Take the quiz: where do you stand on abortion?
This quiz isn’t designed to convince anyone to become pro-life. It’s just designed to show what you currently are: strongly pro-life, lean pro-life, lean pro-choice, or strongly pro-choice. You might be surprised! We’ve made it as neutral as possible, so please feel free to share with your friends.
More information about public opinion polling can be found here, and more information about the reasons abortions are done can be found here (see page 4 in particular).
After affirming that I support safe legal abortion for all girls and women, as and when needed – and the pregnant girl/woman is the only person who can decide when needed – and of course paid for out of public funds! – I then added that I am 100% pro-life.
After all, anyone who opposes safe legal abortion for girls/women is obviously anti-life: they want girls and women to die in illegal abortions or to die of pregnancy/childbirth complications. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for teenage girls worldwide: think how many lives safe legal abortion could save!
Anyone who opposes public funds being used to pay for safe legal abortions for poor women, is obviously anti-life: they support clinics like Kermit Gosnell's.
So you're 100% pro-life – as long as that life belongs to someone who has been born. Would that be an accurate clarification?
Something tells me your comment is tongue-in-cheek.
All hail and glorify the almighty abortion if not suffer the consequences of a guilt trip because we all know that abortion either resolves the very issue that led to the abortion and/or is the best health precaution for pregnancy prevention. Oh, wait……..
Not at all.
I am 100% prolife – which is to say, unlike most prolifers, I am 100% in favour of providing free reproductive healthcare to everyone, regardless of age or ability to pay: including all pre-natal, childbirth, and post-natal care, naturally.
I'm 100% against forcing girls and women through pregnancy and childbirth against their will. Anyone who supports forcing girls & women through pregnancy & childbirth against their will (that is, anyone who is against free provision of safe legal abortion) is clearly not "100% pro life" as doing so is a leading cause of death in any country where it is successfully imposed by law.
Just a sardonic reflection on how pro-death most "prolife" policies are.
Something tells me your comment is tongue-in-cheek. 😉
Your beef is with the people who make teenage girls pregnant. Know the thing you're fighting. Fight whatever makes girls pregnant before they're ready. Also, if abortion were made accessible to all the teenage girls you refer to, then the death rate would stay steady as the children would all be dead instead of their moms. In the pro-life view, the kids matter as much as their moms. End cultural problems that lead to teenagers getting pregnant. The pro-life view is also distinguished by an unshakeable conviction that no woman, IN HER RIGHT MIND, would want to kill her unborn kid. They do it out of desperation and neglect. They do not do it because it is their "will". You are pro-choice if you believe that any woman truly wants to kill her kid. That is definitely a clear delineation between the pro-choice and pro-life stances.
I feel like your Question 6 has lots of nuance on the pro-life side. You have three different options for "support informed consent" and only one "oppose informed consent" option.
If you have a response that starts with "I trust that doctors will give all the information anyway, so…", and you're trying to be fair, you should either have two versions ("What's the harm in requiring it?" and "What's the use in requiring it?") or end with "So I don't particularly care".
If you weren't confined to four multiple-choice options, I also would have liked a choice of, "Informed consent laws often include outdated or disproven information such as the abortion/breast cancer link; I would support an informed consent law that showed the true risks of abortion and pregnancy based on current medical science" or "I would support a law that mandated that this information be offered to the person seeking abortion but not a law that required her to listen to it."
Your beef is with the people who make teenage girls pregnant.
Well, yes, mostly. Sometimes teenage girls get pregnant from having consensual sex with teenage boys – and when it's two kids of equivalent age, there's no blame either side, except to the people who ensured those two kids either did not know or were not able to use contraception – all the people who preach abstinence-only sex ed or who tell kids they should wait til they get married: I have a beef with them: all of the people who de-fund clinics where teenage girls can get contraception – I have a beef with them: all the people who prevent free distribution of free condoms in schools – I have a beef with them.
Know the thing you're fighting. Fight whatever makes girls pregnant before they're ready.
Absolutely. All kids, everywhere, should learn as early as possible that they shouldn't have heterosexual intercourse without using contraception, and that it's entirely up to them when and where they have sex, and that it's entirely up to the girl or the woman when and if she's going to get pregnant/have a baby. That's what I'll fight for.
