88% of abortions occur in the first trimester. Almost NONE, relatively speaking (1.5%), occur in the third. Those situations are almost strictly life of the mother, or a grave birth defect that precludes the ability for the child to even have a modicum of a functional life. Many late-term abortions, are, in fact, performed on patients who WANT the baby. Furthermore, there are FOUR doctors left in the entire country who even perform this procedure (because at least two of the others were assassinated). The idea that women are just changing their mind after 7 or 8 months of carrying a baby and then deciding on a whim to terminate the pregnancy is complete myth.
First, yes, the concept of designer babies is a problem. Not because it results in "better" children (which is debatable, but if it resulted in smarter human beings that might not be a bad thing), but because those kinds of services would most likely only be available to those who can afford it, meaning you know that thing in Skyrim where you can enchant an item to boost your Alchemy, and then use your boosted Alchemy to make a potion that boosts your Enchanting, and then make an item that boosts Alchemy even more? It would be like that, but only for the exorbitantly wealthy.
In fifty years we'd be talking about "Designer Privilege", and we'd be right to do so.
Diagnostic screenings for aptitude have the same issue: they'd most likely only be available to those who can afford the tests.
But all else being equal, it really depends on the fundamental question: If the zygote is a human being, it's wrong to have an abortion on the basis of genetic aptitude. On the other hand, if the zygote is not yet a human being, then wouldn't you want your child to have the best advantages you can give them? (And I say this as someone who was once a zygote, as someone who's had his fair share of problems that were more than likely genetic.)
That's the question, and it's an important one, on both sides of the issue.
In the end, that's why I'm pro-choice. I don't think I'm equipped to make that call on behalf of every woman in the world, one way or the other. I would much rather live in a world where abortion wasn't a necessity for anyone, for any reason. But given that the world I live in isn't that one, I'd rather people have the choice to make the decision for themselves.
Hm, checking my privilege: if you can afford a house in Solitude, Whiterun, AND Windhelm (or if you refer to any one of them as "my crafting house"), you may be part of the problem.
I'm not saying this doesn't take place, but I think the idea that people would (or are) getting abortions as some sort of eugenic exercise is vastly overstated. Most abortions take place for a very simple reason. A young woman isn't ready (or doesn't want) to be a mother. No one thinks having one is some sort of virtue. No one has ever thrown a party after coming home from getting one. They are oftentimes very emotionally painful. But I'll be damned if, as a man, I'm going to force a woman to be an incubator for 9 months if she doesn't want to.
I don't have horse in that particular race one way or another. I got a non-reversible vasectomy at the age of 25--all responsible males should have a reversible one by the age of 21, in my opinion--so there was never any risk associated with me.
I got a vasectomy at 33. This simple little procedure that millions of people get has left me with chronic testicular pain for past seven years. Nearly two months after the procedure, I was barely walking. The doctor told me I was one in a million but also that there are a lot of people like me due to so many people getting the procedure.
I learned there's no such thing as a simple operation and sometimes those fine print warnings do come true.
Basically, we should back to eunuchs. And maybe have them be the only people allowed to work in trusted high government positions. Just like back in glorious Byzantium! Also then maybe we can get a real civil war going when Autokrator Trump I kicks off.
I see both sides of the debate. I believe that abortion should be allowed, but absolutely NOT as a form of birth control. Honestly, just put on a condom. We are all adults here, just wear a freaking condom, god. If you've done it enough that you are one of the 2% of people that impregnated a woman while wearing a condom, then guess what, you've had your fun! Step up, be a man, and take responsibility for your actions. In my opinion, men who abandon their women for being pregnant when they chose not to wear a condom should have to feel the pains of giving birth. You hear that, Scientists? *snap, snap* Make it happen.
As far as teenage pregnancies, that is another, completely separate issue from unwanted adult pregnancies, and the two should not be confused. It is a very concerning one. It is hard to address, and speaks to our society and our families failing these children out there. But teenagers cannot vote, so their voice is unheard.
