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No doubt that many Americans (mostly men) are uncomfortable with abortion.

They are welcome to vote Republican. There are no pro-choice Republicans, as has been pointed out in re: Alito.

While you and I could debate what the Dems would do in a perfect world, the fact remains that Republicans wish to make it illegal for a ten year old victim of rape to receive a first trimester abortion. No, Olympia Snowe does not want that, but she will let it happen.

In the face of that, I think even someone who questions abortion rights in certain circumstances must stand with the Dems.

What Matt's talking about here is rejecting their premise and putting a new one in its place. That the anti-choice crowd is in favor of forced birth is factually accurate. If someone doesn't believe that women should have the right to make reproductive decisions, then that person believes they should be forced to give birth -- plain and simple.

So no, it's not for nothing that we work to keep women's right to bodily autonomy a central issue.

i know i'm just adding to the pile on at this point, but come on, stop using their frames!  

it really disturbs me to see progressives buy into crap like that.

"There are a million things in the world that you have a choice on . . . up to a critical point.  After that point, you're obligated to follow through whether you like it not."

And if a pregnant woman is denied an abortion by the law then she is being forced to concieve. That is a fact.

FYI
While I am ProChoice I am PERSONALLY against abortion. See the difference ?

The family would not exist if you had your way,

She had an abortion when she was young.

If you had your way, she would have had the child, scrapped college and gone to work as a waitress.  She had a terrible temper in those days, and would have been an abusive, and bitter parent.  If the child survived her temper, it would
have a childhood in a daycare pen for the poor.

Her feeling is that it would have easily been a worst case scenario. Possibly killing the child, and then herself.

So tell me how your making choices for the fate of people you don't know, would be an improvement?

Should she have gone forth and accepted her punishment, and virtually ended her life?

Maybe you should meet the loving family that would not exist if the choice were yours and not hers.

South of the border is filled with people obeying orders of the church to breed like flies.  

Your philosphy breeds squalor and unhappiness.

Is this really what the GOP is doing?:

People who decide to have an abortion aren't grown up enough? They are irresponsible? When they have sex they should just realize and submit to the fact that POLITICIANS and many who voted for them have DECREED that pregnant women must give birth?

Don't we need to agree on what is moral and ethical first? Personally, I do not believe it unethical to abort  first-trimester fetuses. But, apparently YOU and other benevolent strict fathers get to decide for all women the ethics of intercourse, pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion. You believe it is a good idea, and within the Constitution, to use the force of law to force women to follow through on their (supposed) agreement when they had sex that if fertilization occurs they MUST let that fertilized SINGLE CELL develop and carry it to term?

Let me answer the following question for you:

Yes it is completely unreasonable. Tell you what, next time someone you love gets cancer cause they smoked, gets diabetes because they are fat, or has a car wreck cause they drove too fast you tell them that you can't help them and they must let the process carry itself through because THEY are the ones who brought their condition on themselves. There are consequences to being fat and if you get diabetes well then you can just deal with it! There are consequences to smoking and if you get cancer you can just deal with it! Let the process carry on cause you started it!

People will grow up in a hurry in that system.

I'd prefer a world where we help people in need and don't get caught up in blaming them for their afflictions. If you get cancer I want society to help heal you. If you have a wreck I want to fix you. If a woman you care about gets pregant, I want to help her. If that means aborting a spherical clump of one thousand cells then I want to help. If it means carrying the child to term and trying to give that child a good life despite poverty, I want to help. Either way, it is not my place to decide whether a woman carries a pregnancy to term.

Rape, date rape, and statutory rape. I would assume from your comments that you believe abortion should be legal under these circumstances. But in limiting the right to choose to pregnancies resulting from non-consensual sex, you're essentially putting the burden of proof on the victim. Who exactly is supposed to regulate this?

And let's also think about forcing a woman to "bear out the consequences of a choice." If a woman makes a choice to responsibly use contraception and that contraception fails one critical time, is there any leeway for her? Let's say her partner tells her he's wearing protection, but isn't. The man is certainly more responsible in this case, but he physically cannot be made to bear out the consequences. So I find it hard to accept that she's responsible for what happens next.

