question: what makes any of us think that this girl isn’t going to feel resentful, not take care of herself and baby, take drugs and alcohol based on that anger (and carrying to term is a prison sentence for those who don’t wish to be pregnant) and otherwise, say, toss herself down the stairs or behave recklessly in other ways? I mean, we’re forgetting that there is the whole pregnancy here that a woman has to go through.

By the way, abuse isn’t always physical. It can be emotional and psychological. It can manifest itself in ways such as the parents withholding college funds or money or permission to get a driver’s permit or a parent refusing to speak to their daughter for a year (that happened to a friend of mine) or a million different ways. Once my mother took my bed away b/c she thought I slept too much. I slept on the floor. Is that abuse? Will it fly with a judge?

If it were me, I’d try the double up on the birth control pills far to late for it to be safe (or work). I’d try douching with alcohol or whatever I could come up with rather than talk to a parent.

When women (or teens) do not want to be pregnant, they do not want to be pregnant. End of story. And when they don’t want to notify anyone, they should have that option.

You, sir, are an asshole. Also, an idiot. Also, there is no need for all those caps.

There is, however, one statement you make with which I find myself in wholehearted agreement.

I’m not experienced in the realm of women getting pregnant.

I therefore entreat you to get over your irrelevant self, go on a lengthy acid trip, and please forget to write.

Bon Voyage,
Hissy Cat

Don’t you think that in “controlling her own body” a pregnant woman bears responsibility to the young life she is carrying?

Well, let’s see. A, it’s insulting, and B, I don’t think it often happens that someone becomes addicted to illegal drugs because they couldn’t afford NOT to, or because they’d otherwise die.

OK.

But, as I admitted, I did quick research, LSD is not particularly physically addictive, and it doesn’t hold steady grasp on psychological addiction, but the latter still exists.

Out of curiosity, can anyone actually get addicted to LSD beyond an emotional level. I’m quite sure LSD is non-addictive. At least, my teen years tell me so.

Mine too. This seems to confirm my admittedly distorted memories of the subject, that for a few days after a trip, even massive doses had no effect – which would work against addiction.

I’ve certainly known a bunch of addicts in my life, and I’ve known a bunch of people who dropped acid, and I’ve never known anyone who was addicted to acid, physically or psychologically.

I especially like this passage from the Wikipedia article linked above:

Many experts consider drugs such as LSD to be a sort of anti-drug (encourages users to stop using drugs), as it forces the user to face issues and problems in that individual’s psyche. In contrast, the harder drugs (alcohol, heroin, and cocaine) are used to escape from reality. Studies in the 1950s in using LSD to treat alcoholism professed a 50% success rate. Alcoholics Anonymous, on the other hand, has a success rate of 5% or less.

See, this is interesting, because it’s been proven completely wrong. Some of the countries with the highest over-all abortion rates — Brazil, Chile and some other Latin American countries, for example — don’t offer legal abortion. Yet their rates are as high and higher than ours, the difference being that many more women are killed and maimed in the process. On the other hand, countries with the most liberal abortion laws — Holland, for example, which offers abortions to its citizens for free — has one of the lowest abortion rates in the world.

Canada, Tunisia and Turkey have all liberalized their abortion laws with no increase in the overall abortion rate. So that argument simply isn’t accurate.

Correlation vs. causation. We don’t run the kind of welfare safety net that most of those countries do, which I’m sure we can agree is an indirect abortion causer.

Go ask someone who’s being tortured if death is preferable. They’d say yes. That’s what torture is.

Ask the fetus then if you so equate a life of poverty to a single mother (Or a life in an adoption agency) to torture. Or you could call abortion “Euthanasia because I can not give the child an existence that isn’t torture.”

I like these teen pregnancy stats myself. Not too much different , but they’re skewed pretty much how I figured. Large population concentrations = higher teen pregnancy per 1000.

The question is: those who are in favor of the government forcing children to be borne by mothers who already know they can’t care for them properly and therefore don’t want them to be born–leaving these children to be more likely to be abused and neglected, and more likely to endanger the rest of society by engaging in criminal behavior–you guys ok with that?

So we should kill them for our convenience?

And you know what we all think and have considered because…? Awfully presumptuous of you. Isn’t it possible that women could be very well aware of what zygotes, embryos, and fetuses are AND what they represent (c’mon — give us SOME credit, okay?) and STILL NOT WANT TO BE PREGNANT?

I want to think that. I really, really try, but it is so hard in that that message doesn’t get portrayed nearly enough. The abortion debate is so polarized.

Hrrrrm, I was under the impression that given its effects, LSD was physically addictive, but it turns out that you crazy college girls are correct. Only psychologicially addictive.

Also, how nice that you think wanting control over your own body is equal to being addicted to drugs.

I chose that example because, if you disregard the connotations, drug use proponents commonly use the argument that it is only affecting their own bodies and thus there should not be laws against it. Clearly, that bird doesn’t fly, so I don’t see why a similar argument should be a golden bullet for a much more complex issue such as abortion.

You were never a teenager, right?

Because I really have no problem imagining a teenage girl taking weeks to a) figure out and admit to herself she’s pregnant and b) work up to telling her parents.

I don’t like the idea of abortions becoming a “Plan B,” a cure-all for accidental pregnancies, removing any responsibility.

I don’t like the idea of seatbelts being a “Plan B,” removing any responsibility for driving safely.

I don’t like the idea of root canals being a “Plan B,” removing any responsibility for basic dental hygiene.

I don’t like the idea of crutches and casts being a “Plan B,” removing any responsibility for skiing on a slope for which you’re not of the right skill level.