Question For Pro Lifers: Is It Okay To Coerce A Woman Into Keeping Her Baby?

We know that most pro lifers are very much opposed to a woman being pushed into an abortion.
But are they also opposed to women being forced to carry an unwanted child?
Is coercion okay as long as they are the ones doing the coercion?

And for choicers, if is not okay to coerce a woman into keeping a baby, is it okay to push her to have an abortion?

The question is mainly aimed at pro lifers, as they are the ones who wish to ban abortion.

Lets find out. (btw I read an article on FB this morning about a similar subject, thought I'd pose the question here)

 

Of course!! A fetus is more important than an actual living breathing person! Stupid **********s.

 

Pro-choicers don't coerce women either way. It is the woman's body and her choice.

 

The crisis pregnancy centers are well-known for using coercion to get a woman to give a baby up for adoption. Coercion toward ANY end is not pretty. Nor moral.

http://thecurvature.com/2009/08/31/...ularly-engage-in-coercive-adoption-practices/

Now there’s a terrifying and depressing article in the Nation about how the period of coercive adoptions is not one merely relegated to our history. It’s happening today, and it’s happening via the ever-infamous, deceptive and also Christian-affiliated crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). If you thought that pretending they were abortion clinics and then admonishing women to not kill their babies was bad — and how could you not? — you ain’t seen nothing yet:

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), the nonprofit pregnancy-testing facilities set up by antiabortion groups to dissuade women from having abortions, have become fixtures of the antiabortion landscape, buttressed by an estimated $60 million in federal abstinence and marriage-promotion funds. The National Abortion Federation estimates that as many as 4,000 CPCs operate in the United States, often using deceptive tactics like posing as abortion providers and showing women graphic antiabortion films. While there is growing awareness of how CPCs hinder abortion access, the centers have a broader agenda that is less well known: they seek not only to induce women to “choose life” but to choose adoption, either by offering adoption services themselves, as in Bethany’s case, or by referring women to Christian adoption agencies. Far more than other adoption agencies, conservative Christian agencies demonstrate a pattern and history of coercing women to relinquish their children.

http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/News2?abbr=daily4_&page=NewsArticle&id=20741

The Nation examined how CPCs convince women with unintended pregnancies to relinquish their infants for adoption by isolating them from friends and family and matching the "birth mothers" with adoptive parents who pay between $14,500 and $25,500 for an adoption. The article also draws parallels between CPCs' adoption practices and maternity homes for single, pregnant women during the so-called "Baby Scoop Era" of 1945 to 1973. During this period, at least 1.5 million unmarried women in the U.S. relinquished their children for adoption under "frequently brutal" coercion, The Nation reports. The Baby Scoop Era ended with the legalization of abortion in 1973, which also led to a drop in adoption rates -- from 19.2% of white, unmarried pregnant women in 1972 to 1.7% in 1995.

However, The Nation reports that the "rise of the religious right and the founding of CPCs" coincided with a decline in adoption rate. Many CPCs offer vulnerable women scholarships, financial assistance and housing in exchange for agreeing to adoption. Ann Fessler, author of "The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade," said, "Part of the big picture for a young woman who's pregnant is that there are people holding our their hand, but the price of admission is giving up your child." She added, "If you decide to keep your child, it's as if you're lost in the system, whereas people fight over you if you're ready to surrender. There's an organization motivated by a cause and profit."

 

Your question is to vague to answer. Be more specific.

 

Its her body, her life, her choice.

 

I read "keep" to mean "have" or "birth", not actually raise.

 

Where's your dictionary?

 

So you have a problem with me explaining why I answered the way I did?
Why so?

 

Bet you'd all be grateful if somebody coerced your mama into letting you have a life.

I read "keep" as allow to live. I consider myself pro-choice, but have absolutely no problem with everything possible being done to change a mother's mind. If she still wants to do it after hearing all the arguments against it, then that's her decision.

 

you bet it is...my wife does it every single Tuesday Friday and Saturday, these are the days that the abortion mills are actively killing babies...shes been doing it for about 10 years now...her and her pro life ministry have saved the lives of (or should i say coerced) over 2000 children, thats not a typo two thousand babies. the mothers that change their minds are then offered a full support system...transportation for medical care, baby needs (diapers, cribs, car seats, clothing etc.) help finding jobs, affordable housing etc. we've moved people rite out of homeless shelters and gotten them places to live.
I bet if you took those 2000 children and involved them in this poll that little bar graph would be so lopsided your moniter would tip over.

