DescentBB

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2006/07 ... ng-to.html

Oh yay! I read something simmiliar in the St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Florida, not Russia). Basically, the government is funding anti-abortion programs to scare women into not getting abortions due to \"increased chance of breast cancer, future infertillity, and 'postabortion syndrome'\"

So, we are not funding Stem Cell research, but we can fund this ★■◆●... Note the fact that all of those reasons are complete lies, here is the supposed PAS

Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS) is characterized by severe depression, guilt, eating disorders, anxiety, anger, lower self-esteem, addictions, anniversary grief, etc., following a woman's abortion. While abortion advocates claim there's no such thing as PAS, PAS counselors say they have witnessed severe psychological trauma in women, regardless of the number of abortions they have had.

That is all because of the ethical matters behind it, and is not supported by the scientific community. It is an unreal syndrome, and it doesnt exist.
http://www.venturacpc.org/
Check the page titled \"The Value of Life\" to see that these CPC centers are built on religion.

Anyone find this ironic, they dont fund stem cell research, but they fund antiabortion by the billions!

I love where my parents tax dollars are going!

Dakatsu wrote: That is all because of the ethical matters behind it, and is not supported by the scientific community. It is an unreal syndrome, and it doesnt exist.

lol.. you obviously have NO CLUE what you're posting about. I've known 3 women in my life that have suffered from this. They were not christian, and they were quite debilitated. They wound up taking hours and hours of counceling and I'm not sure they ever got thier heads back on.

From:
http://www.msmagazine.com/aug01/pas.html

Post-abortion stress syndrome\" — PASS or PAS — sounds scientific, but don't be fooled — it's a made-up term. Not recognized as an official syndrome or diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association , the American Psychological Association, or any other mainstream authority, it is a bogus affliction invented by the religious right. Those who claim its existence define it loosely as a raft of emotional problems that they say women suffer after having an abortion — nightmares, feelings of guilt, even suicidal tendencies — and compare it to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Of course there will be problems after an abortion, but it is not a syndrome. It is more of them questioning the ethics of what they have done and if they regret it.

3 women.. out of how many that have had an abotion?

That's like saying \"I've spoken to three people that have jumped off a ten story building and lived. Therefore everyone will live if they do it.\"

While I DO believe in PASS, I think this is another place where government tax dollars simply don't belong. See how much trouble and controversy we would save if we ONLY spent tax dollars on the things we HAVE to instead of letting the government take your money away and then decide which \"worthy projects\" THEY think deserve funding?

Should Stem Cell research be government funded? NO.
Should Post Abortion Stress Syndrom be government funded? NO.

Kilarin wrote:While I DO believe in PASS, I think this is another place where government tax dollars simply don't belong. See how much trouble and controversy we would save if we ONLY spent tax dollars on the things we HAVE to instead of letting the government take your money away and then decide which "worthy projects" THEY think deserve funding?

Aid for third world countries is not something we HAVE to spend money on, does that mean we shouldn't?

I've honestly never heard about Post-Abortion Syndrome until you mentioned it. But given what you described i'd have to say that most of the symptoms certainly sound real to me, they are nothing to dismiss.

But the main point of the opposition to Post Abortion Syndrome is that all of it's symptoms are better described under the catch-all of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and i agree.

If someone came to me claiming to have Post Abortion Syndrome, i'd 'treat' (i am not a qualified doctor) them for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Obviously unwanted pregnancy is a traumatic psychological experience in and of itself.

Wikipedia has an article on Post-abortion Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-abortion_syndrome

in which it says: \"prior research indicated that adverse emotional reactions to the procedure are most strongly influenced by pre-existing psychological conditions and other negative factors.\"

in otherwords, it's psychosematic. What was in your head BEFORE you had the abortion will have a direct effect on how you react to the abortion, and whether or not you develop PTSD (and if so, to what extent).

You can get PTSD from anything, seriously. You can get PTSD from misplacing the remote control, it's all dependant on what's in your head.

TIGERassault wrote:Aid for third world countries is not something we HAVE to spend money on, does that mean we shouldn't?

yes, we shouldn't.

If you want to send money to a third world nation, send it yourself. For one thing, they will get a much larger percentage of it. The government eats up way to much with its bureaucracy. And for another, you can have much better assurance that you are actually funding the things you WANTED to fund, as opposed to say, putting Saddam in power or shoring up the Shah.

Send the money yourself. I do.

Kilarin wrote:Send the money yourself. I do.