There are other options to abortion, regardless of age. One is adoption; fixing our broken DCF system. Why are we pouring so much money into abortion clinics and chemical research instead of into our foster system, where living, breathing, non-fetus children are already homeless and/or edit:abused and neglected?
One is infusing young people with good values to help them not make the mistake. In a twist of irony, when they started handing out condoms in school, I actually felt pressured to have sex when I didn't want to; this attitude of, "Well, you're going to do it anyway, so here's your basket of condoms," makes it seem that having underage sex is acceptable, as long as you are wearing a condom. What happened to starting a family, and keeping the bond of love that is sex between you and your chosen partner, rather than having sex with as many people as possible and keeping tally like notches in your belt? Fixing our attitude would be a big step forward.
Abortion should be a last resort, a choice made out of desperation after we have exhausted all other options. I don't hear any candidates ever talking about investing in foster care (unless it's on the media after a huge mistake made by the system). No one talks about funding programs to instill reaponsibility into our youth.
There are lots of other alternatives to abortion, both pre-sex and post birth.
Yes, let's allow abortion, but not because we don't want to wear a condom or don't want to get "fixed".
@mashedtaters: For what it's worth, birth control is vastly less expensive than foster care. Condoms cost pennies; sex ed classes cost dollars and hours of work; and a child costs tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours to raise. Each.
Given the limitations of government spending, I would prioritize the former, to reduce the need for the latter.
@mashedtaters: For what it's worth, birth control is vastly less expensive than foster care. Condoms cost pennies; sex ed classes cost dollars and hours of work; and a child costs tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours to raise. Each.
Given the limitations of government spending, I would prioritize the former, to reduce the need for the latter.
Regardless of cost, the problem still exists, and is getting worse despite the increased social and legal acceptance of abortion in our nation. I took a MAP's class last year (the class taken in preparation to become a foster parent). They said that within the last fifteen years, their demand has more than doubled (specifically speaking to the number of kids their office saw), but their budget has halved. In other words, their workload has increased by a factor of over 4, because they have more work to do with less staff, governmental support, and foster families.
Sounds good in theory, but it doesn't seem like it's working to me.
A lot of government offices are receiving that treatment, having their budgets cut and then being asked to do more work with less people.
The IRS has been increasingly understaffed for years now. It's no wonder rich people get away with cheating on their taxes; they've been weakening the only agency that can stop them from doing so.
@smeagolheart I guess I just got lucky then--no awful aftereffects.
Two of my past girlfriends became pregnant at young ages (by "young" I mean "under 25")--neither one by me, of course. One chose to have an abortion; the other chose to carry to term and surrender the infant for adoption. To this day, both of them regret their decisions. I have spoken with both of them about it and offered what solace and advice I could, but truthfully that is a missing jigsaw puzzle piece in their lives which will never be filled.
Legal, safe and rare seems to be the general consensus here on this thread, and in society in general. It should be noted, however, that the official platform of the Republican Party would force a woman to carry the child of her rapist, and offers no exception for the life of the mother, which, again, is practically the ONLY time late-term abortions ever take place.
In other news, Clinton now leads by over 800,000 in the popular vote, with STILL more to come from 3 of the bluest states in the nation. All indications is she is going to receive more votes for President EVER than anyone not named Barack Obama.
Now, it would be one thing if a million more people had voted for Clinton, she'd lost to her opponent in the Electoral College, but that opponent was a generally moderate person who would take into consideration that more people voted against him than for him. What we are getting instead is someone who is staffing an administration that couldn't possibly be any more antagonistic towards these voters.
He is, as reports tonight confirm, attempting to get his CHILDREN top secret security clearance. It was revealed yesterday that Trump did not know the entire West Wing staff had to be replaced in the upcoming Administration. The meeting between him and Obama went on an hour longer than it should have because Obama realized that Trump had absolutely NO concept of the scope of the job. This is, almost certainly, a man who never actually intended to be President, does not have the intellectual faculties or curiosity to do the job, and views the entire endeavor as some sort of fucking game show. What could go wrong??
