your daughter probably fit through your cervix the same way my son did mine. your cervix was dialated for a natural birth.

i didn't say anything about an abortion causing cancer.
i said that some of the effects an abortion could cause in a woman's body could increase the chances of cancer.

but i'm sure you can find something published to negate that.

an iud is not the same thing as a developing fetus, and comparing the two just because they are in the same place in a woman's body is ludicrous; iud's are designed to be flexible and shaped so that it's easy in/out, not requiring surgical procedures. a developing fetus is designed to stay in, not come out.

and the reason some miscarriages occur without induced dialation is because the body dialates on it's own, whether you realize it or not.

i also stated that the methods i described might not be used commonly, but please, don't tell me i don't know what i'm talking about. I've held a friend's hand and watched her undergo what i described.

i'm tired of you people trying so hard to discredit the opinions of people you don't agree with. why don't you get a damn life? this is a forum, which should be a place where different opinions and ideas should be shared and discussed, not a place where people who don't have anything else to do but sit in front of the computer all the time can get off on being right. but ya know, if you enjoy being condescending and close-minded... who am i to argue?

i'm not going to concede that my opinions and experiences are wrong, as you are so eloquently trying to prove, because they're not.

(why did it take you so long to respond to that statement in my original post? did your search engine fail while you were looking up the medications and gestation periods, or were you just concerned about making yourself sound intelligent without having to quote your sources?)

Bosox, you reposted my statements and then responded to those statements: therefore you are discussing my opinion.

if anyone is spouting off like they're medically educated in abortions its not me, i have not quoted any published information, used any type of medical terminology other than a few commonly known and used words by non-medically trained persons, nor have i claimed anyone else's posts are incorrect.

i did not post my opinion for any other reason than to provide an insight to an issue.

i have simply provided my own input to this forum, as i personally have witnessed or experienced. not from what i've read or heard.

i'm not pro-life, biased, or prejudiced to any idea, or in any way, in fact i'm always open to learning new information and understanding different points of view.

i don't have the time nor the motivation to include everything i personally know and all the information i have access to, if i did i would certainly write a book for you, since i obviously have an audience.

soooo......... if you sit back and take the time to realize that people have been discussing the controversy of abortion and the methods and the effects for thousands of years you might come to the conclusion that it's probably going to continue for thousands more.

and what exactly is the result you're hoping to get from continuing a disagreement with a biased, inexperienced, ignorant teenage mother?

Elvis what is your obsession with abortions? have you had one or did you get a doctorate degree from the school of wikipedia?
Have you ever actually spoke with an ob/gyn to become the expert on abortion?

LOL Elvis!! I find it truly entertaining when a man comes on here and falsifies truth about pregnancy and abortion. First off, the "shrimp like appearance occurs around 6-7 weeks, not 11-12. A 12 week fetus will look remarkably human with fingers, toes, and genitalia as well as be around 2-3 inches long. Here is a link to educate yourself on embryonic and fetal development.

Secondly, there is a HUGE surge of hormones during the first trimester to compensate for the enormous changes a woman's body goes through. Have you ever heard of nausea, fatigue, mood swings, and breast engorgement in newly pregnant women? Yea, didnt think so...

Sure, women will be more likely to be more depressed if a miscarriage or stillbirth happens in the later stages of pregnancy but it's not because the woman has more hormones. It is because there is an attachment and bonding process that occurs during pregnancy which no man will ever comprehend unless you miraculously become pregnant one day..

As far as abortion goes, many women do become depressed after having one. I can vouch for this personally and I can also vouch for my friends who have had one as well. The hardest part about grieving after an abortion is people like you who say, "you're not depressed, there is nothing to be depressed about...it's only tissue...ladeedaaadeeda" I knew that I ended a life or potential life, and the only way I could forgive myself is to give my unborn child an identity and to write a letter and send it to him/her in a balloon. Call me crazy, but this is what helped me to heal and I know a lot of other women who have given their aborted fetus' identities to help them grieve (ie naming them, becoming a godparent to someone else's child, etc) As a man, you will never experience a pregnancy or abortion and for you to make assumptions about womens' mental status post abortion is ridiculous. Why don't you go ahead and google "post abortion counseling" and find the multitude of resources available to women who need it. Ever heard of supply and demand? Yea, there wouldn't be a ton of resources out there unless a ton of women requested it.

Elvis, if you wish to be an expert in pregnancy please educate yourself from actual physicians, not web links, kthxbai.

I cannot believe this thread is still alive and kicking....and that NotElvis is still stirring the debate that will never be "won"...

A man preaching to women on abortion is just well.....wrong......

It is a woman's choice because it is a woman's body. NotElvis, you should try to let this one go....you do not have a say in the real world and you shouldn't.....period.

No woman has the right to tell you what to do with your body.

