As for the number of children to have, there is no "right number" for any particular parents. However to "pump out" children at the maximum possible rate (as in your facetious premise) would not be beneficial to the family or to society for obvious reasons including the ability to house, feed, and take care of that many children effectively. But of course you knew that.
Obviously we have opposing viewpoints. What I am trying to get at is this: If life is precious, why don't we make more of it? Those against abortion draw the line at the moment of conception, but why? Isn't an egg pre-fetus just like a fetus is a pre-child? Can't we logically extend the need to protect the unborn to the unconceived, with ease?
In the paragraph above you admit there are circumstances where an additional child would not be beneicial to the family or society for what I agree would be "obvious reasons". Yet you want to protect the conceived, unborn regardless of those reasons. why ar they suddenly good reasons when conception hasn't occurred yet, but not good reasons once it has?
Again, I wish it were the case that there was no need for abortions anywhere on the planet. I am not pro-abortion so much as I am pro-choice, feeling that the woman who is going to have to go through the process and live with the child afterwards should be able to decide what to do. She can carry the child to term and keep it, carry it to term and adopt it out or abort it early in the pregnancy. But she is often considering exactly the same reasons you are for not getting pregnant (housing, feeding, caring, etc.) that you are.
Of course I understand your reasoning, and I can't fault you for wanting to save the life of an unborn child. However, life is full of unluxurious moments where hard choices have to be made.
I was talking to my very Christian friend last week while the Israeli incursion into the Gaza strip was taking place. Reports of hundreds of dead children were flowing in and I had to ask him how he felt about that. "Its a dirty world..." he responded, his way of saying its too bad but its going to happen. He is ardently, and I mean ardently, anti-abortion, but like most Christians, he seems to be able to shrug his shoulders at the death of the post-born. He felt it was the right of Israel to do what it did, the the consequences were not the fault of the Israelis, but rather the Palestinians. I didn't show him the photo of the burned body of a tiny baby because it would have angered him that I made him look, but he clearly didn't care whether Palestinian children, obviously as innocent as the unborn, were being slaughtered.
I've mentioned the issue in relation to the bombings in Iraq and he has always responded "There are always civilian casualties in war..." as if that makes it okay.
Now you specifically may or may not feel similar, but I have, in the course of my life, run into many Christians who seem to care about the unborn but don't seem to give a damn about the born. They always deny it, but their actions and beliefs say otherwise. I am unable to give priority in that order. That is why I support abortion as an option to those making difficult decisions.
My OP asked why all women shouldn't be pregnant using a logical extension of anti-abortion thinking. Your answer in the quote above is obviously a logical and rational one that I can't argue against. The difference is that I am willing to extend it three months into the pregnancy, and you are not. I figure if I extend the same logic backwards to a pre-pregnancy state and get people to tell me why it would be wrong to 'force' pregnancy on a woman then perhaps we can all at least begin to see, if not understand, the reason different people have different opinions and feelings on the issue.
If abortion had been legal in 1946, I suspect my mom would have chosen that option rather than having me. I would never have known. And more importantly, my father would not have been pressured by the then-current social norm to marry my mother, something she made him regret virtually every day they were together for the next 20 years. I got to live, my father got to suffer through a patently ridiculous marriage that my mother never wanted. He would have had a chance to be more careful the next time, and he would have known more about shacking up with "b-word" women. I of course don't know how his life would have been different, but at least he would have had a chance not to waste his life away with my mother. And I would never have known.
So that is not an issue for me.
I prefer quality in life for fewer over an emphasis on the quantity of life for many more. Its that simple.
