Nothing like the moral clarity of a child.
http://www.rightklik.net/

"For most young kids, that's all they're doing when they talk about hot-button topics like abortion -- repeating what they've heard."

This sentence just highlights the need for parents to teach their children right from wrong, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

She's really good a repeating and delivering what was probably wrote for her, but hey at least mom was involved in the kids school work.

SillyPuddy, clearly you could have used someone to help you with your school work.

And just as clearly, though she almost certainly had help in crafting it, and coaching on delivering it, the SENTIMENTS expressed are HERS! She does not deliver this in a robotic fashion, and her animation and sincerity are clearly genuine.

When I was 12 I understood and was grieved by what abortion meant. Not as much as I do now at age 34, but that's b/c I have three children now. Props to this kid, may she survive high school and (especially) university without falling victim to the political correctness meat grinder. Human rights from conception!

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You're off topic, but keep trying!

but gave many valid, factual arguments on why abortion should not be legal.

"Fetuses are knit together in their mother's womb by their wonderful Creator, who knows them all by name."

Uh, yeah, "factual" arguments, and not "some middle-school girl talking about God". Gotcha.

Gee, Brian, pluck the only religious sentiment among the multitude of facts and count coup.

And they say leftists aren't intellectually honest.

Abortion is always a deeply sad solution.

Well, I suppose I could have "plucked" the story she read on the Focus on the Family web site, instead.

Anyway, I was looking for those "many valid factual arguments on why abortion should not be legal". Instead, I heard a litany of statistics about abortion procedures, repetition of disproven lies (abortion leads to increased breast cancer risk), ridiculous claims (women who have abortions tend to have mood disorders substantial enough to provoke them to harm themselves), and broad proclamations ("abortion leaves a woman feeling lost", which she herself then torpedoes by stating that only less than 1/3 of women who have abortions feel dissatisfied).

The religious argument is the only one she gives that could be perceived as "factual" by someone who shares that belief.

I've researched Dr. Seuss' famous line for Horton the Elephant. It is clear from his later clarifications (and his estate's legal actions against pro-life groups) he was using "persons no matter how small" as a metaphor for underrepresented minorities and oppressed cultures.

However, it just points up the absurdity of the "fetus is not a person" argument. To have a functioning civilization on the speck of dust, the Whos must have been no larger than single-celled bacteria; their quality of life, their art, their great buildings, had absolutely no impact on the outside world, yet they mattered to the Whos. The silent scream is not as audible as the smallest Who's "yot!"

"her animation and sincerity are clearly genuine." Didn't realize those won arguments, like I said though she's got good delivery, get her a teleprompter and she could be president.

Brian is right in that more recent studies have shown that there is no evidence that abortion plays a role in the development of breast cancer. If i remember correctly, the most prevalent factor is family medical history.

But brushing off that "litany of statistics about abortion procedures" is being a bit too dismissive. If these statistics don't provoke some level of concern, then the discussion is ended.

The statistics are alarming. If one is willing to dismiss them, they aren't willing to admit its role in the degradation of a society. Like anything else people are exposed to regularly, they become inured to it, desensitized. Sometimes that's a bad thing.

When I was a child, I understood as a child and I spoke what I learned in Sunday school. Now that I'm an adult woman, I have adult women friends who were raped or abused and chose not to continue the abuse by bearing the rapists' children. As a favorite person of mine used to say: "circumstances alter cases."

And no one knows another's circumstances.

YOWZA! I don't think she's parrotting what others have fed her. I believe she believes it too and I appreciate her conviction. In fact, she's got more brains than most adults I know. Think we can get her to run for President someday...that is, if we're still a sovereign nation?

Lucy.

A woman who is raped or abused doesn't have a "choice". Advocating for "choice" does not solve this problem. It doesn't make her not-raped and it doesn't make her not-abused. MOST pro-life advocates recognize that the option for an abortion should be available in cases of rape or incest, and *certainly* for legitimate risk to a woman's life.

If what you were advocating was compassion for women who have been raped or abused you could comfortably be on the pro-life side of the argument.

The pro-choice argument is that a woman has the right to do anything she pleases with her own body for any reason at all.

It doesn't matter if she's been raped or if she just didn't bother with birth control. Same-same. Or else the pro-choice argument would actually make the argument that it matters how a woman got pregnant.

The circumstances would matter. And while we can't *know* the circumstances exactly, it's not that hard to know them generally. It's not *mysterious* when a 17 year old tells you that her parents paid a fortune for a second trimester abortion so that none of their important friends would find out that their kid got pregnant.

How much of our humanity do we sell for telling ourselves that abortion should available due to the horror of rape and abuse and that means allowing it, no questions asked, for any woman or any minor child who asks for one?

