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Abortion discussion

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Bromley boy

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You must realise that many on here are somewhat immature in years.

Are they?

The only (very) regular poster on here I know in real life is a good 10-15 years older than I am (and I’m a 30 something).

I suspect many contributors are more mature in age than the content of their postings suggests, but perhaps lack experience of real life.
 
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radamfi

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Do you therefore believe hetero/bi/homosexual people cannot form platonic friendships?

They can, of course, but at times they will be drawn to certain people who may not necessarily be nice people or people they would be not normally be friends with simply because of sexual interest.

Friendships can also be ruined by one friend having unrequited feelings about the other.
 
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radamfi

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Oh absolutely but providing a condom is used correctly (including storing it correctly) and birth control is employed people should not be put off from having sex, which is what I'd assumed AlterEgo was suggesting.

It depends on your attitude to risk and how important not having a child is to you.

For example, some people are quite happy to get to the airport one hour before the flight whereas others would allow several hours.

Also, to some people having a child would not be ideal, but when told they are going to be a father, they would just shug their shoulders and say "c'est la vie". For others, it would be the end of the world.
 

Darandio

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It depends on your attitude to risk and how important not having a child is to you.

For example, some people are quite happy to get to the airport one hour before the flight whereas others would allow several hours.

Also, to some people having a child would not be ideal, but when told they are going to be a father, they would just shug their shoulders and say "c'est la vie". For others, it would be the end of the world.

We know analogies on here can be silly at times but come on.
 

DarloRich

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Oh absolutely but providing a condom is used correctly (including storing it correctly) and birth control is employed people should not be put off from having sex, which is what I'd assumed AlterEgo was suggesting.

This quote above is good, mature and sensible advice. Take proper precautions and the risk of unwanted pregnancy is reduced to a very low and acceptable level. Clearly the risk is not removed entirely but it is reduced to an extremely low level. Even if the condom should fail (which has happened to me once in many usesages of the method - that was a cheap brand & not my usual brand - and I suspect that is a rare occurrence) there are alternative options available to prevent pregnancy before we even consider an abortion.

Several posters seem to take the view that even 0.1% risk of pregnancy is too high and therefore they will abstain. That is their choice and a perfectly fair one. However it is not the choice of the vast majority of the population.
 

fowler9

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Just as an aside to people who mentioned being friends with women in the hope it would lead to sex, I have a female friend who six months after we met (Many years ago) told me she fancied me but was glad she had never instigated sex as we became good friends instead. She ended up getting pregnant after a casual fling with someone else. She tortured herself over if she should keep it, fortunately she did, she is now married to the father and the child is doing very well at Uni, they have had two further kids. I also fancied her but never tried to instigate sex as I didn't want a full on relationship with her but loved her as a friend. Complicated beasts aren't we. Ha ha.
 

Warwick

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Are they?

The only (very) regular poster on here I know in real life is a good 10-15 years older than I am (and I’m a 30 something).

I suspect many contributors are more mature in age than the content of their postings suggests, but perhaps lack experience of real life.


Are they?

The only (very) regular poster on here I know in real life is a good 10-15 years older than I am (and I’m a 30 something).

I suspect many contributors are more mature in age than the content of their postings suggests, but perhaps lack experience of real life.

Like I said, many posters (that means many but not all) posters on here are of immature years. I - for what it's worth - will (hopefully) be celebrating my 68th birthday later this year.
 

TheNewNo2

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Babies described as “parasites”, WTF?

Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.
 

Up_Tilt_390

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Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.

That doesn't make any sense. If it's something some people actively desire than how is it an invasion against the person's will? That's like joining a boxing club and saying you're being punched against your will. Unless contraceptives failed or the person was raped, there is no invasion against the will of the person. As everyone else has said, if you don't want to risk a child, don't have sex, because doing so always comes with the risk of one regardless, because really, as I've said before, the purpose of sex is for the preservation of ourselves as a species. I got a lot of flack for that comment last time, but I still stand by what I said, and humans are lucky to have methods against any unwilling childbirth.
 

GB

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Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.

Most scientists seem to be of the opinion that a parasite is a different specie to that of its host and that it is invasive in its nature. A womans body is not only built to specifically house the fetus (effectively in its own special cocoon), the human body also produces antigens to help the fetus development and increase the chance of successful birth...none of that suggests parasitic behavior.

