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Source: (consider it) Thread: Texas but not Virginia
Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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Ender's Shadow, a couple of questions for you.

Do you think it is more important (a) to ensure that people who have sexual intercourse are held entirely responsible for any consequences of that intercourse, and that society (i.e., the rest of us) not be burdened by any requirement to provide anything to mitigate the consequences? Or (b) to prevent abortions?

Surely nearly all of us would agree that adults should make decisions in a responsible way, and that they should accept the natural consequences of their actions -- and that such consequences may be valuable for encouraging responsible behavior in the future.

Nevertheless, if giving people the option of being relieved of some portion of their responsibility can be shown to be an effective means of reducing the number of abortions, would you be willing to relieve them of responsibility in order to prevent those abortions that could be so prevented?

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Anglican_Brat
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Another point is that much of our health care system is devoted to treating people who suffer consequences due to their choices. We treat lung cancer for smokers even if their smoking is the principal cause for their illness. Same for heart disease in its relationship to obesity.

We do so, because as a caring society, we realize that allowing people to suffer even if they "caused" the suffering is antithetical towards treating people with respect and dignity. Oh and Jesus did say something about loving one's neighbor as well.

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Leaf
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Ender's Shadow: We do not agree on the term "unborn babies". This may be used inside your own philosophical and media echo chamber, but you have chosen (perhaps bravely) to step beyond that.

However, beyond the walls of your echo chamber, you are now "speaking the language of Zion", with a mindset and terminology understood only within your in-group.

In order to facilitate understanding, can we at least agree that we are talking about pregnant women?

I know that it's much more colourful, emotive, and fun to talk about pretty babies, with those lovely mental picture-book illustrations from Delusionland. Over here in the real world, we are talking about pregnant women: a much more complicated reality, with personal histories, voting rights, complicated relationships, economic stresses, etc. Those pregnant women have a blob of tissue inside which may change their lives forever.

Justinian was absolutely right: To reduce abortions, address the needs and fears of pregnant women in the real world in a positive and productive way. Addressing their needs with the attitude "sucks to be you" and their fears with "you'll go to hell if you don't go through with it" would not meet the definitions of positive and productive.

How about this modest proposal? This is based on your premise of a punitive view toward sex, which I don't share, but anyway: If a pregnant woman is legally required carry to term, the father is legally obligated for the next nine months to care for the infant, 24/7. Logical, no? She could choose whether or not to pump breastmilk, and if living apart from the father, it would be shipped to him at his expense. But I suspect that you would instantly see so much talk about personal "freedom" and "liberty" being infringed that that it would make your head spin. (It's fine if it's a woman's freedom and liberty being infringed; try to legally require the same of a man.)

That seems fair, doesn't it?

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Soror Magna
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Ender's Shadow, you left out
c) What is the duty of the state to children born to parents who are not fully prepared or able to raise them, for whatever reason?

You keep writing about personal responsibility, but in the real world, people fail in their responsibilities to their children, sometimes horrifically. It is completely foreseeable that this duty will arise, and irresponsible not to prepare for it. At that point, there's two options:

#1. The community /state* steps in, at common expense, to support and protect the child.

#2. The community / state says, "LA LA LA parents are responsible for their children LA LA LA", and it's apparently irrelevant that the consequences of their failure fall mostly on the child. The same child you claimed was an innocent human being deserving of care and protection when in utero.

Given that in the worst-case scenario, the community / state will have to spend common funds to pick up the pieces anyway, I think it is prudent for the state to not just allow but encourage its citizens to prevent it from happening in the first place. And if your jurisdiction allows abortion, which you consider equivalent to murder, wouldn't you want to do everything possible to prevent a murder? OliviaG

*I've used community / state because there's also the option of extended family, faith groups, etc. intervening, but only the state can - and should - guarantee protection for *every* child.

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Soror Magna
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Just adding that c) can happen to any child at any time, not just at birth. Parents can lose jobs, become disabled, divorce, die, etc. The most loving, capable and fortunate parents can be challenged by life's circumstances. OliviaG

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John Holding

Coffee and Cognac
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Just want to point out that part of the problem in this discussion is that ES, so far as I can see, is trying to address a topic that requires participants to have and express some degree of empathy. I believe he is at a considerable disadvantage in this discussion. He might have been wiser not to open the debate, but others ought perhaps also to take this into account.

John

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Leaf
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And now for something completely different:

A little humour! From Funny or Die: Women's Health Experts Speak Out.

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Laura
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quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Just want to point out that part of the problem in this discussion is that ES, so far as I can see, is trying to address a topic that requires participants to have and express some degree of empathy. I believe he is at a considerable disadvantage in this discussion. He might have been wiser not to open the debate, but others ought perhaps also to take this into account.

John

And that is exactly the problem in this debate.

One of the most important articles I have ever read about this issue is written from the side of people opposed to legal access to abortion, by Paul Swope called, "A Failure to Communicate". He noted the pro-life movement's complete failure to reach across the divide and speak to women with compassion about what they really fear. And as long as the movement failed to do that, it would not reach the people it needed to reach.

Now, with respect to ES, I actually think the "pro-choice" side (I dislike these euphemisms, but I'll use them as a shorthand) is too glib about its position. We should say, we belieeve that the killing allowed by the law is justified.

There is no question that abortion is killing something human and special. I think that's the wrong question, though. The question is, is such killing justifiable such that it should be legal? And the answer, in my opinion, is yes. And it's not really hard to find a rubric for it, either. As a society, we allow killing under a number of circumstances, from war to self-defense, and that includes "friendly fire" that kills the innocent.

