I really appreciate that you address the issue of control over other women.
I agree, being pro-choice is supporting the existence of options and not forcing one end on everyone. There are different answers for different people -- women who will choose to keep their babies, some who will give them up for adoption and some who will have abortions. Pro-choice means I am not making or suggesting a decision for anyone but myself should the need arise.

I'm right there with you.

You are the biggest idiot I've come across in a long time! A baby is never a "punishment" you self-involved dumb-ass! It's a gift, period. Abortions ARE murder, period. If you didn't want to get pregnant, then condoms and/or some other birth control need to be planned before you are in the situation! Murder through abortion does not equate to birth control!! And if you think you can convince anyone of this through whatever line of crap you dream up, it doesn't matter. GOD help you when you stand before HIM and answer him in bullshit semantics of why you murdered an innocent baby, especially if your answer was that you needed to go get wasted at another party where you look like the idiot that you are in front of a bunch of people that don't know who you are, much less care if you're there!

You know, I think we should make shooting a dog in the head legal. I mean, I really don't want anybody telling me what to do with my gun. It be wrong for me to tell anybody else why they shouldn't shoot their dog in the head. Of course I'm right. I really think shooting a dog in the head is a great way to save a little money, too. I mean, who wants to care for something if they don't have the money, right? How about a federal law saying dog shooting is legal? Yep. That's the ticket!

Im still on the fence about this. I think people should have choice yet at the same time I don't think you should ever kill a baby, not even before their born. However, I did like the way you put across your point. Once again, however, what a random post. What brought all this on tonight?

Anonymous -

You made it clear that you're anti-choice, but character attacks and appeals to god are not supporting arguments. Note how Andrea introduced premises and then used those to come to a conclusion. If you're truly out to convince people or your point of view, you should figure out how this works.

Metaphorically Speaking -

The moment women start carrying dogs to term is when I'll consider this metaphor anywhere near suitable.

Anonymous -

You made it clear that you're anti-choice, but character attacks and appeals to god are not supporting arguments. Note how Andrea introduced premises and then used those to come to a conclusion. If you're truly out to convince people or your point of view, you should figure out how this works.

Metaphorically Speaking -

The moment women start carrying dogs to term is when I'll consider this metaphor anywhere near suitable.

When you go on long, anonymous rants about sin in which you throw out hypothetical situations about standing before God and being judged, do you ever wonder if you'll ever be in that same situation, being grilled on every bullshit line you spewed in anonymous online blog comments, one after the other, with God reminding you in between each transgression, "Seriously? Did you not read that part where Jesus meets Mary Magdalene? With the stone throwing and the what not?"

You gotta love how self-righteous Anonymous is for someone who choses to remain anonymous.

And please, all you folks who dish out this self-righteous "every child is a gift!" crap are naive. Children aren't a gift, they are a RESPONSIBILITY. Isn't it more mature to admit that you can't care for a child and take subsequent action (whatever that may be)? Where's the morality in raising a human being in a known chaotic environment?

It also seems that much anti-abortion propaganda that utilizes visual depictions of abortion concern really late-term abortions, which I think even most pro-choice folks aren't necessarily comfortable with.

Where Metaphorically Speaking went wrong: Killing a puppy and not a kitten. Had it of been killing a kitten you might of had her. Clearly you don't read this site often.

Uninterestingly enough, Andrea's and my origin story are very similar, except she has an innie and I have an outie. Ultimately though, as I started to fall away from religion, I realized that it's no one's place to say what I do with my body. A person's body is the last true piece of property left in society and if you want to destroy it with drugs or a gun, I have no legal problem with that, although I may of course have an emotional one.

Further, if every life were a precious gift as some of you surmise, then God wouldn't have given the ability to Samson to kill an army with a jawbone; Cain wouldn't have killed Abel, Jezebel wouldn't have been eaten by dogs and hundreds of thousands of lives of children would have been saved in the countless wars that were persecuted on the authority of God.

What about renting The Cider House Rules sometime very soon Anonymous, Metaphorically Speaking and Catherine? Anonymous and MS are probably too busy doing volunteer work at one of their community shelters for Abused Children, putting time and money where their value system rules. Right on. As long as it's not spending a wasteful couple of hours holding gory signs on a sidewalk in front on an abortion clinic, and we all know thats no brainer easy work for a pro-lifer.

