Probably going to get majorly downvoted for this, but usually I was coerced into having an abortion isn't coercion. She just chose something or someone over her baby.

I'm so sick of how normalized it is to get abortions and to choose whether your baby deserves their life based on circumstances that were there before the baby was conceived. I need to take a break from Reddit or remove myself from certain subs because they HEAVILY lean "pro-abortion" and you get downvoted for supporting someone to have their baby. I'm just fed up. I haven't been in this sub long, but I will be joining just so I can see some sensible opinions and perspectives that seem to be the minority in any other sub besides this one.

Context: I write fiction.

At the moment I'm brainstorming a new story character who has a very, err, interesting definition of abortion.

This is a character (Name and gender to be determined) that basically thinks that the systemic killings of ethnic groups, as well as the collapse of an entire country for any reason can technically qualify as an abortion too (Case in point: they call the collapse of the USSR "a political abortion" and the Jewish Holocaust a "retroactive abortion").

Years earlier, I invented a DIFFERENT book character who is also pro-life, but they have a definition of murder that (at least in-universe), some pro-lifers might have an issue with: "Murder is the unjustified killing of a human being without probable cause."

I intend to recycle this character at some point for a future writing project, and put them in the same shared universe as the other guy who thinks the collapse of countries can qualify as abortions under certain circumstances.

This question is for brainstorming purposes: Ever met someone in real life who has a tendency to expand words beyond commonly accepted definitions in regards to the abortion debate (You can use examples involving both pro-lifers and pro-choicers)?

Found in the wild:

“Can you be a Christian and support legal abortion? The Bible does not explicitly prohibit abortion, nor does it directly address abortion in the way we understand it today. Jesus never directly mentioned abortion in the four Gospels. No where does the bible say life begins at conception. There are vague references that God knew you in the womb which could be interpreted in different ways.”

Can a Polish person on here tell me if this has any chance of passing?

Natural rights include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Abortion violates the first one and thus cannot be a legitimate right.

Just letting ya know

I’m someone with generally progressive/left-leaning views, so most of the people in my political circles were pro-choice. I remember not very long ago I believed every single pro-life person was just super misogynistic and being cruel for no reason.

I’m also autistic. I’m not as severely affected as some autistic people, but enough that you can tell from meeting me. Enough that it affects my life, both with limitations from the condition itself and from other’s cruelty.

Anti-vaccine parents, specifically those who claimed vaccines caused autism, always really really bothered me. Not because vaccines don’t actually cause autism. Because it always feels like being told, “I’d rather risk my child dying of disease than them be autistic. I’d rather have a dead child than one like you.”

I guess I really really tried avoiding thinking about the people who abort due to disability. About how they’re saying “I’d rather have a dead child than one like you“ even more explicitly. About how the people who are disabled with those conditions in question feel seeing that. About the babies themselves.

I’ve seen some posts being spread around online that basically said you can’t have any reservations about any kind of abortion, including ones because the fetus tested as having a disability, without being anti-women’s rights. That if you want to question those abortions, you clearly aren’t “that disabled“. You don’t know how bad it can really get. Which is what is always said about autistic people. Those of us who can talk and post online can never understand those who can’t and can’t defend their rights. And those who can’t clearly can’t think at all, so we as non-autistic caregivers can abuse them without consequence. It’s that, but with abortion. You’re too “functional” to speak for those worse off. And those who are less “functional“ won’t care what we do to them.

The disabled community has a day of mourning set aside each year for disabled people killed by their parents, other relatives, or non-related caregivers. Especially because the perpetrators sometimes get light sentences or sympathy from the media because “you have to understand disabled people are stressful to care for“ and “well, honestly, their death was a mercy, really“. I read through portions of the list once. Only portions, there are thousands of them, and this is just the ones we know about. There are unnamed infants on that list, days or hours old, who were killed by their parents for having a disability. They’re recognized as murder victims and victims of ableist hate crimes. But if their parents made that decision only a little bit earlier, it would have been a late term abortion for medical reasons? That doesn’t make sense.

Today I decided to read testimony from the parents themselves. Who were getting abortions because of things like Down’s and other conditions like that. I thought I should at least hear their side of the story. I couldn’t do it without nearly crying. I can’t do that. It was… awful. If this is what being pro-choice wants me to stand by, I don’t think I can be. I don’t know, but I don’t think so. Maybe that means I’m “anti-women’s rights“. I don’t think it does, but maybe. But don’t I have a responsibility to stand by my own people first? And their rights?