In any case, in my view, if you believe that abortion is in fact murder on the level of killing a born human, then the logically consistent position is to oppose it in all cases except when life is impossible (ectopic pregnancy or anencephaly, for example). No level of disability or parentage or economic hardship would justify it, any more than you could euthanize a disabled ten-year-old. The fact that even many ardent pro-lifers balk at that extreme position shows that even at that level, there is a position that allows for abortion, it's just that they draw the line somewhere else on the continuum. The effect on the fetus is the same, whatever the reason.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

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Ender's Shadow
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quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
Just want to point out that part of the problem in this discussion is that ES, so far as I can see, is trying to address a topic that requires participants to have and express some degree of empathy. I believe he is at a considerable disadvantage in this discussion. He might have been wiser not to open the debate, but others ought perhaps also to take this into account.

John

And that is exactly the problem in this debate.

One of the most important articles I have ever read about this issue is written from the side of people opposed to legal access to abortion, by Paul Swope called, "A Failure to Communicate". He noted the pro-life movement's complete failure to reach across the divide and speak to women with compassion about what they really fear. And as long as the movement failed to do that, it would not reach the people it needed to reach.

Thanks Laura - that's a very helpful post. What I've been trying to do is sharpen my own understanding of the issue to enable me to know what I believe and why I believe it. Which is, at one level, a somewhat selfish exercise. However it's only when I REALLY know what I believe that I can be honestly empathetic - because otherwise I would fear that I would be being caught up by the emotions of the moment to agree to something that actually I would later think is wrong. I have a small but significant issue in life: I can often know instinctively / intuitively what is right, but can't actually explain why at the time. The result is that either I become unhelpful - 'I know that's wrong but I can't explain' - or I let it slide and regret it later. This thread has allowed me to test out some of the less commonly discussed lines of argument in this area and thereby clarify my views on the subject. That, after all, is the stated purpose of Purgatory as a board, of which dead horses is an annexe; it's NOT an annexe of All Saints.

Part of the problem is that there is an asymmetry at the heart of the debate: the pro-lifers have to admit that there is at least one circumstance - ectopic pregnancies - where an abortion is justified. But we never actually hear pro-choicers admit there are situations where an abortion isn't justified, because they argue that the ball of cells is merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired, an argument which makes infertile couples desperately hoping for a baby very upset, and the victims of latish miscarriages deeply hurt (there's never a shortage of victims in this area if you only go and look...).

That will have to do for now - I've an essay that needs writing that I've been paying insufficient attention to...

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Test everything. Hold on to the good.

Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Laura:
And that is exactly the problem in this debate.

One of the most important articles I have ever read about this issue is written from the side of people opposed to legal access to abortion, by Paul Swope called, "A Failure to Communicate". He noted the pro-life movement's complete failure to reach across the divide and speak to women with compassion about what they really fear. And as long as the movement failed to do that, it would not reach the people it needed to reach.

Thanks for the reference. For anyone else interested, here is the article in question. It makes interesting reading.

quote:
Now, with respect to ES, I actually think the "pro-choice" side (I dislike these euphemisms, but I'll use them as a shorthand) is too glib about its position. We should say, we belieeve that the killing allowed by the law is justified.
A few years ago I used to have long arguments with pro-choicers and get accused of being pro-life simply because I found the rhetoric used by the more extreme pro-choicers vile. (Calling me pro-life is about as credible as calling me a Papist (sic) - and yes, I've been accused of that once in Atheist circles). I also find the violinist argument to be flawed and that every single abortion that happens is a tragedy.

However where I stand wholly with the pro-choicers is any practical issue. I believe that almost no one takes the decision to abort lightly or wants to have an abortion. Making abortion illegal would do very little to change the calculus.

What I believe is that the reason for almost every abortion is a lack of choice. From the Gutermacher survey I mentioned, almost 75% of women who have abortions had one becuase they believe they could not financially afford a pregnancy. And an overlapping almost 75% of people believe their life as they know it would be over.

If you actually give a damn about abortions, those are what needs working on. The unwanted pregnancies (start with contraception), the group that feels they can't cope financially (child support), and the group that feels that their life as they know it will be over if they have a baby.

Deliberately setting out to condemn sex outside marriage as very bad means that getting pregnant outside wedlock is something that cripples the mother socially. The stain of that stigma really is enough that in many cases she will feel her life being over.

Talking about having the baby meaning taking responsibility turns the baby from a blessing into a punishment. Because that is absolutely what you are trying to do I would assume. Make the pregnancy a continual reminder to both the mother and to everyone else in the community that an unmarried mother is being punished for her sin.

Talking about adoption being a solution is simply doubling down. It's saying to the girls who have the misfortune to get pregnant "After you've carried the sign of your sin around for all to see for six months, don't worry. You can get rid of the part that acutally provides joy." Way to double down on pregnancy being a mark of shame.

All of the above attitudes actually make it harder for mothers to not abort because they significantly increase the social condemnation and loss for many mothers.

So what should you do? Almost the opposite. Spread contraception around. Take extra-marital sex as possibly a sin, but focus (as the bible does) on usury rather than sex. Talk about babies as a blessing rather than pregnancy as a responsibility - and mean it. Support welfare. All these and more make it much less catastrophic for a woman to be pregnant - and therefore much less likely that she will want an abortion, let alone want one enough to actually have one. (Contraception also helps prevent women becoming pregnat of course).

