Pro-choicer at her worst

Not sure if anyone has read the Post today, but "Ask Amy" was particularly disturbing today. In it, a 40 yo woman writes about how she is pregnant and it was not planned and one of her pro-choice friends (the writer is pro-choice too) basically advises her to abort and goes off: "She said that "there ain't nothing there that you can call a life" and that obstetricians perform ultrasounds so early in pregnancy to "browbeat and intimidate" women into having babies that they don't want." WOW. Now, I am relatively new to this whole pro-choice thing (meaning, I was never particularly active in this debate, but I feel passionately about it now), but that kind of behavior doesn't sound right. After all, at the heart of the pro-choice argument is that there should be available options for women who are facing unintended pregnancies. This woman seems to be forcing on her friend what she deems is the only option for her--abortion.

I personally will not force my beliefs on anyone and I am open to hearing the pro-life point of view. And if I were to deal with an unintended pregnancy, I would cautiously weigh all of my options before making a decision. I would hope that other pro-choicers would do the same. Let's not lose sight of the bigger picture here. We are here to ensure a choice that would be up to the woman, not a politician.

Speaking of abortion, there was an interesting article in the British Medical Journal which is definitely making waves. It is an unintended response to the pro-life argument that a fetus is a human being because it feels pain when aborted. Actually, according to a review of available data, a fetus cannot feel pain at any particular time during the period of gestation (pregnancy). His reasoning being: "The neural circuitry needed to process pain is complete, if not mature, by 26 weeks' gestation, he said. "From about 26 weeks you can talk about there being a complete system in terms of biology, a link from the skin to the spinal cord to the brain, and we know that set-up is reasonably functional," Derbyshire explained. But to properly experience pain, the mind must also be developed, something which cannot happen until after birth." This is surely worth debating.