I Am Pro Choice - Forum & Chat Board | I'm pro choice , but slowly changing my mind

I have been pro-choice as long as I can remember. Until recently, I'm not trying to tell women what to do with their bodies, but I am saying try to be responsible before you get pregnant. I have always practiced safe sex and am not and have never been pregnant. Same for all my friends who practice safe sex. I looked at the number of abortions in America and it's ridiculous. Those are not all cases of rape/******. I have met many women who just use it as birth control. That part of abortion makes me angry. I used to think that it was just a few cells, but truthfully those cells have a heartbeat and fingers and toes pretty early on. To me that is a person. I know I'm probably going to get a lot of slack for this, but really where is the personal responsibility? I am still pro-choice for the sake of womens health. But really I'm tired of people taking the easy way out of everything. I know many people don't see it as a baby, hell I didn't even view it as a baby, but it is. Heartbeats don't lie. If there's a heartbeat there is life. People should know that at least. If you're going to end a life then please be responsible in the future and try not to get pregnant over and over again, because that is just laziness

Missing I understand your viewpoint completely, I see where you are coming from.  But pro-choice is not looking at the majority and assuming that they are all lazy and not responsible just because you have met a few women who you felt only used it as a primary and sole form of birth control... The true number of women that do this are very very few. The majority have had either faulty birth control, or bad sex education and resources.  Who could blame someone for not being able to recieve ALL the things they need to be fully knowledgable and prepared (our youth for example)   Abstinence only education is failing horribly in our schools and society.  Our courts are failing our youth by not allowing them the rights and abilities to choose their own birth control on their own when they are at the age of consent!! IF we fix this we have less parents pushing their kids to make a decsion they shouldn't have had to make in the first place due to faulty education and resources.CORRECTION: WE WONT HAVE PARENTS FORCING THEIR CHILD TO ENDURE SUCH A THING AS ABORTION BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO RAISE THEM AS THEY SEE FIT. IF we fix this we will have a lot lower of a rate of abortions because more people will be better informed, better prepared etc etc etc... It all comes down to education and resources available... MOST are not irresponsible, many just don't know or have the access to the knowledge and services they need while others have it fail them completely prior to their circumstance! No matter what its a choice they live with forever.  It is a choice that is NOT easy to make for most.  It is debated, it is painful, It is something that no one involved will ever forget. Our society deserves better than to be judged for things that are out of their control because of dumb laws and restraints on education! 

I used to believe that. I used to think that they just don't know any better. The truth is they don't care. I'm not trying to pick a fight with you, but kids today know more about sex than I do and I'm almost 25 years old. I really used to go on and on about how we needed to educate our youth about sex. I even started a group. Over the years really researching it I realize these women and teens know how to protect themselves they just don't. Probably because of peer pressure or being intoxicated at the time. Or because they have the mentality it can't happen to me. Every year at minimum a million abortions are performed in the United States. Are you telling me even half of those women have no idea what safe sex is? I know not all women report their rapes to authorities, yet still in 2007 only 90,427 rapes were reported. I know that number is probably a little higher but no where near a million. Thats assuming every woman who got raped got pregnant. Like I said I'm still pro-choice but only for the health of the women. Their irresponsibilty should not cost them their health. I just wish they would be more responsible with their bodies. There are things like HIV, Syphillis, HPV ( leading cause cervical cancer) and many more STDS. Getting pregnant is far from the worst thing that can happen from having unprotected sex. I'm not a far right conservative or anything like that. I'm just a person who has stopped making excuses for others. Especially when making excuses for them just seems to add to the problem.

there is a heart beat before there is a brain, your consciousness is in your brain, not your heart.

you are right, there are the irresposible few who misuse abortion rights, but that does not mean everyones right to choose should be taken away. People are simply misinformed, I believe people should be taught more about abortions, pregnancy and development of the foetus in schools, on TV etc. There just isnt enough focus on it.