The problem is that most people dont, because they know that they wont get anything back from their funding. So instead the governments have to force them to donate.
It's the same principle as pewople having guns for defence. People have a right to shoot someone instead of getting their money taken, but it just isn't fair.

Kilarin wrote:While I DO believe in PASS, I think this is another place where government tax dollars simply don't belong. See how much trouble and controversy we would save if we ONLY spent tax dollars on the things we HAVE to instead of letting the government take your money away and then decide which "worthy projects" THEY think deserve funding?

Should Stem Cell research be government funded? NO.
Should Post Abortion Stress Syndrom be government funded? NO.

Do i have this correct?: The Libertarian party supports government funding for WARS, but not HEALTH?

that's strikes me as pretty fucked up man o_O. It's like funding Death but not funding Life. Have you actually thought about what happens in a war situation? What happens when a soldier get hurt? Do the soldiers need to provide their own health care, or is the health of the army considered to be none of the government's business? Assuming the former, this would mean that the government provides ARMY health care (as a part of the military budget) but not PUBLIC health care.

Sounds like a military state to me. Where only the army gets the benefits we currently take for granted in our society - thus military service is considered defacto mandatory (otherwise you miss out on all the public benefits). (Hmm, or maybe there would be some kindof way to limit military signup - like, it'd be REALLY hard to get in. But then, that could mean that society's finest would be concentrated in the military. It seems inherently dangerous for the pinicle of society to be centralised in that society's biggest (and most legitamite, according to the articles of war) target!)

Have you ever read or watched Starship Troopers?

Starship Troopers the movie... in it's very first lines wrote:[first lines]
Newsreel announcer: Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future.
Soldier #1: I'm doing my part.
Soldier #2: I'm doing my part.
Soldier #3: I'm doing my part.
Young kid dressed up as a soldier: I'm doing my part too.
[Soldiers laugh]
Newsreel announcer: They're doing their part. Are you? Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship.

and OMG i am going so incredibly offtopic!
(do you have any IM programs?)

roid wrote:Wikipedia has an article on Post-abortion Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-abortion_syndrome

in which it says: "prior research indicated that adverse emotional reactions to the procedure are most strongly influenced by pre-existing psychological conditions and other negative factors."

in otherwords, it's psychosematic. What was in your head BEFORE you had the abortion will have a direct effect on how you react to the abortion, and whether or not you develop PTSD (and if so, to what extent).

You can get PTSD from anything, seriously. You can get PTSD from misplacing the remote control, it's all dependant on what's in your head.

let's be very careful here. you may be playing a little fast-and-loose with the wikipedia quote (italicised above). The point of the quote is not that people are prone to PTSD or even that a reaction of depression to getting an abortion is "all in the mind". The point is that people who have diagnosed mental illness (depression, shizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc) will be prone to symptoms of so-called PAS. It is a BS disorder. It doesn't exist.

Abortions don't cause mental illness. A reaction after the fact may be connected to pre-existing mental illness of any kind and may have nothing to do with having an abortion. No one is saying it is not traumatic on some level, for some length of time. It just doesn't cause a functional impairment. The functional impairment has always existed. I would bet money that even a PTSD reaction is very rare when compared with acute symptoms (as a situational response) to pre-exiting mental illness, say bipolarism.

My take on psycological disorders in general are that they are over-hyped and over-diagnosed. I don't have a clue about post-abortion traumua or whatever, but at the same time I'm skeptical when it comes to ADD, ADHD, etc. diagnoses. I don't deny that they exist, I just don't think they are as widespread as psycologists might want us to believe.

It's worthwhile to try to balance what might be called \"PAS\" in a small percentage of women, against the severe impact of having to bear and raise a child.

On the balance, the price of PAS seems very low, compared to the vast benefits society reaps by not raising unwanted children, and having to pay millions of dollars to imprison these people later in life - which is where a disproportionate percentage of these non-aborted children wioll end up.

It's very clear, in all the research, society benefits when women have the right to choose, and exercise that right without government interference.

Ever thought that government touting PAS symptoms might actually be a major contributing factor?

Mobius wrote:On the balance, the price of PAS seems very low, compared to the vast benefits society reaps by not raising unwanted children, and having to pay millions of dollars to imprison these people later in life

Wow, and I thought that I was cynical. While I don't necessarily disagree that some of these people would've gone to prison, it is incorrect to simply jump to the conclusion that most of them will and therefore justify killing them beforehand.

roid wrote:Do i have this correct?: The Libertarian party supports government funding for WARS, but not HEALTH?

