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Re:Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared by jaredklewis on Thursday February 20, 2025 @12:17PM (#43117437)
I'm pro-choice, and one way I think about it is that I want to reduce suffering of children. I have children and I feel reasonably confident that they are capable of extreme suffering. We have imperfect information and there is no bright line between fetus and child (it's just a continuous development), but I strongly suspect that a fetus at say, 5 weeks, is less capable of suffering than a child.

So imagine a situation where a mother and father have a falling out. By week 6 the mother feels there is no future in the relationship and feels she can't offer the coming child a good childhood on her own. I feel if a child is unwanted by the parents, they are more likely to suffer.

So in this sense, abortion can be a form of harm reduction. It does not reduce ALL harm, but reduces the net-harm across all parties.

Re:Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared by shepherdjerred on Thursday February 20, 2025 @04:00PM (#43120131)
Here's a snippet from another reply I wrote:

Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life? Should we abort fetuses who have some disability? I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

Re:Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared by richie_adler on Thursday February 20, 2025 @04:58PM (#43120824)
> Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life?

Yes.

> Should we abort fetuses who have some disability?

If the parents are unwilling or unable to deal with it every day for the rest of their life, yes.

> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

That's too big an assumption. But, in any case, not being born, and not having a working brain capable of abstract thought and understanding of the situation, nor a way to express it, they don't get a vote.

Re:Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared by sorryimgreen on Thursday February 20, 2025 @07:41PM (#43122643)
> I'm pro-choice, and one way I think about it is that I want to reduce suffering of children.

Im sorry to say but this sounds like Orwellian doublethink.

> By week 6 the mother feels there is no future in the relationship and feels she can't offer the coming child a good childhood on her own.

Are you saying that a woman probably cannot reasonably provide a good life for a child without a man? I mean, even if she can't then this is an extremely tenuous link. I didn't have a good childhood at all and the scenario I was in personally was actually worse than you described but I turned out to be very happy. Even if I wasn't happy it would be worth living. There are also many people in truly horrific situations in the world - in every country.

In good faith and with much respect I am asking you: do you think that the chronically unhappy people of this world should have been aborted before they experienced this world and without their consent or knowledge? Obviously hard to put a number on it but with the kind of scenario you describe, maybe 20-25% of living adult people have been through?