The Power of Words: terms for the abortion debate

[The Gaffer]

Originally posted by Mercutio
And in the abortion terminology, I believe each side has the right to use the words favoring their own side (pro-choice, pro-life) as long as they are still technically/medically correct.

That's exactly the point, though: they're not.

I consider myself "pro-life", but not anti-abortion. We've already seen that Rian is "pro-choice" but anti-abortion.

We're dealing with an area where being "technically/medically correct" is what the argument is all about. To my mind, there's no getting away from the fact that these are rhetorical devices.

To me, it's pretty evident that an unborn baby is not as much of a person as a born one: it's still part of and dependent on its mother's body.

I pretty much agree with BC's earlier post on this (very eloquently put, ma'am) . I would never have one myself (not least because there's nowhere for the foetus to gestate.. ), but I wouldn't seek to proscribe others from doing so.

The Gammer and I had to face this issue recently, in that there were some dodgy test results that came back around about week 16 of her pregnancy. We ran through the various scenarios and decided that we couldn't abort unless it was something horrendous like anencephaly.

IIRC, the legal cutoff point is 24 weeks in the UK, unless there's a medical risk to the mother. To my mind, that's pretty late on and I'd feel happier if it were 16. Unfortunately, you'd get lots of people in denial up till then and it would be too late.

A question for "pro-lifers": we decided to get an amniocentesis, so that we knew for sure what we were dealing with. It probably wouldn't have affected our decision, but we exposed our unborn child to a small risk of dying nonetheless (around 1% of amnios result in spontaneous miscarraige for unknown reasons). If abortion is killing, are we guilty of contributory negligence if our baby had died?

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
To me, it's pretty evident that an unborn baby is not as much of a person as a born one: it's still part of and dependent on its mother's body.

Unborn babies aren't the only human beings (well...I condsider them that) that are dependent on other people. Infants are still dependent on someone--they couldn't live and survive on their own. The same with the elderly, often. They get to a point where they are dependent on others, too. An unborn baby may be directly connected to their mother's body, but they do have one of their own.

Just to note, here is the dictionary definition of:

Prolife, pro-life
1. Advocating full legal protection of embryos and fetuses (especially opposing the legalization of induced abortions)

Prochoice, pro-choice
1. Advocating a woman's right to control her own body (especially her right to an induced abortion)

[brownjenkins]

terminology is always tough...

that said, pro-life is a fairly good term for those who are against abortion... it refects the fact that they see 'life' as beginning at conception, or shortly thereafter (life that deserves to have individual rights that is... many forms of life have no rights)

pro-choice reflects the main pov of those that support abortion... that 'life' has not yet developed to the point that it deserves rights... thus it is the woman with the 'choice'

the terms are not necessarily opposites, and don't need to be... they are representations of each group's main focus on one particular issue, not a expansive worldview

i'm sure there are many forms of 'life' that pro-lifers could care less about and many 'choices' pro-choicers may be against

[Valandil]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
...We've already seen that Rian is "pro-choice" but anti-abortion...

That might have been me... and sorry, I was sort of 're-defining' the term in jest, which likely only clouded the water. That's what's interesting about these 'word-games' though; words and meanings can all get twisted around a bit - and maybe I shouldn't have contributed to that, though as I said - it was sort of 'tongue-in-cheek'.

... A question for "pro-lifers": we decided to get an amniocentesis, so that we knew for sure what we were dealing with. It probably wouldn't have affected our decision, but we exposed our unborn child to a small risk of dying nonetheless (around 1% of amnios result in spontaneous miscarraige for unknown reasons). If abortion is killing, are we guilty of contributory negligence if our baby had died?

That's a toughie. I didn't even realize that about amnios. I don't think my wife and I would have done one in those circustances, but we obviously view things a bit differently. Just happy that you folks were not part of that 1%!

[Arien the Maia]

I'm not sure if this has already been mentioned or not but , how many people think that the term "pro life" should apply to all forems of life...the unborn to the elderly(i.e I'm talking about Euthanasia or mercy killing as well as Capital Punishment.) I think that they should....so I guess you would call me pro life then.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

i have a question for anti-abortionists/pro-life;
ultrasounds can be harmful to unborns, and about 0.5% of ultrasound patients misscarry as a direct result of ultrasound
do you agree with or disagree with ultrasound as a result?

[Valandil]

Originally posted by Last Child of Ungoliant
i have a question for anti-abortionists/pro-life;
ultrasounds can be harmful to unborns, and about 0.5% of ultrasound patients misscarry as a direct result of ultrasound
do you agree with or disagree with ultrasound as a result?

Chrys, are you SURE of that? We had an ultrasound for each of our three children and were never cautioned about that possibility.

PLease document your sources on this one.

[The Gaffer]

There's good evidence that ultrasound scanning poses no risk to unborn children nor to their mothers.

