Women Who Refuse Abortion Under Threat

And what do you suggest is the solution? End abortion? Force the opposite choice on far more women? I agree that forcing a woman to have an abortion is horrible, and that something needs to be done, but forcing a woman to give birth is no better.

I do object to other reasons/excuses for the proceedure, espescially as a last ditch method of birth control, sex selection, and because the baby will be a special needs child. (downs, autism, etc.)

You see, this is where things get tricky. In all honesty, I don't like these practices either, especially the last one. However, it is none of my business. I don't have to respect someone who aborts a child because they have autism, but I also don't have the right to tell them that they can't. It's not my body.

According to the article, coerced abortions where husband or boyfriend pressures or compels thru threat of break up or violence is much more common than previously known.

It's another form of domestic violence, and is nothing new, and certainly not anything of which people are unaware. The only thing "new" is that an anti-choice propaganda site (the Elliot Institute mentioned as having made the "report" the linked article is about) has decided to use it to further their anti-choice agenda.

From their website:

Lost in the politics is the surprising evidence that MOST, not some, abortions
are unwanted or coerced, many forced.

I call bull@!$%#.

Adoption is a better option in the latter two cases.

There is no way that adoption is an option for someone who doesn't want to stay pregnant.

Abortion isn't all about not wanting a baby - it's also about not wanting to be pregnant.

I read through the study.

I notice it doesn't mention how the women were selected. I'm guessing this wasn't a random sample.

I notice it doesn't mention how the women were selected. I'm guessing this wasn't a random sample.

I don't know why people don't understand that women who give their "stories" to anti-choice sites aren't going to be the women who made informed, educated decisions to end pregnancies and know, even years later, that it was the right thing to do.

It's like putting out an ad for women to call in or write only if they had a bad abortion experience, getting 15 responses, and then saying, "100% of women surveyed had bad abortion experiences". How scientific. lol

It's like putting out an ad for women to call in or write only if they had a bad abortion experience, getting 15 responses, and then saying, "100% of women surveyed had bad abortion experiences". How scientific. lol

Yep, it's what statisticians call voluntary response bias. Basically makes the entire study worthless.

Yep, let's just ignore the baby girl or boy and kill them to please the convenience of a woman who feels that the human life inside them is just some slave who lives or dies on their whim.

Again I understand where you are coming from, but whose rights do you ignore? The fetus's or the mother's? Either way, someone is unhappy, I just favor protecting the rights of those that are already alive and conscious.

Yep, let's just ignore the baby girl or boy and kill them to please the convenience of a woman who feels that the human life inside them is just some slave who lives or dies on their whim

When most abortions are performed there is no "baby". At later gestation, when there is the chance of viability, there are restrictions on abortion.

Something that doesn't yet exist cannot be a "slave". However, a born person who is forced to gestate a pregnancy against her will, can, indeed be considered to be a "slave". There can be no loss of bodily autonomy in a non-existent person. There is true loss of bodily autonomy if a born person is forced to grow something in her body she doesn't want there. That's slavery.

Protecting the rights of one as you suggest means that to live or not is like a lottery.

Well given the number of embryos that never embed and the number of miscarriages, yes it is a bit like a lottery.

Now that I am here, my child is an inconvenience to what I want in my life and when, so off to the executioner

I can see why you would use such a metaphor, given your view that life begins a conception. However, many would disagree with you. I for one believe life begins at consciousness. So while I respect your opinion try to understand why I feel that abortion is different from murder.

Yep, let's just ignore the baby girl or boy and kill them to please the convenience of a woman who feels that the human life inside them is just some slave who lives or dies on their whim.

Slave? No, but it doesn't have rights yet...at least not rights that supersede mine. I have the right to NOT be pregnant and give birth. I've worked very hard to keep from ever getting pregnant and (luckily) never have been pregnant. But if something went wrong I would definitely get an abortion. i don't want children, and I don't want to be pregnant- MY CHOICE.

You think it is OK in cases of rape or incest...but who gives YOU the right to decide? If you think abortion is wrong, fine, don't have one. But leave my uterus out of YOUR opinions.

The idea that most women are coerced into an abortion is absurd. I've never known any woman who was coerced into an abortion and every guy I've ever dated has acknowledged that it is MY choice...and mine alone. The women who are being coerced likely have much bigger problems to worry about..since their spouse or boyfriend is likely extremely abusive.

I've always informed any guy I was dating that in the event of an accidental pregnancy I would immediately obtain an abortion, and his opinion in the matter was of no interest to me. That way he had the choice beforehand of whether to engage in sex with me, knowing full well he'd have no say over any resulting accidental pregnancy.

If we women don't have the choice to abort we become the slaves...not the fetus. It isn't "playing god", it is controlling my own destiny.

The thing that can prevent this result is an abortion which stops the development of something that is and can never be anything but human life.

Stopping the development of an egg that may grow into a human being is not killing a "baby", though. Yeah, fertilized eggs are "alive" as in it's made up of growing human cells that are alive, but human cells don't equal a "person". It is not until much later in gestation that a fetus becomes viable, and where its brain/nerve functions reach a point where the fetal body has an inhabitant. At that point, we do have restrictions on abortions.

If our parents had terminated us at the early gestation period of our development, how would we have turned out?

We would never have existed, so there would have been no "we" that would have "turned out" at all. Of all questions that pop up in abortion discussions, "What if your mom had aborted you?" has got to be one of the most meaningless.

