I sympathize with people not seeming to respect your POV, trust me I know how that feels, and one of the things I love about the GOP, at least my local branch, is that they do hear me out, on ideology and strategy, something noted by a lot of ex-libs who join the dark side and who frankly make up a disproportionate percentage of the party's actual leadership.

But at the same time it would be dishonest for me to say that I respect your position. I respect you and consider you a solid and honest thinker, but I don't believe the framework of your logic is really riveted in steel on this, more glued with emotion. So is mine, just like everyone else I 'know' deep down inside from personal experience that my view is 'right', and I can mock that certainty but its still there and colors my thinking. Most people are so certain on this issue that they tend to use very weak arguments to back it up, like they would be if asked to prove the world was a sphere - most couldn't, and would resort to flawed logic and argument by assertion long before trying to explain it in trigonometry, like some silly remark on ships disappearing over the horizon, which generally speaking isn't actually a doable test without binoculars, a clear day, and a calm sea. Point being that most people don't make very solid arguments of things they consider obviously and clearly true and they leave gaps in their arguments where those spots are to which they react by growing angry when challenged or think it so obvious they consider anyone who doesn't get it to be an absolute fool and it tends to show.

I'm sure you've had that inflicted on you and rightly feel belittled by it, but odds are you've done it too, I certainly have, I often used to write 'Don't be a condescending jerk' on the inner lid of cigarette packs when I was expecting the day to involve a battle of wits until I carved DBACJ on the side of my zippo, probably still there for all that's its presumably been at the bottom of a river for nearly a decade.




I'm not anti-choice, and I don't call people anti-life or 'abortionists' either, possibly excluding Canolli, who is by his own definition not a Republican, I've not seen people use such black and white language on this site, the only place I know for certain you're exposed to genuine right wingers. In fact, the only people I've seen use that kind of B&W language are people like Dreaded Anomaly, batting for the other team.

Information is available, this is modern times. Our objection isn't that Planned Parenthood presents all the options but rather that they don't, and we have evidence to back that claim as you well know. Women are encouraged to go see them, and many of them - personally I suspect most of them - present a lopsided view of choices.



No, I don't generally trust info by an organization that is funded by Planned Parenthood, especially not one named after the former VP of the American Eugenics Society. I would consider them biased, especially after some of their big 'oops' moments when they 'erred' about things like diabetes rates by race and contraceptive use by catholics.




Gay marriage isn't legal either, the morality of it isn't really related to the law, I'll spare the in-this-case-justified remarks referencing Nuremberg. Also, the moral load belongs on the decision maker, that is the nature of decision making, if it is a women's right to make that decision on her own, as you insist, then she bears the absolute and naked responsibility of it, morally and legally. You can't have it both ways.





We're not really talking about forcing people to talk to someone specific, though I will say that if I had a partner who had an abortion during our relationship, mine or not, without talking to me about it beforehand, I would feel utterly betrayed. For my part, I'm not big on 'required counseling', we had to go through that nonsense after we came back and you don't get much effect by standardized routine. A cooling off period is what I would like to see, perhaps nothing more than go in to schedule the appointment, get told it's being setup for two days hence at 2 pm, that it by law can be canceled without charge at a moment, and that here are some pamphlets explaining your options, vetted for accuracy and respectability.

You go to Planned Parenthood's website and click on abortions, as I just did, the very first comment is how they are very normal and common and 1 in 3 women has had them... latter there's a couple discreet links on parenting and adoption... click on that and the very first thing mentioned is how you have a lot to think about, and that you have options... the first mentioned is abortion, I don't require or ask to require they speak to anyone specifically or even any one at all, I think I would require PP itself be required to hand out a variety of - tasteful - pamphlets on the subject but if the person throws them in the garbage and goes home, so be it, so long as we are at least making sure they have time to cool down. I feel the same way about plastic surgery or guns or lots of things, I don't see the dilemma




You don't know if you want a child but you're confident you would know if you found out you were pregnant? Anyway, most of us aren't aware of the facts to help us decide. Most people aren't aware of almost anything till the time comes they have to be and most who think they are find out they aren't. Heck I research the heck out of stuff and plan ridiculous levels of contingency to the point of near neurosis and I still am never ready for a crisis, the planning helps though, but you never know till the time comes on any crisis and pregnancy is certainly no exception. You didn't play the ovary-exclusion card and I appreciate that but I'll throw it out there again by pointing out the dozens of women I've known who did indeed say stuff like 'what to I do?' or the ones who have said in hindsight 'I was totally unprepared'. I choose to interpret these remarks as indicating that those people did not know what to do, and were in fact, unprepared. I'm not going to convince you you're wrong, not trying to, not trying to belittle you either but I think you're standing on a rickety platform arguing that a 19 year old girl who just got knocked up exists in a state of prepared thought and certainty. Probably helps that I would generally consider 'pregnant teenager' on the top five list of situations likely to render someone of poor short term judgment.

Just throwing out some anecdotal here, with the caveat that I tend to attract the weirder things in life, but at the same time a lot of that is just that I'm someone people tend to comes to with their problems when they need the friendly person known for keeping a cool head, confidences, and giving good advice. So the stuff ends up on my doorstep. Just form the proximate cases, I've got a coffee pot I can never quite bring myself to throw out even though the pot itself was a casualty years ago of a friend who came over to chat about 'stuff', which happened to be her own pregnancy, she wasn't normally the clumsy sort. There's the very nearly identical case two months later from a girl I knew more casually who she had suggested come chat with me, and while trying to help me fix dinner and talk, managed to peel an entire sack of potatoes. Which takes an abnormal amount of distraction since I had reinforced the whole 'just do one, I like to use 2 or 3 and leave the skins on 1 or 2 to get a nice mix'. That's a good way to do mashed potatoes I find, peel one, dice two, throw in maybe half a cup of instant.