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
However it's only when I REALLY know what I believe that I can be honestly empathetic - because otherwise I would fear that I would be being caught up by the emotions of the moment to agree to something that actually I would later think is wrong.

For me that's backwards. I can only be honestly sure of what's right and wrong when I've been empathetic and understood the consequences from all angles I am aware of.

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Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.

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Laura
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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:

What I believe is that the reason for almost every abortion is a lack of choice. From the Gutermacher survey I mentioned, almost 75% of women who have abortions had one becuase they believe they could not financially afford a pregnancy. And an overlapping almost 75% of people believe their life as they know it would be over.

If you actually give a damn about abortions, those are what needs working on. The unwanted pregnancies (start with contraception), the group that feels they can't cope financially (child support), and the group that feels that their life as they know it will be over if they have a baby.

That is exactly what Swope contends. That the whole "abortion stops a beating heart" type argument drives people away from their message because it plainfacedly does not give a crap about the women in whose bodies these hearts beat.

I disagree that pro-choice people don't take a nuanced view. I oppose nearly all abortion after 20 weeks. There's reasoning behind that that I'll lay out more when I get back from lunch, but I think that most people do have a line, even if they won't enunciate it.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

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Laura
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That second para was directed at ES, sorry.

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Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. - Erich Fromm

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
But we never actually hear pro-choicers admit there are situations where an abortion isn't justified, because they argue that the ball of cells is merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired,

Okay, by most definitions of pro-choice, I am pro-choice. I think the person in the best place to make a decision about a pregnancy is the person who is pregnant. I do not think that abortion should be a crime.

But I have never described the embryo or fetus as "merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired." And while I am sure someone may have described it that way, I've never heard anyone say it, other than pro-lifers who are putting the words in the mouths of people who haven't said them.

I think that every abortion is an evil thing. It is never a good thing, and it is never a morally neutral thing. Not even in the case of an ectopic pregnancy. But sometimes, because we live in a fallen world, it is less evil than any available alternative.

But that isn't always the case. Abortions that are chosen because the child will not meet the parents' expectations of a perfect child are not justifiable -- you can't justify an abortion because the child is a girl, or red-headed, or has six fingers on each hand, or will be a Leo rather than a Virgo.

But making abortion illegal is a demonstrably ineffective way to reduce the number abortions. If you are genuinely pro-life, if you really want to reduce the number of abortions, we know how. It's not particularly difficult. Just quit treating babies as the necessary and appropriate punishment imposed on immoral women for their immoral choices, and start treating them and their mothers as human beings to treasure and support.

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Ender's Shadow
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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
But I have never described the embryo or fetus as "merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired." And while I am sure someone may have described it that way, I've never heard anyone say it, other than pro-lifers who are putting the wordsin the mouths of people who haven't said them.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
According to the Guttermacher Institute, 73% of women who had abortions in a large 2004 survey say that this is because they can not afford to keep the baby. Assume that these women genuinely believe what they are saying. In these cases, banning abortion will not help. It's a "baby or me" choice. (Estimated cost of a hospital birth in the US is $10,000). And if it's that level of self defence that it's the baby or the woman then most women are not going to care whether it's legal or not. They are going to save themselves from that small parasitic bundle of cells that is about to ruin them.



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Test everything. Hold on to the good.

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
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Okay, I'll amend that: I have never described the embryo or fetus as "merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired." And while I am sure someone may have described it that way, I've never heard anyone say it, other than people (whether pro-life or pro-choice) who are putting the words in the mouths of people who haven't said them.

Now, would you care to respond to the rest of the post?

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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
But I have never described the embryo or fetus as "merely a parasite that can be legitimately treated as such if so desired." And while I am sure someone may have described it that way, I've never heard anyone say it, other than pro-lifers who are putting the wordsin the mouths of people who haven't said them.

quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
According to the Guttermacher Institute, 73% of women who had abortions in a large 2004 survey say that this is because they can not afford to keep the baby. Assume that these women genuinely believe what they are saying. In these cases, banning abortion will not help. It's a "baby or me" choice. (Estimated cost of a hospital birth in the US is $10,000). And if it's that level of self defence that it's the baby or the woman then most women are not going to care whether it's legal or not. They are going to save themselves from that small parasitic bundle of cells that is about to ruin them.


The only reason a foetus does not fit the wikipedia definition of parasite is that the species is the same. It is a small bundle of cells that causes direct harm to the host, dependent on it for survival.

It is therefore as true to call a foetus parasitic, benefitting at the expense of the mother, as it is to call it a baby. I don't normally do so. But when outlining where a woman who thinks she is about to lose everything to an unwanted pregnancy is coming from I believe it to be a fair and accurate reflection of her thought processes. I was not describing it as merely a parasite. But its acts on the woman in the only paragraph I used it are those of a parasite.

Context matters. And that I used the word parasitic in that paragraph and that paragraph alone should have underlined that I wanted to reinforce that part of its nature there. As far as the woman [i]in the specific circumstance listed[i] is concerned it is a crippling parasite.

This does not apply to all situations. And my whole comment was about how we should make pregnancy less onerous on women so the parasitic aspect of pregnancy is less likely to be overwhelmingly important.

And yes, I have seen pregnancy be described as purely parasitic. Which wasn't even close to what I was doing there.

Now, ES, can you stop proof-texting off a single word that is not reflective of my attitudes, merely a way of illustrating the positions some are forced into and actually respond to the arguments please?