If people have that mentality its because they ARE undereducated in some form or another. Im not from america and I dont know british statistics or any other countrys but there are a lot of people in just one country (Over 6 billion ppl in the world, over pop. by about 2-3 billion), try looking at percentages insted of numbers?

I'm just tired of the excuses. People know what they're doing. People know right from wrong. The sole benefit for medically performed abortions is that the mom (well would have been mom) will walk away with her health intact. As for abortion being something good it's not. I'm not even a christian. I'm not some right wing nut protesting abortions. I'm just someone who has become more educated about it. It's really sad and disgusting that this has become a popular form of birthcontrol. Like these women say," It's my body". You think someone who cares so much about what can and can't happen to "Their body" would take a little more precaution before jumping into bed. Getting pregnant is the least of ones worries when the protection fails. Whats even more disgusting than the abortion rate in this country is the rate of STD's. For some reason I associate the two with unprotected sex. It all goes hand in hand.

Tsk tsk, how judgemental.  Behind each abortion there is a story.  A very SMALL percentage of women having abortions do so as a form of birth control, and I agree that is unacceptable.  However, the vast majority do so for other reasons, many of which are personal that someone outside the situation could never understand.

I got pregnant despite being on the pill & taking it faithfully at the same time everyday.  How is that being irresponsible? 

How lucky for you that your safe sex practices have never failed.  And how lucky you are not to have ever discovered you're pregnant when you took every precaution to prevent that from happening.

Were both of you using protection? Just curious.

Who cares about excuses?

13th Amendment says she has the right to be free of enslavment, and may use lethal force to protect that right.

What excuses are needed?

"I don't want to" is all that is required of a FREE woman!

Again, it is about choice, and it doesn't matter how many forms of birth control one uses, sometimes it fails. Mulitple forms FAIL. It happens, body chemistry can react differently to different medications. If one wants to lower the rate of women who are forced to choose then one must support open access for all, open access for those who are at the age of consent. Our youth are being failed, and knowledge is a BIG problem so "knowing what their doing" isn't even an argument against my statements here. They don't know what an STD is past the forefront symptoms.  Many don't know about the kinds of death are associated with STDs and all of them who are under the age of 18 do NOT have the right to choose their form of birth control without parental consent.  If society wants to look at abortion as a "problem" then society needs to get off its *** and start educating the kids! more knowledgable and prepared kids creates knowledgeable and prepared adults. I don't believe abortion is a "problem", it is a choice that every woman should be able to make.  Young women to older women, it doesn't matter, if one is age of consent they should be allowed to recieve the proper health care. If parents saw wanting to have sex as the normal and healthy thing that it IS, we would have a lot less confused and uninformed young people growing into their adulthood still clueless. Why fight the fact that it is normal to want to do something we were engineered to do? The only difference is that kids were forced to endure a longer childhood in today's society because they had more time to grow up because people began living longer with the increase in medical care technology. Sex is a normal thing, it is apart of our everyday lives, we shouldnt be hiding it behind a big curtain for people to be confused about.  more knowledge = a more prepared generation = a more knowledgable and prepared society. Choice is a choice regardless, and the freedom to choose for oneself should NEVER be violated with legislation taking away that right. If one doesn't want to be a parent, they have every right, if one doesn't want to undergo a pregnancy they have every right to make that choice. If they want to choose to begin taking the pill they should have that right regardless of parental consent as long as they are legally at the age of consent. It is unfair and unjust to keep our people unprepared and uninformed. I think these are the things you need to think about missing if you want to truly understand what is going on with our society and how to "fix the problem" you feel is illegal. you have the choice to choose for yourself how you feel about abortion, so why shouldn't someone else. Why do you feel entitled to choose what I beleive?

I have had birth control fail on me and yes we were both using protection

and yes I had an abortion

I knew I could not take care of a child and I knew it would be irresponsible for me to bring a child into this world who could have multiple problems (I was on the pill and drinking at the time)

what I did was responsible

and no ones business what I did with my body but mine

and no one has to live with my choice but me