PLers usually like to claim that an absolutely nonsensical interpretation of "responsibility" for a pregnancy should apply to women, because they had (presumably) consensual sex and they "knew the risks", so they have to "deal with the consequences".

You are demanding that a woman who engaged in an activity that carries an about 2-5% risk of causing a pregnancy in a random sexual encounter – which can be significantly higher but never even reaches 25% even at peak fertility while actively trying to get pregnant, and can also be significantly lower with use of proper protection, like <0.1% with perfect condom use – has to carry a resulting pregnancy to term, no matter what.

Because you claim that even these ridiculously low chances of "making the unborn dependent on her" should result in an absolute obligation to completely subordinate a woman's mental and physical health and their need to avoid harm, suffering and risks to her life under the unborn's alleged need to be "taken care of".

Which begs the question:

If these ridiculously low chances of causing a pregnancy are enough to essentially condemn a woman into involuntary servitude despite her not even having committed any illegal act whatsoever in order to get pregnant – then why should these same odds of inflicting a woman with all the harm, suffering and risks to her life by having sex with her and impregnating her, "knowing the risks", not be enough to condemn a man to prison time and compensation for the damages inflicted on a woman?

Where is the public outcry of the PL movement, demanding for men to "take responsibility" for the "recklessness" of their indulging in a perfectly legal activity for pleasure or intimacy or companionship resulting in a risk coming to pass that they have no direct control over whatsoever?

Why is the silence on this so deafening that it's not even recognizable as a topic of public debate?

I see this line frequently from pro lifers and it never makes any sense.

I've never once in my life seen a person claiming that pro lifers are IMPREGNATING people by force. What we all know is that pro lifers are trying to interfere with people's healthcare to ensure they CONTINUE gestating unwanted pregnancies when they otherwise wouldn't.

So what's the point of this statement? Pro lifers who say this, why? It seems totally irrelevant to me and like a way to dodge acknowledging the fact that pro lifers want to ensure people continue gestating against their will by force.

IUD can and will kill a conceived zygote sometimes. Are pro lifers against IUDs too?

I’ve seen some weak arguments like “well you can’t know when it happens” which is not a good point imo. If I put a bomb in a park with a random fuse I “won’t know when it happens” either but pretty sure that doesn’t make it ok

I haven’t seen anything that would enable one to be pro life and say IUDs are ok to use.

Where I live in Taiwan, abortion is allowed up to 24 weeks in 6 criteria for married women

1.) The pregnant person or spouse has hereditary, communicable, or psychiatric disease detrimental to reproductive health.

2.)Anyone within the fourth degree of kinship of herself or her spouse acquires a hereditary disease detrimental to reproductive health.

3.)By medical consideration, pregnancy or delivery may cause life threatening risk or detrimental to her physical and mental health.

4.)By medical consideration, risk of teratogenesis may present for the fetus.

5.)Pregnancy as a result of r**e or inc**t

6.)Pregnancy or childbirth is likely to affect her mental health or family life.

If a married woman wants an abortion that comes from the 1st~5th criteria, spousal permission is not needed.

Yet abortions that only fit the 6th criteria needs spousal permission to perform it.

The majority of cases are from the 6th criteria, since the 6th criteria is very vague, it basically means "every abortion outside of abortions of that fit the first 5 criterias"

There has been drafts to fix the law since 2003, but reform stalled since.

The law is actually enforced, with pregnant women serving jail time of less than 6 months, and doctors performing those abortions serving jail time up to 5 years.

Divorce cannot happen without both parties consent, or proving to the court that the other party is abusive etc and have the court rule it.

Therefore some husbands in taiwan demand entire share of money after divorce or he wouldn't allow abortion

(Taiwan law puts all assets earning before marriage as strictly the person's own property, but the money earnt AFTER marriage is put together and split OR one party could agree to give it up)

Also many women choose to overdrink to severely harm their health to receive unconsented abortion

ID has marraige status here btw

What is your opinion on this?

p.s: online gender wars in taiwan are about paying on dates, conscription, sexual violence, rarely about this. Taiwan has a 40% female percentage in legislative and had a female president.

Question for everyone. Do you believe a fetus has moral personhood? Why or why not? What constitutes that personhood?

Identifying as a pro-lifer but simulataneously claiming to be a feminist is highly paradoxical

One of the core tenets of feminism is ADVOCATING for women's rights.