Based on existing evidence, routine Doppler ultrasound examination in low risk or unselected populations did not result in increased antenatal, obstetric and neonatal interventions, and no overall differences were detected for substantive short term clinical outcomes such as perinatal mortality.

Bricker L, Neilson JP. Routine Doppler ultrasound in pregnancy (Cochrane Review). In: The Cochrane Library, Issue 2, 2004. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by Last Child of Ungoliant
i have a question for anti-abortionists/pro-life;
ultrasounds can be harmful to unborns, and about 0.5% of ultrasound patients misscarry as a direct result of ultrasound
do you agree with or disagree with ultrasound as a result?

I don't quite understand what you're getting at here.

If there is even a tiny percentage of risk involved, that's no different than the risk a, say 40 yr old person might have when some medical test is done. I'd consider it the same way I would any other medical test done on someone at any age with some kind of risk. Just because I'm prolife doesn't mean I wouldn't do tests that could help the welfare of my child simply because the child is unborn.

[The Gaffer]

The question I posed WRT amniocentesis would be relevant because its purpose is to determine the genotype of the foetus.

Now, if 1% of them result in the death of the foetus, in a country such as the US where, let's say, 100,000 amniocenteses are carried out each year, that's 1,000 dead babies which you wouldn't have otherwise. In other words, amnios kill babies.

[Insidious Rex]

So do guns. oh wait! no thats people! guns are ok! abortion is bad. damn terminology again...

[Mercutio]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
The question I posed WRT amniocentesis would be relevant because its purpose is to determine the genotype of the foetus.

Now, if 1% of them result in the death of the foetus, in a country such as the US where, let's say, 100,000 amniocenteses are carried out each year, that's 1,000 dead babies which you wouldn't have otherwise. In other words, amnios kill babies.

Is another purpose of amniocentesis to determine any abnormalities or disabilities of the baby? And what...if it has a bad disability would it be aborted? Then wouldn't it be done for the purpose of destroying it if it isn't "healthy" or "perfect"? Since I don't believe babies should be aborted because of those reasons, it makes no sense. Why risk killing the child just to find out whether to kill it or not?

[Lizra]

Well, If there was a decent chance that the embryo developing in my body might be profoundly handicapped, requiring 24 hour care (and huge sums of $$ I didn't have) from birth till death, I would want to know. There are far worse things than just "not perfect". Such a child would not have much pleasure in life, and the rest of the family would suffer greatly, etc, etc, etc. When I got pregnant at 40, I had a something...(not amnio, everybody gets ultrasounds....) I can't remember what it was called. It showed the chromosones (and that it was a normal boy! ) Having had one "not perfect" child, I realized these types of decisions are very serious, and life altering for parents, siblings, and grandparents, and not to be taken lightly. It was very important to me and my husband to know what was going on, to be prepared. It was the responsible thing to do...for us.

[brownjenkins]

i think you bring up a good point Lizra, which ties in with terminology... very little, if anything in this world, is black and white, though we desire to paint it that way with words

[BeardofPants]

Originally posted by The Gaffer
There's good evidence that ultrasound scanning poses no risk to unborn children nor to their mothers

Ultrasound is being used for other treatments now as well. The BF has a form of arthritis, and got treated with it recently when his arthritis played up.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

I don't know the exact details,
but my mother(a R.A.N.A) has reliably informed me that
ultrasound is harmful to unborns, if there is new evidence
disproving this, then i apologise, and recind my original statement

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by Last Child of Ungoliant
I don't know the exact details,
but my mother(a R.A.N.A) has reliably informed me that
ultrasound is harmful to unborns, if there is new evidence
disproving this, then i apologise, and recind my original statement

Everything is harmful to a point though. But does the benefits outweigh the risks.

I've posted this before, but I'll say it again. Nightline had a special townmeeting the one time. Asked a question about this great new energy source. it's highly flameble, gets pumped directly into your house and so many people a year time from houses exploding because of it. Should it be allowed. Do you know most of the people there said that it should not be used at all because 1 death was 1 too many. Yet what was being talked about was natural gas.

Life is full of risks and not everything is safe - neither would ultrasound be completely safe.

I'm pissed off by the way - that the crown to the Statue of Liberty if closed indefinetly. The damn statue will be open - but you can no longer climb to the crown. They have a glass ceiling now that allows you to just look up INTO the statue and that is it.

[Rían]

I've had 4 amnios ...


(and it was VAL who made the statement about being pro-choice and anti-abortion! Altho I agree with him...)

[Minielin]

Perhaps a key point here is that abortion is intended to kill the fetus, whereas amnios and ultrasounds are just procedures that may or may not, as jerseydevil points out, have risks (as nearly everything in life does).

[Valandil]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
(and it was VAL who made the statement about being pro-choice and anti-abortion! Altho I agree with him...)

Yes, I thought it was mine - and tried to clear that up.