Yep!

roid wrote:Do the soldiers need to provide their own health care, or is the health of the army considered to be none of the government's business?

Yes, keeping the army healthy and on it's feet is a legitimate government concern. That does not involve funding stem cell research or anything remotely similar.

roid wrote:this would mean that the government provides ARMY health care (as a part of the military budget) but not PUBLIC health care.

Yes, but it's the opposite of a military state. We HAVE to have an army. Protecting this country from foreign attack is a legitimate goal of government. And I have no problem with the concept that if you refuse to pay your share of the expense of supporting your countries army, you have no business being in that country.

The government ALSO has a legitimate concern with communicable diseases. That falls under the "protecting us from each other" part of governments job.

Outside of that, health issues should remain a private concern.

Mobius wrote:On the balance, the price of PAS seems very low, compared to the vast benefits society reaps by not raising unwanted children, and having to pay millions of dollars to imprison these people later in life - which is where a disproportionate percentage of these non-aborted children wioll end up.

But this really doesn't go far enough. Because there are lots of kids who are born even though they aren't wanted. Euthanizing these undesirable, unwanted, failed abortions whenever we find out about them would save us even MORE money.

i just had a great idea...

since abortion is always wrong, but war is an acceptable necessary evil - let's put the unwanted children in the army straight away. the army can feed, clothe, shelter and love them until they are ready to kill or be killed. yes folks, this is a win win win situation.

Palzon wrote:i just had a great idea...

since abortion is always wrong, but war is an acceptable necessary evil - let's put the unwanted children in the army straight away. the army can feed, clothe, shelter and love them until they are ready to kill or be killed. yes folks, this is a win win win situation.

That has it's own problems. You'd want an army that is more willing to look for external threats than internal - and the greatest internal threat is always the populace that depends on that army for protection because that populace has the ulitmate oversite. An army of the "unwanted" will seek an excuse to attack the populace that initially rejected them.

I think he was kidding Flip.

Palzon wrote:

roid wrote:Wikipedia has an article on Post-abortion Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-abortion_syndrome

in which it says: "prior research indicated that adverse emotional reactions to the procedure are most strongly influenced by pre-existing psychological conditions and other negative factors."

in otherwords, it's psychosematic. What was in your head BEFORE you had the abortion will have a direct effect on how you react to the abortion, and whether or not you develop PTSD (and if so, to what extent).

You can get PTSD from anything, seriously. You can get PTSD from misplacing the remote control, it's all dependant on what's in your head.

let's be very careful here. you may be playing a little fast-and-loose with the wikipedia quote (italicised above). The point of the quote is not that people are prone to PTSD or even that a reaction of depression to getting an abortion is "all in the mind". The point is that people who have diagnosed mental illness (depression, shizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc) will be prone to symptoms of so-called PAS. It is a BS disorder. It doesn't exist.

Abortions don't cause mental illness. A reaction after the fact may be connected to pre-existing mental illness of any kind and may have nothing to do with having an abortion. No one is saying it is not traumatic on some level, for some length of time. It just doesn't cause a functional impairment. The functional impairment has always existed. I would bet money that even a PTSD reaction is very rare when compared with acute symptoms (as a situational response) to pre-exiting mental illness, say bipolarism.

That is the way i understood it too. The words might be getting jumbled up coz i'm trying to touch on too many points at once. When the subject of mental illness comes up, i have a lot to say .

--
The "all in the mind" thing... maybe we are misunderstanding eachother, i don't use the term negatively. This is psych, everything is "all in the mind"!

--
Just because a reaction can be explained via something like bipolarism, doesn't make the suffering any less valid. The conditions can still be co-morbid*, the patient should still be treated.

(* if you ask me, any DSM that implies otherwise has problems.)

The problem with chronic mental illness is that everyone just explains away every problem you have as "a part of your mental illness". ie: "he's freaking out, oh but don't worry that's just a symptom of his bipolar, ignore it". Just because you have Bipolar doesn't make you immune to other conditions, if anything it can make PTSD more likely because thanks to the bipolar you are already purpetually traumatised - it may not take as much to send you over the edge into full blown PTSD.

Kilarin wrote:

roid wrote:Do i have this correct?: The Libertarian party supports government funding for WARS, but not HEALTH?

Yep!

roid wrote:Do the soldiers need to provide their own health care, or is the health of the army considered to be none of the government's business?

Yes, keeping the army healthy and on it's feet is a legitimate government concern. That does not involve funding stem cell research or anything remotely similar.