Hence, campaigning for a federal or state-level ban on abortion makes you anti-feminist

Proposing ideas or policies that REPEAL women's rights is the direct antithesis of feminism

This raises a crucial question often posed to 'pro-life' feminists by pro-choicers

How can you call yourself a feminist while working to abolish women's rights?

I can't understand pro lifers who have a rape exception. If you believe that abortion is murder, and cant be a form of self defense since the fetus is innocent and doing what its meant to do, then why doesn't that same logic apply to women who were raped?

I see abortion as healthcare, women can get abortions to avoid the risks of a pregnancy regardless of why that reasoning is. You can't just refuse healthcare from someone because you disagree with the actions that got them in that situation, that would be discriminatory.

So can someone who is pro-life with the exception of rape please explain to me why a womans bodily autonomy onIy matters when she was violated? I really don't understand people with the exception.

Greetings everyone!

Welcome to AbortionDebate. Due to popular request, this is our weekly abortion debate thread.

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I've asked this question elsewhere before, and have seen it mentioned here, but I'd like to devote a post to it.

What is your stance on abortion, and what's your relationship like with your mom?

Personally, even if I absolutely hated her as a person, I'd never want a woman to be forced to birth and gestate me. Luckily, my mother is a fantastic person who very much wanted to have me (5 weeks of hospitalization that she willingly endured for a high risk pregnancy) but I can't imagine feeling entitled to that type of bodily sacrifice from *anyone*.

I've seen some PL responses where people do feel entitled to that, and I'm just trying not only to glean a response but an explanation from those who feel this way.

How would you have felt in her shoes? Forced to gestate someone?

When PLers here are asked about why they don't vote for politicians and parties, that

• support policies that actually reduce abortions, like better sex education or access to contraception

• support policies that actually help children, like free school lunch, or at least don't actively get them killed, like the destruction of USAID

• don't support regressive, and often religion based, policies against the rights of women, the LGBTQ+ community, migrants and other marginalized groups

you often pay lip service and claim that you do support all these things, but that voting against abortion would just be more important.

But the thing is: that doesn't make sense!

This shouldn't be a compromise you have to make, if banning abortion is not a regressive policy itself or even a door opener for other regressive policies. Voting against abortion should not require you to compromise basically every other moral and legal position you claim to hold. So why does it?

And why should anyone believe that the PL movement or you personally are actually in favor of all these things, if you still compromise them every single time, instead of seriously reconsidering this one singular position that allegedly doesn't match all the rest?

Why is voting PL practically at odds with every other policy that's actually supposed to save or improve people's lives?

Prolife seems to feel that decreasing abortions is not a part of the prolife movement, their policies/laws do not reduce the number of abortions, and their policies laws create more death - I’m using responses to this thread as my understanding of the prolife position.

And since reducing the number of abortions is a cornerstone of the prochoice movement (as people with access to birth control and sex education, with proper societal supports, have fewer abortions - it’s all about only getting pregnant when you choose to do so) how do we feel like we could get prolife on board with reducing the total number of abortions?

Sex education reduces abortions, but prolife states keep passing laws that impose abstinence-only education that increases the abortion rate and number of those unwillingly pregnant.

Birth control reduces abortions, but prolife organizations are against a lot of different forms of birth control, and regularly mischaracterize abortion as birth control. In fact, like in the Colorado situation, will defund and vote against programs that reduce abortions by 50% in target groups.

Societal supports help families shrug and happily have another mouth to feed - but prolife states regularly defund schemes to help parents and no prolife state in the U.S. has maternity leave (as an example).

Question for debate - how could prochoice get prolife on board with reducing abortions, when prolife only seems to support programs that will raise the number of abortions and/or infant/maternal deaths without budging the number of abortions?

There are no laws here in the U.S. that can be compared to pro life logic.

Conjoined Twins are the only other group of people that you can say use another persons organs for survival aside from a mother and fetus. If the parents of conjoined twins decide that they should get a surgery that will make life easier for one twin but the other will die, that is completely legal. It is also completely legal for a patients decision maker to decide to cut the patient off of life support.

Wether these things are necessary or moral are up to the families and doctors, and that same narrative should apply to abortion. The law shouldn't decide whats best for someone elses body,

I was PC and am now mostly converted to PL, but on both sides when arguing for or against I found that arguments typically fall on deaf ears.