Let's see, the girl who drove herself into a ditch on her way to get her pregnancy confirmed. The one who my girlfriend and I swung by to chat with the next morning after she'd found out the girl was pregnant, and she was scrubbing the grout in her bathroom, had been up all night, place was spotless and she was normally a bit of a slob. Clearly a bastion of emotional stability there. I think we can bypass the cases of extreme depression, occasional self-destructive acts, manic cheerfulness, etc all of which are notoriously common features of people totally, totally of sound mind. I mean, these same behaviors in soldiers weren't in the pamphlets and literature they used to pass around the leadership with titles like 'Signs of Post-Traumatic Stress' or various polite ways of saying 'So, your trooper is going batshit crazy'.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be insulting but the idea that your average person isn't stressed out and not so clear of thought and action in cases like this is just improbable for most people and bordering on the absurd for a teenager or young adult. That's the nice thing about life and experience, it tends to leave you tough as boot leather or maybe beef jerky, a quality most young people usually haven't acquired yet and I know how most people get it young.

I also don't accept this notion that it's 'their decision'. Ignoring that I personally do not believe it is their decision, I also don't think pregnancy is unique compared to normal crisis mode that most people don't practically leap to obey anyone who seems authoritative or wise. Most people confronted with crisis, especially younger and used to be lower on the social totem pole and decision making flow chart are absolutely grateful if you suddenly tell them what to do, even if its just so they can get angry and defy you rather than have to actually stop and use their noggin. That's actually why we have things like juries and trials and review boards and different standards for decisions made in haste and panic as opposed to premeditated and such. I'm not really sure why abortion is somehow exempt from this. I mean we would definitely agree that getting a boob job is a women's personal decision but I don't think there'd by cries of oppression if the legislature said 'from now on, after they sit down for a face to face consultation, you must wait 48 hours before performing the operation and may not take any money till that time elapses as that could be viewed as pressuring them'. That's not draconian. Why would the same be true for this case?



It's impossible to say, as every individual is different. I've known many a gal who got nauseous as their first sign, ran out as soon as they stopped genuflecting to the Porcelain Throne, and got a test from the nearest drugmart. Anecdotally the fastest turnaround I know of was 'under an hour', that was the coffee pot dropper, I know because she repeated the time line maybe twenty times that afternoon, kinda stuck in the head. One of my all time favorites was the rather vivid conversation with the gal who thought - because her grandma died of breast cancer and her aunt too - that her tender swollen breasts might indicate breast cancer. I always find it rather humorous that people tend to assume I know jack about medicine, having not even taken high school biology, but the gal came by dragged by another when I was a RA back in college to ask if that was a sign of cancer, not so much google and wiki then I guess. I shrugged and said "It could be pregnancy or menopause, I think we can rule out the latter" and she damn near fainted... fainting, again, not one of those signs of a healthy emotional condition, nor are mantra repetitions of denial. Some people wait, re-test, etc. That's fine. I want them to have a face to face with a licensed medical expert who can tell them the ins and outs, and who has to face an ethics board and malpractice if their advice is wrong unlike Dr. Online and Mr/Ms. Knowitall Friend. I want them to talk, and under legally protected confidentiality to be able to talk, and to get sound advice and options and then to go ruminate on their options. Informed. Calmed down in at least some part by the observation and presence of a doctor who knows the score. I want them to then go home and think about things, talk to people if they want, read some pamphlets if they want, cry into their damn pillow if they want, or sit back and watch a movie marathon while they wait for the 'stupid 48 hour government required waiting period to pass cause I ain't changing my mind'. I don't get what's complex or draconian about that.



Many physicians have ethics and common sense, if they won't do it for three weeks as their own choice, it hardly matters, it's not like I'm suggesting we tack on an additional 48 hours after that 3 weeks.



That, like a lot of this, is very case specific, I don't know why a gal already at say, 45 days when she finds out is going to be harmed being required to wait till 47 to terminate her pregnancy. She makes the decision, or is thinking about it, she goes in and the clock starts ticking, I'm not suggesting she sign a legally binding and public contract of intent to abort, just that there be a waiting period.



I'm fairly torn on the morning after pill myself, so no I'm not making that case. I suspect if asked for a definition of when human life begins I'd say 'cell division begins', that always seems a neat sidestep around fertilized embryos being used for research or kept on ice. Again the party isn't unified on these matters, I think we'd forcibly expel anyone who was okay with legal non-life threatening late-term abortion, most of us favor hanging those people anyway with the majority of the remainder prefer jamming a vial of formaldehyde in the back of their skulls, but you get into pre-heart beat or even pre 'viability' and agreement goes out the window, most haven't given it to deep of thought as the focus is getting Roe v Wade flipped.




Well, I know more than three, most people probably do too but I seem stuck in life playing confessor. And its a mixed bag, the reaction of your friends isn't uncommon, common in soldiers and I imagine police as well. Others are wishing they hadn't done it, false bravado, fits of anger and outrage at anyone questioning the ethics of a parallel case, and so on. Suicide rates are several times higher in women during the period after an abortion, not mentioned on PP's site I notice, so presumably many have had some regrets.