Choices, choices...

[pne]

On the topic of abortions I recently read a comment by cairnsy in a journal entry by isabeau, with a line of thinking I hadn't seen before but which I found interesting.

I think it's commonly accepted that part of growing up and becoming an adult is learning to accept that choices come with consequences (e.g. "you broke it, you fix it or pay for it"), and this comment seemed, to me, to be based on this, though it wasn't explicitly stated:

I've never [bought] into the whole 'a woman should be able to do what she wants with her body' line of thinking, mainly because in most cases, she was doing exactly what she wanted with her body when she chose to have unprotected sex. The male partner is naturally just as responsible, but to me, arguing that a woman should have a control over her body and yet not have to deal with the consequences of how she uses that body, is just not my cup of tea.

(Ignoring for the time being that some conceptions occur despite precautions; I've heard them called "Tropi-Kinder" in German, a play on words with the Tropi- root meaning "tropical" and an abbreviation of trotz Pille "despite the pill".)

Comments

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

You could just as easily argue that we should institute the death penalty for parking tickets. After all, if you don't want to die, you should know to put enough money in the parking meter. And if you really want to be careful, you can just avoid driving completely!

[pne.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I fail to see the analogy.

If there were a death penalty for parking tickets, then yes, it would make sense to put enough money into the parking meter (or not to drive, so you wouldn't have to park).

But I'm not getting why you think one should be instituted, or what you are comparing this to.

[catamorphism.livejournal.com]

Your reasoning seems to be that if you have sex, you should have to deal with the potential of becoming pregnant and carrying a child to term, because such are the consequences of sex. "People should face the consequences of their actions" sounds nice, but the question is what consequences? People should be responsible for parking illegally, but the death penalty seems like a bit of an excessive punishment. Likewise, being forced to carry a child to term seems like somewhat of an excessive punishment for the "crime" of having sex.

[pne.livejournal.com]

We may have to agree to disagree on this.