Ask the questions!

Most Americans support some restrictions on abortion, and don't want abortion used as routine birth control.
But most, I think, believe that a teenage girl, date-raped, seduced, or peer-pressured into pregnancy, afraid to tell her parents at first, should be able to choose abortion. (Most would say with parental consent.)
Also, most people would probably say abortion is OK for poor women too ignorant to take proper precautions, or unable to afford birth control (the Pill is not coverd by insurance.)
I think very few women are saying to themselves, "What the hell, if I get knocked up I'll just get an abortion!" Maybe some of the men in their lives think that way.

Synova,
We were raised in a patriarchal society, so everything we say is colored by that. Men in government & church leadership & family leadership have made the decrees we have followed...

Humanity is exactly what I advocate for. Not sacred, supernatural, invisible souls that religion says are inside of embryos. It isn't "selling humanity" to allow women to be autonomous. It's HONORING humanity.

Please ask yourself the questions: WHY should you decide what I do when I'm pregnant? Do you decide what I do about a hysterectomy or a tubal ligation? Perhaps you'd like to.

And perhaps that is the ultimate patriarchal dream...NO procedure will be the woman's decision, but her husband's/father's/ priest's/neighbor's? Count me OUT of that society!

Or shall ALL decisions be the woman's?

Women are either:
(1) competent adults with all the rights of male adults in a free society, or
(2) incompetents whose bodily functions shall be monitored by society(father/husband/priest).

There's no middle ground. Freedom or serfdom.

I wonder what she thinks about the stimulus bill?

Why should I decide what you should do when you're pregnant?

Why should you decide what I should do after I give birth?

Why should you decide what I can or can't do to my children?

What if I beat them? Abuse them? Keep them in a closet?

When you pretend that women are not part of a *society* but only and ever oppressed individuals in a society made up of only men, you're going to end up with this very odd notion that autonomy means personal anarchy.

And yet liberals, feminists and whoever else are on the forefront of punitive and controlling legislation that WILL control MY life in a whole lot of ways that I haven't agreed to. Not MEN but Women, pushing for laws that infringe on my rights.

Some very simple things such as not hurting other people... do you have a right to decide that for me? That I can't hurt someone? Is it churches and men and the patriarchy imposing serfdom on me if I'm told I can't hurt another person just because I screwed up?

Or is that legitimate? Do you have the right, with other people, to restrict *my* behavior?

This patriarchy you're so on about is not *forcing* you to bear children, to get pregnant. This patriarchy you're so on about has laws to protect your rights and your autonomy. That it's necessary to portray as serfdom, a reluctance to allow you to harm another, even when everything possible has been done, legally and socially, to ensure that the choice to reproduce is yours and yours alone, and it *works*... That's really reaching.

Argue that a woman forced has a post-conception right to exercise her choice and control and I won't argue with you, but how do you argue that a woman who has control and *made* a choice has been oppressed?

I doubt, highly, that you're suggesting that I have the right to kill my offspring.

Why does it take the patriarchy for me to suggest that you ought not kill yours?

Laws governing how we treat our spouses or children or neighbors are needed for society to work. We have even agreed as a society that abortion is illegal past a certain week, based on viability (tho' today, very undeveloped premmies sometimes survive, albeit w/developmental difficulties).

When you venture into religious areas like "when does the soul enter the body" of a baby, even the Catholic church hasn't agreed on that. And non religious people don't consider that a pertinent part of the discussion at ALL.

If you want to make abortion available ONLY TO THE WORTHY, how will you decide which woman got pregnant "on purpose" and therefore does not qualify for an abortion?

There are only two "choices" then:
(1) the state investigates each pregnancy and adjudicates whether or not an abortion is allowed.
(2) the individual (or the couple, if there is a father who sticks around - MANY don't) gets to decide what to do.

I'm not suggesting you don't have a right or even an OBLIGATION to LESSEN THE NEED for abortions by educating young people about sex, birth control, pregnancy, and their responsibilities in their sex lives (and they ALL will become sexual at some point in life).

I advocate factual sex ed, so that kids KNOW how urgent their sex drive is/is going to be, the reesponsibilities that the sex drive carries with it, what a fetus looks like and the stages of development...they will be less likely to treat the whole thing lightly, then.

Some humans will always mess up, and some males will always force sex. Some situations aren't all rosy and "let's pick out a crib."

The state (or you) should not decide for me what to do in my situation.

P.S. - What laws are feminists forcing on you? Equal pay for equal work? Equal tax dollars for girls' sports as boys' sports? The right to have your birth control prescriptiion filled? It can't be abortion, as no one forces you to have one...?