Pro-life vs. Pro-choice is very personal for me as well. I posted about my son in the "what makes you happy" thread a little while ago. He was born with a very serious genetic disorder that almost killed him. He is thankfully doing wonderfully now. But my wife and I were told that we should have aborted him because of his condition, by nurses, IN A CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT. While I understand that not all pro choice advocates (probably not even most) are in for eugenics, it is a factor in the debate.
@mashedtaters: But who actually is advocating the forced abortion of fetuses? That's what people mean when they use the word "eugenics" these days. If such people exist, what are their names?
It is not enough to simply say genetic engineering research is ongoing. Who is calling for the destruction of a group of people through abortion?
@mashedtaters: But who actually is advocating the forced abortion of fetuses? That's what people mean when they use the word "eugenics" these days. If such people exist, what are their names?
It is not enough to simply say genetic engineering research is ongoing. Who is calling for the destruction of a group of people through abortion?
I am asking for a name and a quote.
Sadly, I never got the name of those nurses, or I could tell you.
To clarify, I ask because it's a pretty serious charge to link pro-choice people to eugenics. Most people understand eugenics to be the practice of killing people as a means of "improving" the overall population's genes--in a word, Nazis. There are other forms of eugenics, but that's what people are usually referring to.
Unless you're using a very different definition of eugenics, you're suggesting that a huge group of people supports an idea that most of us find abhorrent.
@mashedtaters: But who actually is advocating the forced abortion of fetuses? That's what people mean when they use the word "eugenics" these days. If such people exist, what are their names?
It is not enough to simply say genetic engineering research is ongoing. Who is calling for the destruction of a group of people through abortion?
As far as your request, it was encouraged by our doctor to abort our child if we discovered that either of them had Down Syndrome (although he did not advocate for enforcing it). You can supposedly perform a test during pregnancy to see if the child has it or not, a test which we did not perform, so don't ask me what it was. My wife is the one with "all the know" about that pregnancy stuff. (Ironically, though, she said that many studies show this test actually causes Down Syndrome.)
Not exactly source material, but it doesn't matter because that's not what I was talking about at all.
I was under the impression that eugenics referred to the production of "designer babies" through some method of controlled reproduction, not the destruction of groups of people based on their physical traits or supposed birth defects, abortion or otherwise. What you are describing sounds a like version of genocide or possibly euthenasia to me. Am I wrong about this?
The nazi philosophy was certainly one of enforced eugenics and euthanasia as a result, which requires that only individuals who are preselected as suitable breeding material are legally permitted to reproduce, and to kill or destroy "defective" children. I was not under the impression that eugenics itself had to be enforced.
Eugenics, as I understand it, is any method of controlling the improvement of the human gene pool (historically either by discouraging "undesirables" to reproduce or encouraging "desirables" to reproduce). It does not have to be enforced.
I was under the impression that genetic manipulation of the fetus is a form of eugenics, regardless of the parents' "undesirable" traits, because it allows the parents to choose desirable traits and exclude undesirable traits of their offspring.
Here is a cool video about the CRISPR technology. It also raises the concern of how this technology could be used to "perfect" the human gene pool, which is the main argument of eugenics.
(FYI, I am not in favor of designer babies, edit: or eugenics, or what you are describing, if I didn't make that clear)
Funnily enough, eugenics were popular and trendy in Europe up until those jerky old Nazis tarred them by association. They also ruined racism, anti-Semitism, and big land wars for everyone, the cads.
Speaking as someone who has a genetic disorder, and also speaking for my wife who has multiple sclerosis (and whose brother has another auto-immune disease), bully for any gene therapy that can remove such things. It'll unfortunately be only for rich, mostly white people first, but so's everything.
I really couldn't care less if people use the same tech to make their kid blonde, or curly hair, or a beautiful voice. The natural state for a human being is to live naked outside eating raw, probably rotting meat and whatever berries and roots you can scrounge. I wear glasses in contemptuous defiance of god's plan for me to not see ten feet beyond my face. I wear clothes made of unnatural fabrics, I eat something called a "banoffee pudding", and I watch a Tonkinese cat that has been bred into such kittenish imbecility that it cannot be allowed outside the house lest it be pecked to death by magpies.