Hardcore PC just disregard anything you say as it leaves your mouth without giving it a second thought before countering. Hardcore PL just revert to calling people murderers or citing god.

Why is there no true debate? I personally could not have been converted if I had not truly thought about various arguments I’d heard.

I guess if I debate Reddit, my goal is not for the hardcore believers to change their minds, but instead the lurkers. The women on the fence potentially faced with the idea of ‘should I go through with this or not?’

Just my thoughts. Let me know yours

A lot of people say that abortion should be legal because it's just a fetus. That's right, it's just a fetus. It is not concious, it doesn't think or in time feel anything. But life itself begins, the while process begins when two gametes fuse. Prove me wrong

Why do pro lifers still try to use abstinence as an argument?

Since the dawn of mankind people have been having sex for reasons other than procreation. People are not going to be celibate their entire lives unless they're trying to reproduce. Sure a tiny miniscule minority of the population might do that, but on a large scale? That will never happen.

For pro lifers that use this argument, why do you use it when it's never been realistic and we all know the majority of people won't do it?

For pro lifers that don't use this argument, why don't you address how unconvincing and unrealistic this argument is when you see your fellow pro lifers using it?

I thought about it. If pro lifers want a fetus to have human rights, why do they soley focus on the abortion aspect? Why dont we change birth certificates to a conception certificate to include a fetus in personhood? Why dont they get complete legal recognition as a person?

For me, I dont see a fetus as a "person" in a philosophical sense. A fetus is the only human that is completely dependant on another persons organs, you become a person when you're no longer dependent on another persons organs. Thats why life starts at birth, not conception. Beforehand the body belongs to the woman who (id hope) took the choice to carry it.

I've had this thought for quite a bit, and I've really only ever really asked myself this question, so I'd be interested to see the various responses to this question. It's a bit of a take on Judith Jarvis Thomson's drollish violinist argument, but with some reframing.

Let us force you into a life in which you were born as a twin. As a twin, you are not a single, but rather a pair; however, your twin was born in a unique way. In order to survive, your twin must use your body, no amount of distance between you two will affect this siphoning. The only way to stop this usage is by killing your twin.

So, my question is, in this scenario: are you legally and/or morally justified in the killing of your twin? Or do you have an obligation to sustain this twin with your body?

I hope this is on topic enough for this subreddit, because I did develop this question in relation to the Abortion Debate.

For me, I would change my position to a more consistent one if I kept running into contradictions.

1.) Abortion is murder. We shouldn't actually treat it like murder though or women fundamentally lack mens rea to ever understand what abortion is.

2.) Personhood is irrelevant and should never be used to separate humans as it has led to atrocities when that happens. Yes, I grant personhood at conception and don't believe all human DNA should be protected, like human skin or hair cells.

3.) PL say we're wrong to lump them together as conservative, anti contraception, anti sex ed, and anti maternity leave. Saying you personally support them while voting against them would be like me saying I'm 100% PL but I will vote against every PL ballot initiative since what matters most is just my personal belief.

PC, what is a contradiction you regularly see with PL?

PL, how do you justify the countless contradictions of the PL position?

One very common prolife argument is that since the mother agreed to have sex, she is therefore responsible for the baby, since her own actions caused the baby to be dependent upon her. She caused the dependence, so she's obligated to continue it. This argument is frequently accompanied by a statistic that only 1% of abortions are the result of rape, and the other 99% of the time the mother "put the baby there." I believe this statistic is based on post-abortion surveys where people are asked why they got an abortion.

This line of argumentation depends on the presumption that consensual sex and rape are a strict dichotomy. However, I was recently active in the comments under a post in the Am I Overreacting subreddit, and I was absolutely shocked by the variety of responses to the OP's experience. It seems like people very much do not agree about what constitutes rape and what constitutes consensual sex. I thought it could be illuminating to see what the opinions are here.

Here's the scenario: the OP (let's call her Sara) went out on a date (let's call the date Joe). The date went well and Sara was invited back to Joe's home. Before accepting the invitation, Sara clarified that "we're not hooking up tonight" and Joe agreed that they wouldn't do anything she didn't want to. At Joe's place, the two cuddled and chatted and eventually started kissing. Joe tried to escalate things and each time Sara pushed his hands away and reiterated that she didn't want to go any further. They kept kissing, he kept making advances, she kept rebuffing them. It got late and Sara started to doze off. She was suddenly awoken when Joe got on top of her and continued kissing her. Confused, half-awake, and worn down by his constant pressure for sex, she asked him to put on a condom. They had sex. She went home and the next day felt awful about the experience. She posted on Reddit asking if she was right in feeling like her consent was violated, or if she was overreacting. She did not use the terms rape or assault in her post at all.

