pregnant, which is why the violinist argument is analogous.

sunshine424

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Re: Help With a Position Paper
Posted: 01-06-06 12:42pm

sigma wrote:

nightangel73 wrote:

that violinist argument is bs. When it comes to get pregnant, nobody is imposing to you anything. You asked it yourself when you decided to have sex. What a load of crap is that.

give me a break. Yes, pregnancy is consensual to the fullest. Birth control allows you to ***not*** consent to pregnancy. No protection is consenting. There are no exceptions. I only skimmed over your "violinist" argument, but I get the jist by your response to what nightangel said. From what I gather, it sounds like another petty excuse of an argument.

I definetely would not include that in your paper hun, you may hear a lot of giggles and laughs.

sunshine424

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Posted: 01-06-06 12:53pm

nightangel73 wrote:

jenn_smithson wrote:

i'm going to give my opinion as well. :o)

here is what should have happened.
If you sister was so against pregnancy she should have protected herself and with the knowledge protection can still fail, she should have refrained from sex if her intentions were to abort, or if she didn't want a baby. Pro-choice comeback to this comment is always that sex is not all about pro-creation. No, not technically, but it is about responsbility. When it comes to a decision as big as either keeping your child or killing it, sex should come with a little bit more thought. Am I correct in saying you raise your neice right jenn? So I do give your sister credit on not aborting. Good for her. Yes, it is very sad that as a mother she didn't want her daughter, but......With that being said, at least that girl was given her right at a shot at life. She was spared the death penalty by her mother.

I really dislike your argument about abortion being ok because of a lack of financial means. That just does not swing this day in age. Whether you find pride in it or not, there is such thing as government assistance. It is there with the help of taxpayer money so nobody at any point should be ashamed of seeking help, unless it's abused of course. So the "i couldn't affford the child and didn't want it to lack" argument is caca. Swallow the pride and take some help, at least a life will be spared. There are plenty of means out there in help to get food, formula, an apt. And even money. And it's not hard to get, just look at the criteria. You don't even have to be dirt poor.

As nightangel said, if you were not ready for a pregnant, maybe you should have held off on marriage and sex. Just an observational opinion.

Many woman have sex anyways, regardless of not wanting a pregnancy. Like myself! But guess what.....Here is a concept! I become pregnant unintentionally, and kept my baby! I now have a beautiful 8 month old son. He was not intended. My husband (boyfriend at the time) were scared of every circumstance surrounding it). But we swallowed the worry and the fear and got past the shock, and ***planned****.You can do anything you put your mind too.

Society is lazy and irresponsible. People are always looking for an easy way out and someone else to blame. Everyone needs a swift kick in the a.Ss and be responsible for themselves.

Abortion is just another excuse.
A deadly one for an innocent baby.
Terrible.

paganangel

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Posted: 01-06-06 14:42pm


Sunshine....I think you pretty much wrote what I was going to say. I am sickened and disgusted to live a world where we can kill for convienience. Don't want a child? Take the necessary precautions not to get pregnant. Abortion is selfish/irresponsible/lazy and just shows a pure lack of intelligence. If you aren't adult enough to own up to your own actions then you should not be having sex. There is nothing responsible about abortion. You are taking a life so that you can continue with a lifestyle. Which is more important?

nightangel73

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Posted: 01-06-06 17:53pm

paganangel wrote:

sunshine....I think you pretty much wrote what I was going to say.

I am sickened and disgusted to live a world where we can kill for convienience. Don't want a child? Take the necessary precautions not to get pregnant. Abortion is selfish/irresponsible/lazy and just shows a pure lack of intelligence. If you aren't adult enough to own up to your own actions then you should not be having sex. There is nothing responsible about abortion. You are taking a life so that you can continue with a lifestyle. Which is more important?

.Thank you

sunshine424

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Posted: 01-06-06 17:58pm


Good that there is at least 3 smart people here.......;o)

Sigma

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Re: Help With a Position Paper
Posted: 01-06-06 20:53pm

sunshine424 wrote:

give me a break. Yes, pregnancy is consensual to the fullest.

does the fetus consent? To be consensual, there must be mutual consent which there obviously is not. Unless the woman desires pregnancy, she desires and consents to sex, not pregnancy.

sunshine424 wrote:

birth control allows you to ***not*** consent to pregnancy. No protection is consenting. There are no exceptions.

no. Consenting to sex is consenting to sex, it is consenting to nothing else. You cannot support this position logically.

sunshine424 wrote:

i only skimmed over your "violinist" argument, but I get the jist by your response to what nightangel said. From what I gather, it sounds like another petty excuse of an argument.

if you wish to disregard my argument, at least read what I wrote. To do otherwise shows you to be foolish.

sunshine424 wrote:

i definetely would not include that in your paper hun, you may hear a lot of giggles and laughs.

it is a famous argument. I seriously doubt that would be the case.