It is instinctual to look for good genetics in a partner you intend to have offspring with. Animals do it everywhere around you, from the peacock's tail to deer bucks bashing heads. It's been speculated it's behind a lot of common preferences in male and female humans (though it so often dips into evolutionary biology that I take all that with a grain of salt). If we figure out how to do it better, well, so what? As far as possibly destructive technologies go, it hasn't got a patch on the burning of fossil fuels.
@ineth what you describe sounds terrible, but it isn't the Democratic Party position.
I'm afraid it is. Just look at some of the abortion policies the Democrats and their SCOTUS activists, ahem, justices have implemented or fought for, over the last two decades:
Forcing health care counselors to tell their pregnant clients about the option to get an abortion, but not (!) require them to also mention the option to give up the baby for adoption with no responsibilities attached. If this seems strange to you, remember the business model of Planned Parenthood:
PP is, first and foremost, an abortion provider. The marketing image of "women's health clinics" is a deception - the bulk of their revenue comes from abortions. The do provide some minimal health services for free, like breast exams (they don't even have the machines for proper mammograms, despite much Democrat lying to the contrary), so that they can get pregnant women in a room with their staff and talk them into getting an abortion from PP. They then charge quite a fair sum of money for the actual abortion. Being required to tell their clients about other options beside abortion, would of course be bad for business - so their Democrat friends and donation-recipients in the government have seen to it that they aren't.
Forcing pro-life doctors and nurses to participate in abortions against their conscience.
Forcing tax payers to subsidize other people's abortions.
Forcing churches to cover their employee's abortions.
Allowing abortions based on race, sex or disability.
Allowing partial-birth abortions (where the fetus/baby is pulled half-way out its mother's body, and then its head stabbed to kill it).
Allowing "dismemberment abortions" (where the living fetus/baby is literally ripped into pieces through mechanical force).
Allowing elective abortions throughout all nine months of pregnancy. (Which, by induction, means allowing the aforementioned barbaric methods to be performed on fully developed babies that have the ability to feel pain.)
Excepting abortion providers from the health and safety standards & legal liabilities, that other medical service providers are bound to.
Those are the things the Democratic Party fights tooth and nail for.
And those are the contemporary legal and legislative battlegrounds on the issue of abortion – not the strawman spectre of bible-swinging Christians banning all abortions if we don't vote for the Democrats.
(And yes, fundamentalist Christians and others who believe life begins at conception, do exist - but that stance has no foot-hold anymore on Congress and SCOTUS. The above policies – all way in abortion extremist territory – are what the legal and legislative battles are fought over nowadays.)
It should be noted, however, that the official platform of the Republican Party would force a woman to carry the child of her rapist
Another popular liberal talkshow talking point which isn't actually true.
The Republican platform isn't the extremist ban-all-abortions strawman the left likes to paint it as. Rather, it calls for banning late-term abortions and specific cruel abortion methods and eugenics and the sale of body parts, as well as making sure taxpayers are not required to pay for abortions, and making sure abortion providers are subjected to the same kinds of health and safety standards and legal liabilities that hospitals and other medical facilities are already subjected to.
defund abortion providers like Planned Parenthood "so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions [...] rather than provide healthcare" (N.B.: Note that they don't demand that it be banned - just that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for it.)
"not fund or subsidize healthcare that includes abortion coverage" (N.B.: ditto)
"ban the practice of misleading women on so-called fetal harvesting consent forms"
"make it a crime to acquire, transfer, or sell fetal tissues from elective abortions for research"
"ban [...] any sale of fetal body parts"
require "health and safety standards in abortion clinics"
punish "healthcare providers who fail to provide treatment and care to an infant who survives an abortion"
ban "abortion after twenty weeks, the point at which current medical research shows that unborn babies can feel excruciating pain during abortions'
ban "the cruelest forms of abortion, especially dismemberment abortion procedures, in which unborn babies are literally torn apart limb from limb"
"ban sex-selection abortions and abortions based on disabilities"
...plus some stuff about supporting alternative options like adoption, and assurances that they oppose punishing women who have abortions, even illegal ones - only the abortion providers would be liable.
