Abortion

[_moksha]

If abortions were stopped, LDS Social Services could get back into the adoption business. If Republicans were able to curtail Aid to Dependent Children, Catholic Family Services could open up the tent version of Boy's Town in Arizona.

[_Icarus]

It’s amazing what mental gymnastics some will go through to justify ripping a child (developing human) apart, limb by limb and killing him or her. If you had to do it yourself, would you? Would you then be so supportive of KILLING CHILDREN?



Women’s risks with abortion:
“During, and immediately after an abortion, the greatest risk is bleeding, or even hemorrhage. Bleeding may result from:

cervical laceration
uterine perforation
Rare, but serious complications include:

blood clots
embolism
negative anesthesia reactions
The most common complication is infection. Infection may be caused by:

lacerations
perforations
retained tissue
unsterile conditions
an existing infection, such as a venereal disease, that is spread or made worse.
Any of these abortion related infections may contribute to infertility, scarring of the uterus, blockage of the fallopian tubes, or other negative effects on future reproductive health.

Another immediate complication is called an “incomplete abortion.” This means some tissue may be left behind. If it is not removed, it can begin to rot and cause an infection, even a life threatening infection. An incomplete abortion requires a second treatment to remove the dying tissue.

Longer term complications of abortion include elevated risk of:

premature death
cervical incompetence
premature or low birth weight deliveries
infertility or difficulty becoming pregnant
lower general health; greater need for medical services
endometritis
ectopic pregnancy
salpingitis or pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)
placenta previa
death from cardiovascular diseases
sleep disorders
substance abuse
suicide and other mental health problems

The risk of death increases with each abortion, 45% after one abortion, 114% after two abortions, and 192 percent after three or more abortions”
https://afterabortion.org/abortion-risk ... -abortion/

You're relying on a lot of partisan disinformation there. Just about everything you said there is wrong.

[_Meadowchik]

You're relying on a lot of partisan disinformation there. Just about everything you said there is wrong.

It's an example of how easy it is to be misled, especially by a surface exposure to an issue or a highly partisan exposure.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Here are a couple of related anecdotes I read from Reddit just this morning:

u/kristinbugg922 explains the consequences of pro-life

AITA (am I the asshole) for outing the abortion my sister had since she will not allow my niece to get one?

NTA (not the asshole).

Your sister was able to have autonomy over her body and make the choice to have an abortion when she wasn’t ready to raise a child. Yet, she doesn’t feel that her daughter deserves that same autonomy. Isn’t it funny how she was deserving of that, but her daughter isn’t? We can often find ways to justify anything when it applies to us, but refuse to justify those same things for others.

I know you stated you didn’t want to get into politics on this, but when it comes to abortion, that’s like trying to round up horses once they’re out the corral.

I am a child protective services investigator. I work child deaths, near deaths and shocking & heinous abuse cases exclusively. I have seen what can result from forcing a woman to keep a baby that she either does not want or is not equipped to raise. People can say that the baby can always be given up for adoption, but that’s not the fairytale you’ve seen on “Annie” either; there’s no Daddy Warbucks waiting in the wings to whisk most of these babies out of foster care into a limousine and off to their mansions.

Because no one wants to deal with babies born addicted to heroin, whose genetic pool is rife with schizophrenia and who contracted syphilis during their vaginal birth, because their mother didn’t receive prenatal care.

Because these babies aren’t blonde headed and blue eyed.

Because these babies are blonde headed and blue eyed like Mama and Daddy...who share the same father.

Because sometimes these babies have names like Keyshawn and Trayvon and Kiana.

Because sometimes these mothers don’t realize they aren’t ready to be mothers until these babies aren’t babies and you can’t drop a toddler off at a Safe Harbor Drop-Off.

Because sometimes these mothers live 45 miles from the nearest Safe Harbor Drop-Off and they don’t have a car, so the toilet is their next best option.

Because sometimes the Safe Harbor Drop-Off is the local police station in a town of 658 residents and the local police chief is Mama’s uncle.

Because sometimes a woman doesn’t need a reason for not wanting to be a mother and she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for what she does and doesn’t do with her body.

