Michigan Anti-Abortion Bill, 'Most Extreme' In The Country

Mustafa said:

I disagree. Both are moral stances. Pro-life people might simply have a different definition of "life" than pro-choice people. But it is not as simple as, Row vs. Wade said X, so that's what we all must believe. It's not so simple. Science defines life a certain way, and a fetus is a life.

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See that part I bolded? That's not the difference between pro-life and pro-choice. A primer on some of the things being pro-choice doesn't mean, at least to me:

• It doesn't mean I believe a zygote or later a fetus aren't lives. It doesn't mean I don't believe they're human lives. I believe a fetus, especially, is a human life. But I'm pro-choice because of the rights I believe that fetus should and shouldn't be granted in relationship to its mother.
• It doesn't mean I want women to get abortions. Many pro-lifers seem to think pro-choicers throw parades when they hear women are aborting pregnancies. We don't. We may even mourn a loss when abortions happen. We just don't think that, in the end, it's our decision to make.
• It doesn't mean I think pregnancy is a horrible despicable thing. Pregnancy is a risky thing and has different effects on different women and it's impossible to recognize all the possible complications beforehand so it's better to let the women going through the pregnancies in conjunction with their doctors make decisions about when those pregnancies should be carried to term and when they shouldn't.

  RichardGarfinkle said:

  The mother's body provides the material that is used to build the body often at great cost to the health of the mother.

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  This is why people are pro-choice.

virtue_summer said:

See that part I bolded? That's not the difference between pro-life and pro-choice. A primer on some of the things being pro-choice doesn't mean, at least to me:

• It doesn't mean I believe a zygote or later a fetus aren't lives. It doesn't mean I don't believe they're human lives. I believe a fetus, especially, is a human life. But I'm pro-choice because of the rights I believe that fetus should and shouldn't be granted in relationship to its mother.
• It doesn't mean I want women to get abortions. Many pro-lifers seem to think pro-choicers throw parades when they hear women are aborting pregnancies. We don't. We may even mourn a loss when abortions happen. We just don't think that, in the end, it's our decision to make.
• It doesn't mean I think pregnancy is a horrible despicable thing. Pregnancy is a risky thing and has different effects on different women and it's impossible to recognize all the possible complications beforehand so it's better to let the women going through the pregnancies in conjunction with their doctors make decisions about when those pregnancies should be carried to term and when they shouldn't. This is why people are pro-choice.

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+1

virtue_summer said:

See that part I bolded? That's not the difference between pro-life and pro-choice. A primer on some of the things being pro-choice doesn't mean, at least to me:

• It doesn't mean I believe a zygote or later a fetus aren't lives. It doesn't mean I don't believe they're human lives. I believe a fetus, especially, is a human life. But I'm pro-choice because of the rights I believe that fetus should and shouldn't be granted in relationship to its mother.
• It doesn't mean I want women to get abortions. Many pro-lifers seem to think pro-choicers throw parades when they hear women are aborting pregnancies. We don't. We may even mourn a loss when abortions happen. We just don't think that, in the end, it's our decision to make.
• It doesn't mean I think pregnancy is a horrible despicable thing. Pregnancy is a risky thing and has different effects on different women and it's impossible to recognize all the possible complications beforehand so it's better to let the women going through the pregnancies in conjunction with their doctors make decisions about when those pregnancies should be carried to term and when they shouldn't. This is why people are pro-choice.

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+1 from me, too.

Add me as one in agreement with what Richard and virtue summer said. I'm pro-choice because I don't feel it's up to me to decide what is right for another woman to do. I can only decide that for me and I certainly don't want someone else making that decision for me, either.

Chrissy said:

Wrong. I claimed that pregnancy no longer has to be life-threatening, as stated by the World Health Organization.

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A couple of things here:

First, the WHO link also says: "a working health system with skilled personnel is key to saving these women's lives." The statement that "women need not die in childbirth" is not necessarily aimed at developed nations, which already (at least in theory) have a working health system with skilled personnel. It's addressing the situation of the nations of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the vast majority of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths occur (over 85% of the world's total).

Second, the U.S. has an astoundingly high maternal mortality rate (WHO report), which would seem to imply a problem with the health system. To put things into perspective, about 1 woman in 11 will die "from a maternal cause" in Afghanistan (the highest in the world); that figure is 1 in 2,100 for the United States. BUT that number is 1 in 10,000 in Singapore, 1 in 4,700 in the United Kingdom, 1 in 5,600 in Canada, 1 in 7,100 in the Netherlands, and 1 in 7,400 in Australia.

By international standards, the US is doing pretty well. By developed world standards, the US has a real problem when it comes to taking care of its women of reproductive age: lack of education about and access to family planning; lack of access to antenatal care; increasing lack of access to safe abortion care; and lack of access to quality emergency obstetric and neonatal care--the things the WHO says are necessary to reduce the maternal mortality rate. This is precisely why many in the US perceive current GOP policies as a war on women. The GOP, at both the state and federal levels, is trying to dismantle access to services that could "prevent the vast majority of maternal deaths" (from your WHO link).

Mustafa said:

A zygote can easily be classified as a human life, Celia, depending on your opinion. It has human DNA. ETA: it is stage one of human development. What you're doing is conflating human with "person" which is an entirely non-scientific definition.

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I did not say "human life," or "person." I said "human being."

Jersey Chick said:

Add me as one in agreement with what Richard and virtue summer said. I'm pro-choice because I don't feel it's up to me to decide what is right for another woman to do. I can only decide that for me and I certainly don't want someone else making that decision for me, either.

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And this is precisely why anti-abortion people largely come ff as judgmental. The idea that suffering must be endured for the great honor that is pregnancy shows little compassion for what that individual woman is going through.

vsrenard said:

And this is precisely why anti-abortion people largely come ff as judgmental. The idea that suffering must be endured for the great honor that is pregnancy shows little compassion for what that individual woman is going through.

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Yes, exactly. Everyone makes different choices in life. Not everyone wants to be pregnant or have a baby. The idea that all women are supposed to want it does come off as judgemental.