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Soror Magna
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
... Part of the problem is that there is an asymmetry at the heart of the debate: the pro-lifers have to admit that there is at least one circumstance - ectopic pregnancies - where an abortion is justified. But we never actually hear pro-choicers admit there are situations where an abortion isn't justified, ...

I'm about as pro-choice as they come (I did a paper in high school on abortion access in Canada, in the bad old hospital committee days), so here are my suggestions.

If I were a benign dictator, the cutoff for an abortion would be at the point where statistically, the pregnancy and the abortion are of equal risk to the woman. So for example, the death rate for abortions at 21 or more weeks is one per 11,000 in the USA. The death rate for pregnancy is somewhere between 11 - 24 per 100,000, so they're in the same ballpark.* I think it is reasonable to argue that when outcomes are comparable, one should do less, rather than more.

My benign dictatorship would also not allow abortion for sex selection, on the simple grounds that it would screw up our demographics. We know extra single men in a population leads to a host of social problems. It's probably safe to assume that superfluous women would also come with its own set of problems.

And in my dictatorship, other hard cases would be up to the woman and her physicians. OliviaG

*Facts on Abortion in the United States
Maternal Death - Wikipedia

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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Part of the problem is that there is an asymmetry at the heart of the debate: the pro-lifers have to admit that there is at least one circumstance - ectopic pregnancies - where an abortion is justified.

For the record, this isn't actually true. The Roman Catholic Church will not allow abortions even in the case of ectopic pregnancies. What it allows is the more medically invasive treatment of gratuitously removing the fallopian tube after it has become damaged by the growing baby, which has the side effect of killing the baby.

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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.

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Soror Magna
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Excellent article on the results of outlawing abortion in El Salvador: Pro-Life Nation

And two different views of a country with no abortion laws:
Canada’s teen birth and abortion rate drops by 36.9 per cent

Opinion: Abortion statistics show reality of a land without restrictions

OliviaG

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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"

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Ender's Shadow
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Thanks for the clarification, Justinian; I should have remembered that particular piece of fatuous casuistry from Rome.

Let me raise the heat a little here, having started to plough through the 'Pro-life nation' article, I was struck by the reference to 'mandatory reporting'. Now of course the other occasion where 'mandatory reporting' is enforced, is in the case of possible sexual abuse of minors.

So in one scenario, a man who fails to resist the temptation of a piece of jail bait gets hauled off to prison surrounded by a howling mob of feminists.

In the other, a woman who fails to resist the temptation of having sex gets to murder a child to make it all right.

There's definitely something wrong with that moral analysis somewhere.... oh - I know - men are expected to accept responsibility for their actions, but women aren't.

It's past my bed time; see you in the morning.

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Please don't refer to me as 'Ender' - the whole point of Ender's Shadow is that he isn't Ender.

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Opinion: Abortion statistics show reality of a land without restrictions

Just thought I'd provide a baseline for that article becuase it is obviously speaking about the raw numbers in a vacuum.

Looking at the Ontario Womens Report in question,

quote:
Finding: In Ontario, the overall induced abortion rate was 1.5 per 100 women aged 15-49, of which 93 percent (1.4 per 100 women) were early stage (less than 16 weeks gestation) abortions.
The abortion rate according to Statistics Canada in 2003 was 15.4/1000 in the 15-44 range.

This compares favourably to the abortion rate for the United States for 2007 of 19.6/1000 women according to Guttermacher or 16 according to the CDC. Note that the CDC figure is a known underestimate in the United States because it specifically counts legal abortions - Guttermacher attempts to count illegal and non-hospital ones as well. So the abortion rate per woman in the United States with strongly restricted legal abortion is higher than the rate the National Post were complaining about, despite the greater barriers for access in the USA.

It's not the access to abortion that's the problem. It's the demand. Even with unrestricted access, the demand is lower than that of the USA therefore the use is lower than the USA.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Let me raise the heat a little here,

If you want to turn up the heat, take it to Hell, where people can respond to you with all the compassion, empathy, and understanding that you show to other people.

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Let me raise the heat a little here,

If you want to turn up the heat, take it to Hell, where people can respond to you with all the compassion, empathy, and understanding that you show to other people.
OK - I shouldn't have expressed my post like that - I clearly need to think a little bit longer late at night - but I stand by the logic: this clearly reveals that those who are demanding 'empathy' for the woman having an abortion are operating on the assumption that the zygote has no human rights. Once we clarify that, all the ducks line up. If you accept the traditional Christian teaching that a zygote is a human - as clearly indicated by the story of John the Baptist jumping in the womb when the newly pregnant Mary turns up at Elizabeth's house - then you should offer the same degree of empathy to paedophiles who are proposing to offended as to pregnant women who are proposing to have an abortion. And seek to either punish both - or neither - after the event.

Or alternatively you can argue that the zygotes aren't human - which constructs a coherent ethical model. Just don't claim it as a Christian one.

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Curiosity killed ...

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Um - no. I do not think a zygote has human rights because it is only potential life at this stage. A zygote is technically a fertilised egg and more loosely a fertilised egg after the first few cell divisions. The zygote will not have implanted in the womb either. Nor actually do I think an embryo should have human rights because this is still only potential life. I do think a foetus is beginning to have human rights - but then you're talking 9 weeks after fertilisation. It really would help if you used your terms correctly.

Until the last go around on this discussion I was holding for legal abortion to be only legal to about 13-15 weeks gestation, but having heard North East Quine's and birdie's stories on that thread, I now realise how late in a pregnancy the prognosis of birth defects is really understood. And having shared a maternity ward with someone who had gone through an induced still-birth that's really not a good experience either.

