From: L645219@LMSC5.IS.LMSC.LOCKHEED.COM
Subject: Unwanted Pregnancies
Organization: Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, Inc.
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 92 22:38:23 GMT

------------------------- Original Article -------------------------
If a pregnancy is unwanted-steps should be taken beforehand to prevent it.
if i don't want to get caught for drunk driving, i'm not about to take a few
drinks then *hope* i don't get pulled over. that's irresponsible behavior just
as is having unprotected sex if pregnancy isn't desired. to me it's clear-----
when people talk about pro-choice, the real choice should be whether or not to
have risky sex in the first place,not whether or not to murder a fetus. respon-
sible adults don't run out and have abortions just because it's a convenient
form of birth control.





In <1992Nov17.171306.1666@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> psmith@iies.ecn.purdue.edu (Paul
>In article <1992Nov17.162439.18162@nas.nasa.gov> dking@raul.nas.nasa.gov (Dan K
>>
>>Care to elaborate on how abortion is a societal problem.  If anything
>>I would say the reverse.  The forced continuation of un-wanted pregnancy
>>is a much larger societal problem.  Many of these forced pregnancies you
>>wish to force women through will require a large amount of societal
>>help in being raised.  Also by denying women reproductive freedom you
>>are denying them any chance at equality.  This denies 50% of society
>>a fair shot which is a societal problem.
>
>Well, lets start with your premise: there are more unwanted pregnancies
>than abortions (which is the "larger problem"?).

No, Dan said that the *forced continuation* of unwanted pregnancy is a
larger problem.

>Give that ~1.5M abortions occur in the US alone each year (since RvW),
>and we don't know how many "unwanted pregnancies" are carried to term

Maybe *you* don't know, but the statistics *are* out there.  In fact, they've
been posted here (t.a) more than once.

>I am simply advocating that men and women should not have sex if they
>don't want a baby at that time,

Advocate it all you like, but pardon me if I ignore you.

>but if they do have sex then they should be
>prepared to, at the least, give that child up for adoption.

Seems like a responsible decision to make if they have a child they don't want.
I think a more responsible decision would be to get an abortion so that there
is no unwanted child in the first place.

>That *WAS
>THE ORIGINAL QUESTION* - "adoption is a viable alternative to raising the
>child, so what is a viable alternative to pregnancy".  That viable
>alternative is abstinence.

Nope - abstinence is an alternative to having sex (and not a viable one, as
far as I'm concerned).  It's *not* an alternative to abortion, which is a
method of terminating an *existing* pregnancy.  Clearly it's too late to be
considering abstinence at that point.

>And that is all I'm saying.  I was not saying that abstinence is an
>alternative to abortion.  I'm simply saying that abstinence is a
>resonable behavior to expect from two people to *prevent* a so-called
>"unwanted pregnancy".

Use of contraceptives is a much more reasonable behavior, since it doesn't
require abstinence from sex, which can really be a lot of fun.

>You seem like you might know what you will do to
>protect rights and freedoms, which I applaud, but what will *you* do to
>protect a child?

I'll do lots to protect a child, including protecting her rights to not
be forced to remain pregnant against her will.
--
Larry Margolis, MARGOLI@YKTVMV (Bitnet), margoli@watson.IBM.com (Internet)

Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh