Abortion as a form of birth control?

Abortion Forum

Dems like to kill babies? WTF is wrong with you people?

Completely off topic, so I'm splitting it.

For the record, I think abortion should be restricted to first trimester only, but that it should perhaps be a fairly expensive procedure so as to reduce dependence upon it as an acceptable means of birth control. Thre are more effective means of prevention that are not so gruesome.

Indeed, moving now! This was split off from an election thread and I forgot to move it afterward.

i doubt that there's any one of us here, liberal OR conservative, that favors abortion as a "means of birth control." That's ridiculous. I'm totally opposed to that - preplanned abortions. but once a pregnancy exists, if and ONLY if, there is a VERY good reason to terminate that pregnancy, i don't think the government or the courts should be dictating anything, providing it's done in the first trimester when it is highly questionable whether a human life exists. beyong that first trimester, i think that some other alternative should be applied, as difficult as that might make things for the mother and/or child.

1) if the mother's life is in danger from the pregnancy, obviously it's a clear-cut case of life or death so an abortion in that instance I wouldn't argue with.

2) if the pregnancy is from rape, it'd be great if the mother would go ahead and have the child anyway, but she didn't have a choice, so the decision should be hers.

99% of the time, however, abortion is used as birth control.

i pulled that out of my ass I have no idea what the actual number is

I'll see if I can find reasons abortions were performed online but I doubt I will be able to.

are you saying most abortions are not performed because the person doesn't feel like having a kid when they are pregnant from consensual sex?

ok I found this

it's from an obvious Pro-life page but here ya go

http://www.christianpulpit.com/righttol.html

Percentage of abortions performed due to life or health threat to the mother: 1%
Percentage of abortions performed due to rape or incest: 2%
Percentage of abortions performed due to health of the baby: 4%

Percentage of abortions performed for social reasons: 93%

Source: "Why Do Women Have Abortions?", A. Torres & J.D. Forrest,
Family Planning Perspectives, Jul/Aug 1988

Number of live births in 1992: 4,065,014
Number of abortions in 1992: 1,528,930

Percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion: 27%

Source: World Almanac & Book of Facts, 1996, New Jersey

I don't know what the rate is in USA, but since 1991, the rate of abortions in Australia has actually dropped every year. This is happening without any government intervention, it's just that people are finding alternatives on their own and that has got to be a good thing.

I don't think abstenence is beyond our reach. Most sex is recreational and not terribly genuine/loving to begin with - why would it be so difficult to teach kids an alternative to caving into the media and letting their hormones control them? There's great danger to life with STD's which social diseases and could disappear with changes in social behavior. There are too many people on this planet which are the result of promiscuous sex and unregulated child bearing. There are a good number of problems that tie into this topic.

Mystic, I see your point regarding our present inability to regulate using abortion as a form of brith control (short of outlawing it altogether), but what if we did something with abortion from a regulatory standpoint like we do with driving: if you end up in that clinic for an unplanned pregnancy, you must take a follow-up course on sex education, planned parenthood, etc. just as the DMV allows you to get out of certain tickets as being points aginst your driving record by attending a follow-up traffic school..?