14th March 2007, 10:06 PM
Quote:Makes me wonder if all that child sacrifice done in ancient times was some form of post birth abortion.
That was more about getting rid of "inferior" children, really. For the most part, that meant girls were the main target of infanticide (in ancient Greece, at least; Sparta was the one exception, where boys were the main target, as they only wanted good warriors so smaller boy babies or crippled children (especially boys) were the ones left to die, not girls. But women had better status in Sparta than anywhere else in classical mainland Greece, that was just one part of it...)
That is called abortion by some, but it's different, as those babies were actually born before being abandoned, while abortion removes the fetus before birth, and before it is a true human being yet.
Quote:Should only the woman be allowed to decide to abort, or should both parents have to consent?
Limititations like that are added by anti-choice legislators trying to restrict abortion any way they can, not because they actually make sense. Often the girls who most need abortions are ones who could never tell their parents without being severely punished...
Quote:If the man wants to abort the child, but the woman wants to keep it, should the man be forced to take a huge blow in his paycheck to pay child support? Is our society sexist in that a man must be dragged kicking and screaming to raise a child when he does not wish to do so, but the woman does?
If one parent wants to keep the child, and there is no medical reason that an abortion is necessary, it does make sense to keep it... the problem, though, lies in legislating some "the father must know" law or something. What if the identity of the father isn't known for sure, or the father is out of contact and has no interest anymore for a while but comes back later and says "I would have taken care of it"? You can't just say "in every case the father must know", that would work as badly as parental-consent laws do... still though, I understand the point, and it is somewhat true that it's not fair that a baby that a father wants could still be aborted... I just don't know what could really be done legally about that, given that I am pro choice.