Anyone who opposes that, is plainly fighting to ensure more teenage pregnancies and therefore more teenage abortions.
The pro-life view is also distinguished by an unshakeable conviction that no woman, IN HER RIGHT MIND, would want to kill her unborn kid.
Yep. The prolife view IS distinguished by the unshakeable conviction that women are crazy inferior people not to be trusted with big, important decisions like when to have kids.
It's not a case of "wanting to kill a kid", its a case of not wanting to be pregnant.
Unless of course you are insinuating that women who abort are sociopathic child killers?
That's a fair criticism. I worded it the way I did because Gallup shows a majority of pro-choicers support informed consent. But I've just changed it to what you suggested, "so I don't particularly care."
Why is it always painted that pro-lifers want to "force women to be pregnant". I don't want to force anyone to be pregnant. I'm just saying that once you ARE pregnant, you shouldn't be able to dismember and kill your child.
When did it become okay to kill someone because they are inconvenient to you?
Forcing women to remain pregnant against their will.
Pregnancy is not easy. It is an intimate bodily violation if you do not want it inside you, and it can end in death and disability.
Labour and birth are so painful that if induced by other means they would be classified as torture.
Because prolifers want to force girls and women through pregnancy and childbirth against their will. Prolifers don't want safe legal abortion to be freely available. Prolifers dehumanise and monster girls and women who have abortions, talking of them as if they were serial-killer villais from horror movies.
When did it become okay to do that to other human beings? Forced use of another human being is always, always wrong. Rape, slavery, "prolife" – all vilely immoral.
Apparently I lean pro-life. Good to know.
that is simply false and a lie. It is pro life group that have healing groups for post abortion women who in some cases suffer severe depression after an abortion. It is dishonest to say that pro life groups dehumanize these women and girls when they are the ones helping with the consequences of abortion. Also I don't see pro choicers having any healing groups for abortion survivors.
This is just a test comment…
You are making broad, and very untrue, assumptions. You think that if you make us look like we are "forcing pregnancy on a woman", people will ignore the fact that this woman has a living, breathing human child inside of her. You think that if you can make being pregnant look horrible and debilitating, your cries will drown out the fact that abortion is dismembering and killing.
Fact: Pregnancy CAN cause injury to a person. Abortion WILL kill a person.
Fact: Pro-lifers do not force women to get pregnant. That whole idea is completely ludacris. We do not stand outside of bedroom windows yelling at women that they have to get pregnant. We are not trying to create a law that forces every woman to have sex with a man and conceive.
Fact: Once a woman is pregnant, ALREADY pregnant, we believe it is wrong to kill that child.
My results are……..
"You support abortion on demand, without apology, and with public funds."
I'm totally pro-life, but I'm still against informed consent laws on principle. If people have a certain right, they should have that right regardless of age … that's the whole reason I'm pro-life in the first place.
Yes. Pregnancy/child birth can cause all of this. I know because I have had a child.But if you are going to list all complications and side effects of pregnancy, you need to be equally aware of all the side effects that abortion has on the mother. And on the child. Is it that you don't think the baby is a living human child, or that you don't care?The bottom line is that there is no justification for killing. None. Women are free to do whatever they want with their bodies.Inside and outside of the womb. Why do you discriminate against women just because they cannot speak for themselves yet. Bodily autonomy exists for both parties. Both women have rights. I am not trying to force anyone to do anything. I am trying to give voice to the person who does not have one. Stand up for the weak. The inability speak for herself does not give you the right to oppress her.
The prenate does not have the right to occupy and use the body of the woman for its own consent. It does not have the right to threaten her, by its very presence, with bodily harm, torture and death.
Calling women who've had an abortion "abortion survivors" is insulting. Most women feel relief after an abortion.
abortion survivors are the children who survived the abortion. THe women are also counseled to come to terms with their abortion and go through healing. Again not a service Planned Parenthood offers
I find it kind of sad that you did not know about children who actually survived their abortion. Here is some info http://www.theabortionsurvivors.com/
and the help for the women http://hopeafterabortion.com/
So by your own admission, you have no problem with a baby being harmed, tortured and killed, so long as the woman isn't "threatened" with the minute chance of being harmed. Why are you okay with one woman being discriminated against but not the other?