Get to work doing something meaningful for all the babies your hoping to save before you stand naked on your idea of Judgement Day, and God makes you bring one of your posters to Show and Tell, then asks you if that's all you did in your fervor of yourmisunderstanding.

@ Metaphorically Speaking... As long as it's your dog and not mine, I don't give a shit what you do with it.

Wendy, I'm confused. That's probably because it's like midnight and way to late to be talking about this stuff. But if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't need to worry, I'm o ly still on the fence because I havnt had much of an experience of this and I'll understand it better eventually.
I hope that make sense, sorry if it doesn't.

Catherine, it's more than ok if you're confused and especially admitting to it. Who isn't confused about something? It wasn't my intention to lump you in with Anonymous and MS, more that The Cider House Rules would be good material for also possibly helping you work through any confusion regarding the subject of the post. Hope you do see the film. Take care.

Good Afternoon Trolls! Wendy said it better than I ever could. All of you pulpit-pounders calling for the government to come and force THEIR choices and THEIR ideals onto MY body, why don't you STFU for a second and put this passion and zeal you have towards, oh, I dunno, caring for the millions of children already in this world who don't have enough to eat, an education or a clean place to sleep at night.

Because all of this talking and name-calling won't get you anywhere. You are steadily losing the battle against choice so why don't you worry about YOUR life and YOUR actions and not just words.

Go ahead, call me a sinner, an idiot, a whore, a bitch. Your words can't hurt me because obviously, they are all you have.

I was also brought up believing that MANY things were evil and spent many nights at my mother's direction praying for my cousins to carry their babies to term instead of aborting, and for them to marry the baby's father. What she didn't tell me was that my 3 pregnant cousins all had abusive boyfriends. One of my cousin probably shouldn't have had children, and she now has four bratty kids, all to different (abusive) men. Despite being a Christian, a mother and prolife, I honestly believe that the option of a safe abortion should be available.
Anonymous, I think you should read your Bible a bit more, God is a loving, forgiving God. He has been for a while, but perhaps you're stuck reading the Old Testament.

I am pro-choice, but I am cautiously pro-choice. What I mean when I say "cautiously" is that I do not approach the issue as if it is black-and-white. I've read quite a bit about taking the conversation away from the political (which is where it usually ends up--whether or not it should be legal) and moving it more into a social discourse. I believe that abortion should be legal, but that doesn't mean it can be treated lightly. I've had one. I went through the grief afterward. I'm glad I had that choice. But when I had my own post-abortion pregnancy scare, it was wildly different than any pre-abortion pregnancy scares I'd had. Those I approached much the same way you did--"Golly, isn't it great to know I always have the option of abortion?" When I had my post-abortion scare (the condom came off during sex), I laid in bed and cried for about an hour. I was upset because I knew what I would have to do, but it was a choice I did not want to have to make again. I was full of mixed emotions, none of which were quite so easy to define. I've known many girls who've had abortions, and they all say the same thing: it was a necessary evil. I use evil here not in the religious sense but in the sense that it was not a pleasant experience on any level. I don't write this to take issue with anybody but to simply illustrate an experience. I don't feel I can stand firmly entrenched on either side of this debate because it is so multi-faceted and emotional that I have to look at it from two different angles: what I believe politically and what I believe morally and emotionally. The two don't necessarily always have to match up. They're not even always all that clear cut.

This is not a simple issue. I believe that most people on both sides would agree about that. It saddens me that people sometimes equate "pro-choice" with "pro-abortion". I want women to have options, and the freedom to choose. I also want the number of abortions to be reduced through better education (for men and women) and wider availability of birth control, so that couples can become responsible for the risk of pregnancy together. I would hope that any woman considering abortion would do so thoughtfully and seriously, and then decide what is best for her. I have two close friends who have been raped. While neither of those rapes resulted in a pregnancy, those events made me realize that I cannot/will not decide anything this serious for another woman.

As much as I dislike these stupid arguments (East is East, West is West and neither the twain shall meet.), I have to add my two cents:

Keep your laws off my body, and keep your "Christian" rap, punk, goth, rock, music in your headphones.