As for the "real facts" behind development of babies....honestly, most of what has been posted within this thread is from pro-lifers and pro-abortionists so neither is unbiased and neither is therefore likely to be scientifically factual. I'll tell you what I personally choose to believe as facts is the materials provided to me by my ob/gyn and the literature handed out to all women expecting babies.

Nobody on this planet can tell any woman how she will feel being pregnant or having an abortion, nor should anyone think they have the right to do so. That is not really a debatable topic....

my question now is why do i have a right to an opinion but not to the facts that i've personally witnessed or experienced???

please let everyone know when you've had an abortion or witnessed one and the effects of it.

I'm just saying that as easy as the word abortion is to say, its not that easy to live through and with.

i don't think any MAN has any right to question or even form an opinion based on the decisions a woman makes about her own body.

- someone sticks two long needles with scapulas on the ends of them inside you after they give you a pill to induce cervical dialation and then cut the fetus or 'shrimp-like being' into small enough peices to fit through the opening of your vagina. (if an abortion is done after 3 weeks of pregnancy)

FALSE: this is the 2nd most common non-medical method. The most common in the first 12 weeks (you didn't specify, so I'm guessing) is Vacuum Aspiration. Further, again, while you didn't say, during Dilation and Curettage (which it sounds like you're describing), the woman is usually under general anesthesia, whereas you, while again not saying, make it sound like a woman's awake and feeling everything during this procedure (Maybe in some cases, I wasn't able to immediately find information about those instances).

- (if there were not complications like say, the scapula cut YOU and now you have to have a hysterectomy, or maybe your cervix was traumatized and scarred so you'll have complications with your health for the rest of your life, or a larger chance of getting cancer....)

A lot? Many? Define this. It's apparently NOT enough of a percentage to be able to say that post-abortion-trauma exists.

Are you SURE that they're depressed because they had an abortion, or because they've been told that they've murdered someone or ended a life?

And what about WOMEN who agree with my views, who've had abortions?


Still, you keep falling back on "you're a man, you can never understand"

Please pay attention to the context of my comments and specifically WHAT I was responding to.

Of course, the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that abortion does not hurt women — physically or mentally. In the late 1980s, President Reagan tried a strategy similar to Reardon's and asked his like-minded surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, to conduct a study on the mental pain caused by abortion. To everyone's surprise, Koop determined that there was insufficient evidence of trauma. Psychological problems were "minuscule from a public health perspective," he said. The American Psychological Association followed up by asking a group of six experts to undertake a special review. The panel concluded in 1989 that terminating an unwanted pregnancy posed no hazard to women's mental health. The predominant sensation women felt following an abortion was relief, the group said.

And in August 2000, a study conducted by Brenda Major at the University of California at Santa Barbara — the latest among many — confirmed those findings. Severe post-abortion psychological distress is extremely rare, affecting just one percent of patients. "Most women were satisfied with their decision, and believed that they had benefited more than they had been harmed," said Major, who, along with other researchers, tracked women for two years after they had first-trimester abortions (88 percent of abortions are performed in the first trimester, and therefore represent the typical experience). The best predictor of post-abortion mental health, it turns out, is a woman's mental health prior to the abortion.

"Abortion does not cure depression or bipolar disorders; nor does it cause them," says Suzanne Poppema, a retired Seattle abortion provider, now an international consultant on reproductive health issues. She and many others have little tolerance for PAS — "because it doesn't exist," she says. The overwhelming emotion she witnessed at her clinic, she says, was relief; PAS is merely an attempt to scare women, and she points out that if women do feel negative emotions, they are probably a result of the antiabortion movement itself. After all, the picketers who scream "murderer" at women entering clinics are significant stress-inducers, too.
Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, American Psychological Association, Brenda Major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Suzanne Poppema



False and Misleading Information Provided by Federally Funded Pregnancy Resource Centers
The centers provided false and misleading information about the mental health effects of abortion. Research shows that significant psychological stress after an abortion is no more common than after birth. However, thirteen centers told the caller that the psychological effects of abortion are severe, long-lasting, and common. One center said that the suicide rate in the year after an abortion “goes up by seven times.” Another center said that post-abortion stress suffered by women having abortions is “much like” that seen in soldiers returning from Vietnam and “is something that anyone who’s had an abortion is sure to suffer from.”
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1080

I am not obsessed with abortions. What makes you say that?

Also, barring some sort of medical Twilight Zone episode, it's impossible for me to have an abortion. Putting that bit in is snide stupidity.

My "doctorate" is from the "school of wikipedia," har -de-har-har, though I've spoken with ob/gyns in the past.

Now, I'm not debating that hormone levels will take a sudden upswing in a lot of women during pregnancy, even in the early stages - but the suggestion that in early-to-mid pregnancy an abortion will result in the woman having the same surge and drop in hormones as she does after giving birth is preposterous, and you know it - you're misrepresenting the point I was trying to make and you know it.

