Aspies For Freedom

If it were up to me, I'd march his entire country to the death camps and curse each one of them so that their spirits can hang around for a century or two and see people making the same comment about them. Let the punishment fit the crime and all.

What differentiates America from Iran is that if Bush said the holocaust was a legend, he would be removed from office so fast he would break his butt. That, and the fact that citizens rightly protest him whenever he seriously messes up. Iran's idea of dissension is to say "baaaaaaaa" to a different tune, and it is not too hard to figure out how I feel about such people.

Maybe, but it is very hard to arrest an entire country's populace. Not even America could resist the dissension of its entire tax base (which is partly the point I have been trying to make, governments are only as strong as the people think they are).

I cannot begin to describe how offended a man who wishes he had been aborted can get when abortion is described as a holocaust.

I have never found a biologist or a doctor who is able to agree that a month-old fetus is anything other than a collection of cells beginning to form into a cohesive shape. Admittedly, I do not know the exact timetable, but there is a certain point at which the mother's health is simply more important, simple as that. And had I been offered a choice between the reality of now and not existing at all, only a moron would guess I would choose the former.

Hey you are a fine strapping lad - you can't just wish yourself out of existence. It's the pain that should be wished out of existence - not you yourself.

Most abortions are performed well after the 1 month mark, when the foetus is recognisably human. The DNA is human, right from the very earliest, so that means they are human lives. Are we saying some lives are more important than others? Looks as if we are.

What I am is an alien stuck in a world of cruelty and despair who would rather turn his back upon it and leave it for good.

I do not mean to insult anyone, but there seems to be a lot of ignorance or misinformation about DNA. Yes, the DNA is recognisable as Human, but so too is that of an unborn ape up to a certain point. I also fail to understand why it is such a horror to say that some lives are more important than others. Yes, the life of a mother is more important than that of her unborn child. It's called survival.

I'll tell you what. When you know what it is like to have a mother who bashes your head against a solid surface while telling you she is going to kill you because she is frustrated with a neurological quirk you won't know about for another two-plus decades, you can tell me about propaganda to your heart's content. Failing being aborted, I tell my parents every day that I wish I had been stillborn.

I am not trying to tell you what to do. I am simply expressing offence at the half-baked exaggeration of calling a woman's ability to not be used as a baby factory a holocaust. I will scream it until I deafen people, but if my mother had aborted me, I would not shed one tear for the life I missed. Especially not given the way I was raised. Or my ability to tell the sum of people's experiences from what they tell me about the actions of others for that matter.

I would recommend reading The Godfather. There is a little moment where a woman explains why Luca Brasi is so feared by all, and revolves around him ordering his just-born child be put into the furnace because "he did not want any of that race to live". That is exactly what I would say of my own.

Well, one day when I was 12, my parents were discussing abortion. This was around the time of the Roe -vs- Wade court case in the USA. I said "what is wrong with it - they aren't even babies?"

So dad showed me all these pamphlets he had. Even the foetuses at 4 weeks had recognisable hands and feet. The pictures were scary and ever since then, I have been strongly anti-abortion.

I don't believe all this claptrap about foetuses not being human. The abortion industry makes huge profits out of human misery and I seriously doubt that most women are told all the facts before they make this decision, which can be life altering, and often for the worse.

The issues that Iron Man brings up are another thing altogether. It is tragic that anyone has to feel that way.

Trust me, when your cousin, sister, or niece has a uterine cancer that will kill her within weeks if the baby is not aborted and surgery is not performed, it is damned easy to think of a foetus as just a collection of cells.

I also have a big problem with believing anything someone who supports taking away the decision tells me.

Another big problem I have is with people claiming that abortion is an industry and somehow someone makes a profit out of it. Unless you count one less battered child a profit. I just think of it as a miracle.

I have seen cases of babies born without brains, so to claim they are capable of jumping up and singing the Star-Spangled whatsit at one month would be tragic if it was not so incredibly tasteless.

To use another, simpler example, I can name no less than six different women who all state that if they were told they were carrying a Jesus-like child, they would not need to think once about aborting him.

A woman's hormones also prompt them to cause serious physical harm to the baby (and I have the physical problems to prove it), or to themselves. Nature is not perfect, so let's give up the I'm-right-you're-wrong-because-I'm-a-woman act, please.

Funnily enough, my mother was a healthy woman in her 20s, in a stable relationship with my father. Go figure.

You cannot take away a right that nobody had in the first place, which is exactly what murder, theft, and rape are. This is comparing apples and droppings. I repeat, anyone who wants to tell me that every piece of tissue should be held up as sacred is a liar in my eyes. A quick viewing of The Thing can give a good idea why.

I need a reality check because I do not live in a country where patients are held to ransom in medical terms? Well, I would happily support aborting every child who might turn out to be diabetic in America, thank you. If nothing else, it would send a great message to the anti-cloning lobby.

And babies being born with brain damage due to bad delivery (admittedly not quite the same thing as no brain whatsoever) is not rare or extreme. When I was tested for brain injury, I was told I could have acquired it simply during the process of birth. So again we are comparing apples and rainfalls.

Freak, as Amy has stated so well, your arguments have absolutely no substance and I wouldn't take your views one little bit seriously except for them to serve as a horrible example of ignorance, prejudice, and lack of thought.

