This is my story. The right to choose benefits families, period.

My sister was a single mom who did not have an abortion
She worked full time
Paid for her own college education
Built her own house
Started her own business
Raised a wonderful son
Didn't get married till he was an adult.

Just imagine how much more successful she would have been if she did get an abortion and did not have a loving son, daughter in law and granddaughter now.

But as CPP stated, its not about any of that... its about the RIGHT the FREEDOM, for a woman to make a CHOICE... either way.... obviously we would all love for beautiful litte babies to all be born, but it does not work out that way most of the time. it is not OUR choice, it is the womans.... and the fathers... PERIOD.

My mother had an abortion, if she did not, I would not be here.

Some edification on the matter -

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/05/27/1099739656/do-restrictive-abortion-laws-actually-reduce-abortion-a-global-map-offers-insigh

Imagine how much better the son would be if he had a father. Like all those religious nuts who keep harping on missing black fathers.

I can assure you he would not have been better off with his father a registered sex offender, drunk who spent more time in prison than out in his life. My sister made sure he had strong father figures in his life, like her dad to teach her son what a real man should be and that's what he grew up to be. She refused to let a lowdown rule her life or determine her baby's value.

Thats great on your sister. However if thats his father, he shares half his genes, its not all about environment.. - page 6

https://nida.nih.gov/download/20362/genetics-epigenetics-addiction-drugfacts.pdf

and again... at least she the Freedom, and Right.... to choose for herself. Who is anyone to deny her that choice?

But if the woman CHOOSES to keep the baby? You guys treat it like a crime and irresponsible if it's not in the most perfect of circumstances. (Even my births with a loving husband were not the most ideal circumstances)

If she chooses to keep it great.... so long as the baby is not living in a filthy crack den or on the streets. If conservatives cared for the born as much as they do a bunch of cells not even born, then the choice would not be needed. but they dont, and it is.

I don't see any purple haired liberals volunteering in the soup kitchens, homeless shelters crisis pregnancy centers, food pantrys, drug rehab centers, AA programs. Conservatives by far contribute many more man hours, muscle and money from their pocket than liberals to organizations that directly help women, men and children, before and after birth. Liberals want to line the pockets of government officials over the pockets of that single mother living on the street.

Make it so there's less crack head streets, tell me how many pregnant women have you personally helped to get out of that circumstance that would enable her to have a better life for her child? I help them on a daily basis.

By the way, do you remember what it was like before you were born? No? No one does.

A 3 month old born baby doesn't remember either, can I bash him over the head because of that? My pet dog can't remember past the last bowl of food he ate can I abuse him? My grandmother with alzheimers can't remember my name, should I push her in her wheelchair in front of traffic? The lack of memory is no justification for abuse or killing.

You are missing the key words and point - "before" you were born.... you are not a person and you dont have a soul until first breath, per your holy book. Genesis 2.7

God “breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”

You a few minutes ago "Stop pushing your religion on me!" Now you're quoting a Book you don't even believe in.

But since you're going down that path...

Fun fact, many states will declare double homicide if a pregnant woman is killed.

So I guess pregnant women can drive in the HOV lane then.

They should be allowed, lol.

Its not 'my' religion'.... its your own book, where in does it say 'abortion is a sin'? I showed you where it does say a soul does not inhabit the body till first breath.

Adam was not in the womb and was not naturally born so I don't see how that can be used in this scenario.

Exodus 21:22-25
English Standard Version
22 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is harm,[a] then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Plenty of support for the presence of a soul in the preborn before they breathe in carbon dioxide. The word Spirit is often used for soul.

In Ecclesiastes, the writer says, “As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything (11:5, ESV

Job “Your hands shaped me and made me. Will You now turn and destroy me? Remember that You molded me like clay…You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in Your providence watched over my spirit” (10:8-12)

John the Baptist: “he will be great in the sight of the Lord… and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born” Luke 1:15).

That's insulting to assume my sister was left to beg on the street. Did you not read anything I wrote?

It was not about you or your sister... its the real world for most unwanted kids.

In your society in which a woman loses her value once she becomes pregnant if it's not in the most ideal circumstances. Yes. Why not work to change the social attitude rather than kill a person because you don't want to encourage people to help others in their time of need.

You are not killing a person. An embryo is not a person, stop forcing your religion on others.

We have separation of church and state for a reason.|

Read the NPR article below - religion or no, you are not saving anyone as the statistics with countries with total bans proves.