I once held the body of an 8 month old infant in the back of an ambulance that didn’t need to run lights and sirens. He was too small to strap to the gurney. When they handed him to me, he was wrapped in a blanket and he looked like he was sleeping, but no infant should ever be that still and cold or have white foam around their lips. His mother tried to have an abortion, but didn’t have the money or resources. She had three children she couldn’t afford or care for already and she knew she couldn’t handle another one. She was told, “Just have him. You’ll be fine. You already have three kids, so you can figure it out. You can’t kill your baby. You can’t give your baby away to strangers, because no real mother does that. No...no, we can’t take the baby in. We won’t help you get an abortion and we can’t support adoption, but we will help you with the baby.” But, when he was born, all the people who promised to help disappeared faster than her patience did when that baby cried and she was on day four of a methamphetamine binge. In the end, the only support she had was a methamphetamine addiction and a boyfriend with a nasty temper and even less patience than she did for that tiny, unwanted soul she brought into this world. So, she had him and eight months later, she proved everyone who told her she couldn’t kill her baby wrong by allowing his life to be taken in a fit of rage, methamphetamine and the fists of a man who just wanted him to STOP. damned. CRYING. ALREADY. And the only thing she could say was, “I told them I never wanted this. I said I never wanted him. Why did they make me have him? I want my mother.” But her mother had been dead since she was 10. I know this because I was the first CPS investigator on the scene and I covered her little brother’s head with my coat and gave her my beanie, so they didn’t see the damage their father’s bullet did to the side of their mother’s head. Amy was a beautiful woman and her daughters look just like her....even in their mugshots. Even when they’re trying to explain why their boyfriend shook and beat their baby to death. This one looks especially like Amy. This daughter perpetuated that cycle and her baby was collateral damage, I suppose. Maybe if I had given her my coat to cover her head with, as I led her and her sibling out of the house, so they didn’t see their mother’s head shattered by their father’s bullet, she would have traveled a different path. But I didn’t give her my coat. She was older. I thought she’d be able to cover her head better. So I gave her my beanie and I gave her sibling my coat and I covered their heads and told them not to look at Mama. I told them to keep walking and don’t look down. I said I was right there with them. That’s why I gave her my coat this time and as she was being led out in handcuffs, I told her, “I’m going to cover your head. Don’t look down. Don’t look at the baby. Just keep walking. I’ve got you. I’m right here with you.” It’s funny. After all of these years, that’s what I blame myself for. That I didn’t give her my coat. That maybe, just maybe, if I had given her my coat instead, I wouldn’t have stood looking down at her dead son years later. I don’t know what the last thing that baby saw was, but I pray it wasn’t the fist that ended his life or the face of the demon that ended his life or the woman who was supposed to be his protector. I still dream about him. I still dream about that coat.

The people who screech about how a woman does not have the right to terminate a pregnancy are always silent when they are questioned about what THEY are doing for their local foster care agencies. They rarely lobby at their state capitols for more funding for child welfare agencies and preventative programs to assist children and families in need. They rarely, if ever, volunteer their time and money to support children in foster care or foster parents. Instead, they’d rather post hateful, judgmental vitriol on social media about women in difficult situations they know nothing about. They’re content to talk about what women should or should not be able to do. They’re content to pass judgment about a woman’s choices. But when they actually have to look at the consequences of those choices....well, that’s a conversation 99.9% of them are willing to sit out on.

People like your sister can screech about how abortion is murder. They can cry about the poor babies who never drew a breath. But you won’t see them doing anything for the babies that are breathing and living in foster care. The children that are living in homeless shelters. The kids that won’t get supper again tonight because Daddy’s check was short and Mama drank the grocery money again. Because that would mean they’d actually have to look upon the humanity they don’t want to acknowledge. It’s easier to crusade for a cause they don’t actually have to interact with.

And from the r/bestof comments section from the linked post:

[–]HeloRising

[+1] 558 points 2 hours ago*
If I may perform a slight hijack...

I saw more than a couple comments suggesting that what OP is talking about was overly dramatic or otherwise just BS.

I work in mental health at a place that provides social services for children who've been removed from their homes due to abuse or because of extreme behavior (violence, sexually acting out, self-harm, etc) that is usually due to an abusive or otherwise neglectful home.

I'm the person the kids end up with after OP pulls them out of their homes.

What they're talking about is 100% real and happens on a regular basis. Far more regularly than most people would be comfortable realizing. And it can be worse. So much damned worse. At my job we have a binder that contains a rough clinical history of what each of the kids in the program have gone through prior to getting to us - family history, previous treatment, etc.

The majority of people that start working for us and then quit after a week or two do so after reading that book. Reading it is literally watching a play-by-play of a child's life being destroyed spelled out in the most cold, clinical terms.

Some rough HIPPA-compliant examples of what we've seen:

A child with no name, no family, and no personal information rescued from someone who'd "bought" them for sex.