No birth control is 100% effective (have you ever seen "I didn't know I was pregnant"? it illustrates the multitude of way birth control fails.)
You can't even say abstenance is only 100% effective method anymore because kids find loop holes. I alway thought the only way for abstenance only education to work is for it to extremely explict. I.e blow jobs count as sex, hand jobs count as sex, frottage counts as sex, if you pull out it still counts as sex, only having anal doesn't make you still a virgin. etc. etc.

You know, when I disagree violently with some of the crap that Andrea posts on here at least I have the guts to use my own name. Trashing her anonymously is REALLY the way to get your point across; wtg!
And I agree wholeheartedly as a mother that children are not a gift, they are a RESPONSIBILITY.

Summation:

Babies are human beings that have not yet been assigned a social security number. You may murder them as a mater of convenience.

Illegal Immigrants are human beings that have not yet been assigned a social security number. May we murder them as a matter of convenience?

The problem is that one, by by cheapening life may very well lead into the other. By the same respect, however, no one should be forced to have children they do not want. That never ends well for the child. Adoption should be pushed more than abortion, and we should push towards technology that allows the extraction of a live pre-natal baby to either a surrogate parent that wants a baby, or machinery that allows us to artificially bring it to term and put it up for adoption.

At the same time, better conception control, not birth control, should be developed.

Wendy, I understand you know. I'll look for the cider house. Thanks for telling me about it, it should help.

Oh Mr. Gall that doesn't even make sense. If we are going to talk about cheapening life then lets include the death penalty and training young men and women to kill. If killing anything at all ever is wrong then no more meat, wars, or death penalty. Even if that means we can't defend our country or help out others. No more guns for police...well no more guns period really because they are just used for killing. I guess if you just want to talk about HUMAN life than we can still eat meat and have guns for hunting but the armed forces are out.

Quit calling them babies. Nobody is for killing babies. Babies are born. Fetuses are not yet born. Calling a fetus a baby or even a pre-natal baby is like calling a child an adult or a pre-adolescent adult. If we're going to get this loose with semantics, than my room is a graveyard for billions of pre-conception babies I smothered with a sock or left to starve to death on the fly of my boxers. With that kind of murder-per-square-foot ratio, I'm pretty sure I've got Pol Pot beat. It's cool if you believe life starts at conception, but babies don't start at conception, babies start at BIRTH.

Andrea, Thank you for sharing this experience. I've recently moved away from a religious upbringing and like you I now believe in pro-choice. Thank you for having the courage to share something like this. It means a lot to me and has helped me make better decisions for myself, not for God.

This article sickens me. I myself was a baby conceived in college. Abortions is personal to me, it could've happened to me if God hadn't given me to a mother who had a staunch catholic upbringing that had taught her that abortion is wrong. Sure, there were setbacks, but with perseverance and having your head on straight (which you obviously don't) you can get through those things. Did you know that women who have abortions are more likely to suffer depression, have miscarriages later in life and be barren. Also, the person who suggested contraceptives needs to go back to high school--freshman year to be exact, where they outline the necessities to be alive, a fetus at the moment of conception meets all these qualifications, thus birth control, ect. is murder.

How funny. I was also a baby conceived in college. My father's family was staunchly Catholic, while my mother's was a little less strict. My mother was 19; she briefly considered abortion, going as far as to look up clinics in the phone book.
I've enjoyed living, but I am very glad that she had the choice. Times were tough and I know that raising me chained her to an violent relationship for several years and effectively ruined her career.
People bring up the argument of "how would you have felt if your mother aborted you?" Well, I would never have developed the cognitive ability to care about it. It's not like I'd fade out of existence Back to the Future style. My mother's life would have likely turned out very differently. She'd have probably ended up with a different man and had children with him, children who will never come to be now.

It is not that I am not pro-choice. I am pro-choice, and anti-moron. If you have an abortion because it just feels better to have sex without a condom...if you choose to have an abortion because sex orgies are just too much fun to worry about birth control... you might, no scratch that you ARE a moron. I realize those are extremes. They are however just the latest in reasons I have heard. The problem tends to be that because the choice is there, people take it...regardless of how right it was. I think we should just make it illegal for stupid people to ever have sex and that might just solve most of the issues between the pro-life and pro-choice camps.