It also seems to me that you're forgetting there is a human side to all of this. Nine months of pregnancy punctuated by childbirth is a heavy burden to bear for any woman, especially one who is forced to do it alone. (And that's not even getting into the decision of whether to raise the child or give it up for adoption.) Anti-choicers always seem to forget that. Imagine if someone proposed artificial insemination as a punishment for a petty crime. The "consequence" of their choice to steal would be pregnancy and childbirth. Anyone would consider that cruel and unusual punishment. Yet that's exactly what you're proposing should be the consequence for having sex. I strongly disagree.

Point being, there are too many loopholes in your position for it to be translated into law. Safe, legal, and rare is the only way to go.

I still ovulate and am sexually active, but the chances that I will conceive are slim. Should I use a contraceptive (which is very dangerous for me at my age and with my family history) because you don't want me to terminate a mass of cytoplasm in the unlikely event that I get pregnant? And even if I do, contraceptives are not 100% reliable.

OK I'll have the baby if I conceive. It will probably have Down's Syndrome and various other deforities because of my age and the meds. Also, I might not survive the delivery. Will you raise him or her because you have certain moral values? Don't worry, I use the rhythm method and hopefully this scenario will never play out.

The pill is dangerous. Condoms don't always work. But according to many people in order to have consensual sex you are obligated to conform to someone's religious beliefs.

I applaud those beliefs. Just don't force them on me.

You're not thinking this through enough jcjcjc (something I find typical of people who hold this position).  Answer some of these questions and scenarios...

For instance, imagine a situation where two people are having consensual sex and use birth control because they do not wish to start a pregnancy.  Regardless of this a no-fault accident happens and a pregnancy does occur.  So despite any negligence on the part of the women (and in fact, an active approach to avoid), you would now oblige her to bring the pregnancy to completion, infringing on her rights by making her do something she does not wish.  You call that ethical?  You call that fair and equal considering that only half the population is capable of becoming pregnant?  She should go before a judge and present the broken condom, the journal where she recorded taking the pill or the box of spermicide with the expired date she missed as evidence she has the right to an abortion?

It's not just that situation either.  You have to keep thinking more about this argument you are making.  What sort of additional legal, moral and ethical responsibilities are you placing on women for wanting to have sex as a result of your stance?  How much more of a burden are you placing on them for selecting partners, for understanding and knowing the motives, emotions, background and future of the people they have sex with?  How much more responsibility are you placing on women for planning their lives out when they are young?  How much less room for learning hard things about love, life and sex are you giving them?

Or even what about rape?  Why do you stop at having a legal and moral responsibility to give birth just because the women wanted to have sex?  Why does an unborn fetus in a 14 year old girl have fewer rights just because it was put there by her uncle?

Are you beginning to see how INSANE your belief is yet?

How can the contents of a women's uterus have more rights then the women with the uterus?  How far does this go?  Do her eggs have more rights then she does?  She should even be allowed to use birth control at all because it restricts the rights of her eggs to turn into a fetus?  Does the contents of a man's ball-sac have more rights then a woman too?  Like a fetus, sperm too has the "potential" to be a living human being, its just a few steps behind.  If you are looking for a law that requires you to have access to spread your sperm so it can fulfill its rights, keep dreaming bub.

Do you have a right to be born?  Should we require that pregnant women abide by certain laws while pregnant, such as not smoking, drinking or forcing them to attend Lamaze classes?  What would the punishment be if its found out that a miscarriage was the result of a failure to comply with these?  Murder 1 or 2? 5 years or life?  Death penalty maybe, considering how helpless the victim was?  Why stop there?  How about requiring that all pregnant women spend 30 minutes a day on playing classical music, reading Shakespeare and just talking to their womb each.  Think of the loss of things in their life an unborn fetus might experience if denied these things.  What a terrible infringement on its rights!  Its unethical and immoral, so of course, there needs to be a punishment!  Why won't somebody please think of the unborn children?!?

If you still haven't figured out the answer yet, the truth is of course, that you DO NOT have a right to be born.  Period.  What you really need to do is remember this fact every time mother's day comes around.