A child who had to have reconstructive surgery after a particularly intense bout of abuse from someone.

A child who literally ate their own waste because the people caring for them didn't provide for them.

Many children who act out sexually towards other children because that behavior has been normalized for them in their environment prior to coming to us.

Children who routinely wet the bed or defecate in bed to deter potential abuse and/or molestation.

I frequently see pro-life people scoff and say that "anything is better than being dead."

I would submit that having a young child who has seen and experienced things most people don't even see in their nightmares is worse. Far worse.

I've seen a lot of really disquieting crap in my life but nothing, nothing, is as bad as seeing a child that is well and truly broken. Someone who has gone through so much they've just collapsed as a human being. They're little robots who stare right through you with that empty look of "I am living but I am not alive." It's the expression that adults who are in a deep depression can sometimes get, that look of someone who wants to die but can't even summon up the strength to end their own life so they just sort of..drift. Seeing it in an adult sucks, seeing it in someone who hasn't even reached ten is soul crushing.

I invite pro-life parents to work at a facility like where I work for a few weeks and see the consequences of children being born into environments that are neither willing nor able to care for them.

As a semi-related side note, keep these kind of things in mind when you crap on people who go into fields like psychology or social work. I personally get really angry when people say things like "bless you for the work you do" because often times they're happy to crap on people who go to school for psych because they "didn't want to study a real subject."

STEM bros are notorious for this kind of crap.

[–]spinningpeanut

129 points 2 hours ago

I was born into one of these homes. I've had depression since I was 5. 5 damned years old. It was solidified into me that all parents want to make you feel miserable and afraid at the age of 9. I'm 27 now and the c-ptsd is getting better but very slowly.

VERY SAD PART! PROCEED WITH CAUTION! TRIGGER WARNING!

My gay mom was raped by her manager. He hated that I existed because of it. He wished I was never born. He made me wish I was never born at such a young age. The conservative Mormon run state of Utah would rather us live with an abusive dad than a gay loving mother. They couldn't divorce because Mom couldn't protect us as best as she could. One memory that stands out is when I was very small, probably 8 years old at the most, I was falsely diagnosed with ADHD like everyone else. I hated the pills. I did not want to take them. They made me feel horrible. He forced one down my throat in blind rage. Stuffed his fingers down my throat. I can still feel them. I was coughing up blood from how badly he scratched my throat up. My mom was by my side making sure I did swallow and wasn't inhaling a pill into my lungs, all while rubbing my back and calming me down from the crying and vomiting blood. This is what prolife gets you. If I wasn't born my mom wouldn't have had to suffer for 19 years more. 39 years in total of abuse for her. She also had abusive parents. She doesn't talk about what they did to her, her sister does though. They were child slaves to lazy parents with murderous foster kids living in the home. 100% of those kids are on death row, dead, or in prison.

Please for the love of God don't be pro-abuse by forcing people to have babies they can't have.

If I had to guess the amount of stories for unwanted and hated children born to parents who weren't ready for them and ended up with miserable lives far out number the stories for kids being born to parents who weren't ready for them and ended up with good lives. I'd probably be a lot more sympathetic to the pro-lifers if they adopted all the orphaned and CPS kids. Walking the walk is more convincing than talking the talk, and being pro-birth doesn't make you pro-life.

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

What happened to Amore's post about angry mobs demanding late term abortions? Was it removed or is it right in front of my face and I don't see it?

Where are the mobs begging for children to adopt, Amore?

ETA: Uh, it's in another thread. viewtopic.php?p=1216142#p1216142

[_Holy Ghost]

To the OP, my stance began as an absolute one against abortion. I thought society ought to weigh in on the side of the weaker (the unborn) versus the stronger (the pregnant woman) and protect the unborn. Also, it seemed that the unborn's interest in a life of ~80 years ought to outweigh in the balance the interests of the pregnant woman with respect to the unborn: the remaining months of the pregnancy and if she chooses not to give the baby up for adoption, then the years nurturing the child to self-sufficiency. How the woman became pregnant seems to have been irrelevant to my initial stance. I did not allow for exceptions, as the Mormon church did, for rape and incest. The balance of the scales did, however, get altered in my initial thinking when medical complications were diagnosed, and threats to pregnant woman's life were posed by the pregnancy and/or defects in the unborn were detected.