The Democratic Party is the extreme one on abortion (both by common-sense standards and in comparison with other developed nations), whereas the Republican Party position on the issue is pretty centrist.
Many inside the liberal bubble have simply deceived themselves into believing it's the other way around.
In other news, Clinton now leads by over 800,000 in the popular vote, with STILL more to come from 3 of the bluest states in the nation.
Subtract all the illegal immigrants who voted, well, illegally (thanks to Democrats blocking the kinds of voter ID laws that many European countries consider normal), and Trump probably leads by a million...
No, I mean it contains conspiracies and myths and information from questionable sources. I'm well aware of the echo chamber that exists on both sides of the political spectrum, from Breitbart News to Huffington Post, from The Federalist to Slate. My Facebook feed is full of articles from sites I would never consider using in a debate. (I don't even count Cracked and BuzzFeed as news sources, because one is a self-styled comedy site and the other is BuzzFeed.)
If you want to actually discuss this issue that is personal for a whole lot of people, I can only offer you this advice: find sources that are reputable, that contain quotes and citations from other reputable sources. Talk about the issue without assuming everyone in front of you is a blind sheep that just needs to have their eyes opened to The Truth. It makes you sound like a religious zealot, and it makes everyone a whole lot less likely to listen to what you're saying.
Comments
First, yes, the concept of designer babies is a problem. Not because it results in "better" children (which is debatable, but if it resulted in smarter human beings that might not be a bad thing), but because those kinds of services would most likely only be available to those who can afford it, meaning you know that thing in Skyrim where you can enchant an item to boost your Alchemy, and then use your boosted Alchemy to make a potion that boosts your Enchanting, and then make an item that boosts Alchemy even more? It would be like that, but only for the exorbitantly wealthy.
In fifty years we'd be talking about "Designer Privilege", and we'd be right to do so.
Diagnostic screenings for aptitude have the same issue: they'd most likely only be available to those who can afford the tests.
But all else being equal, it really depends on the fundamental question: If the zygote is a human being, it's wrong to have an abortion on the basis of genetic aptitude. On the other hand, if the zygote is not yet a human being, then wouldn't you want your child to have the best advantages you can give them? (And I say this as someone who was once a zygote, as someone who's had his fair share of problems that were more than likely genetic.)
That's the question, and it's an important one, on both sides of the issue.
In the end, that's why I'm pro-choice. I don't think I'm equipped to make that call on behalf of every woman in the world, one way or the other. I would much rather live in a world where abortion wasn't a necessity for anyone, for any reason. But given that the world I live in isn't that one, I'd rather people have the choice to make the decision for themselves.
I learned there's no such thing as a simple operation and sometimes those fine print warnings do come true.
I see both sides of the debate. I believe that abortion should be allowed, but absolutely NOT as a form of birth control. Honestly, just put on a condom. We are all adults here, just wear a freaking condom, god. If you've done it enough that you are one of the 2% of people that impregnated a woman while wearing a condom, then guess what, you've had your fun! Step up, be a man, and take responsibility for your actions. In my opinion, men who abandon their women for being pregnant when they chose not to wear a condom should have to feel the pains of giving birth. You hear that, Scientists? *snap, snap* Make it happen.
As far as teenage pregnancies, that is another, completely separate issue from unwanted adult pregnancies, and the two should not be confused. It is a very concerning one. It is hard to address, and speaks to our society and our families failing these children out there. But teenagers cannot vote, so their voice is unheard.
There are other options to abortion, regardless of age. One is adoption; fixing our broken DCF system. Why are we pouring so much money into abortion clinics and chemical research instead of into our foster system, where living, breathing, non-fetus children are already homeless and/or edit:abused and neglected?