You do know, Ender's Shadow, that 70% of all abortions in the UK (and Canada from those papers) are before 10 weeks gestation, 93% are before the end of the first trimester - so 13 weeks gestation. The other 7% are often the very hard cases which most people would agree should be exceptions - the ones that are dealing with risks to the life of the mother or dealing with a baby that will not survive.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
I stand by the logic: this clearly reveals that those who are demanding 'empathy' for the woman having an abortion are operating on the assumption that the zygote has no human rights.


A zygote, as Olivia has clarified for you, is the fertilized egg. Once there are enough cells to have a "bubble" with a inside and an outside, it's called a blastocyte. When the blastocyte has implanted in the womb (or at about 14 days post-fertilization, if it's in a petri dish), we call it an embryo.

I think most people operate on the assumption that a zygote or a blastocyte has no human rights.

quote:
Once we clarify that, all the ducks line up. If you accept the traditional Christian teaching that a zygote is a human - as clearly indicated by the story of John the Baptist jumping in the womb when the newly pregnant Mary turns up at Elizabeth's house

John the Baptist would have been a fetus at the time, not a zygote. Zygotes cannot jump in the womb. In fact, zygotes are generally not yet in the womb at all. They're in the fallopian tubes.

This is one of the reasons that I think conception should be understood as implantation and not as fertilization. We speak of a child being conceived in the womb. That's where implantation takes place. That's the moment at which a woman becomes pregnant.

You do understand that, before implantation, a woman is not pregnant, don't you?

quote:
- then you should offer the same degree of empathy to paedophiles who are proposing to offended as to pregnant women who are proposing to have an abortion. And seek to either punish both - or neither - after the event.

Your logic seems to be:
A child is a human person.
A zygote is a human person.
Therefore, a zygote is a child.

While that may be emotionally appealing, it's logically absurd. Even if you accept the premises as true, the conclusion does not follow from the premises. It's exactly the same logic as:
A maple tree is a tree.
An oak tree is a tree.
Therefore, a maple tree is an oak tree.

quote:
Or alternatively you can argue that the zygotes aren't human - which constructs a coherent ethical model.
I would argue that humans have different rights at different stages of development -- or, to turn it around, we have different obligations to humans who are in different stages of development.

A new-born infant does not have the same rights or the same responsibilities as a 5-year-old child, and the 5-year-old child does not have the same rights or the same responsibilities as a 15-year-old, or a 50-year-old.

If a 5-year-old is ill, she has no right to refuse treatment. If you allowed the child to refuse treatment, it would probably be considered criminal neglect. If a 50-year-old is ill, she has the right to refuse treatment. If you did not respect her refusal, it would be considered criminal assault.

That's a little more complicated than saying that all humans have the same rights at every stage of their lives -- but it's perfectly coherent.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
I stand by the logic: this clearly reveals that those who are demanding 'empathy' for the woman having an abortion are operating on the assumption that the zygote has no human rights.


A zygote, as Olivia has clarified for you, is the fertilized egg.

Rather, as Curiosity killed has clarified. (Sorry for the blunder!)

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Soror Magna
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
... you should offer the same degree of empathy to paedophiles who are proposing to offended as to pregnant women who are proposing to have an abortion. And seek to either punish both - or neither - after the event. ...

Wow. Last week, Vic Toews claimed that people who opposed his legislation were on the side of pedophiles. This week, Ender's Shadow says pro-choice advocates are also on the pedophile team. Maybe we need an addendum to Godwin's Law. OliviaG

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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
It is therefore as true to call a foetus parasitic, benefitting at the expense of the mother, as it is to call it a baby.

You say that as if being parasitic is a bad thing. As far as we know being a member of a parasitic species is a prerequisite for bearing human-like rights.

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Laura
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quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Wow. Last week, Vic Toews claimed that people who opposed his legislation were on the side of pedophiles. This week, Ender's Shadow says pro-choice advocates are also on the pedophile team.

Well, really, it's only true. I'm in favor of legal access to abortion and also, pedophiles being employed by day care centers and also, the homosexual agenda.

See agenda here.

[ 04. March 2012, 15:00: Message edited by: Laura ]

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Ender's Shadow
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Yeah - that will teach me to reach for a technical term without checking I understand its meaning [Hot and Hormonal] ; I didn't mean zygote, I meant an embryo, being an implanted unit of cells. I think there's a good case for arguing that because it can divide into twins, at the first stage it isn't a unique human and therefore not eligible for human rights. However the argument from Luke 1 does still stand: at some remarkably early stage John the Baptist recognises Jesus in the womb, and that does constitute the theological argument for early recognition as human.

quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
... you should offer the same degree of empathy to paedophiles who are proposing to offended as to pregnant women who are proposing to have an abortion. And seek to either punish both - or neither - after the event. ...

Wow. Last week, Vic Toews claimed that people who opposed his legislation were on the side of pedophiles. This week, Ender's Shadow says pro-choice advocates are also on the pedophile team. Maybe we need an addendum to Godwin's Law. OliviaG
Ah the 'whoops, that's a bit true so we'll run for cover' approach to debating. Once you've corrected for my incorrect use of the term zygote, the logic is robust: both abortions and paedophilic activities are a denial of the right of a child to be protected from harm. The only way to avoid that logic is to deny that an embryo is human - incidentally thus telling people who have miscarriages that it wasn't really a baby so they are being irrational to grieve.

