I'm just wondering because I hear the "rape exception" so often and it's never made sense to me. You can't call something murder and then turn around and say "oh but it's ok if the mother's sufficiently traumatized". It really has to be an all or nothing thing, for legal purposes, or it just makes no sense.
I've always wondered about that, Randomnity. It seems like a pretty huge hole in hard-line pro-life reasoning.
I add my confusion to this. Rape and incest exceptions have never made sense to me. Either it's murder or it's not. To me, if you make exceptions then you have started sliding down the slippery slope. You've already endorsed abortion, now it's just a matter of on whose terms it's done.
It reminds me of the old punch line, "Well, now we know you're a whore, we just have to haggle on price."
Add me, too. It's all been said, and I agree with those above me.
Agreed x100!
I actually don't know for sure if I am pro-choice or pro-life, which sounds ridiculous for such a hot button issue. But one thing I do know is that it bothers me when people separate sex from reproduction. Sometimes it seems like people are almost indignant that they got pregnant, like it's a birthright to enjoy sex free of consequences. That's what sex is FOR. Nature only made us like it so that we'll keep doing it. It's like driving 100mph and saying it's the cop's fault you got a speeding ticket. In this sense I suppose I can say I'm pro-choice, but that the choice is made when you decide to engage in behavior designed to produce a child, not when you decide to abort.
I know a lot of the viewpoint I mention above comes from women who argue that they're the ones who have to suffer the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy and so they should have the authority to decide its fate. It's a natural reaction. But again, this is something nature decided...women give birth. It's not something that a cabal of evil men decided at some point in the distant past to keep women down. It's just a biological fact. A lot of the resentment of this fact is directed at men, and I think many women feel that the best way to combat this and promote equality is to legislate the uterus into irrelevance. As if the best way to become equal is to wipe away all traces of femininity. I can't pinpoint what I find so distasteful about this, but it just seems so against the natural laws that it feels like hubris. It's almost the exact same feeling I get when contemplating genetic engineering.
I suspect I've wandered off topic, so I'll stop now
Hmm, hmm, hm.
I see where you're coming from, and I think that's a very insightful way to put it: "As if the best way to become equal is to wipe away all traces of femininity." I've often contemplated equality of women along these lines as well. The bottom line is, stereotypically masculine qualities are and have always been more valued than feminine ones: strength, aggression, confidence, assertiveness, scholarliness, intelligence, and other masculine qualities are more honored and revered than nurturing qualities, even today. Men have always had all the say in government, and men's concerns have simply always been more important than women's. Empires were built on masculine qualities - or at least, masculine qualities probably got all the credit and glory, but in reality the nurturing qualities and the DOMESTIC SPHERE were just as necessary for the success and prosperity of society.
Women have given up an ENORMOUS amount of their femininity in their search for equality, as though, in effect, "The only way to gain equality is to wipe away all traces of femininity." This angers me, because it seems we continue to place feminine qualities on the backburner and idolize masculine qualities. Look at how acceptable it is for a woman to pursue a career, i.e. a "man's" role, yet how completely unacceptable it is for a man to display more feminine qualities: for example GAY is such a popular insult, and it just seems to be a perfect example of how society still malignes femininity, especially in men.
Besides the uterus being laid by the wayside, consider the other feminine practices women have given up. For one thing, instead of staying at home to rear kids, women now enter the work force as purposefully as men. Women have to a large extent shedded their softer, gentler behaviors and taken hold of stronger, more aggressive, more confident behaviors in order to find fulfillment and success in their careers, i.e. outside the domestic sphere of child-rearing and community-fostering. However, something we may have failed to realize is the extreme importance of fostering a healthy domestic sphere as well. In other words, I think society (and women especially) are gobbling up these new pathways to fulfillment that they never were allowed to enjoy before, but it's at the expense of a more family- and community-oriented homelife that previous generations enjoyed. I think a lot of society's loneliness and anxiety may be due to more and more women basically shedding their nurturing roles for more masculine roles, which seems to leave a tremendous gaping whole in the community (but I could be wrong).
New doors have been opened for women and new pathways of fulfillment have been paved, ones that for centuries have been open to men but not to women, but does anyone realize the enormous strain it is to raise children and foster a sense of family and community while at the same time being a successful career person? Sure, it would be nice to have several meaningful pathways to fulfillment, but can women really double-dip, and what are the consequences of trying to have your cake and eat it too? It seems downright impossible to do BOTH at the same time, yet this is what so many women feel pressured to accomplish. Sure, they're entitled to it if they can manage it, but I don't see how. It seems like a preposterous amount of work.
I like the equality women are still in the process of achieving, but it angers and anguishes me that this equality comes in the form of women adopting more masculine roles and in the still-practiced behavior of undercutting and undervaluing feminine qualities. DAMNIT.
Anyway, this was SO a tangent!
Well, split this into a new thread if you must, but in order to close my post with something more on topic, I'll just say that I'm not positive where I sit on the issue of abortion, either, which doesn't sound insane at all to me, FM.
I'm pro-choice in theory, and I don't think reproduction can be expected to be completely separate from sex, but I also understand people's wish to enjoy sex without the consequences. I pity those who find themselves with the consequences, but I know they agreed to the risk when they engaged in those behaviors. Still, as Randomnity said, if I chanced to get pregnant at this point in my life, would I be able to rear a child? Hmm. It's a rhetorical question that HAS no answer, but I want my right to abort the child if I were to decide it was in everyone's best interest, especially mine, but also the interest of the child were I unable to care for it. I think I'd PROBABLY keep it, but that statement really says nothing about what would actually happen in that scenario. I would likely find myself with a very supportive family, so I'd probably be a lucky one and have that support to fall back on, but I know there are women out there with nothing close to the support system I have, so I have to think of them and their situations, too.
Not THIS topic! 
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