One is infusing young people with good values to help them not make the mistake. In a twist of irony, when they started handing out condoms in school, I actually felt pressured to have sex when I didn't want to; this attitude of, "Well, you're going to do it anyway, so here's your basket of condoms," makes it seem that having underage sex is acceptable, as long as you are wearing a condom. What happened to starting a family, and keeping the bond of love that is sex between you and your chosen partner, rather than having sex with as many people as possible and keeping tally like notches in your belt? Fixing our attitude would be a big step forward.
Abortion should be a last resort, a choice made out of desperation after we have exhausted all other options. I don't hear any candidates ever talking about investing in foster care (unless it's on the media after a huge mistake made by the system). No one talks about funding programs to instill reaponsibility into our youth.
There are lots of other alternatives to abortion, both pre-sex and post birth.
Yes, let's allow abortion, but not because we don't want to wear a condom or don't want to get "fixed".
Given the limitations of government spending, I would prioritize the former, to reduce the need for the latter.
Regardless of cost, the problem still exists, and is getting worse despite the increased social and legal acceptance of abortion in our nation. I took a MAP's class last year (the class taken in preparation to become a foster parent). They said that within the last fifteen years, their demand has more than doubled (specifically speaking to the number of kids their office saw), but their budget has halved. In other words, their workload has increased by a factor of over 4, because they have more work to do with less staff, governmental support, and foster families.
Sounds good in theory, but it doesn't seem like it's working to me.
The IRS has been increasingly understaffed for years now. It's no wonder rich people get away with cheating on their taxes; they've been weakening the only agency that can stop them from doing so.
Two of my past girlfriends became pregnant at young ages (by "young" I mean "under 25")--neither one by me, of course. One chose to have an abortion; the other chose to carry to term and surrender the infant for adoption. To this day, both of them regret their decisions. I have spoken with both of them about it and offered what solace and advice I could, but truthfully that is a missing jigsaw puzzle piece in their lives which will never be filled.
Giving birth would have killed them both.
Now, it would be one thing if a million more people had voted for Clinton, she'd lost to her opponent in the Electoral College, but that opponent was a generally moderate person who would take into consideration that more people voted against him than for him. What we are getting instead is someone who is staffing an administration that couldn't possibly be any more antagonistic towards these voters.
He is, as reports tonight confirm, attempting to get his CHILDREN top secret security clearance. It was revealed yesterday that Trump did not know the entire West Wing staff had to be replaced in the upcoming Administration. The meeting between him and Obama went on an hour longer than it should have because Obama realized that Trump had absolutely NO concept of the scope of the job. This is, almost certainly, a man who never actually intended to be President, does not have the intellectual faculties or curiosity to do the job, and views the entire endeavor as some sort of fucking game show. What could go wrong??
It is not enough to simply say genetic engineering research is ongoing. Who is calling for the destruction of a group of people through abortion?
I am asking for a name and a quote.
Unless you're using a very different definition of eugenics, you're suggesting that a huge group of people supports an idea that most of us find abhorrent.
*edit* added "not" above. Whoops, that completely changed the meaning I intended.
As far as your request, it was encouraged by our doctor to abort our child if we discovered that either of them had Down Syndrome (although he did not advocate for enforcing it). You can supposedly perform a test during pregnancy to see if the child has it or not, a test which we did not perform, so don't ask me what it was. My wife is the one with "all the know" about that pregnancy stuff. (Ironically, though, she said that many studies show this test actually causes Down Syndrome.)
Not exactly source material, but it doesn't matter because that's not what I was talking about at all.
I was under the impression that eugenics referred to the production of "designer babies" through some method of controlled reproduction, not the destruction of groups of people based on their physical traits or supposed birth defects, abortion or otherwise. What you are describing sounds a like version of genocide or possibly euthenasia to me. Am I wrong about this?
The nazi philosophy was certainly one of enforced eugenics and euthanasia as a result, which requires that only individuals who are preselected as suitable breeding material are legally permitted to reproduce, and to kill or destroy "defective" children. I was not under the impression that eugenics itself had to be enforced.