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
However the argument from Luke 1 does still stand: at some remarkably early stage John the Baptist recognises Jesus in the womb, and that does constitute the theological argument for early recognition as human.


Elizabeth was six months pregnant.

quote:
Once you've corrected for my incorrect use of the term zygote, the logic is robust: both abortions and paedophilic activities are a denial of the right of a child to be protected from harm. The only way to avoid that logic is to deny that an embryo is human
Did you read my post? I said that an embryo and a child and an adult are all humans. That does not mean that they have the same rights and the same responsibilities.

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Curiosity killed ...

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Many many embryos are spontaneously aborted without the mother realising she is pregnant. The first trimester people are advised not to broadcast they are pregnant until they've passed the first three months / 13 weeks as that's the time when spontaneous abortion is most likely. You might call a spontaneous abortion a miscarriage, but technically it's a spontaneous abortion.

Twin formation can happen up to two weeks after fertilisation - more but that tends to lead to Siamese twins - as an embryo, so that's not going to give you the cut off you desire.

John the Baptist's recognition was at 6 months gestation which is really a foetus - Elizabeth wouldn't be able to feel him moving in her womb, let alone leaping, until at least 5 months gestation for a first pregnancy. That's about the end of the second trimester.

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Ender's Shadow
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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
However the argument from Luke 1 does still stand: at some remarkably early stage John the Baptist recognises Jesus in the womb, and that does constitute the theological argument for early recognition as human.


Elizabeth was six months pregnant.

Yeah, but Mary wasn't.

quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
quote:
Once you've corrected for my incorrect use of the term zygote, the logic is robust: both abortions and paedophilic activities are a denial of the right of a child to be protected from harm. The only way to avoid that logic is to deny that an embryo is human
Did you read my post? I said that an embryo and a child and an adult are all humans. That does not mean that they have the same rights and the same responsibilities.
No - this is a question of whether they are 'human' - and so to be protected from being killed, or whether they are not human. This is a simple bifurcation.

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Soror Magna
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
... However the argument from Luke 1 does still stand: at some remarkably early stage John the Baptist recognises Jesus in the womb, and that does constitute the theological argument for early recognition as human. ...

No, it doesn't, unless the Baptist Fetus also jumped in the presence of EVERY pregnant woman Elizabeth met in her last trimester. Which we can safely assume he did not, hence it was noticed the one time he did. The Baptist was recognizing the Saviour, the Son of God, not just any human baby. OliviaG
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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
]OK - I shouldn't have expressed my post like that - I clearly need to think a little bit longer late at night - but I stand by the logic: this clearly reveals that those who are demanding 'empathy' for the woman having an abortion are operating on the assumption that the zygote has no human rights.

Then you aren't understanding the argument at all.

The argument is that if abortion is an acutal problem then we should do things that will lower the abortion rate. If it doesn't work to lower the abortion rate then it is just empty posturing.

I think the same about paedophiles. I don't ultimately care what happens to the paedophiles. I care that kids do not get raped. If having empathy for paedophiles and understanding how and why they rape kids helps us prevent kids being raped, then yes. We should have empathy for paedophiles. Because if we don't then more kids get raped. And I care far more about kids being raped than I do about actively keeping myself from understanding people.

It boils down to a simple question for you. Are you more interested in saving foetusses from being aborted, or are you more interested in punishing women for not keeping their legs together.

If you actually care about the babies being aborted, then you need to change the conditions that cause women to feel they need to have an abortion.

Do you actually want to lower the abortion rate? Because from where I'm standing, you don't give a damn about the abortion rate. Instead you simply want to punish women.

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
No - this is a question of whether they are 'human' - and so to be protected from being killed, or whether they are not human. This is a simple bifurcation.

Making abortion illegal does jack shit to lower the abortion rate. And this is where your position falls apart. Comparisons between countries with legal abortion and those with not show consistently that there is no difference between abortion rates where it is legal and illegal once you account for other factors.

The pro-choice side of the debate all want to change the system to prevent anyone needing an abortion. They do not want abortions to happen. They want to take the measures which will prevent abortions. Like contraception, welfare, free healthcare, maternity leave, etc. The pro-choice position is actively working to reduce the number of abortions.

The pro-life side on the other hand is trying to ban abortions. Which is less successful just about everywhere it has been tried than the war on drugs is at preventing drug use. People who think they need abortions don't care if it is legal. It's necessary. And the rest of the so-called pro-life movement opposes just about everything that we know to work to lower the abortion rate. Like free contraception.

The question is whether you want to change the law, or whether you care about preventing abortions.

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Soror Magna
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From the New York Times (2007):
Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare

I'm not going to bother quoting from the article, since everyone can read it (if you haven't gone over your monthly free quota!). Except for this little bit:
quote:
Some countries, like South Africa, have undergone substantial transitions in abortion laws in that time. The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.
So the "pro-life" position doesn't actually seem to protect any fetuses, AND it seems to kill many more women. What's pro-life about that? Aren't there several Christian parables about maintaining religious purity in the face of human suffering? OliviaG

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Josephine

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quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
]OK - I shouldn't have expressed my post like that - I clearly need to think a little bit longer late at night - but I stand by the logic: this clearly reveals that those who are demanding 'empathy' for the woman having an abortion are operating on the assumption that the zygote has no human rights.

Then you aren't understanding the argument at all.

The argument is that if abortion is an acutal problem then we should do things that will lower the abortion rate. If it doesn't work to lower the abortion rate then it is just empty posturing.