At its very core and fundamental level, reproduction is to ensure a species survival and as far as humans are concerned, keep the world going...(while having a bit of fun!)
 

DarloRich

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Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.

I think there is a serious misunderstanding of both physiology and science at play here. That said I do think your final point is correct.

At its very core and fundamental level, reproduction is to ensure a species survival and as far as humans are concerned, keep the world going...(while having a bit of fun!)

several posters seem not to want us to continue as a species!
 

Up_Tilt_390

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several posters seem not to want us to continue as a species!

I'm going to have to straight up admit to being guilty of these feelings at times. It's one of the minor reasons why I'm favour of allowing someone to have an abortion.
 

Bromley boy

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Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.

But a baby is not a “parasite” by the scientific definition, so describing one as such is factually incorrect.

Based on the above, I doubt you've ever known any pregant women? As and when you do I strongly suggest you don’t refer to their unborn child as a “parasite”.
 

Bromley boy

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I'm going to have to straight up admit to being guilty of these feelings at times. It's one of the minor reasons why I'm favour of allowing someone to have an abortion.

The time I most want the human race to vanish as a species is usually when I’m reading these forums :D.
 

Abpj17

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  • having multiple abortions might not be a sign of irresponsibility but a sign of being highly fertile and non celibate.
  • it’s a layered approach. Certain traditional approaches make this worse rather than matter. Free ‘in the moment’ contraception should be available. Emergency contraception should be available and non-stigmatised (such as the morning after pill)
  • The body naturally aborts (miscarries) a non-trivial proportion of pregnancies within the first 12 weeks. So access to early term abortions should be quick and non-controversial. Particularly religious countries don’t make this the case - maintaining the view that only a higher power can make such decisions.
(disclaimer: I'm female...)
 

AlterEgo

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Pregnancy is a foreign body taking up residence in a host, and siphoning off nutrients and providing little to no benefits. That's a parasite. It may be something people actively desire, but the point is that if your body is invaded against your will no one else should be able to tell you you can't get it removed.

A foetus isn’t a parasite, either by analogy or example.
 

trash80

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Based on the above, I doubt you've ever known any pregant women? As and when you do I strongly suggest you don’t refer to their unborn child as a “parasite”.

Yes though i know a few who probably might regard their fully grown up offspring as such.
 

Harbornite

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Some thoughts on the 'babies are parasites' thing...

"Of course, parasites have babies, and some free-living organisms have a parasitic early life stage. But the notion I seek to discredit here is that all babies are parasites of their parents and, particularly, that the human fetus is a parasite of its mother. This misconception has become distressingly common among my peers.

It distresses me because I love babies and I love parasites, so I think it's important to understand the distinction between them. In a nutshell: a parasite reduces the fitness of its host; a baby increases the fitness of its parents.

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Yet I will concede that numerous superficial similarities between babies and parasites can lead to confusion. Parasites often live inside the body of another creature, extract their nutrition from its blood, and struggle to escape attack by its immune system. That's starting to sound an awful lot like a fetus . . .

But the host-parasite relationship is one of conflict, while the mother-baby relationship is intrinsically cooperative. Consider the immunology of the two. Host and parasite are locked in an arms race: the parasite evolves ever more complex techniques of avoidance, while the host evolves ever more complex techniques of detection and attack.

Meanwhile, mother and baby cooperate to prevent immunological conflict. The site of this cooperation is the placenta--the big blob of tissue that's genetically part of the baby and physically connects baby to mom. For a long time, scientists thought of the placenta (and by extension, the fetus) as a kind of natural organ transplant. Just as in medical organ transplants, the mother's immune system would have to be suppressed to prevent it from rejecting the foreign body.

But a fascinating review paper in 2010 suggests this is the wrong way to think about pregnancy--that, in fact, the cooperative choreography between mother and child is far more sophisticated:
The trophoblast [placenta] and the maternal immune system have evolved and established a cooperative status, helping each other for the success of the pregnancy. This cooperative work involves many tasks, some of which we are just starting to unveil.True, the placenta uses at least one trick from the world of parasites--a molecule that makes it partially invisible to mom's immune system--but it also oversees an active exchange of molecules and even cells between mother and baby. The full implications of this exchange aren't yet understood, though the mother's contributions undoubtedly protect the baby from infection, and the baby's cells may also offer health benefits to the mother.