I'm a woman. That does not give me a right to the bodies of other women. Even if my very life depends upon it.
And embryos can't feel pain. Women can. Unlike embryos women have functional brains. They can feel. An embryo isn't even sentient.
Wow, that is completely false information. Is this why you think it's okay to kill children? That would make sense lot of sense. It has been scientifically proven that unborn children can feel pain. And who gets to decide what makes someone "okay to kill"?
If someone is mentally handicapped, can someone kill that person just because they decide that that person is in the "able to kill" category? Scientifically, children aren't fully conscious until they are 6 months old. Does that mean if I decide my 2 month old is too much work and is causing me bodily harm from lack of sleep, I can throw her in a dumpster. Why do you get to decide whose life is worthy of rights and whose isn't?
The answer is– you don't. ALL humans deserve the SAME rights, no matter their color, sex, sexual preference or level of development. To deny these rights to any person is just wrong. You discriminate against a whole group of people because they aren't the same as you. Because they don't fit your specifications of who deserves rights.
I refuse to continue communicate with someone who would deny an entire class of people their basic human rights.
Kindly explain how a fetus can feel pain if consciousness aka sentience is not possible until 6 months AFTER birth.
Yes, all humans do deserve the same rights, and there exists no right to exploit the body of another for your own benefit. An embryo has no more right to my body than a 5 yo or Stephen Hawking. Even if their very lives depend upon it.
The vast majority of abortions occur in the first trimester so not sure what you are talking about.
PP offers pre-abortion counseling as well as a plethora of other health care services.
good to know, if you go to PP and decide NOT to have an abortion, will they give you diapers, refer you to daycare, even pay your rent? Because crisis pregnancy centers do.
what I am talking about is fetuses who survive the abortion. Not too hard to understand.
Yes, PP will do all that. They will even hook a woman up with adoption services.
http://www.abortionfacts.com/facts/13
Look guys, we can keep going down this rabbit hole of whose rights mean more. I could go on about how women choose to have unprotected sex, knowing the consequences and that in doing so, she now has the consequence of a baby to deal with for 9 months. If it was a choice between the mother getting ripped to pieces or the baby, I wouldn't be having this conversation. Then you will go on about how women shouldn't be punished for having sex and that I'm forcing them to be pregnant again.
When it comes down to it, neither of us is going to change our minds in one conversation. I don't expect you to all of a sudden have an epiphany and become pro-life.
We are both people whose lives have been affected by abortion in one way or another. I know what it is to be a 20yo college student with an unexpected pregnancy. I know that abortion was the first thing that crossed my mind. It seemed like the easiest way to fix my problem. But after a while, I realized that an abortion won't sudden make me a "non-mother". It makes me the mother of a dead child.
Everyone has very strong feelings on this. I get that you may have been affected by abortion in a similar way. I get that you see pro-lifers as condemning your decision and making you out to be a murderer. That's not how I feel at all. I have talked with hundreds of post-abortive women, and they are not discussing bodily autonomy and the human rights issue. I have never met a post-abortive woman on either side of the fence who didn't regret her abortion in some way. Most of them have depression and a deep feeling of emptiness and loss.
You want to protect women in your own way, but please realize that I do too. We both want to change abortion laws and practices in the way that we see is best for everyone involved.
I just want to thank you for standing up for what you believe in and for your heart in wanting to help people. I care about moms just as much as their babies. My heart hurts for them. There are so many post-abortion groups online. http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org is a great one, with testimonies from real women. I hope that if anything, someone reading this can go there and get the post-abortive help they need.
Tis very telling that your first paragraph speaks of pregnancy being punishment for women who have the wrong kind of sex.
What kind of society do we live in that if someone makes a bad choice, they are allowed to kill an innocent party to get out of the consequences. Your arguments are full of pro abortion buzz words and cold/clinical determinations that the majority of society does not agree with. You seem to believe that women are owed everything and what their comfort trumps everyone's rights, even the right to life. There is no arguing with someone who lives in a moral vacuum.