Are these facts, speculations, or opinions? What attachment and bonding process? Does it occur in women who, even months in, didn't realize they were pregnant? Are you SURE a later termination of pregnancy (induced or naturally occurring) that causes depression is NOT because of higher hormone levels?

I have had a first trimester miscarriage, and the following hormonal upheaval was worse than the post partum hormone drop.
Hormone levels are at the highest when pregnancy begins. The placenta doesnt ake over the corpus luteum's job of producing progesterone until around week 10.
Hormone levels peak out and then began to decline betwen weeks 8 to 12.

You appear obsessed. Thats why i say that.
Ponder it.
So you actually got up from perusing wikipedia to take the obsession one step further and talk to some real live physicians?
Im impressed.

I have had a first trimester miscarriage, and the following hormonal upheaval was worse than the post partum hormone drop.
Hormone levels are at the highest when pregnancy begins. The placenta doesnt ake over the corpus luteum's job of producing progesterone until around week 10.
Hormone levels peak out and then began to decline betwen weeks 8 to 12.

Exactly how do you know how many women have post-abortion trauma.

Never mind, i know, a website told you.

Are you sure they are NOT depressed over having an abortion?

Im sure you can find a handful of women who can abort a child of theirs with no feelings about it. I wont go into my opinion on that as it would be off topic and very offensive to those with differing beliefs than mine on life. However for every one of those women you find im sure you can find 10 more who did feel remorse or sadness post-abortion.

What books exactly? I have all the books recomended by my doctors, including one my brother in law's wife wrote.
No i dont consider you an expert on pregnancy from perusing web sites, just a dude with a strange strange obsession with pregnant women that thinks google search takes the place of actual experience with pregnancy, or have studied on actual patients.

The hormones are lower. And yes the body can think it has given birth.
I have had one miscarriage, that is how i camke to he conclusion. From real life.
How many have youy had?

yeah yeah i know you saw it on wikipedia so any woman who has like, ya know, actually HAD KIDS AND PREGNANCIES dont know anything about their bodies(Did you see the site about the latest UFO sighting?)

itsallinthesoul wrote:


I cannot believe this thread is still alive and kicking....and that NotElvis is still stirring the debate that will never be "won"...

A man preaching to women on abortion is just well.....wrong......

It is a woman's choice because it is a woman's body. NotElvis, you should try to let this one go....you do not have a say in the real world and you shouldn't.....period.

No woman has the right to tell you what to do with your body.

As for the "real facts" behind development of babies....honestly, most of what has been posted within this thread is from pro-lifers and pro-abortionists so neither is unbiased and neither is therefore likely to be scientifically factual. I'll tell you what I personally choose to believe as facts is the materials provided to me by my ob/gyn and the literature handed out to all women expecting babies.

Nobody on this planet can tell any woman how she will feel being pregnant or having an abortion, nor should anyone think they have the right to do so. That is not really a debatable topic....

to which you responded....

Please - you should know better. At no point have I told anyone what they're supposed to feel, nor what they must do with their bodies. Do NOT fall into strawman and ad hominem attacks. You've shown that you know better, so please don't do that.

And, if you're honest, you'll realize that almost all of the "pro-abortionist" (as you like to call it) posts are generally unbiased in terms of the facts they're presenting. Can you say the same for the pro-lifers?

You are misrepresenting what I'm saying, and, frankly, I find that offensive. No, correction - I find it offensive that you're targeting me AND misrepresenting my arguments, whereas you are NOT saying anything at all about information posted on the pro-life (or at least anti-abortion) type of posts that are absurdly false, and you're perfectly aware of the falsity of those statements.

Telling any woman that having an abortion will not affect her is FALSE. I don't give a rats ass about proof that medically the actual procedure is safe and there is no evidence to show that the procedure can cause negative emotions in a woman following the procedure. I have never disputed those facts, I just don't care about them. What I care about it the reasons WHY a woman is choosing to have an abortion because those reasons can be directly correlated (in most cases) to how well she will emotionally process what she has done. I grant this is not directly attributable to the actual procedure itself, but it is a component nonetheless of having the procedure done.

I feel it is as morally reprehensible to make a woman feel guilty for having an abortion as I feel it is to tell a woman she will feel nothing because the studies show that most women experience no negative side effects from abortion (physical or emotional).


You cannot call yourself pro-choice if you feel strongly that abortion is not a big deal because you are judging every single woman who has come into this thread and shared her personal experience as being invalid!

You haven't exhibited consistent compassion for any woman who has shown the other side of your arguments. (like having an abortion for some women IS emotionally devasting for them)

If you cannot see that what you write can be perceived in different ways by different people, well that is your problem and not mine.

