Top abortion myths!
Warning: graphic image.
"You can't be pro-choice and be anti-death penalty/anti-war at the same time."
The Pro Choicers want women to have choices whether to carry a pregnancy or terminate it. The victims of the death penalty and war are fully conscious persons rather than presentient entities in a woman's womb, so the moral questions involved are entirely different.
"Abortion causes breast cancer."
This has been proven time and time again that this is false. If abortion caused breast cancer, so would a miscarriage. It doesn't.
Both, the American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute have made these conclusions:
After combining and reviewing the results from these studies, the researchers concluded that “the totality of worldwide epidemiological evidence indicates that pregnancies ending as either spontaneous or induced abortions do not have adverse effects on women’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer.”
-ACS
09/20/2011
Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.
-NCI
01/12/2010
"This is what an abortion looks like."
Here's a typical photo Anti- Choicers use:
Here's what an ACTUAL(first trimester) abortion looks like:
Embryo sac.
Do you see how big that first fetus is?! That fetus is about the length of a banana which would make it about 20 weeks. Abortions after 16 weeks, typically, are not performed unless something is very, very wrong. Using photos of late term abortions or miscarried fetuses is not only very uneducated but insensitive to those who have suffered the loss of a wanted pregnancy.
"Even first-trimester fetuses can feel pain."
No, they cannot. They do develop nerves and their brain and spinal cord are developing but the three do not connect in order for the pain to register.
In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation. After 24 weeks there is continuing development and elaboration of intracortical networks such that noxious stimuli in newborn preterm infants produce cortical responses. Such connections to the cortex are necessary for pain experience but not sufficient, as experience of external stimuli requires consciousness. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation. This state can suppress higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimuli. RCOG
"Fetuses become conscious at 8 weeks."
No, they don't.
Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation.
RCOG
"Emergency contraception causes abortions."
All emergency contraception is, is a huge dose of birth control.
I'm going to post a statement from Plan B's website:
Plan B One-Step® is intended to prevent pregnancy after known or suspected contraceptive failure or unprotected intercourse.
Plan B One-Step® isn't effective if you're already pregnant, and it won't terminate an existing pregnancy.
Plan B
"Banning abortion will get rid of it, once and for all."
Abortions have been happening since life has been around. Abortion has been mentioned by Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Soranus, and there were loads of natural abortifacients from early times. SO, no, banning abortion will not make it stop, it will just make it illegal and dangerous.
"Pro-choice activists want to increase the number of abortions."
I don't know who in their right mind would want THAT, but damn, those people need help. Pro Choicers are not only out to make everyone have abortions. Pro Choicers want abortion to be an OPTION.
"Pro-choice activists want abortion on demand until the moment of birth."
False! If the fetus is past the viability stage, birth it. And no sane woman would wait until third trimester of her pregnancy, and say "Gee, I think I'll go and have an abortion today!"
The fact that every late term abortion is for medical emergencies only, it's ignorant to say women just randomly want to abort their pregnancies nearing later term.
These are some of the worst abortion myths out there.