If you are going to refute my arguments, at least take the time to do a bit more than simply an ill-thought out knee-jerk response.

Amy obviously knows what she is talking about. I also do because I have been reading medical articles ever since I was about 8 years old and keep up an interest in lots of different medical subjects.

Iron Man, I had post-natal depression after both my girls were born. It made me miserable and probably everyone around me, but I never for one moment thought of harming my children.

There is a very rare and tragic form of post-natal depression, where a woman becomes pychotic and may kill herself and/or her child. Much of this could be avoided if a woman has proper support after having a child.

I also don't think I should be expected to pay for abortion on demand through any of my taxes. The main people who seem to have them are those who could quite easily raise a child. Our "me centred" society has much to answer for. If they don't want to have a child, they should take proper precautions.

We are developing a serious problem with an ageing population and encouraging abortion only exacerbates the issue. I don't think the public health system should be paying for elective abortions - only those where there is a clear and immediate danger to the mother's life.

They just don't want to be bothered and are probably too worried about "losing their figure". So what.  They're going to lose it anyway as the effects of gravity and ageing kick in; plus they risk breast cancer. Studies are already showing that women who have one or more abortions are coming out with higher than expected rates of breast cancer in their 30's and onwards.

Having one or more abortions often causes problem with later pregnancies, such as miscarriage and premature birth. Also, it can interfere with maternal attachment to later children and there is a real risk of infection and later infertility.

I would not be surprised if diabetes is caused by a virus that attacks the pancreas and destroys cells. We don't know enough yet to say it is completely hereditary.

Iron Man, from what you've said, you have had a miserable time. But your life was spared and so you have the opportunity to help people learn more about autism and diabetes and surviving abuse. I have had quite a few periods of intense depression and despair but never wish I wasn't born.

I'm grateful that I've never been pregnant so have not personally had to face the moral dilemmas surrounding abortion. What bothers me about the "pro choice" side, when they say that the fetus has no personhood, is that this then becomes an excuse for avoiding what I consider to be genuine ethical issues.  What bothers me about the "pro life" side, is a willingness to pontificate but not, in many cases, a willingness to lobby for the social changes required for supporting pregnant women who need support, and providing the resources required for giving unwanted children a good life, especially those with special needs.

I think that women contemplating abortion should be encouraged to think through the moral issues inherent in making a decision between two difficult paths--continuing a pregnancy that may entail much emotional pain and inconvenience and then having to contemplate what will be best for the child when born--or, deciding that the circumstances are such that abortion has less morally bad consequences than continuing the pregnancy would have. That is, the fetus's interests are considered less important than the interests of other people, such as the woman, for reasons that can be stated and accepted.  In my experience, many women who have had abortions face a future of "What ifs" with respect to the potential of their unborn child. In these cases, it can help a bit to know that they made the decision with discernment, that is, with acceptance that they made a moral choice based on their circumstances at the time.

Just my opinion.

While I do not doubt that there are women who abort for reasons of convenience or lifestyle, I would argue that they are a tiny minority. The vast majority do so after serious contemplation, and whether or not they reach the best decision at the end of it is something only they can say.

I am reluctant to tell anyone that an embryo/whatever is not alive, but unfortunately an important element to survival is priority. A mother who dies or is sterilised when giving birth can produce no more children. To dismiss that fact out of hand is to deny survival as a natural element.

We also live in a society that is increasingly leaving us unable to care for our own children, healthy or otherwise. Latchkey kids are no longer an anomoly but the norm, and single parents have to teach their children things that a lot of adults from two-parent households fail to learn. This, not surprisingly, results in increased infanticide, increased abortions, and increased accidental child death.

It is also worth pointing out that while it is all well and good to say that proper precautions should be taken, no precautions short of sterilisation are effective a hundred percent of the time, and a lot of places have education systems designed to prevent knowledge of precautious measures (eg. bible-belt America).

The diabetes "gene" has been mostly identified and catalogued, by the way. The evidence that it is genetic is far more overwhelming than the evidence that autism is.

Maybe instead of saying "never wish I wasn't born", one should ask why someone would.

One of my sad quirks is that I rarely speak hypothetically. Being a Dwarf, everything I think and feel is carved in stone. But I do think numerous times, still.

I do not know how to explain the violence of my mother. Some have said it was hormonal, some have said it was social, others just put it down to bad judgement. I was just trying to state that while hormones do many wonderful things, including form our attachments, they can do many evil things too. And I would never wish to stop anyone from seeking help if they need it.

I guess I misspoke. I fail to understand, but I hate to walk around with a lot of question marks in my head. I am grateful that I will never know how pregnancy feels, however. And there is little that I would ignore as being someone else's issue. If I ever have a daughter it is by extension my issue, I feel.

Well, in a way, I am not confusing anything. If you have a book of codes that tells you exactly what you can or cannot do in a situation, and that is the only choice you ever make, you cannot be moral.

Well, I do not know about the NHS, but I assume it is somewhat like Medicare. It is a pretense of allowing the non-rich access to healthcare, yes? Put simply, though, diabetes is a lot like cancer. Except cancer stops ripping your guts out after a while.

Either way, we can just take it as read that I would thank my mother for aborting me.

I wish there were more of that here. And good for you, Amy, for following up your convictions with actions.