Thank you, Justinian. I let myself get pulled away from the point. You came back to it, clearly and plainly.

quote:
Do you actually want to lower the abortion rate? Because from where I'm standing, you don't give a damn about the abortion rate. Instead you simply want to punish women.
This is the point.

Ender's Shadow? Which is more important: reducing the number of abortions? Or punishing women who are promiscuous or irresponsible?

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Ender's Shadow
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quote:
Originally posted by OliviaG:
From the New York Times (2007):
Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare

I'm not going to bother quoting from the article, since everyone can read it (if you haven't gone over your monthly free quota!). Except for this little bit:
quote:
Some countries, like South Africa, have undergone substantial transitions in abortion laws in that time. The procedure was made legal in South Africa in 1996, leading to a 90 percent decrease in mortality among women who had abortions, some studies have found.
So the "pro-life" position doesn't actually seem to protect any fetuses, AND it seems to kill many more women. What's pro-life about that? Aren't there several Christian parables about maintaining religious purity in the face of human suffering? OliviaG
Also from the article:
quote:
Anti-abortion groups criticized the research, saying that the scientists had jumped to conclusions from imperfect tallies, often estimates of abortion rates in countries where the procedure was illegal. “These numbers are not definitive and very susceptible to interpretation according to the agenda of the people who are organizing the data,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, director of education and research at the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund in Washington.

He said that the major reason women die in the developing world is that hospitals and health systems lack good doctors and medicines. “They have equated the word ‘safe’ with ‘legal’ and ‘unsafe’ with ‘illegal,’ which gives you the illusion that to deal with serious medical system problems you just make abortion legal,” he said.

Given the researchers, it's on a level with tobacco companies successfully proving that smoking isn't bad for you.

The data for the US as abortion was legalised paints a very different pictures

Live births data:

1970 3,731,386 18.4
1971 3,555,970 17.2
1972 3,258,411 15.6
1973 3,136,965 14.9
1974 3,159,958 14.9
1975 3,144,198 14.8
1976 3,167,788 14.8
1977 3,326,632 15.4
1978 3,333,279 15.3
1979 3,494,398 15.9
1980 3,612,258 15.9

source

and legal abortion figures

1970 193,491 52
1971 485,816 137
1972 586,760 180
1973 615,831 196
1974 763,476 242
1975 854,853 272
1976 988,267 312
1977 1,079,430 325
1978 1,157,776 347
1979 1,251,921 358
1980 1,297,606 359

source

So either American women weren't as clever as their African sisters are in getting illegal abortions, or this report is dubious. The data here is unambiguous - making abortions available legally cut the number of live births by hundreds of thousands, so clearly illegal abortions weren't very common.

The other statistic in this is the proportion of abortions had by women who had had abortions before. If ignorance was the cause of a substantial number, then we should see that as a low proportion. In 2009, 34% of women undergoing
abortions had one or more previous abortions. The proportion has risen from about 29% since 1998. Source UK department of Health p.6 of the PDF

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Josephine

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Ender's Shadow, with respect, if you would answer one question, please:

Which goal is more important: Reducing the number of abortions, or ensuring that women receive the appropriate consequences for irresponsible behavior?

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Ender's Shadow
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quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
Ender's Shadow, with respect, if you would answer one question, please:

Which goal is more important: Reducing the number of abortions, or ensuring that women receive the appropriate consequences for irresponsible behavior?

Of course reducing the number of abortions is the target. And yes, I DO support sex education in schools, availability of contraception and it is desirable to make it easier for women to cope with keeping the baby. However that doesn't justify ever implying that there isn't some responsibility there, which in our 'non-judgemental' age is the fashion. The massive rise in abortions following legalisation reflected in those US figures offers solid support to the idea that outlawing abortion would reduce the numbers...

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Anglican_Brat
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quote:
If you accept the traditional Christian teaching that a zygote is a human - as clearly indicated by the story of John the Baptist jumping in the womb when the newly pregnant Mary turns up at Elizabeth's house
I don't think it's appropriate to use Scripture that way. The story is about the superiority of Jesus over John the Baptist, Jesus being the Messiah and JB being the forerunner. The writer wasn't making a statement about abortion policy or when a fetus is considered a human being. The writer was making a specific theological statement about Jesus.

To quiver over that detail is akin to saying that the story about the Fall is a lesson in botany.

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Justinian
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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
Given the researchers, it's on a level with tobacco companies successfully proving that smoking isn't bad for you.

Given the World Health Organisation as well as Guttermacher put its name to that report, I'm going to question your assertion that the tobacco company equivalent is those who published the report rather than those quoted as having wooly criticisms.

And even Guttermacher. I know you don't like what they have to say. But find me the evidence that they are dishonest. Show me. Because as I have pointed out, just about everything the pro-choice side wants is to lower abortion numbers.

quote:
The data for the US as abortion was legalised paints a very different pictures
You mean that five years after Griswold v Connetticut contraception access wasn't increasing?

quote:
So either American women weren't as clever as their African sisters are in getting illegal abortions, or this report is dubious. The data here is unambiguous - making abortions available legally cut the number of live births by hundreds of thousands, so clearly illegal abortions weren't very common.
Correlation is not causation - and all you've shown is that one number was increasing and one was decreasing. If you actually want to try to show anything of the sort, show the numbers as one table including the number of abortions plus the number of births.

The American birth rate was falling after the baby boom. Is it your contention that this was due to abortion? Because it's mine that for whatever reason people didn't want babies or felt they couldn't bring them up. And that abortion was one contributory method to this.

