My Stance on Abortion.

It is no wonder this is such a hotbutton issue.

When you pick a side in this debate it is for one of two reasons. You are thinking about yourself, or you are thinking about others.(Research the people in the abortion debate, % of those in favor of pro-choice that do not have children for example) When you are thinking about yourself or putting yourself in the shoes of the woman who has the choice to make, you have a tendancy to go in the pro-choice direction, and if you are thinking about others, or have children of your own I would venture to say the majority cannot imagine letting such an atrocity occur even knowing the factors invovled in making that choice.

Since the Roe v Wade decision in 1973, over 50 million abortions have been performed in the US alone. If you have ever been a parent and loved your children I cannot see how you could possibly read the mechanical, cut and dry medical explanations of the abortion procedures and not cringe. 1.3 million abortions are performed each year in the United States each year on average. Is it a matter of population control for some people? This "mistake" a woman has in her womb has it's life taken away by crushing it's skull and forcibly removing it after 9 weeks. That "woman" had many more years and many more chances and "choice" than she gave the baby.

According to the online medical encyclopedia Medline Plus(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002912.htm), there are at least four main reasons for having an abortion:

"The developing baby has a birth defect or genetic problem
The pregnancy is harmful to the woman's health (therapeutic abortion)
The pregnancy resulted after a traumatic event such as rape or incest
The woman may not wish to be pregnant (elective abortion)"

It is the abortions that fall in "The woman may not wish to be pregnant (elective abortion)" category that completely boggle my mind. There are so many options today to prevent unwanted pregnancies that barring rape, if a woman gets pregnant on accident, she is just plain lazy. If a woman is lazy in taking care of her children after they are born and neglect them, it is a crime, but killing them before they have a chance to live is not considered a crime. The argument is that the fetus is not yet a living breathing human, and that is where I call bullshit - it IS! Science cannot say exactly when life begins, it is all theory. We afford more protection to people who live their lives as a vegetable, never to speak or open their eyes again, than we do unborn children.

This is another one of those debates that may never be resolved in my lifetime. This however is my stance - that all elective abortions be made illegal, and that all necessary abortions for medical reasons help provide some good - by the use of the stem cells for research.