Those feet that your Army is standing with were originally made of stemcells. And if those feet get blown off by mines, they will be regrown thx to Stemcell research. Saying your Army isn't concerned with Stemcells research, shows that the Army has a lack of concern about the health of it's troops. So which is it, is the Libertarian Army concerned with the health of it's troops or not?

What is the nature of this Army health care? Does the army provide the health care itself, or does it simply let the private health system deal with them (but on the gov's tab)?

To quote Jimmy Smitts on The West Wing:

\"Abortion's a tragedy. It should be legal, it should be safe, it should be a whole lot rarer than it is now.\"

I'm pro-choice, but I also believe that PAS exists.

roid wrote:The "all in the mind" thing... maybe we are misunderstanding eachother, i don't use the term negatively. This is psych, everything is "all in the mind"!

No no no it should read: This is psych, everything is "all in the brain"!
That's quite a crucial distinction because the mind is usually not seen as part of the body, but the brain is.

Palzon wrote:Abortions don't cause mental illness. A reaction after the fact may be connected to pre-existing mental illness of any kind and may have nothing to do with having an abortion. No one is saying it is not traumatic on some level, for some length of time. It just doesn't cause a functional impairment. The functional impairment has always existed. I would bet money that even a PTSD reaction is very rare when compared with acute symptoms (as a situational response) to pre-exiting mental illness, say bipolarism.

Abortions CAN of course cause serious mental illnesses. Every traumatic event - especially if it trespasses the boundary of your (or someone elses) body - has a not so low probability of causing PTSD --- ask firemen or soldiers... chances are that many of them had had it once in their life, and they will tell you that it was not pretty. Usually PTSD subsides quickly with councelling, but it CAN turn chronic, and either way it is associated with a quite high mortality rate (due to suicide). Therefore PTSD is NOT a BS disease, it has drastic consequences for your future life (the fact that you get it more often if you suffer from Depression just means that if your psychological immune system is already weakened at is easier to catch something else as well --- especially because PTSD and Depression seem to be related).

So, does that mean that abortions are bad? Of course not. People can get PTSD from any surgery, they can get it from trying to save people from car accidents, and even from hearing about a traumatic episode of someone else's. What it means is that women who want to get an abortion need to be AWARE of the danger of PTSD. They need good counseling that informs them about the signs of PTSD so that they can watch out for them and do something against it. You would put them in serious danger if you don't do this just because you don't want to scare them away from an abortion.

So, if it has not become clear till now, like Suncho I believe that PAS exists (but it's just a politicized label for good old PTSD) but I am also for (informed) choice.

roid wrote:What is the nature of this Army health care? Does the army provide the health care itself, or does it simply let the private health system deal with them (but on the gov's tab)?

Hmmm. Good question. My leaning would be that medical care in the field is something the army must provide directly, medical care off the field would be better and more efficiently provided by the private health system on the gov's tab. Of course, the big problem there is that when the gov is paying, you KNOW the cost of paperwork is going to go up, AND both sides will try to cheat the other. <sigh> There are just no GOOD solutions frequently when Government is involved. Government is a necessary evil. Necessary AND evil.

Pandora wrote:

Palzon wrote:Abortions don't cause mental illness. A reaction after the fact may be connected to pre-existing mental illness of any kind and may have nothing to do with having an abortion. No one is saying it is not traumatic on some level, for some length of time. It just doesn't cause a functional impairment. The functional impairment has always existed. I would bet money that even a PTSD reaction is very rare when compared with acute symptoms (as a situational response) to pre-exiting mental illness, say bipolarism.

Abortions CAN of course cause serious mental illnesses. Every traumatic event - especially if it trespasses the boundary of your (or someone elses) body - has a not so low probability of causing PTSD --- ask firemen or soldiers... chances are that many of them had had it once in their life, and they will tell you that it was not pretty. Usually PTSD subsides quickly with councelling, but it CAN turn chronic, and either way it is associated with a quite high mortality rate (due to suicide). Therefore PTSD is NOT a BS disease, it has drastic consequences for your future life (the fact that you get it more often if you suffer from Depression just means that if your psychological immune system is already weakened at is easier to catch something else as well --- especially because PTSD and Depression seem to be related).

So, does that mean that abortions are bad? Of course not. People can get PTSD from any surgery, they can get it from trying to save people from car accidents, and even from hearing about a traumatic episode of someone else's. What it means is that women who want to get an abortion need to be AWARE of the danger of PTSD. They need good counseling that informs them about the signs of PTSD so that they can watch out for them and do something against it. You would put them in serious danger if you don't do this just because you don't want to scare them away from an abortion.

