TRTL et al:

My UN Declaration of Human rights post is very relevant. Can none of you read the part about the universal right to life regardless of amongst other things "BIRTH"!

I am not sure how you can miss it. The UN clearly states that everyone has a right to life regardless of weather they are born or not!

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Read article 2 and 3.

Its right there in black and white. Please acknowledge this! Why would they etch the word "birth" clear as day if they were not refering to the unborn?

This is a clear protection of the unborn human - so by your standards the UN must be a bunch of religious kooks and woman haters/bigots?

The fact is there are a million ways to excercise sexual freedom - why pick the one way that murders another human. Use a condom, the pill or any of the other preventative measures that can be used!

Daniel, I suggest that you calm down a bit and read those passages in their proper contexts. They are about discrimination, including sex, race and birth status. It's about making laws that discriminate against those persons, eg. forcing women to abort certain babies (eg down syndrome children), or even forcing them to not abort them. The Nazis had laws on both of these for their eugenics program (they had very strict anti-abortion laws for German 'Aryan' women).

But if a woman chooses to have an abortion, then you are saying she is discriminating against a whole class of individuals (ie unborn children)? Get real.

yvonne, If women can play with our toys it's only fair we get to play with theirs. The pirate thing is pretty interesting. :-)
AAAAARRRHH, matey. Shiver me timbers. ;-)

If pro-lifers use the argument that a zygote is a ‘potential human being’ and therefore should have the right to live, then they should take this same logic into the euthanasia debate: a suffering, terminally ill, elderly patient is a ‘potential corpse’, and therefore should have the right to die if they wish.

Aqvarivs,
many men love being involved in ‘women’s’ things as well, and luckily they can now come to pre-natal classes, be part of the birth process and child raising; it’s not only women who need or want more options, and it is not only women who benefit from the changes the early feminists fought hard for.

MickV,
abortions may be largely unnecessary to you, but to pregnant women who strongly feel they cannot cope abortions are necessary. Women don’t have abortions for frivolous reasons.

RObert,
thoughtful points. I am aware that my question was quite confronting but I wanted to improve my chance of getting across that anti-abortionists should take realistic steps to reduce numbers of abortions instead of keep doing what they’ve always done.
They should know by now that a ban on abortions is ineffective.
It is time for something more pragmatic: to look at countries with low abortion figures and copy what they are doing.
Only then will there be fewer abortions to worry about.

Would they rather have to worry about 100,000 abortions a year or about 10,000? All I wanted to do is make them see that what they are doing is achieve the opposite of what they want.
If they are serious, they should look at facts and figures, not only of abortions but also of abused and neglected children who are being dragged from one dysfunctional foster home to the next. I have looked after neglected children and I tell you: some people should NOT be parents.
But I hear you about their ‘mindset’.
I just won’t accept that they think women should be Stepford Wives.

They really don’t ‘show’ how serious they are because they deliberately ignore facts.

Celivia I have been following your discussion with Aqvarivs and I see a lot of anger directed at women, and not a lot of understanding of where that anger comes from. The usual feminist rebuttal is to yell misogynist. I think it comes more from women being so fantastic at playing the victim, and having the stage for the last 50 years, and in this time mens issues/needs (not that we'd call them that) have been secondary to womens for that whole time and there are many men bought up in that environment.

Celivia, "They should know by now that a ban on abortions is ineffective. " - put that in context with historical patterns.

Remember Galileo and how he was treated. All they had to do was have a good look through the telescope but it still took a long time for the evidence to be accepted. Someone has suggested that a flat earth society still exists.

Consider how long and hard they fought to have creationism taught as science despite the evidence (and some still have not given up). It might be called Id now, there may be a grudging evidence of the most difficult to refute parts of the science but that determination to ignore the evidence is still there.

In part the issue for fundies is that god cannot be wrong, given time and enough evidence they can accept that their predecessors had a wrong understanding of god and his word but god cannot be wrong regardless of what the evidence says.

Many of the moderates will have come to accept abortion as a fact of life, one they don't like but a fact of life.

On the other hand there may be some hope for change when you consider how quickly and thoroughly the church has taken to divorce and remarriage. Despite the bibles clear teaching on the topic most of the church has embraced divorce and remarriage with a vengeance.

Of course it's easier for church members to keep quiet about having an abortion than it is about a divorce so it may take some time for the church to realise that abortion has become common practice within their own ranks (if it has).

R0bert