Too bad people in general who hate children and child birth so much didn't have a mother that had exactly their same viewpoint and act on it.

You see, now you are being unfair. You are Pro-Life. Does that mean that I feel you are an evil misogynistic who hates women and thinks they don't deserve the right to do what they want with their bodies? No. I think you are a good, moral person who is standing up for what they believe in. I am only doing the same.

Whenever I have a discussion with anyone on the Vine I try to keep in mind that regardless of how wrong a person's beliefs seem to me, to them they are morally right. That regardless of the outcome, their intentions are usually good.

So please don't act like I hate children just because I think I shouldn't have any say over what a woman does with her body.

Selfishness in engaging in sexual pleasure and then resorting to an abortion if other bc methods failed

You are entitled to your opinion. Call me selfish if you want. But you won't be taking my right to control my body. Your rights stop where my body begins.

You got your life and you intend to kill to keep it exactly as you want it.

Nonsense. I've done everything reasonable to avoid getting pregnant and have succeeded thus far. I'll be 40 this year, so my fertility is already winding down. I highly doubt I will EVER be pregnant. So I haven't killed, or even prevented a life. But it IS my life to live, however I see fit. I'm under no obligation to carry a fetus, nor give birth. I have a CHOICE. I tried to get sterilized when I was younger but was lectured on how I would "change my mind". I didn't. I don't want children and refuse to carry a pregnancy. If that's selfish I really don't care. The world certainly isn't dying for my genetic contribution and, like it or not, my rights supersede those of a partially formed fetus that can't survive outside the womb.

Yes my position is "out of the mainstream" since most women plan on having children at some point in their lives. I don't. I never have and never will. Perhaps if you are resigned to eventually giving birth, then giving up a child for adoption seems like a possible solution. But if you are completely against EVER giving birth, it isn't an option at all.

I don't want children and refuse to carry a pregnancy.

How selfish of you not to lower yourself to the status of accidental brood mare so someone else can have a kid.

I was very careful about using birth control, until my DH stepped up to the plate and had a vasectomy. If I had every gotten pregnant, I would have terminated asap. Since I don't believe a fertilized egg is a "baby" (nor even close to being one until about the 3rd trimester), there would have been no qualms, certainly no guilt, about removing something from my body that I didn't want there.

Luckily, misogynists who want to control women's reproductive processs wouldn't have had a thing to say about it.

So, what would either of you have done if you'd had a pregnancy that didn't reveal itself until say the 22nd week or later?

Now you're just being silly.

So, what would either of you have done if you'd had a pregnancy that didn't reveal itself until say the 22nd week or later?

I'm way to aware of my body to have this happen (I could feel an ovarian cyst the size of a walnut), but I'll play. I would probably go ahead and have it if it had managed to sneak by me until it was viable (I think viability is 26 weeks). Or if it had progressed so far that the abortion would be as bad as giving birth. The reason late term abortions are only done in cases of medical need is because it is more dangerous to abort a late term fetus as it is to give birth. I consider a fetus to be human once it can live outside the womb. But that is MY personal take on things. I don't make decisions like that for other women.

Once the unwanted offspring was born I'd sell it to the highest bidder

(ROFL, I'm kidding- don't get all riled up).

Legally I don't think we should consider a fetus to be human until birth.

Somebody will want the child even if the birth mother does not.

Yeah, that's why there are no kids in foster homes and orphanages.

The situation for infants is quite different. The demand for infants to be adopted far outstrips the available babies that weren't sent to an abortuary instead.

Ah, yes. All those women who don't want to act as brood mares so other people can have infants....

... Better to murder the child than be personally inconvenienced for a few months. Right?

Murdering children is against the law; if you know anyone doing it, please report them to the proper authorities.

Terminating a non-sentient, non-feeling, non-viable fertilized egg that's nothing more than a bunch of multiplying cells at the point of termination? Yes, that's better than going through 9 months of having something growing in your body that you don't want there.

Dialog across the country like above is why after persuasion all these years there is now a pro life majority in the USA.

And some diaglogue on this board is evidence of the misogyny represented by many on the anti-choice side - the desire to control women and their reproductive rights. The fairy tale view of a fertilized egg being a "baby" is a favorite lie, and now you present propaganda from an anti-choice site trying to show that most women are forced into abortions, because they all have controlling boyfriends and family, they really all want to stay pregnant, but women are so air-headed they're incapable of making decisions on their own.

The truth is, there is no "baby" until sometime around the 3rd trimester. There is simply no one home in the fetal body until the brain/nervous system develops to a point where the capability for sentience arises. But, if you want to keep lying to yourself and pretending an early-term pregnancy is a "baby", then I suggest you not have an abortion; but, you have no right to tell other people what they can do. The law's on the side of women's rights.

And you know as well as I do that women can't just choose to get abortions up to the moment before live birth. There are restrictions on late-term abortions and they are only to be done to protect the life/health of the mother.

The fact that you are spreading lies about women going to great lengths to abort right before birth certainly presents a good picture of your view of women. I'm not surprised.

... Better to murder the child than be personally inconvenienced for a few months. Right?

You call it an "inconvenience", I call it unbearable torture. You don't seem to understand what it is like to NOT WANT TO GIVE BIRTH.

No one has the right to live inside my body. Is that really such a hard concept for you?