 

Okay, the article I was reading used divorce as a method of coercion. In other words, threatening to divorce the woman if she kept her baby, or threatening to divorce her if she had an abortion.

What other specifics would you like provided? Is it okay to force a woman into keeping her baby? Is it okay to force her into having an abortion?

I don't believe any of those is moral because both options take the decision away from the only person who can make the choice - the woman.

 

How does your wife feel about people pushing women into having abortions? She wouldn't agree with that, so why does she feel she has a right to push women into giving birth?

 

well first of all she doesn't "push" anyone into anything, she simply talks to them and lets them know that there are other options and that there is help available. most women who go for an abortion are either very young and scared or financialy strapped and scared, and feel that abortion is their only option. you'd be amazed at how many of these moms come back years after chanding their minds and thank these pro lifers for helping her to realize that there are other options...never not once has a mother come back and said to them "I wish I didn't listen to you and aborted my child" NEVER.
secondly, abortion is murder so agreeing that someone has the right to talk someone into an abortion is the equivalent of saying that someone has the right to talk someone into shooting their boss, or neighbor or whatever.

 

I think it's a good idea to clarify "Pro-Lifer."

Any self-declared pro-lifer who thinks it's a good idea to cut funding for the elderly, children, education, the disabled and the poor while funding invasions probably needs to reassess their values.

 

Abortion isn't murder though. It is legal, and therefore not murder. Who provides money to these women? Does your wife go to work and hand over her paycheck every week to help a woman raise her child?
My guess is she doesn't.

 

nope she doesn't, actually she is a stay at home mom, I started my own small business a few years back in the hope that it would allow her to stay at home with my younger son ( He's homeschooled) and so far thats worked out pretty good.
but they do provide for as many of the moms needs as they can, ultimately hoping to get them a job and get them on their own two feet financialy.
they will give these moms gift cards to the local grocery stores for food shopping and quite often will pay for minutes on their cell phones for them (many of these moms tend to have pay as you go cell phones), so that they can stay in communication with them in case they need help with anything.
you make this sound as if it is such a bad thing makeede, most of these moms don't want to have an abortion, but they feel like their in a rut and have no choice in the matter. once they realize that there is help out there and more importantly sometimes is just having some form of a support system, a real person to talk to, and get guidance from its real easy for them to change their minds and CHOOSE to have their baby. and like I said before we've never had a mom come back and say that she wish'e she'd had that abortion. and believe it or not we've never had a mom, family, or baby die due to lack of shelter, clothing, or starvation.

 

How did your wife's ministry manage to convince 2000 troubled and vulnerable women to continue their pregnancies? I'm curious as to exactly what is said to them.

These women were in homeless shelters and you convinced them to bring a child into the world? What makes you think that can be a good thing? Your ministry can't possibly provide for the needs of those families for long. You have taken women in desperate situations and complicated their lives even further.

 

What makes you think a poor child is a worthless child? What makes you think homicide is a better option?

 

Where did I say that? Why must you make false accusations about other posters? You well know that I meant a homeless woman is in no position to support and care for a child.

Prove abortion is a homicide...never mind, I have seen you so-called "proof" before.

 

That's not exactly the way things were presented in the poll since you didn't mention it was the woman's HUSBAND and FATHER OF THE CHILD who was doing the coercing.

I know things are different Down Under, but doesn't it still take two people to create a baby? Why on earth should the father have NO SAY about his own child's future? Especially when you're talking life & death???

 

Quite simply because he should have no control over another person's body.

And no matter what people might call themselves, they are not fathers or mothers until their child has been born alive.

 

For me this question deals with the greater of two evils; namely, it is better to coerce a woman or is it better to let her make her own choice, even if that choice involves what some would call the unnecessary destruction of human life? Put another way: which is more important, life or freedom from manipulation?

It seems to be the omnipresent question of quantity or quality. On one hand, you can decrease the quality of life for two individuals, and on the other hand you can maintain or improve the current quality of life for one but prevent the second from ever having the chance to make such a qualification. Are the expenses of either course of action balanced? That's impossible to say. But for me personally, I am disgusted by the idea that somebody would want to trick, fool, or cheat my mother into doing something that she doesn't want to do - sort of sounds like rape, doesn't it? And, strangely enough, rape can create babies too.

 

And their child can't be born alive if they abort it. Rather a catch 22, huh?

 

It's a potential child. Must a wife give her permission for a vasectomy?