Leslie ([info]sonorandreamer) wrote,
2005-07-26 13:58:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/national/26romney.html


I just don't understand this point of view. If you're against abortion, you should be doing everything you can to prevent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. When you're working with populations (underprivileged teens) for whom "abstinence only" education is so far off the map it's ludicrous, this should include providing ways for girls under 18 to obtain the morning-after pill--if a teenage girl is having unprotected sex, her parents and her doctor have already failed her, and the way to prevent her from trying to have an abortion later is to ensure that she doesn't get pregnant with emergency contraception. It should also definitely include requiring emergency rooms to provide the morning-after pill, which law my governor just vetoed.

After teaching sex ed in a seventh grade classroom in Boston this year--and volunteering in a pediatrics clinic--there are so many cases where the message of the "right" just doesn't fit. The girl in our seventh grade classroom who "couldn't wait" to have her boyfriend's baby, so that she could move out of her abusive father's house. The fourteen year old whose boyfriend drugged her drink and slept with her. You can't tell me that telling these kids to stay abstinent is going to work. I think abortion is terrible--and the way to prevent it is to prevent the pregnancy in the first place.

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[info]aucodemonkey

July 26 2005, 19:06:59 UTC 6 years ago

The view of many who are pro-life would probably say that emergency contraceptives are just as bad as abortions because you're destroying a potential human being and that emergency contraceptives permit young women to be irresponsible in their sexual behavior.

I like people who legislate based on personal morality as opposed to utilitarian safety. </sarcasm>

[info]sonorandreamer

July 26 2005, 19:50:55 UTC 6 years ago

Hehe. Absolutely. Governor Romney's beliefs should obviously dictate law for everybody. What I really want is a government that can't trust me to think and act morally for myself. Goodness, how can they let me run around in a hospital? Or vote?

[info]aucodemonkey

July 26 2005, 21:39:07 UTC 6 years ago

Well, now all you have to do is wait for a tragedy to occur before it will become an issue that the state Supreme Court will hear.

So now, an white woman is going to get raped and not have access to a "plan B" pill, get pregnant, and make a civil case with the state because she couldn't get an emergency contraceptive. So after wasting taxpayer dollars on a case like this, the legislation will be revised and passed, but not before a couple of additional kickback amendments are added to it.

... That's the way it normally works at least. Or have I misunderstood everything that I've learned about the governement up to this point ? ;-)

[info]sonorandreamer

July 27 2005, 13:08:34 UTC 6 years ago

The thing is that "plan B" is just a marketed form of high-dose birth control pills...it's exactly the same as taking 4 or 5 birth control pills (depending on the type.) Any doctor should be able to get that for a woman in the ER who has been raped, even if the hospital pharmacy doesn't carry plan B specifically. I think the good thing about the law is that it required it to be offered, because regardless of what you think about abortion, it would be atrocious to require a woman who has been raped to carry her rapist's child, and this is the best way to prevent that.

[info]y2korean

July 27 2005, 21:49:57 UTC 6 years ago

Atrocious? You think one atrocity can be countered with another? You should focus your anger on your rapist, not on the child you might well be carrying. He or she didn't do anything wrong, just the victim of circumstance, like you.

[info]redziggy

July 26 2005, 21:38:09 UTC 6 years ago

What we really need is a contraceptive distributed through the water supply. In order to get the antidote, you would have to apply to conceive a child. Then we could completely control the population by forcing them to adhere to a certain moral standard.

But really, abstinence is not a solution for everyone. I think it should be taught as an option, but something has to be done for those that don't choose it. I would guess that most pregnant teens don't really want to be pregnant. It seems like we could do something to help them out with that.

I heard a story recently about a young teen girl in the hospital to give birth. She didn't know how the baby was supposed to get out of her. Of course, when the doctor told her, she burst into tears. I heard that from someone else, but I assume it's mostly accurate. It's hard to keep such young people educated when it keeps becoming a problem at younger and younger ages.

[info]sonorandreamer

July 27 2005, 13:16:42 UTC 6 years ago

Oh, absolutely :) Wouldn't conraceptives in the water fix so many other problems??

That is a tragic story. Like the girl I saw in the peds clinic who had been date-raped...she didn't even know what had happened, she came in because she got an STD from the guy. I also met an abortion provider at a talk at school who said she had had a twelve year old girl come in. Again, at that point, the abortion isn't the problem--it's the educators and parents who have failed that little girl.

[info]zicau

July 27 2005, 07:07:53 UTC 6 years ago

To me it seems like the heart of the abortion issue is when something is a human being. Most everyone agrees that killing a human is generally wrong, but many disagree on when a human is formed. Some might say its at conception, others might say its not until birth. Reading at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_after_pill , it seems that these pills will not only stop fertilization, but can also "inhibit implantation of a fertilized egg". I'm not sure how this compares with regular birth control. I know I have heard some say that consider it/he/she to be a human at the time of conception. If that's your view, then these pills could be seen as possibly causing a form of abortion. Then again I really don't know much about this, so maybe I am way off base.

[info]sonorandreamer

July 27 2005, 13:25:37 UTC 6 years ago

Having learned this year in school about what happens in the first few weeks of life--what the baby does to grow from one cell to several cells--I would have a hard time saying that it isn't a life :) What makes it less clear to me is that less than 1 in 5 fertilized eggs implant in a normal, healthy woman to begin with. Also, before implantation, it can even split to become two individuals. I guess that makes me think twice about calling it a human being yet--it might become two, it might not become anything. Two, the "minipill" (progestin-only birth control) also functions by preventing implantation, not necessarily ovulation...so that's been used for decades with no similar debate. Still, if you're trying to prevent abortions--of the type where you're very clearly killing an undeveloped baby--then I feel like this is a lesser evil, at least.

[info]y2korean

July 27 2005, 22:02:47 UTC 6 years ago

A lesser evil is still an evil.

All this discussion, debate and strife about abortion is misfocused. It's like throwing water out of a sinking boat while ignoring the fact that the hole in the hull needs to be patched. Too often we focus on whether people are happy, or healthy, or well-off. We attempt to prevent pain and suffering, but these are unavoidable. Modern medicine seeks to extend life without improving quality of life. As a health-obsessed country, we are terribly unhealthy. Death and old age are inevitable. We simply are trying to disillusion ourselves. Movie stars today hold up impossible standards of beauty, not only in body image but in age appearance. Instead of trying to control things we can't even begin to grasp, we should focus on trying to be better people ourselves, and fostering environments in which other people can better themselves. Not in a material way, but in a spiritual way. After all, the only thing Everyman carries with him are Good Deeds.
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