It's a human being can we agree on that?

Yes, it’s as much of a human being as two eggs and some flour whipped together is a cake.

I could understand your confusion especially if you take the term "bun in the oven" literally. 🤣 a 1st grade biology lesson would indicate that an embryo with the complete DNA of a human being that is growing and forming every second in the womb to become a fully formed baby is nothing like a few ingredients thrown together in a bowl. Do cake ingredients live and grow, have a heartbeat at only 3 weeks, does it have a developing brain at 5 weeks and all the necessary organs and structures needed for life at 7 weeks? Wow, I would think an educated man as yourself would see comparing an embryo to eggs and flour is laughable and frankly quite an idiotic thing to say.

—The term “fetal heartbeat” as used in these anti-choice bills is misleading. Cardiac activity can be detected early on in pregnancy, but it’s not a developed heart until later.

—The brain also starts forming early in pregnancy, but no brainwave activity can be detected in utero until the third trimester.

—These are all specious arguments anyway, because radical abortion opponents such as yourself promote the nonsense that a 5-minute old fertilized egg is every bit as much of a “person” as a fetus at any stage of development — and indeed, as much of a person as a baby that’s actually been born. We’re not the ones who have trouble recognizing the difference, you are.

Fetal development defies such intellectual reductiveness, but common sense provides a path forward.

Everyone is capable of grasping that a cake that is only 5 minutes from being taken out of the oven is “more of a cake” than the uncooked ingredients where it started.

Similarly, Roe v. Wade has allowed states to ban third-trimester abortions. Even though the fetus hasn’t been born yet, it’s “close enough” to birth to receive protection.

North been written out of your thinking, but it’s a critical event. Birth is taxing (hence the term “labor”), and possibly dangerous to both mother and baby. It’s *certainly* dangerous if you don’t have access to healthcare like far too many in this country. Birth can’t be waved aside. That’s why world cultures and religions (Christianity included) have traditionally defined birth as the moment of personhood. Certainly, that is when our government has defined personhood for at least the past 49 years.

In contrast, folks like you want to mandate through law that two cracked eggs and some flour is a cake. You want to protect combinations of DNA inside the womb at such an early stage that the woman has no way of even knowing about it yet. You want the state to put that woman in the kitchen with a gun to her head and say, “bake.” With no exceptions for rape, or incest, or minor women. It’s slavery, it’s unsustainable and incompatible with the modern world, and even red states will realize that once they are finished with their frenzied criminalization of what’s been long understood to be a basic right.

In the meantime, have fun with your experiment. The rest of the U.S. and the developed world will be laughing at you.

All over Florida there are billboards along the highway that say "heartbeat 18 days after conception". That is not even remotely accurate from a medical or biological standpoint. And if it were, then how come the states with heartbeat bills don't restrict abortions after 18 days?

The other funny thing is that it says 18 days but it shows a drawing of a fetus that's about six or seven months along. At 18 days it doesn't resemble a newborn whatsoever. But anti-abortion activists want you to think it looks like a fully formed baby one second after conception.

But I do agree with you, we need conservatives to more like Jesus, and less like Scrooge.

Imagine if liberals and conservatives were more like Jesus and less like Scrooge. Let's work together to make abortion not even necessary because the society sees the value in every women whether she's pregnant or not.

Our country needs to do way, way more to give support to expectant and new mothers. A Finland-style newborn box would be a start.

However, I can’t fathom how a society that forces a 13-year-old to give birth to her uncle’s rape-child is a society that values women in any way, shape, or form.

You think I’m exaggerating, but these bills being passed currently have no exceptions for rape, no exceptions for incest, no exceptions for minors.

It’s mind-boggling. She’s not old enough to vote, yet she’s old enough to have her future chosen not only by her rapist, not only by the government, but in fact by an axis of the rapist and the government acting in cahoots to control her womb.

The last time our government held such contempt for a portion of its citizens was when slavery was legal. That’s what banning abortion amounts to. Enslaving women’s wombs on behalf of some abstract ideal of procreation as an absolute good.

Procreation is a relative good. Having a child with the man or woman of your life? No better feeling in the world. Being forced to bear your rapist’s child? A waking nightmare so horrible that suicide would probably be a better way out.

And make no mistake, some women pregnant against their wishes (without the means or knowhow to obtain an illegal abortion) will choose suicide over the slavelike conditions of forced pregnancy and birth. Just as some slaves committed suicide, seeing no other way out of their horror. That’s not “pro-life” in the slightest.

