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So a pro-choice adult woman tried to convince me that abortion is self-defense. "What if the baby puts her in a dire financial situtation?" she argued.
Some would argue that abortion is self-preservation; defense against taking responsibility.
Here's my problem with that argument: Self-defense is when you attack the person who is trying to intentionally harm you. The unborn child has brain waves at 6 weeks, but it cannot think for itself and it cannot calculate a plan to harm the mother. Also the unborn baby is no bigger than my palm. Outside and inside the womb it is completely defenseless against the mother. No, the kicking part doesn't count! The baby cannot defend itself against the abortionist. Personally I find the argument flimsy.
I want to know your view. If you think abortion is self-defense, that's perfectly fine. If you think abortion is not self-defense, that's fine too.
Pro-lifers and Pro-choicers, explain your position and be sure to respect the opinions of others. This is a topic for intelligent discussion, so no name-calling, no ridiculing, no threating people. It's not cool.
Ready...set...DEBATE!
And have fun! smile

You have a very good point and I respect your opinion. However, I shall present my argument. Get comfortable because this is going to be a long one!:
First off, you're right about the financial situation thing. If the woman is in a dire financial situation, crisis pregnancy centers offer financial assistance, there's welfare, insurance companies like Allstate and Mercury Insurance, etc, offer all kinds of benefits and assistance to their customers. And of course adoption is an option.

With all due respect I diagree with abortion being safer than childbirth. It's not safer for the baby and interestingly enough, since the legalization of abortion, more than 350 women have died from abortion complications, so abortion is not all that safe.
In addition surgical abortion can harm the reproductive system. Studies have shown that the majority of women who have abortions suffer from physical trauma and psychological trauma. Women who choose abortion are more likely to get cervical or ovarian cancer. 13 out of 17 studies have reported that breast cancer is common among aborted women. Common side effects include severe pain, cramping, nausea, diarrhea, hemorrhaging, cervical laceration, menstrual disturbance, inflammation of the reproductive organs, uterine, bladder or bowel perforation, sterilization, infection, sepsis, Pelvic Inflammatory Disease, etc. As for mental and emotional health, depression, anxiety, insomnia, guilt, pain, flashbacks of the experience, feelings of worthlessness and failure, avoidance of children, friction in relationships, anorexia and/or bulimia, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, self-injury, and thoughts of suicide are common.

Plus if the goal is to protect women and childbirth is so dangerous, then why don't we just encourage them to terminate all their pregnancies, unwanted and wanted pregnancies? Let's take it a step further. If the goal is to protect women from their children, then women should be allowed to kill their born children, as well. After all, children sometimes grow up to be murderers, so wouldn't killing them be self-defense? Laugh if you will, but classifying abortion as self-defense is opening a pandora's box. If a woman has an abortion to protect herself from death by childbirth, then why shouldn't she be allowed to kill her born child and say it was in self-defense because the child was causing problems to her mental health? My point is once you open that pandora's box, there's no going back.

As for abusive spouses, a woman can go to a Domestic Violence shelter, where she is protected. There are so many shelters, hotlines and services avalible for abused women. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-SAFE/7233), the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook, Family Violence Prevention Fund, and I could go on forever. A pregnant woman who is in a abusive relationship needs to know her options so she can protect her baby and herself.

As for child abuse, if a teacher suspects child abuse, it is mandatory that they report it, so if a pregnant teenage girl tells a teacher she was raped by her father or some male relative, the teacher should report the rape. If the teenage girl goes to an abortion clinic, the officials should report the rape. Rapists use secret abortions to cover up their crime. There are hotlines and services for abused teens, as well.

You're right about abortion not being just black and white, but with all due respect when you look at the number of options women and girls in crisis pregnancies have, I don't think the self-defense argument holds water for long.
Thank you for this intelligent conversation and I would be happy to continue this debate with you.

Welcome back, Tyshia2! Nice to meet you!
Yes, the self-defense argument is a pretty cruddy argument. I agree with you on that one because self-defense is when you're trying to protect yourself from someone who is going to harm you intentionally. The unborn baby cannot intentionally kill the mother, so abortion's not self-defense.
I'm a little confused about one point you made. You say that 50,000 women have died from childbirth and negative side effects are common among women who have carried their pregnancies for all nine months.
My grandma on my dad's side had six children, my grandma on my mom's side had four children, my mom had my brother and I, my aunt Sandy had one child, my aunt Patty had two children, my Aunt Pam had three children, and my 22-year-old cousin just had a baby on Thurday. All of them are alive and well and neither my grandmothers nor my aunts nor my mother ever had physical or psychological complications after having children and my cousin is doing just fine (I saw her on Saturday and she's doing fine). If childbirth is dangerous, why are both my grandmothers, my aunts, my mother, and my cousin alive?
About the 1000 to 5000 statistic, I did a little investigating for a term paper I wrote and I found a statement from former abortionist and founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America Bernard Nathanson. Real interesting statement:
“How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of the revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason which had to be done was permissible.” Mr. Nathanson says that the real death toll of illegal abortion deaths was 39. 39 is the number of reported deaths. Now, 39 deaths is tragic, but if 5000 to 1000 women were dying from illegal abortions, don't you think it would have been reported years before Roe v. Wade? Someone would have taken it to court before the number reached that high. Either Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee waited too long to address the situation to the courts or NARAL did fabricate the statistics. You don't have to agree, but it is an interesting point to look into.
Here's an expert from my paper: “Since abortion was legalized in 1973, between 1973 and 1987, 215 women died as a result of complications from botched legal abortions. The government stopped collecting these statistics in 1987, though many women continue to die each year from legal abortions” (www.calright2life.org). According to more recent studies, such as studies done from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than 350 women have died from safe, legal abortions. Legal abortion deaths may be low, but there are abortion-related deaths.
There is a abortion-breast cancer link, but I'm gonna have to get back to you on that one. I have sources and evidence, but their explanations are really long and hard to understand, so let me get back to you on that one. Is that okay?
I did take the argument a little too far. What I was trying to say was if it's okay to kill an unborn child for any reason at all, if it's okay for a man to end his wife's life (the Terry Schavio case), if assisted suicide is okay, if the death penalty is okay, then what is there to stop society from legalizing murder altogether? Laugh if you will, but with abortion, assisted suicide, and the death penalty, doesn't it seem like we're on the road to legalized murder? Just throwing out there.
Thanks for this intelligent discussion and I would be happy to continue it with you if you want to. Welcome back to the forum!

But if there are more abortions than births, that is deaths: The baby hasn't seen the daylight, had a chance to love, walk, play,or anything: He was killed before he ever could. That's unfair. And if there is possibility of the mother's life in danger, they can have the baby early,and thus save both lives. Or take medications to save her life.

It has been proven that it is very rare that a pregnancy to endanger the womans health.

They are usually under the watchful eye of doctors and taken care of. They then to do C-Sections or put on bed rest, etc... to prevent deaths. It usually doesn't occur until the later stages of pregnancy. Yes the risk is premature babies but doctors try to wait until the fetus reaches a certain point to increase their chance of survival.

Good thing the modern medicine is advancing. Lowering blood pressure and bed is still doing something to help them and keeping more people alive. Some even stay in the hospital so they have round the clock care.

A lot of things can endanger peoples lives and a lot of medicine, medical procedures are doing more to save lives.

Sadly some died from complications of the flu. Things happen at times but that is why people become doctors and try to help the best they can.