So, if it has not become clear till now, like Suncho I believe that PAS exists (but it's just a politicized label for good old PTSD) but I am also for (informed) choice.

i am usually in agreement with you but i have to part ways here. first of all, a clarification. it was PAS that I said was a BS disorder, not PTSD.

Second, If PAS is a policital name for PTSD then it is precisely that politicising that makes it a BS disorder - there is no PAS. You have even acknowledged that anything could cause a PTSD response so to connect it, in name, with abortions in particular is totally asinine. Do we make up a new disorder for every different type of response to trauma?

Third, I am not convinced that the the so-called PAS is equivalent to PTSD. I think the "advocates" of PAS are themselves trying to make a case for it being distinct. So please clarify this for me.

Fourth, I would like someone to provide some kind of valid statistical data showing that abortion was somehow correlated with a clinical mental health diagnosis of any kind that could be attributed to abortion itself as the cause, or even a cause on any level, as apart from a pre-exiting condition or distinct from a predisposition to mental illness.

Further, Consider this, is PAS more common that post-partum depression, an actual (accepted) mental illness. How do the statistics of the two compare?

I'd like real answers to these points.

How about the trauma of bringing a child to term...

Palzon wrote:I'd like real answers to these points.

I have NOT done any research on the topic of PASS, but I asked a friend who I know is involved where to find the info and this is what he said:

Our best man on this topic is Dr. David Reardon, who's been published in (e.g.) the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. His website is http://www.afterabortion.org and it contains a great many items of interest.

Of particular note are the first two items listed under "Latest News", which refer to a twenty-five year longitudinal study conducted on about 500 patients in New Zealand. It was conducted by Professor David Fergusson in New Zealand, who expected to find that post-abortion mental health problems could largely be traced to prior mental illness or other predisposing factors. He was surprised to find that he could not use the latter entirely to account for the former. His conclusion was so unpopular and politically incorrect that he had to submit his research to four journals before he could get it published. The twist is this: he was and is pro-abortion and an atheist! But he is also a scientist of integrity and wasn't having any of the attempts to suppress the results of his research. Also, the first article relates an interview with an American Psychological Association spokesman who openly admitted that the APA's pro-abortion position is entirely based on ideology and that studies such as Fergusson's are irrelevant to it (!).

There's also quite a lot under the "Research" heading on the site, of course.

Palzon wrote:i am usually in agreement with you but i have to part ways here. first of all, a clarification. it was PAS that I said was a BS disorder, not PTSD. [...] If PAS is a policital name for PTSD then it is precisely that politicising that makes it a BS disorder - there is no PAS. Do we make up a new disorder for every different type of response to trauma?

Oh I see --- I wasn't clear in my post. I didn't want to imply that I condone the renaming of PTSD to PAS when the traumatizing event is an abortion. In fact, my position is the opposite. That renaming muddyies the waters for laymen even further --- it either suggests that PTSD after abortion is somehow different than a regular PTSD (I don't think that's the case), or that it is not related to PTSD at all (note how they removed the mention of 'stress' from the acronym, so the syndrome could be taken to refer to bodily symptoms as well --- edit: yes, I know that some call it PASS).

However, I wanted to make it clear that abortion can nevertheless lead to serious mental illness, and that this should be acknowledged. I have no scientific evidence for that. It just based on the logic that there is lots of evidence that traumatic events lead to PTSD, and that abortions can be traumatic events. Thus, abortions should potentially lead to PTSD as well.

I am trying to find some studies about that (also about your points three to six), but from a first look the data seem to be really unclear.

Palzon, most studies I have found so far come to the conclusion that there is indeed a high amount of PTSD symptoms after an abortion that may even be detectable after some years have passed. See, for instance, here(.pdf), here, or here. However, most studies deal with abortion due to fetal misformedness. If you want to look for yourself, I recommend using Google Scholar or PubMed with the keywords 'abortion' and 'PTSD'.

Kilarin wrote:Our best man on this topic is Dr. David Reardon, who's been published in (e.g.) the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. His website is http://www.afterabortion.org and it contains a great many items of interest.

I know that I should be talking to your friend here, but are you sure that this is the homepage of Reardon? I couldn't find any mention of that on the website. Also, I have a hard time believing that a respected scientist in his right mind would quote Michael Crichton...

His conclusion was so unpopular and politically incorrect that he had to submit his research to four journals before he could get it published.

