Abortions in Taiwan

Indeed. I had my son because I was “stupid” once,. I thought having sex with my girlfriend in the shower would be a good idea. Personally, I convinced her not to have an abortion because:

  1. I knew she would have emotional scars because of it, one way or another.
  2. I’m against it personally and asked her not to because I didn’t want to solve the “problem” that way.

I have no regrets. Very happy I was able to convince her. Now we’re divorced, he lives with me, granny helps me look after him when I need a weekend off etc, his mum gets to see him when she wants. Win-win.

And whereas I’m not going to judge other people for their decisions, I agree with you on the multiple abortions. I personally know a couple of (foreign) guys here who’ve had several (Taiwanese and otherwise) gfs have an abortion. One guy in particular has forced seven girls to do so over the last nine years here. Knowing that kind of changes the perception I have of him. Maybe I’m wrong to feel that way. :idunno:

But for the sake of argument bear this in mind also. If you knock up a girl, or if you get knocked up i most western countries, regardless of marital/relationship status the guy has to pay maintenance to support the child for at least 18 years. If you refuse, in most places your ass gets arrested etc etc. Not pleasant at all.
In Taiwan, what happens in the same situation? Nothing. If the guy’s not interested, too bad for her. I bet that also has something to do with why many women here have had an abortion.

I’d like to retrospectively give abortions to some of the mothers of my students. Do they give 170 month abortions?

Anyway, I can’t help wondering that if the crazy mothers mentioned here had educated their daughters and not treated them like babies (even as adults), those girls wouldn’t need to go sneaking around behind their mothers’ backs and they’d be much less likely to even need an abortion. There’s nothing like sticking one’s head in the sand whilst waving a big stick.

We don’t know who is having the abortions. It could be married couples with financial constraints. It could they are after the boy after a girl or two. It could be teens and students. It could be singles. Why are they having abortions? Is it lack of state support, lack of paternal support, pressure from above or independent decision? Just so much research that needs to be done. I feel it is a complex mix of the above. We can estimate the abortion rate due to sex selection by male:female imbalance ratio.

Bismarck mentioned Ireland earlier. Until the 1980s contraception was illegal in Ireland, people used to take the condom train to Belfast to get their supplies! I thank God contraception was so hard to get :slight_smile:. Even now in Ireland abortions are practically illegal, we deal with the problem of unwanted pregnancy by having a fairly good understanding and use of contraception in society, but also by many women flying to the UK. The problem is exported and that is shameful too. It is rarely discussed openly. The number would be much higher but for the fact that single mothers in Ireland get very good state support. It’s a career option for some teenagers.

This also links to another mystery here, the high infertility rate. Backstreet and legal abortions must have influence as do STDs. Then when women finally want to have kids in their 30s their fertility has dropped too much. But why does it seem to drop so fast here? Mystery…

That is indeed shameful. Ireland should legalise abortion.

It’s legal for rape or cases of abuse or underage pregnancy or risk to the mothers health, everybody else needs to go outside the jurisdiction. Practically that is pretty easy to do. There have been referendums on the issue and that is the majority decision after much debate so it is still better than Taiwan in that at least there has been much discussion and voting on the issue.

No need to vote on an issue that the government has left up to society to make it’s own mind up about.

Discussion would be good from a public health perspective, but otherwise, do you really want to let the taiwanese legislature have a say in this?

I’d rather issues are faced and discussed openly.

Everybody has a favored method of avoiding pregnancies; for Taiwanese it seems it is abortion. If they are ok with it , who are we to judge? Here, abortions do not seem to scar physically or emotionally. Not everybody deserves to be a parent and/or would like to be one at the wrong time.

Abortions don’t scar physically or mentally? I doubt that in a lot of cases.
What about back street abortions for teens? You know abortions can increase infertility rates right? How about people who have abortions late in term? Then what about women who feel pressurised into abortions , for instance to abort girls or they feel they cannot afford another kid?

Besides, there are far too many people on the goddamned planet anyway.

I say bring on the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Dasher, Prancer,Donner, and Blitzen I think they were called.

Ah, no someone tells me now thats the Four Reindeermen. Close enough!

If someone is having abortions as a method of staying out of pregnancy instead of asking the partner to use condom then obviously such women are not scarred by abortions. It is a personality issue. In a country like Taiwan, I don’t think there is a reason to feel pressurized for aborting a girl child. I see plenty of families around with just one baby girl. In rural areas things might be little different.

I think you are naive, there is still a lot of pressure in many families to have a male heir. There are also financial pressures although the amount of abortions due to this is hard to judge. We know Taiwan’s birth rate has halved in less than 10 years but not sure what methods were employed or all the reasons. Also you ignored the fact abortions can damage the womb in some cases. I know a case where a female was aborted and subsequently the mother could not have another child, she became infertile most likely due to the abortion.

This is why there should be more discussion, to figure out what the f$&@ is going on!

How about the terrible shame of asking your doctor or a pharmacist for a contraceptive pill? I really canmot picture any of the tw girls I know mustering the courage to do that… :neutral:

How about the terrible shame of asking your doctor or a pharmacist for a contraceptive pill? I really canmot picture any of the tw girls I know mustering the courage to do that… :neutral:[/quote]

Same here, I can’t see any Taiwanese girl going to do that. She’s afraid of looking a slut and losing face…to her doctor. Your doctor is supposed to be the one person you can share your medical stuff with…although I can just picture that asshole doctor from the clinic on Chongxin Lu in Sanchong I saw one time sitting around playing majiang gossiping about who’s on the pill without naming names, just casually mentioning her uncle the next sentence after.

You forget the most important part! Mafan! It’s too mafan to go to the doctor to get the pill. Just get it taken care of when and if that day comes.

[quote=“Mucha Man”]A little abortion humor if I may:

Ha!

More funnies.

[quote=“boingboing”]VA state senator attaches rectal exam amendment to anti-abortion bill

“To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.”[/quote]

Yeah, that too. And on the occasions where I’ve been with a gf while she buys pills, the pharmacist does, more often than not, look down his nose at her or sidelong at the evil perverted foreigner who’s forcing her to not get pregnant. One pharmacist (female) tried to have a long discussion with her about why she shouldn’t use them.

non of them can be considered “lives” cause they are not developed enough…every women’s own decision…

I heard there’s some kind of a superstition (based on karma no less) that if you have abortions too many times, the babies who died will become an evil spirit to haunt the woman…

I bet that makes Ghost Month a real drag.

I somewhat agree. It’d be a terrible shame to have so many unwanted, unloved children. But at the same time, that’s 500,000 lives just being disposed of because they’re inconvenient for the irresponsible little snots that didn’t think about the potential ramifications of their selfish actions.[/quote]

Not necessarily. No contraception is 100% fail safe. In a country that doesn’t readily dish out welfare unlike Australia and New Zealand, those unborn foetuses were probably better off being aborted than being born to parents who can’t afford/be bothered to take care of them.