This evolved and changed. Considering that when a person dies, brain activity ends. If life ends when brain activity ends, then perhaps life begins when brain activity begins. That then gets complicated with what kind of brain activity. I understand that the cortex is the epicenter of human consciousness. The cortex does not start to form until six months of gestation. Neuroscientists suspect from studies that in the late stages of pregnancy, the unborn becomes familiar with the sound of its mother's voice and may already be learning language. Before that, I think we are dealing with one being--the pregnant woman. She ought to be able to abort.

After the cortex begins to form and the unborn responds to pattern stimuli (not just recoiling responses to being, for example, poked), in my current view the unborn has become another being. Now we are dealing with two beings. There are then but two to three months more of pregnancy the woman must endure so that the unborn can have a life of ~80 years. In such instance, I think the scales tip strongly against allowing abortion.

[_Icarus]

To the OP, my stance began as an absolute one against abortion. I thought society ought to weigh in on the side of the weaker (the unborn) versus the stronger (the pregnant woman) and protect the unborn. Also, it seemed that the unborn's interest in a life of ~80 years ought to outweigh in the balance the interests of the pregnant woman with respect to the unborn: the remaining months of the pregnancy and if she chooses not to give the baby up for adoption, then the years nurturing the child to self-sufficiency. How the woman became pregnant seems to have been irrelevant to my initial stance. I did not allow for exceptions, as the Mormon church did, for rape and incest. The balance of the scales did, however, get altered in my initial thinking when medical complications were diagnosed, and threats to pregnant woman's life were posed by the pregnancy and/or defects in the unborn were detected.

This evolved and changed. Considering that when a person dies, brain activity ends. If life ends when brain activity ends, then perhaps life begins when brain activity begins. That then gets complicated with what kind of brain activity. I understand that the cortex is the epicenter of human consciousness. The cortex does not start to form until six months of gestation. Neuroscientists suspect from studies that in the late stages of pregnancy, the unborn becomes familiar with the sound of its mother's voice and may already be learning language. Before that, I think we are dealing with one being--the pregnant woman. She ought to be able to abort.

After the cortex begins to form and the unborn responds to pattern stimuli (not just recoiling responses to being, for example, poked), in my current view the unborn has become another being. Now we are dealing with two beings. There are then but two to three months more of pregnancy the woman must endure so that the unborn can have a life of ~80 years. In such instance, I think the scales tip strongly against allowing abortion.

This sums up my position too.

[_huckelberry]

What happened to Amore's post about angry mobs demanding late term abortions? Was it removed or is it right in front of my face and I don't see it?

Where are the mobs begging for children to adopt, Amore?

ETA: Uh, it's in another thread. viewtopic.php?p=1216142#p1216142

under Moshka thread on social justice.along with stuff I am disinclined to speak of.

[_Meadowchik]

To the OP, my stance began as an absolute one against abortion. I thought society ought to weigh in on the side of the weaker (the unborn) versus the stronger (the pregnant woman) and protect the unborn. Also, it seemed that the unborn's interest in a life of ~80 years ought to outweigh in the balance the interests of the pregnant woman with respect to the unborn: the remaining months of the pregnancy and if she chooses not to give the baby up for adoption, then the years nurturing the child to self-sufficiency. How the woman became pregnant seems to have been irrelevant to my initial stance. I did not allow for exceptions, as the Mormon church did, for rape and incest. The balance of the scales did, however, get altered in my initial thinking when medical complications were diagnosed, and threats to pregnant woman's life were posed by the pregnancy and/or defects in the unborn were detected.

This evolved and changed. Considering that when a person dies, brain activity ends. If life ends when brain activity ends, then perhaps life begins when brain activity begins. That then gets complicated with what kind of brain activity. I understand that the cortex is the epicenter of human consciousness. The cortex does not start to form until six months of gestation. Neuroscientists suspect from studies that in the late stages of pregnancy, the unborn becomes familiar with the sound of its mother's voice and may already be learning language. Before that, I think we are dealing with one being--the pregnant woman. She ought to be able to abort.

After the cortex begins to form and the unborn responds to pattern stimuli (not just recoiling responses to being, for example, poked), in my current view the unborn has become another being. Now we are dealing with two beings. There are then but two to three months more of pregnancy the woman must endure so that the unborn can have a life of ~80 years. In such instance, I think the scales tip strongly against allowing abortion.

I think this is reasonable and it applies in the state that recognizes and enforces the existence of both. And this state is exactly the "nation" of the pregnant person only. This person recognizes, judges, and enforces. No one else.

That, to me, is the ultimate question here: the bodily autonomy of a human being.