All this isn't to deny the fact that a pregnant woman makes certain sacrifices. Notably, she gives up nutrition that could otherwise have gone to her own body. But in sharing nutrients with her offspring through the placenta and, later, milk production, a human mother has it relatively easy. Some species transfer nutrients more, um, directly.

Babies of one rather unusual amphibian* simply graze on their mother's skin to get the early nutrition they need. And the young of certain spiders consume their mother's entire body--parental sacrifice at its most extreme!**

Then there are the jellyfish children. In some species of narcomedusae, baby jellies hang out inside their parents, slurping food out of the adults' digestive tracts. That's not so weird--I mean, think of regurgitation in birds--but then sometimes they'll go and slurp from an unrelated adult, or even from adults of another species.

The ones that stay with their parents are certainly not parasites. But the ones that feed off other adults are in murkier territory. They're certainly acting a lot more like parasites than if they'd stayed at home.

But what if it's like a "village" scenario, in which all the adults pitch in to raise all the children? Parasitism need not enter the picture; this is simply cooperative parental care. Of course, jellies do not have complex societies, so it's a rather fanciful idea. It becomes even more fanciful if you consider the baby jellies who feed from adults of a different species. It's hard to argue that those little tykes are anything but parasites.

I like the narcomedusae because they illustrate when a baby is just a baby, and when a baby becomes a parasite.

It all boils down to the fact that parent and child have a common goal: the child's survival. Host and parasite, on the other hand, have a fundamental disagreement about the desirability of the parasite's survival.

(Of course, the baby in my belly could have taken over my brain and caused me to write this manifesto.)"

http://www.cephalopodiatrist.com/2012/10/why-babies-arent-actually-parasites.html
 

61653 HTAFC

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The parasite analogy was a bit clumsy and not entirely accurate, but the over-reaction to it from some members seems like the sort of thing you hear goes on on Mumsnet (no pun intended).
 

DarloRich

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The parasite analogy was a bit clumsy and not entirely accurate, but the over-reaction to it from some members seems like the sort of thing you hear goes on on Mumsnet (no pun intended).

It wasn't a "clumsy analogy". It was a silly statement made by and then supported by people with no knowledge or experience of the subject. These posters have, in this and other threads, suggested that they support the idea of the human race dying out by ceasing to reproduce. That is bonkers. They deserve the responses they got.
 

61653 HTAFC

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Nevertheless, I can imagine that an unwanted pregnancy, particularly if it's the result of an assault, might feel like a parasite to some women. I can't imagine the anguish that a woman would feel under those circumstances though. Restricting access to a termination in a case like that would be a huge ethical no-no for me.
 

DarloRich

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Nevertheless, I can imagine that an unwanted pregnancy, particularly if it's the result of an assault, might feel like a parasite to some women. I can't imagine the anguish that a woman would feel under those circumstances though. Restricting access to a termination in a case like that would be a huge ethical no-no for me.

Perhaps - but that wasn't the statement made above.

BTW 0 i do agree with your final sentence.
 

radamfi

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It wasn't a "clumsy analogy". It was a silly statement made by and then supported by people with no knowledge or experience of the subject. These posters have, in this and other threads, suggested that they support the idea of the human race dying out by ceasing to reproduce. That is bonkers. They deserve the responses they got.

There are some people who have chosen not to reproduce for environmental and ethical reasons. Having a child is the probably the most environmentally friendly thing you can do as the environmental damage caused by children and their ancestors is likely to be much greater than what the damaged caused in your own life.
 

Bromley boy

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There are some people who have chosen not to reproduce for environmental and ethical reasons. Having a child is the probably the most environmentally friendly thing you can do as the environmental damage caused by children and their ancestors is likely to be much greater than what the damaged caused in your own life.

That is a very peculiar viewpoint indeed.

The vast majority of normal, well adjusted people would not consider having children to be an environmentally irresponsible act.

Should we sterilise the entire human race then, so that it dies out, in order to preserve the environment?
 

DarloRich

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There are some people who have chosen not to reproduce for environmental and ethical reasons. Having a child is the probably the most environmentally friendly thing you can do as the environmental damage caused by children and their ancestors is likely to be much greater than what the damaged caused in your own life.

I suspect there are few who have taken such a stance. You are welcome to do so if you wish but it is not a choice many will take. I suspect the majority would consider such a stance irrational.
 

radamfi

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So you have extrapolated from an article that people should stop having sex? That is bizarre.

Not sure what the point is here. Clearly you know that people can have sex without having children.
 
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