Comments on Males Are To Blame For The Nation's "Abortion Problem"

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Feenix, hats off to you, personally, for taking such a responsible attitude yourself towards contraception - prevention is obviously better than cure here, although I can't help thinking it a pity you didn't pass on some of that responsible attitude and protectiveness towards women to another generation.  I'm not going to wade in to the abortion debate, it'stoo complex an issue for me to be willing to comment on, pacifist that I am. 

posted by mneme on July 10, 2008 at 10:14 AM | link to this | reply

Sira,
I agree with everything you said. Females, too, are to blame for the country's "abortion problem" and its "illegitimate-births problem".

The reason why I wrote the post in the manner I did was to cause some of the readers to give significant and serious thought to the problems and to openly discuss their views and ideas for addressing the problems.


posted by Feenix on July 9, 2008 at 4:59 PM | link to this | reply

Feenix

I agree with almost everything--I don't, however, think it's fair to blame men for everything. Most things, sure. But not everything.

I think it boils down to a very simple concept: adult actions = adult consequences. For both the boys and the girls.

Boys (and a few men) need to be taught how to be safe if they insist on sleeping with a girl. And they need to be forced to face up to their consequences. By parents, or whoever.

Girls need just as much education, and perhaps a couple lessons that include the phrase "keep a penny between your knees and squeeze". And again, if they simply must sleep with a boy, then they need to own up to the consequences of their actions. That includes making some hard decisions.

posted by Sira890 on July 9, 2008 at 4:35 PM | link to this | reply

I think that this is something that certainly should not be
"jumped into" but thought about by all parties concerned.

posted by Afzal_Sunny7 on July 9, 2008 at 1:09 PM | link to this | reply

I like your argument here but mostly because I'd also like to see men
take more responsibility in the area of pregnancy.  You can bet that if they knew they'd catch a disease from a woman, they would either put on a condom or think twice about getting laid that night.  But so many don't really worry about the possibility of getting a woman pregnant.  They leave it up to the woman to deal with birth control, as though it's not their problem. 

Not all men are like this, but so many are.  And when the woman does get pregnant, these same men turn into boys.  I've seen it happen.  Had the man stood by his woman and said he'd be there for her, maybe she wouldn't have felt there was no other choice but to abort.  You just never know.

All that said, I'm still a woman and pro choice.  (ducking)

posted by -blackcat on July 9, 2008 at 1:00 PM | link to this | reply

An Observation and a Question or two
I think that life as such starts much earlier than the "age" a fetus can be classified as a human being with a brain, the brain being an organ for processing and coordinating information from inside and outside the body (not much different to the events inside the first fertilized cell attached to the inside of the womb except for the apparent level of complexity). 

Have you thought about the fact that your way of engaging the world is to some degree part of the blueprint in each cell in your body and that not having children will terminate your particular line of development?  In the meantime those who carry on impregnating woman willy nilly are involuntarily carrying their traits over to the next generation.  If this trend carries on for a couple of generations, your personality type and physical characteristics will become extinct while the people who don't care for anything but their immediate gratification will be the dominant type of human (if they are not that already).  Do you want to contribute to human society becoming that kind of society?


posted by AardigeAfrikaner on July 9, 2008 at 12:42 PM | link to this | reply

Feenix

Clearly you are a well-educated, responsible man.  I applaud this and the honesty within your post.  I disagree that males are to blame, but not entirely.  Yes, you've got corrupt and irresponsible men out there who worm their way into a naive girl's britches, but at the same time you've got girls out there doing as they please with no regard for future consequences.  Throw low self-esteem into the mix, a night of drinking, rape and date rape drugs, etc., and it's no wonder the abortion rate is so high in this messed up world we live in. 

I am against abortion.  It's murder - period.  I sympathize with noone who uses abortion as a means of birth control.  I sympathize with noone who aborts a baby because they think they aren't ready for a child or think that becoming pregnant throws a wrench in their career path.  I do, however, sympathize with a woman who must abort a child, because bearing the child would kill her.  THAT is a decision I hope I never have to make.  THAT is a decision I wish no woman would ever have to make.  And I do sympathize with young, naive, adolescent girls who end up have to make a decision whether to abort, have and keep, or have and let someone else adopt their child.  CHOICES!  CHOICES!  CHOICES!

Education is only one of the keys.  Unfortunately, abortion is a topic and choice that will never go away.

posted by Hilow on July 9, 2008 at 12:42 PM | link to this | reply

Xeno-x, apparently, you had your heart set on being critical of me.
I say that because as I am certain you are aware, it is impossible to discuss all of the aspects of an issue as broad and complex as abortion in a single post.

posted by Feenix on July 9, 2008 at 12:06 PM | link to this | reply

I GUESS I GOTTA JUMP IN HERE

it's interesting the main group you refer to here.

and then you mention that abortion is genocide because many of this group must have abortions.  problem is, it seems that more of this group are having babies than are having abortions.

Let me say that I do not think that abortion should be taken lightly.  Although, in line with the Supreme Court's guidlines, we have to understand that a human fetus is only a potential human until later when it does indeed develop a human brain.  It is not an actual human until that time.

taking a life is a serious thing.  period.  personally, I cannot rule out abortion as a possibility in certain limited circumstances where keeping the fetus would do great harm.

that being said, you miss a lot of the causes of teen pregnancy -- lack of education -- lack of will to seek birth control (not to mention some religions' problems with birth control) -- the culture -- the young boys prove their manhood by sex with girls, then of course, attempt to avoid responsibility for the resulting child.

this is a society and culture neglected, avoided, left behind, ignored, and generally left out of mainstream American society.

attention needs to be paid to it.

I deo have this problem though:  mainly a sort of a question:  we have growing violence, killings, other mayhem in this society.  living human beings are killed and much damage is done to living human beings.  forms of birth control could have helped this society, could have helped this society to avoid its present plight.

always there is the question of helping the living rather than concentrating on the not yet born.

it's like in Central America, where any form of birth control is basically verboten by the Church, and girls begin having babies around 12 or 13 and have them at the rate of 1 a year -- infant mortality is extremely high, as is that for these young women, and the women die very early in their lives.  In this case, birth control of some sort, where the Church believes that it is preventing a human life from forming naturally, as God wants it, would prevent the deaths of untold living human beings.

the subject is much more complex than you portray it.

posted by Xeno-x on July 9, 2008 at 11:53 AM | link to this | reply