OMG!!! Four journals!!! That's a scandal!!! --- Seriously, what's with the whiny ass scientists lately that cannot take a few rejections? Where I come from four rejections of a paper are nothing unusual (as my boss always says: "It's a lottery!")

the first article relates an interview with an American Psychological Association spokesman who openly admitted that the APA's pro-abortion position is entirely based on ideology and that studies such as Fergusson's are irrelevant to it (!).

Why should they be relevant? The APA has decided that it should be the woman's choice. As long as she is informed about the dangers (such as PTSD), she is perfectly able to make such a decision. We're talking about grown ups here.

Whining about four rejections? See, there are these things called standards, and some reviewers like to inflate their importance and pretentiousness...

What do you mean, DCrazy?

I mean that some reviewers (like the professor I'm working with) are dicks because they overinflate the requirements of academic standards, or are expected to do so because everyone else does.

Maybe it's just computer science's persistent desire to assert itself as a \"real\" science -- as if the past 30 years haven't proven it already.

hehe, I feel your pain.

But with regard to the example above: Being rejected four times (actually three times) by different journals means that each time different editors and different reviewers independently came to the conclusion that the study should not be published in the journal in question. That doesn't mean that the study was politically incorrect. The easiest explanations are:
(a) you aimed to high to high (no wonder you got rejected if the first three journals were really picky ones like Nature, Science, and PNAS).
(b) your study is scientifically without much merit
(c) you were really unlucky and got crappy reviewers each time

Pandora wrote:Why should they be relevant? The APA has decided that it should be the woman's choice. As long as she is informed about the dangers (such as PTSD), she is perfectly able to make such a decision. We're talking about grown ups here.

Science and blind ideology don't mix. As we have established many times before, blind ideology smothers science, good or bad, and science either shatters the ideology or supports it while eliminating the blindness, though this is less common.

Life (and science) is not so simple. Scientific research should of course be as objective as possible. However, the decision about which actions to take in response to the scientific findings depends heavily on ideology:
If you live in a totalitarian state, you might be prohibited from doing something if scientists find it is dangerous. There the ideology is that the autorities should decide what is good for you.
However, if you live in the \"Free World\", the authorities do not prohibit you frm doing something, just because there is scientific knowledge that it is dangerous (as long as it is not too dangerous). They believe that as a grown-up you can make such decisions yourself.

What has to be stressed here is that, yes, there is evidence that abortion is somewhat dangerous. It seems that it can lead to PTSD-like symptoms. However, abortion is not too dangerous. PTSD does not necessarily follow abortion, it depends on prior factors (such as depression). Also, PTSD can be treated by counceling, especially if you detect it early on. We do it often, for instance, when firefighters witness a tragic accident. Also, the studies that have found abortion to be dangerous have compared it to either a control group that was not pregnant, or to a control group that got a desired child, These findings are totally banal. Of course, a tragedy such as an abortion has worse effects than a happy event such as the birth of a wanted child, or no event at all. Everybody who calls for a change of the APAs abortion policy because of that is a moron (or, as always, a propagandist).

If you want to really judge the dangers of abortion, you have to compare it with what happens if a women definately wants an abortion but is forced to have the baby, irrespective of whether the baby will have serious illness, or if the pregnancy wreaks havoc on the womens life. As of yet, there is no evidence whatsoever for that. Abortion is NOT more dangerous than having an unwanted child. Before such a study is out (and replicated by independent labs), there is no grounds for the APA to change their position.

Pandora wrote:are you sure that this is the homepage of Reardon?

I just haven't had time to dig into it, and probably won't for a little while here.

Pandora wrote:Abortion is NOT more dangerous than having an unwanted child.

It certainly is to the child.

Kilarin wrote:It certainly is to the child.

Oh come on, now you're switching levels. The danger to the child has nothing to do with whether PAS exists, and whether it should be a reason to prohibit abortion. So, before we talk about whether a bunch of cells is already a child, do you acknowledge my points about PAS?

Pandora wrote:Oh come on, now you're switching levels.

Guilty.

Pandora wrote:do you acknowledge my points about PAS?

Not yet, but I don't dispute them either. I just do NOT have the time right now to do the research necessary before I felt qualified to take a position one way or the other. Sorry. Work is stealing from my debate time! Grrrr!

I am pro-choice all the way!

When it comes down to PAS, any life decsion can cause a lot of stress.

I feel, if a girl is raped, she should have a choice whether or not to have a child by this man.

I also thimk it will cause more damage seeing the face of that man everyday in that child.