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Originally Posted by GCSTroop
What the hell kind of crack pipe has the Catholic Church been giving you now, Thomas? Do you have any evidence for anything you've mentioned in terms of the "strong eugenic component" of abortions today?
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Insulting me isn't going to change anything. I think how I think based on what I know. If you want to think it's all from some crazy priest or something that's your affair. You're welcome to it, but it has little to do with me. (Although I admit if I'd been raised by secular feminists maybe I would have been indoctrinated enough to go so strongly against my own self-interest I'd support US abortion laws, but I'd like to think I'm not that foolish or malleable)
Now what I know is that ever since I was a kid I've seen many Pro-Choice people emphasize that it's "cruel" to let kids be born poor or deformed. And that when the fetus is believed to have certain conditions its chance of being aborted is much higher. And that people have told me, even knowing what I am, that aborting people with certain conditions is a good thing. If you need me to get the stats on it here's a start.
Prenatal tests, genetics, and abortion. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
Wiping out human variation | Dan Kennedy | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Obviously most abortions have nothing to do with eugenics, but arguments that relate to abortion specific (rather than generalized birth-prevention) are going to invoke eugenics a bit more even if they don't see what they're doing as eugenic. However saying that it's better to not exist than be born poor or deformed is eugenic. And it's also a more significant issue with second and third trimester abortions, which is more of an issue to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GCSTroop
The vast majority of abortions performed today are in the first trimester. In fact, the CDC (as of 2007) reports that over 92% of abortions are done before the first thirteen weeks.
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And from what I recall of Guttmacher one of the main reasons is that the mother is poor and there's a strong vibe in our country that being born poor is a fate worse than death. Abortion allows a capitalist society like the US a chance to get rid of the underclass rather than deal with them.
Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries
Quote:
Originally Posted by GCSTroop
I'm really struggling to see how a eugenics component fits into this. I mean, yeah, I could actually see a woman saying to herself "I was raped. I don't want to have the rapist's baby." That is hardly eugenics, though. That is more of a personal decision based on an already traumatic event in someone's life.
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What you or I can see and what is is not necessarily the same thing. Sterilization could handle many to most of the "I don't want a kid right now" type issues. Abortion is "better" to handle the "I don't want my baby to be of an undesirable group" (poor, deformed, intellectually delayed, etc) type issues.
Still I should have been clearer that I was largely thinking in terms of second and third trimester abortions. Although I'm personally against abortion at all stages legally I think German or French style restrictions on abortion is the more plausible course. Not that those are perfect, both I think also allow the aborting of "imperfect" babies at a later point, but it seems a reasonable compromise. It's also an impossible one due to Roe V. Wade essentially forbidding any bans before viability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GCSTroop
If you can find some statistics (from a reliable source) for me where the majority of abortion mothers are performing abortions because they don't like the color of their babies hair or their sex or their overall physical appearance then I'm all eyes and ears. But, frankly, I think you fall into the same trap that most people against abortion fall into: That the mother is recklessly carrying on with her life, has no regard for the thing growing inside of her, and that this decision is on the same level as what bikini to wear to the beach next weekend.
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I think the mother is usually not some capricious bimbo. I think she's probably often upset and scared. She didn't want to get pregnant and pregnancy can be unpleasant. She might be in a situation that she's uncertain about with regard to her job and the father.
And the Pro-Choice message can include a good deal about how children should be planned, wanted, perfect, and beautiful. That you can't get an education or a good job if you're young and have a child. (Which isn't true. It may reduce your chance of those things, but it doesn't eliminate them. There were mothers in my college class some of them my age or younger. I don't know why women buy this stuff, but I've seen it enough to know many do) That people who disagree with that are just "blinded by religion." If you're uncertain and young, and this stuff is most of what you hear, I think it could be persuasive. So those of us non-beautiful or non-planned people get flushed. I remember on one of those "What Would You do?" programs they had the scenario of a teenage boy pressuring his teenage girlfriend to abort. In the one where they did that in NYC several of the bystanders told the girl she should listen to him because her "Life is over", or something to that effect, if she had a baby. So it does happen.
Granted sometimes the Anti-Choice message is just "have it, live with the discomfort, and suffer for your sexual sin." Still in my experience many Anti-Choice people do want to help these women. Give them jobs, education, whatever. I'm willing to support that and to an extent have done so. And I'd be fine with them having a totally "knocked out on pain-killers" childbirth even.
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