Sigma

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Posted: 01-06-06 20:58pm

Separate from my reply above, and since we are reading the famous violinist argument, I thought I would add some thoughts from laurence h. Tribe's book "the clash of absolutes" (a very good read):

Quote:

in anglo-american law there is no general duty to give of yourself to rescue another. That may come as a surprise to many; it certainly surprises many law students when they first confront the principle

Quote:

there is only one place in the law where a really significant and intimate sacrifice has been required of anyone in order to save another: the law of abortion. If you woke up with the hypothetical violinist attached to you, the law--and, probably, the views of morality held by most people--would permit you to free yourself of him. When the law prohibits a woman from freeing herself of the fetus inside her, the law appears to work a harsh discrimination against women even if fetuses count as persons

here is a response to those who feel that consenting to sex is consenting to pregnancy:

Quote:

one response is that pregnancy is different from those situations in which we would not ask someone to be a good samaritan. The pregnant woman, at least in most cases, 'volunteered' in the sense that she chose to have sex and ran the risk of getting pregnant. Thus, she is not in the same position with regard to the fetus as she would have been with regard to the violinist. This feeling probably plays a significant role in shaping people's views about abortion rights. What the feeling suggests is not an argument that because the fetus is an innocent human life, all abortion must be prohibited. Rather it suggests an argument, or at least a sentiment, that the woman is 'responsible' for the pregnancy, she loses at least her moral right to claim that its continuation interferes with her autonomy. This sentiment might in turn explain the widespread sense that abortion must be allowed in cases of rape...But the same moral view would seem to require an exception from any ban on abortion not only when the pregnancy resulted from a sex act forced upon a woman but also when it resulted from the failure of a conscientiously used, ordinarily effective means of birth control.

[snip]does this not suggest that such opponents of abortion come to their views about the immorality of abortion not in response to the voluntary nature of the woman's pregnancy but in response to the voluntary nature of the sexual activity in which she engaged? And does this not in turn suggest that such antiabortion views are driven less by the innocence of the fetus than by the 'supposed' guilt of the woman?

Quote:

a ban on abortion imposes truly burdensome duties only on women. Such a ban thus places women, by accident of their biology, in a permanently and irrevocably subordinate position to men

Quote:

society's willingness to impose on women alone the sacrifice required by laws restricting abortion, unique within the landscape of anglo-american law, may well reflect a deeply held traditional view of the differences in character of the sexes. While we might not impose selflessness and virtuous behavior on a man....Some may find it less of a contradiction to impose such virtue on a woman because of the traditional view of her nature. But to impose virtue on any person demeans that person's individual worth. It is no more acceptable when the person is a woman than a man. There should be no 'woman's exception' to our traditional regard for individualism and autonomy. As long as these values remain at the core of our legal system, there is thus a powerful case for the conclusion that laws prohibiting abortion--even if the fetus is regarded as a person--deny women the equal protection of the laws guaranteed to all by the 14th amendment. And if this is so, then perhaps the roe decision, by gratuitously insisting that the fetus cannot be deemed a person, needlessly insulted and alienated those for whom the view that the fetus is a person represents a fundamental article of faith or a bedrock personal committment. Perhaps as yale law school dean Italian calabresi has suggested, the roe opinion for no good reason said to a large and politically active group "[y]our metaphysics are not part of our constitution." the court could have indeed have said: even if the fetus is a person, our constitution forbids compelling a woman to carry it for nine months and become a mother

just an add-on and hopefully thought-provoking.

Quote:

[snip]the abortion issue poses constitutional problems not simply for judges but for every federal, state, or local official who must at some point address the issue. Each such official is required to take an oath to uphold the constitution of the united states. Even if the supreme court were someday to conclude that judges have no business enforcing constitutional limitations in the abortion area, that conclusion would not relieve other public officials of the burden of deciding what they believe those limitations are. In deciding what laws to vote for or against or what enforcement measures to take, public officials cannot properly avoid considering what they believe the constitution allows or requires them to do.

Those who either defend or attack the constitutional analysis contained in roe v. Wade purely in terms of the role judges should or should not play in our system of government are therefore missing much of what is at stake. Of course, roe v. Wade involved, in part, the question of what the judicial role should be. But that is only part of what it involved. It involved as well the question of what protection, if any, the constitution, as a document addressed to all officials, extends either to a woman who wishes to terminate her pregnancy or to the fetus, or to both.