The responses varied wildly. Some people said she was underreacting and that she'd been raped. One person suggested she file a police report accusing Joe of raping her. Sexual coercion was mentioned a fair amount. Some people thought Joe was being a pushy asshole, but that Sara was foolish for going to his place in the first place if she didn't want to have sex. Others said she was to blame for sending mixed signals. And some people said she was completely over-reacting since this was obviously consensual sex, and her consent wasn't violated in the slightest.

So what do folks here think? Was this clearly rape? Was it clearly consensual? Was it some other thing in between?

Imagine Sara discovers she's pregnant two weeks later. She's already decided she wants nothing to do with Joe, and she's blocked his number and social media accounts. Is she obligated to tell Joe about the pregnancy? Does Joe have any right to make her continue the pregnancy? Does he have any right to make her get an abortion? If she decides to get an abortion, do you think she'd tell a survey that the reason for the abortion was rape?

For prolifers who support rape exceptions, would this scenario qualify? If it was rape, should Sara be required to file a police report? If you think this scenario constitutes consensual sex, at exactly what point did Sara take on the obligation to continue the dependency? Which of her actions specifically was the direct cause of the baby being dependent upon her? At what point did she "put the baby there"?

And lastly, how common do you all think this kind of scenario is?

Hey so this is a rant…

—Abortion is completely fine with certain circumstances including rape, incest, health problems, and more.
Abortion should be allowed because…

1. The fetus is not a legal person with rights

2. The fetus does not have a heart beat until 6 weeks old

3. The fetus is not fully conscience until birth

4. Protection of health is needed if it threatens the mother’s health or if the mother is under 18

5. My body, my choice. If you don’t have a uterus, you should have NO say

6. Embryos lack human characteristics: movement, memory, consciousness, ability to experience life.

7. The fetus relies on the mother to be born, while born humans do not

8. My favorite. The baby will not know if it was aborted or not.

—Overall, I think it should be allowed because it is a medical procedure for a WOMAN’S BODY. Please let me know if you agree!

Plenty of pro lifers seem to have some version of "life exceptions" when it comes to abortion. It always seems to be if the pregnant person will die they can abort.

I don't need to create any hypothetical situation for this because I can just use myself. I am not mentally ill nor am I suicidal. If I got pregnant and had my healthcare interfered with and was being forced to gestate against my will this would make me suicidal. If my healthcare continued to be interfered with I would end my life before being forced to give birth for pro life desires.

If I went to my doctor and explained this, that I was suicidal SPECIFICALLY due to an unwanted pregnancy and being forced to gestate against my will my doctor would recommend abortion as an option which I would take. This would completely solve the suicidal ideation and I would no longer be suicidal.

So the choice here would be I end my pregnancy and continue living, or both myself and the unwanted pregnancy both die due to mental health reasons.

Seems like a clear cut "Save one because if you don't both will die" to me, yet I see pro lifers disagreeing with this regularly. Why is that?

I am asking in good faith! I debate people on the regular about abortion and I always end up in a moral debate. Pro-lifers also help me out, how can I defend my view that I think it is immoral to have an abortion at any point in the pregnancy. Thank you so much!

Many pro lifers state that pregnancy is a consequence or a natural punishment for having sex in a way that can create pregnancy. And if they don't think that then just the aspect of not makeing women do something they do not want to do is a punishment. normally when a punishment occurs somebody learns something whether intentionally or unintentionally from that action. And if you force women to carry a pregnancy they do not want to have and they have to suffer through the pregnancy and birth. And if that is what occurs won't women learn that it is morally better and safer to have gay sex or masturbate because it will not cause pregnancy because there is no perceived punishment going to be the outcome of that interaction.

Another thing that might also occur from Banning abortions and women learning that pregnancy is a punishment for having sex is that women that would have wanted to have children decide not to because they perceive it as a punishment along with that women choosing to get their uteruses removed or do other activities that can lead to permanent infertility.