If your vague hypothesis was presented to just about any journal, it would be rejected for being pure wool and hypothesis. Whereas the Guttermacher Institute gets its articles published in the NEJM - which is pretty much the gold standard publication for medical research.

quote:
If ignorance was the cause of a substantial number, then we should see that as a low proportion.
I don't know where you are getting the idea ignorance has anything to do with the abortion rate. I'm not aware anyone in the thread is claiming it.

I'm claiming that the biggest determinant of abortion is women believing that they can not cope with having a baby. This is not about ignorance. It's about practicality.

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Justinian
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# 5357

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And performing analysis every bit as wooly as ES's,

the birth rate dropped sharply before 1974 and rose slowly then plateaued afterwards. (1974 was, of course, Roe vs Wade).

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Josephine

Orthodox Belle
# 3899

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
quote:
Originally posted by Josephine:
Ender's Shadow, with respect, if you would answer one question, please:

Which goal is more important: Reducing the number of abortions, or ensuring that women receive the appropriate consequences for irresponsible behavior?

Of course reducing the number of abortions is the target.

Thank you.

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orfeo

Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
The data for the US as abortion was legalised paints a very different pictures

Live births data:

1970 3,731,386 18.4
1971 3,555,970 17.2
1972 3,258,411 15.6
1973 3,136,965 14.9
1974 3,159,958 14.9
1975 3,144,198 14.8
1976 3,167,788 14.8
1977 3,326,632 15.4
1978 3,333,279 15.3
1979 3,494,398 15.9
1980 3,612,258 15.9

source

and legal abortion figures

1970 193,491 52
1971 485,816 137
1972 586,760 180
1973 615,831 196
1974 763,476 242
1975 854,853 272
1976 988,267 312
1977 1,079,430 325
1978 1,157,776 347
1979 1,251,921 358
1980 1,297,606 359

source

So either American women weren't as clever as their African sisters are in getting illegal abortions, or this report is dubious. The data here is unambiguous - making abortions available legally cut the number of live births by hundreds of thousands, so clearly illegal abortions weren't very common.

Eh?

You've got abortions as legal from the very beginning of your data set in 1970. How can you possibly show the effects of legalising abortions if abortions were legal when you started?

If, as seems likely, you're attempting to show the effect of Roe v Wade, then Justinian is correct to point out that 1971 and 1972, before Roe v Wade, already shows a marked drop in the number of live births. And an increase in abortions for that matter.

I suspect what you're actually showing there is the effect either of increased access to contraception or of rapidly changing 'lifestyle choices' in the critical late 60s/early 70s period as women made more use of contraception. Either way, you're certainly not showing the effect of abortion law.

[ 05. March 2012, 02:41: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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orfeo

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By the way, the source for the Wikipedia statistics clearly indicates that 1973 is the first year they even have proper nationwide data on the number of abortions. They started collecting data in 1969, but 1973 is the first time all jurisdictions were included. Since then it hasn't always included every jurisdiction, either.

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Eliab
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# 9153

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quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
What DUTIES does a state have to to carry out with regard to parents. Specifically does the state HAVE TO provide as opposed to all the 'nice to have' things such as child health care / contraception / sex education. Part of the problem with the pro-choicers is that they offer a moving target: whatever provision is present, they always demand more, and excuse the murder of babies on the grounds that mothers can't be required to accept the consequences of their action because it's too onerous. My aim is to undermine that lie by denying that women have a RIGHT to these things. Yes they are DESIRABLE for state to provide, but their absence is NOT an excuse for having an abortion.

Thank you for that explanation. It makes your position much more understandable and humane.

It would have helped if your response had been on the lines "Yes, I support all/most/some of those measures to support women and families, but whatever political decisions a community might make on those issues to me that makes no difference at all to the wrongness of abortion" ; rather than (what I and I think many others took to be) an implication that you did not want the state to offer support in those ways. I'm glad that this impression was wrong.

quote:
Originally posted by Ender's Shadow:
If you accept the traditional Christian teaching that a zygote is a human - as clearly indicated by the story of John the Baptist jumping in the womb when the newly pregnant Mary turns up at Elizabeth's house

I don't see that as a "clear" indication. The point of the story was that this was unusual - very probably miraculous. A foetus in the womb does not normally respond this way to anyone, and Elizabeth knew it, which is why she mentions it. The fact that John reacted so uniquely to Mary is evidence of the astonishing degree of grace given to Mary, and the lesser, but still enormously important, grace given to John. It is not evidence that foetuses routinely show spiritual discernment, or any discernment at all. You might as well use Balaam's ass as a clear indication of animal sapience. In both cases, God is using part of his creation to announce some truth, and the remarkable thing is that the creature used is normally dumb.

In any event, this story says nothing about the starting point of life. Even if it is read (as it could be, but does not have to be) as evidence that John at least was fully human at six months' gestation, it tells us nothing at all about whether he had that status from conception, or whether he was suddenly granted it at the point of Mary's visit, or at any stage in between. We are just not told that. It is certainly not obvious to me that there if a foetus at X days before due date is to be treated as human, it follows that a zygote is to be treated as human. I don't see that Christianity compels that conclusion at all.

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Laura
General nuisance
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ES: unfortunately, those "live birth" figures would also have gone down dramatically from the 70s to the 80s as reliable contraception became more universally available. I'm not saying the abortion rate didn't go up, but those figures can't tell the whole story.

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