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i know someone who is very 'christian,' but there's something i think can get discussed here.

this woman has encouraged someone to step out of the bounds of marriage (this woman wasn't married, but they were sleeping around with a man who was), not using protection (the married woman was in another country, like anything would surface?) and the woman got pregnant multiple times from this guy, and 'miscarried' all the babies she had from this guy. miscarried is in parentheses because she miscarried on purpose so she wouldn't give birth to 'b*****d children', but she is very much against abortion, and thinks any woman who would intentionally kill a child inside her will go to hell.

i personally think what she did is abortion. she just didn't pay a doctor to do it. i think a miscarriage is a COMPLETE act of god or nature, and that there's nothing that could have been done to save the child. it's tragic i'm sure (to my knowledge, i've never miscarried. i'm married, don't cheat and am on birth control), and there's tons of wrong hytheses here on what makes this so bizarre on so many levels, but i want to know this.

does a woman making herself miscarry considered abortion to you? do you think it should hold the same stigma abortion does? i'm more interested in what others think it is (i stated this woman's opinion, i stated mine. what's yours?)

Actuallly, even a miscarriage is an abortion. The clinical term for it is "spontaneous abortion". It is very possible to constantly miscarry (I had a few friends who couldn't carry several feti to term), and doing such is a symptom of other medical conditions (e.g. PCOS). No matter how you feel about the issue it's all abortion. It just becomes an issue of whether it's of her own volition or not. That is where it gets tricky...

Depending on the circumstances of miscarriage it can have its own stigma. If you're viewed as hedonistic some might say things "caught up with you". Some women feel shame even if they did nothing to induce miscarriage (miscarriage can occur for many reasons). Most societies, however, are moving away from the idea that miscarriage is something the mother should feel guilty about. That's probably why there are some instances of women inducing miscarriage.

So, yeah, it's abortion on a technicality. Depending on the circumstances, however, there may be less stigma with it.

OW!!!!!! That's just...ow...

To be real technical, the word abortion means any death of a fetus, be it intentional or a miscarriage. However, ethically it is exactly the same, and just as evil to intentionally miscarry.

The ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Chinese believed it was murder. In China, today, there are shrines to the murdered by their parents in apology for their deeds; even if it was state mandated.

There is no difference between an "intentional miscarry" and an abortion. In both cases the woman didn't want the child and terminated the pregnancy. A miscarriage is a terrible thing to go through...trust me, I know; and I personally find it offensive when people use the term "intentional miscarry" to try to make an abortion done at home to avoid the shame of a public one sound ok. If the woman mentioned in the OP was such a "Christian woman" then why was she messing around with a married man in the first place? abortion is abortion no matter how you word it. I know in the medical field they are trying to call a true miscarriage, when the woman's body naturally gets rid of a fetus for natural reasons, a "spontaneous abortion", meaning that it was an unplanned abortion. This also is unacceptable, because if a woman's body gets rid of something without having to be prompted, then it is not technically an abortion, when the fetus is intentionally taken out of the woman's body. So to sum it all up for you, a miscarriage is when nature decides to get rid of a fetus from the woman's body without having to be prompted by anyone. Abortion is when the fetus is intentionally discarded, weather it be by a certified doctor, safest way, or by the woman who is too ashamed to go to the doctor and decides to do it herself.

that is definitely abortion, no question asked.