If you took a balanced position in reporting on abortion "facts" then I would have nothing to say about what you right except perhaps to agree with you. Your position smells decidely pro-abortion. Neither pro-life nor pro-abortion debate a balanced position but they do make for a good debate....I should perhaps simply get some popcorn to go with my reading of this thread. I take offense to people who claim to be pro-choice when they clearly are not in their "rants" on abortion.

The reason why I don't comment on the "facts" given by either side of the debate is because I'm smart enough to realize that neither are unbiased. As a matter of "FACT", I stated as much in the post of mine you quoted and quoted again in this post. As I said before in this thread, I make decisions for my body and my life based on medical information I receive from a medical professional who is not biased in the outcome of my decision.

Telling any woman that having an abortion will not affect her is FALSE.

I don't give a rats ass about proof that medically the actual procedure is safe and there is no evidence to show that the procedure can cause negative emotions in a woman following the procedure. I have never disputed those facts, I just don't care about them.

What I care about it the reasons WHY a woman is choosing to have an abortion because those reasons can be directly correlated (in most cases) to how well she will emotionally process what she has done. I grant this is not directly attributable to the actual procedure itself, but it is a component nonetheless of having the procedure done.

The reason why I don't think you as a man should have a say in abortion is for that reason and that reason alone. You will never understand because you will never be in a position to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy within your own body.

I feel it is as morally reprehensible to make a woman feel guilty for having an abortion as I feel it is to tell a woman she will feel nothing because the studies show that most women experience no negative side effects from abortion (physical or emotional).

You cannot call yourself pro-choice if you feel strongly that abortion is not a big deal because you are judging every single woman who has come into this thread and shared her personal experience as being invalid!

You can only call yourself pro-choice if you are willing and able to provide balanced factual evidence and quite frankly, neither camp does.

You can only call yourself pro-choice if you can honestly not judge another for their choices.

Everytime I read your posts Futureshock, I become less of a pro-choice person and more of a pro-life person. Keep it up ......if the cost of women having the choice to abort or not means that men get off the hook for their share of responsibilitythen I say outlaw abortion again

Ok, fine, then why not point out to me the facts that I have stated that are actually false, but that I keep insisting are true. I never claimed that what I'm saying applies 100% to everyone. Your decision and your opinions are all fine and well, but they do not change the actual medical facts, research facts, etc.

I feel it is as morally reprehensible to make a woman feel guilty for having an abortion as I feel it is to tell a woman she will feel nothing because the studies show that most women experience no negative side effects from abortion (physical or emotional).


Once again, it's a good thing that I haven't done the latter, then, isn't it? Do I need to say the s-word again?

Maybe it's best if you define what you believe to be balanced factual evidence, then. You object quite strenuously to the things I've said, yet haven't actually pointed out where I've provided incorrect information.

You've barely, if at all, done so with information from the pro-life/ant-abortion/whatever side, or the ones that are posting information that you personally know to be false.

Now, if you're finding it convenient to say that "neither camp does" and make it sound like both are equally guilty if you realize that it's more a 90/10 split of who provides misinformation, then that's being rather deceptive on your part, isn't it?

I mean, what if someone came in with the idea that abortions are fun, exciting, pleasurable, and every woman should try to have at least 2 of them a year. Should THAT view also be given "equal" or "balanced" time?

Everytime I read your posts Futureshock, I become less of a pro-choice person and more of a pro-life person. Keep it up ......if the cost of women having the choice to abort or not means that men get off the hook for their share of responsibilitythen I say outlaw abortion again

No, clearly not judging anyone or anything there.

Pot, meet kettle.

you were doing the same accusing-someone-of-something-they-didn't say back in those posts

I agree with this, and women who have wanted pregnancies should not abort them.

I don't think anyone is saying that any woman who has said she had an emotional upheaval after an abortion is lying, or being less than honest. However, when people say that MOST women will experience significant trauma/depression after an abortion, that is clearly FALSE and must be corrected.

But then there is this.........when a woman shares her personal experience and is met with a study that shows that for most women, what they experience is relief after an abortion, what message do you think you sending to that woman?

I don't have to forgive shiat NotElvis....sarcasm is the tool of the frustrated and emotional. I'm going to show your "feelings" the same degree of respect that mine received in this thread.....

When you can post something to me devoid of all the emotion, then I will respond further...until then your emotions are your issue, not mine.

An abortion does terminate a pregnancy. It is a medical procedure that carries a low risk of complications physically and emotionally. The likelihood of complications of an emotional nature are in relation to how you personally feel about abortions and may feel about the pregnancy. The complications physically are infection and infertility but again, that risk is quite low and dependent on the practioner's skill and experience performing abortions.

That is essentially what two ob/gyn's told me when I spoke to them about abortion.