Controversial Topic Discussion

First I would like to clarify my statement about the pro-choice group protesting our prayer service. I did not mean to blame them for doing what they did, I agree that they had the right as we did. But, like you said, I feel more and more like anything outside abortion clinics is not wise because of the inevitable environment that it creates.

I believe that the parents' rights are no match for the unborn child's right to life. In the most extreme circumstances, adoption is an infinitely better option than abortion, if the parents truely cannot take care of a child. The parents already made their choice when they decided to have relations that could result in pregnancy. I don't see pregnancy as ever "unforeseeable". If two people absolutely cannot support a child then it is their duty and responsibility as adults not to have sex, or at least to be willing to put a child up for adoption. Abortion is the removal of the right to life whereas, at the very most, supporting an unwanted child will infringe on the rights to the pursuit of happiness, which right is more fundamental? You can't have the right to happiness without first having life.

I'm not saying that nobody should have sex unless they desire to create new life. But I am saying that if the ability to support that life, if it happens to be initiated, is non-existent then the responsibility exists to not have sex. I agree it is very difficult and totally idealistic given that the people who might usually be in these situations don't feel much responsibility for anything such as teenagers, but this is a failure of our society to impress upon our youth the strong family values that used to be integral in each child's upbringing. With legal abortion, there is no reason to feel the responsibility or the duty toward family life because one can just go out and get an abortion whenever they get pregnant. But that shouldn't even be a solution because, as I said before, the most fundamental human right is abused to its fullest extent when a fetus' life is aborted.

Your point about the kidney is very interesting and got me thinking. I know people have kidneys removed relatively frequently and it is a common surgical procedure but the strongest reason I can think not to force parents to give up their organs for their child is because that would be a violation of the parent's own right to life, in a different sense of the right of course. Like you say, most parents would gladly give up a kidney, but the risk of losing ones own life exists under the knife in those types of operations and that risk is enough that it should be left up to the parent to make their own decision on whether to take it or not. In this case I see it as right to life vs right to life as opposed to the abortion issue which I see in the most extreme cases as right to life vs right to the pursuit of happiness.