From: cj@eno.wpd.sgi.com (C.J. Silverio)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Another good reason not to vote for Bush
Date: 4 Sep 92 21:06:01 GMT
Reply-To: cj@sgi.com
Organization: SGI TechPubs


In article <5013@news.duke.edu>, eyc@acpub.duke.edu writes:
|cj@sgi.com (C J Silverio) writes:
|%1. A teenager (say, a 14-year-old) finds out she's pregnant.
|%   Should she abort, stay in school, and go on to college?
|%   Or should she drop out?
|Of course, we can also ask, should her parents know?

This is a totally separate issue from the question of whether
obtaining an abortion is responsible in this situation.  If
you like, we can talk about it in another thread.

|%2. A married couple has two children already.  He's just been
|%   laid off.  She discovers that she's pregnant, even though
|%   they've been using birth control.  They depend on her
|%   paycheck, and are barely getting by now.
|Then why are they still having sex if there are things in their lives
|that obviously have a higher priority?

Are you an adult?  Are you sexually experienced?  Are you
in a relationship or marriage right now?  Pardon the personal
questions, but if you've actually been in a relationship, you
won't have to ask this question.  We've heard this reasoning
before from people who have turned out to be young & sexually
inexperienced.  They usually get laughed at.  

But I will take you seriously, and give you a straight answer:

- The risk of pregnancy is significantly reduced by the use of
  birth control.  People are content to take much greater risks
  when they cross the street or drive a car.
- Maintaining the relationship is important.  Sexual intimacy,
  for normal healthy adults, is a part of a close relationship.
- Aside from emotional issues, healthy adults experience a
  physical sexual drive.

[...]
|%Abortion is a responsible choice in all of the scenarios I
|%describe above.  I'd say it's probably the *only* responsible
|%choice in the third.  There are other possibilities in the
|%first two.  I leave the choice to the woman involved, though--
|%she's the only person able to assess her circumstances and
|%decide what's best for her.

[...]
|A classmate of mine recently had a baby (I assume unplanned) and she is
|still taking some of the most difficult classes here. She is still among
|the top 5 people in my major in my graduating class. She admits it's not
|easy, but she and her husband (pregnancy came before marriage) are
|prioritizing their lives.

Good luck to her!  Her action, though, would lose meaning for me
if the gov't were to mandate it.  Self-sacrifice isn't
praiseworthy if it's required of everyone.

|%I prefer to keep government OUT of private lives.
|What we all want is government to respect our right to privacy,
|but with rights -- to say it again -- come responsibilities.
|Granting the "right to choose (to have or not an abortion)" must
|mean there are responsibilities associated. What
|responsibilities are accorded to this "right to choose," as we
|have legal abortions now for the past 20 years?  

I'm not quite certain what your last question means.

Women who find themselves pregnant have a number of choices they
can make.  Some women take no active part in their pregnancies 
until they go into labor.  Are these women taking responsibility
for their situation?

A woman who gets an abortion has taken action, has shown herself
in control of her situation.  She has to find a clinic, get a
pregnancy test, assess her situation, make a decision to get an
abortion, take care of financing the abortion, schedule an
appointment, and go through the procedure.  How is it
irresponsible to say, "I can't successfully cope with a child
right now"?

When people talk about abortion being "evading responsibility",
I suspect them of really saying:  pregnancy is punishment for
sex, and women are trying to evade their punishment.  This is
probably not what you mean.

A situation with some parallels:  Consider a middle-aged man with
heart disease.  He got his heart disease from a lifetime of
smoking, eating fatty red meat, and sedentary habits.  If this
man gets open heart surgery to fix his condition, is he somehow
behaving irresponsibly?  Is he trying to weasel out of facing 
up to the consequences of 25 years of bad habits?

---
cj@eno.wpd.sgi.com      C J Silverio/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
"Distinctions of this kind are interesting because they notify us
about the limits of our empathy."  --Brian Eno