Whether they admit it or not, many conservative Christians seem to be fine with the idea of treating grown women like little kids who can't make decisions for themselves. It's disgusting.

What if she had had an abortion and still did all that, but some time later?

My mom had one too. I'm proud of her for making her choices (including having me) and going on after her abortion to build a life and career that are meaningful to her.

I am so grateful that she HAD the choice!

Lol. You missed the point. What if your mother had aborted you is the gist here.

No. You missed the point. We’ve all heard this stupid trollish nonsense about “what if your mom aborted you?” a thousand times.

What abortion opponents have to consider — what even many abortion supporters probably haven’t considered — is how a woman being forced to bear a child at age 20 (let alone age 13) forecloses other reproductive choices she could make later in life, like choosing to bear a child at age 30 (or age 37). Which is what my mom did.

My mom’s decision to abort at age 20 gave life to me and my little brother 10 and 17 years later respectively. All with the same father. How many weighers-in on the abortion debate have considered stories like that?

Not many. I’ve almost never heard about stories like mine, from either either pro-lifers or pro-choicers. Those who owe their lives to their mother’s right to choose. Yet there are surely millions or tens of millions out there like me.

My mother also had an abortion:
She was an up and coming young nurse in the prime of life
She was scared she was going to lose it all because the community around her convinced her a single mom life was the end of life.
Instead of finding strength and hope from her family she hid the fact, didn't even tell the dad. Knew what she was doing was worse than becoming pregnant because she knew it was a human life inside her. Lived with that regret for 40 years. In the end couldn't even have children of her own when she was finally married and financially stable ready to start a family. But I guess one good that came of her decades of agony and regret and clinical depression as a result of her decision was adopting my brother and I.

Women deserve better than abortion.

She had an abortion early in life, but she adopted you and your brother later. Do you know where you would have ended up otherwise? No, you don’t.

Every woman struggles with the decision. Of course they do. No one makes it flippantly. But the right to choose benefits all families, really it does.

I don't know where I would have ended up. Possibly adopted by another family what does my happiness have to do with another child dying out of fear of the consequences if its not gotten rid of?

I don't see much choice going on. I see women told by society that she can't be successful if she carries a baby except in the most perfect ideal circumstances. I see women scared by an industry that thrives on fear of the consequences if she does have a baby. I see women pressured to conform to the patriarchal society that says the only good sex is sex without the natural consequences, i see women's morale beaten down by a society telling her she can never be a good mother unless she has a specific income. There's no choice sweatheart. Choices based on fear and stigma is not a choice.

Society pressures women *more* into having an abortion than having a child? You’re deeply deluded if you actually think that.

I live in a blue city, and even here, abortion is shrouded in stigma. Expectant mothers meanwhile are showered with praise and affection and, literally, showered. Baby showers are a thing in Blue America. Abortion showers aren’t.

I can’t imagine how much women are pressured into having a child in Red America where abortion rights are treated with total contempt or not recognized at all.

Well, you see here's the thing, you don't feel or see the pressure because you're not a pregnant woman and never will be. How many doctors offices have you sat in and there was a prognosis about your baby that is pretty common yet they continually advise you to abort until you travel across the state to find doctors willing to fight for your baby. How many people have you had look down on you because you're pregnant and pushing 2 young children in a shopping cart. How many times have you been told after your 4th baby "aren't you done yet?" Or " that's so irresponsible " you're a lawyer, i assume you don't live in a blue collar lower income, non college educated minority community that planned Parenthood strategically seeks out and puts their abortion centers at.

I can’t imagine how hard it must be to go to a doctor who will advise you of what to expect in your pregnancy (whether it’s a normal or a complicated one), and present your full range of options. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to reject that care in order to drive across the state to find a more ideological doctor who will present you with only one choice. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to endure the judgmental stares of supermarket strangers for having a very normal number of kids. (Is that what they were doing? Really? How can you possibly know?)

It must be at least as difficult as being shunned and excommunicated from your church for making a personal family decision. It must be at least as difficult as being shouted at, harassed, and called a murderer and baby-killer as you make your way into one of the dwindling number of Planned Parenthoods in your state to seek reproductive care that might not even include abortion (such as screening for breast or cervical cancer). It must be at least as hard as being forced to drive 6+ hours to the nearest PP because the last one in your state finally closed under a flurry of nonsensical regulations and threats of litigation.