You know, at least the "Right-To-Be-A-Birthing-Machine" crowd could do would be to devote even a fraction of the energy they expend protesting abortion to pushing for important things that could begin to make the responsibility of having children even remotely fair for women in the first place.  Things like the right to good health and prenatal care, more money for pursuing and enforcing paternal responsibility, reducing domestic abuse, access to day care, mandatory employer child care leave (not just maternity leave), equal pay for equal work and on and on and on.  Of course, we never see them outside of clinics with signs like that, though.  We do not live in an equal society and in the case of gender you are just looking to make things worse.  I think that if you dropped the abortion stance for awhile and starting really working towards some of these other goals first your mind will change.

Nobody likes abortions.  It is quite often only the lesser between two difficult choices for the women who have to make it, and who are often only faced with the choice because they were a bit too innocence or trusting in the first place.  I think the argument of forcing "people to grow up enough to confront the consequences of their actions" is brutally harsh, specifically unfair to women and hypocritical. The truth is that they available of that choice makes things better for women and society as a whole.  

That is your opinion. Is a woman obligated to follow through with the birth of a child with a serious genetic defect? How about a birth that threatens her life? Her health? Her ability to have additional children?

Is a sixteen year old obligated to have a child because of a poor moral decision to have sex? How about a thirteen year old?

One of the key roles of society is ensuring that people follow through on moral, ethical, and legal obligations.

Defining what those obligations are and how punitive the requirement to follow through on it is exactly what the debate is about. Who makes the decision is the bottom line. Is any politician or group of politicians smart enough to write legislation that makes the decision for all women under all circumstances?

Phone, fax, and email addresses for the Judiciary Committee.

Write a letter to the editor of your local paper and contact your congress critters -- all with one click.

People for the American Way has collected over 60,000 signatures to send to the Senate, please add yours:Save the Court Petition

Also: Moveon.org gathered 300,000 signatures in their Anti-Alito petition -- in a day! They're shooting for 500,000:

Move On.org's stop Alito petition
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Democratic Party's Reject Alito Petition

Pretty warped but it becomes easier to justify doing anything to stop you because I just turned you into a monster

Choice Yes! Forced Childbearing No!

Note: Forced Childbearing (see gina below) or Forced Childbirth both work well IMHO. I prefer childbearing because it brings home that we are talking about 9 months of being forced to do what you are told instead of just the few hours of childbirth itself.

This is shown by statistical correlations that do not vary significantly, whether abortions are taken in cases of rape or threat to women's or fetal health or they are taken in other cases, commonly seen as more a matter of choice.

The counter-example you are trying to insert here is actually quite consistent with these data.

Does anyone seriously believe that abortions of female fetuses in societies like India's are a matter of free choice, devoid of coercion designed to control women's bodies?

If so, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.  And here's the beauty part: Everyone who's ever sold has done so at a profit.

And I would assert that the problem there is misogyny/sexism. Girls/women are undervalued. That would NOT be solved by further restricting women's liberty and personal autonomy.

Back to sex ed for you TTYD.

if we accept the Burkean idea that people are conditioned to accept right and wrong by the legal and cultural environment in which they grow up, proscribing a behaviour with the full force of law will entail a society in which such behaviour is less likely to occur.

Burke's theory does not appear to have worked for the war on drugs any more than it worked for Prohibition. Why do you believe it will work for controlling sexual behavior?

the large majority of people who get abortions do so because they imagine that their disempowerment will translate into a failed, struggling lifestyle of starvation and lack for their children or because, even more tragically, they look at their bank statements and realise that they are so poor that the one time cost of having an abortion is something that they can bear, but going through pregnancy and then raising a child is something that they just cannot do. It is quite possibly one of the most tragic things that people go through. No human being should ever be forced to go through this kind of cost-benefit analysis.

hmmmmm. You have a very low opinion of women TTYD. Are the women in your family that shallow and superficial or is it just all of those "other" women?

We do not stop abortion by stopping the legal supply of it. This is a war that can only be won in the hearts and minds of men.

What the hell does that mean? At least you admit that you are waging a war on women. You may wish to explain how a war on women can only be won in the hearts and minds of men. That is as mysogynist a statement as I have ever heard or read.

It is, indeed, a war against women that's going on here. Or rather, as I say elsewhere, a war against femininity.  It's quite natural for self-hating men (frightened and disgusted with their own femininity) to hate women as well.