It is still the mother's body...and what she chooses to do with it is her own issue.
If an individual woman makes a choice for herself...it is hers.
You can decide what you want to do with your body, Jane, but these are individual choices....and the government has no place in this arena, outside of making sure people aren't being abused.
Some people look only at the life of the prospective child (for conception never guarantees birth, or a healthy birth at that), but fail to take into account the totality of what will follow.
If a child is 1) going to have a physical disability that will cause strain to the family/parent, 2) the product of rape, and the prospective mother does not want to carry the child to term, 3)going to put severe strain on a single mother or family ill-equipped to take care of the child, or even, 4) going to be born into a family, city, nation, or world that provides little to no opportunity, it is up to the mother/parents to figure out what to do.
That child will have to grow throughout life.....and being born, as we all know, is no guarantee of success or happiness.
We shouldn't be interested in breeding simply to have more kids....we have plenty... Having worked in the foster system as well as with homeless youth, I see plenty of young ones who are desperately in need of help...
If I were a woman, and I were pregnant, I would think long and hard before deciding to have the child. "Not having sex unless wanting to have kids" is ludicrous, false, completely hypocritical coming from those who typically use the phrase, and goes against nature itself.
Look at Bonobo Chimpanzees, and keep in mind that you are in the same family.
Or are you afraid to recognize your primate self?
That is another question for another time.
Sex transcends the need for procreation....but some "religious" heads want to control people....
If we want to preach "self-control"-"responsibility"-and "self-reliance" then we have to cultivate a society of education and choice as opposed to dogma, shame, harassment, and the overreach of governmental authority....
The war is on Roe v. Wade....and it has always been... People can try to hide this, but this is ultimately what it comes down to...
There is a war against Brown v. Board of Education as well.....and each war began as soon as these decisions were made...
At the same time, there is a war against Citizen's United... There is also a war against the ongoing abuse of undocumented immigrants in this nation..
"Oh...but the immigrants are illegal...they are here just to suck our system"...no...they are here making sure your produce prices are falsely low...guaranteeing there is a steady stream of labor to work in restaurants...locked in urban and suburban sweatshops...making clothes in Los Angeles that say "Made in Vietnam/Thailand/Mexico/Honduras/El Salvador/etc")... They also provide the cleaning jobs that anti-illegal immigration politicians like Republican candidate for governor in California Meg Whitman use... From Beverly Hills and Malibu, to Woodland Hills and Northridge (all in L.A.), the elegant, upper-class, and largely Republican/conservative, white homes are cleaned and maintained by undocumented immmigrants...
(One of my best friends in high school was one of these types....mind you, politically I agreed with him. We were both conservative Republicans...we watched Limbaugh on t.v., and discussed politics every day. I visited his home, and learned that they had a woman living in their home..she had her own small room, who was from Mexico...undocumented. This guy and his father would decry deportation for the "illegals" and "rah rah rah" for their political hacks...then Pete Wilson who signed the hypocritical Proposition 187...while living a lie... Liars....deceivers...that is what they are..)
The war on the Dreams of the undocumented men and women who are working far harder, making far less, and are far more prone to abuse than we...
The war against the Dream Act....
Sorry to tangent....but this was necessary for perspectives-sake.
These wars are real. To deny them is pure foolishness or hypocrisy...