So, in short, you believe in forcing girls and women through pregnancy and childbirth against their will. Why argue with that? Force is what prolifers believe in.
"Informed consent" laws amount to state interference in the relationship between parent and child. If the girl trusts her parents enough to tell them she's pregnant and she needs an abortion, the law doesn't need to force her to do that. If the girl doesn't trust her parents enough to tell them she's pregnant/needs an abortion, well, whether she's right or wrong not to trust them, that failure of trust is their fault, and the law shouldn't force the girl to have to tell her parents when they've failed to be trustworthy parents.
So I can use your body without consent should my very life depend upon it?
I agree that it's really wrong for laws to give adults, who already have power over children because of things like size, ability, experience, and established social status, even more explicit legal power to control their lives, bodies, and life outcomes. It makes it easier and easier for adults to mistreat children.
Do you mean the laws that make pregnant teenagers tell their parents before they have an abortion induced, or the laws that make abortion providers read off a health warning written by a political committee before inducing abortion?
"When did it become okay to do that to other human beings? Forced use of
another human being is always, always wrong. Rape, slavery, "prolife" –
all vilely immoral."
Are you opposed to the idea of having a draft in *all* cases (including in historical and hypothetical cases) as well?
Are you opposed to the idea of having a draft in *all* cases (including in historical and hypothetical cases) as well?
Yes, I am. I am a pacifist. War is never a good response to any situation: forced military service is never an ethical thing for a government to do, any more than the death penalty is.
How about a little honesty in the pro-lifer sign on your post that says that 'abortion kills a person' and has a picture of a baby that appears to be at least a few months old, and show an accurate picture of the results of they typical abortion, which resembles some skin flakes in a petri dish, rather than a picture of an infant that is old enough that under no circumstances whatsoever would it ever be a subject for abortion, because it's already well past birth?
The problem with dishonesty, is sooner or later you're going to get called on it, and engaging in it undermines your own position in the long run.
**You think that if you make us look like we are "forcing pregnancy on a woman",**
So… if you get in the ocean voluntarily, because you enjoy swimming, then want to get out of the ocean if you see a shark, you would be just fine with my forcing you to remain in the ocean, and this would not amount to 'forcing you to be eaten by a shark' because, after all, you originally got in the ocean voluntarily.
Fact: Once you are in the ocean, ALREADY in the ocean, I believe it is wrong to starve a shark.
** this woman has a living, breathing human child inside of her.**
That's interesting. What's this 'child' breathing? Amniotic fluid? I was always taught in my college biology classes that the FETUS (not CHILD) did not breath until after birth, and obtained it's oxygen supply from the mother's bloodstream. But I'm interested in the possibility that your sad feelies might be more accurate than what my college professors had to say, because there's enormous commercial potential. Is there a way to get adults to retain this magical ability you ascribe to 'children' to breathe liquids? There's a lot of scuba companies that would pay a lot for the secret of doing that. Tell you what, you explain to me the exact means by which a 'child' supposed 'breathes' liquid, and I'll let you in for 10%
Not to mention that prior to the 5th month of pregnancy, medical science holds that the lungs of the FETUS (not child) are too undeveloped to breath ANYTHING, even air. I'm sure a lot of smokers who are dying due to their lungs no longer functioning would be interested in the secret of how something can 'breathe' with undeveloped lungs. Can you let me in on the secret? I'll sell it to a company and let you in on another 20%.
Or is your post the usual inaccurate forced-gestationer sad-feelie nonsense?
Anyone who needs a quiz to know their own position, would probably be too wishy-washy to maintain that position in the face of propaganda.
I mean the former. Laws that place additional restrictions based on age.
Thanks for your comment, EdinburghEye–you inspired me to write an article: http://liveactionnews.org/nun-too-helpful-why-giving-money-to-planned-parenthood-doesnt-protect-women/
Thanks for the heads-up, Adam. I see that you not only support women having to use clinics run by the likes of Kermit Gosnell, you also like the idea of women having no choice but services provided by the likes of Timothy Liveright, hoping thus to force girls and women to give birth to babies they can't support and have to give them up to the adoption industry and never see them again.
Prolifers lack both compassion and common sense.
Thank you very much for your response.
I strongly admire your consistency in regards to this.