Eugenics, as I understand it, is any method of controlling the improvement of the human gene pool (historically either by discouraging "undesirables" to reproduce or encouraging "desirables" to reproduce). It does not have to be enforced.
I was under the impression that genetic manipulation of the fetus is a form of eugenics, regardless of the parents' "undesirable" traits, because it allows the parents to choose desirable traits and exclude undesirable traits of their offspring.
Here is a cool video about the CRISPR technology. It also raises the concern of how this technology could be used to "perfect" the human gene pool, which is the main argument of eugenics.
(FYI, I am not in favor of designer babies, edit: or eugenics, or what you are describing, if I didn't make that clear)
Speaking as someone who has a genetic disorder, and also speaking for my wife who has multiple sclerosis (and whose brother has another auto-immune disease), bully for any gene therapy that can remove such things. It'll unfortunately be only for rich, mostly white people first, but so's everything.
I really couldn't care less if people use the same tech to make their kid blonde, or curly hair, or a beautiful voice. The natural state for a human being is to live naked outside eating raw, probably rotting meat and whatever berries and roots you can scrounge. I wear glasses in contemptuous defiance of god's plan for me to not see ten feet beyond my face. I wear clothes made of unnatural fabrics, I eat something called a "banoffee pudding", and I watch a Tonkinese cat that has been bred into such kittenish imbecility that it cannot be allowed outside the house lest it be pecked to death by magpies.
It is instinctual to look for good genetics in a partner you intend to have offspring with. Animals do it everywhere around you, from the peacock's tail to deer bucks bashing heads. It's been speculated it's behind a lot of common preferences in male and female humans (though it so often dips into evolutionary biology that I take all that with a grain of salt). If we figure out how to do it better, well, so what? As far as possibly destructive technologies go, it hasn't got a patch on the burning of fossil fuels.
activists, ahem, justices have implemented or fought for, over the last two decades:If this seems strange to you, remember the business model of Planned Parenthood:
Being required to tell their clients about other options beside abortion, would of course be bad for business - so their Democrat friends and donation-recipients in the government have seen to it that they aren't.
Those are the things the Democratic Party fights tooth and nail for.
And those are the contemporary legal and legislative battlegrounds on the issue of abortion – not the strawman spectre of bible-swinging Christians banning all abortions if we don't vote for the Democrats.
(And yes, fundamentalist Christians and others who believe life begins at conception, do exist - but that stance has no foot-hold anymore on Congress and SCOTUS. The above policies – all way in abortion extremist territory – are what the legal and legislative battles are fought over nowadays.) Another popular liberal talkshow talking point which isn't actually true.
The Republican platform isn't the extremist ban-all-abortions strawman the left likes to paint it as. Rather, it calls for banning late-term abortions and specific cruel abortion methods and eugenics and the sale of body parts, as well as making sure taxpayers are not required to pay for abortions, and making sure abortion providers are subjected to the same kinds of health and safety standards and legal liabilities that hospitals and other medical facilities are already subjected to.
In detail, the following list is all the demands regarding abortion I could find in the 2016 Republican Party Platform (full PDF document / online version of the relevant chapter):
The Democratic Party is the extreme one on abortion (both by common-sense standards and in comparison with other developed nations), whereas the Republican Party position on the issue is pretty centrist.
Many inside the liberal bubble have simply deceived themselves into believing it's the other way around. Subtract all the illegal immigrants who voted, well, illegally (thanks to Democrats blocking the kinds of voter ID laws that many European countries consider normal), and Trump probably leads by a million...
If you want to actually discuss this issue that is personal for a whole lot of people, I can only offer you this advice: find sources that are reputable, that contain quotes and citations from other reputable sources. Talk about the issue without assuming everyone in front of you is a blind sheep that just needs to have their eyes opened to The Truth. It makes you sound like a religious zealot, and it makes everyone a whole lot less likely to listen to what you're saying.