How is Abortion a 'Right?' (poll, community, legal, statistics)

[vkhmini]

Originally Posted by gizmo980

Good question. As a former teacher in urban low-income neighborhoods, I've always tried to encourage open discussions... I worked at an after-school program last year, and we had a really great "round table discussion" about teen pregnancy. The kids were so appreciative of our willingness to listen, and the fact that we didn't judge - and we heard some pretty amazing stories!

I think that's a good place to start, even if you aren't actually a teacher. Just be available and honest for any young people in your life, and let them know you will listen without judging. You'd be surprised how far this can reach, and how easily you can affect their train of thought... teens are impressionable, so I take advantage of that in a positive manner.

Thank you gizmo. That's a huge chunk of honesty and reality.

[smartalx]

Originally Posted by gizmo980

How is advocating safe sex & available birth control a "red herring?" It is DIRECTLY related to the number of unwanted pregnancies, and thus the number of possible abortions... the fact that you can't see a connection here is one of the root problems.

Obviously it's related. It's just not directly related. That's why I said it's a side issue and not an entirely different issue.

Dreaming of a world where everybody is safe, responsible, and doesn't have casual sex, is just that - a dream. The reality is that people will do these things, and therefore we need to stop it BEFORE it happens. Hence, the need for available/low-cost contraception and factual sex education. Those are the angles that will reduce abortion, not the tactics you and other pro-lifers are advocating.

The fact is that neither of these is a solution. I'll save you the numbers because I know that you have seen the statistics and you have never denied that they are true. so you know that the statistics show that "contraceptives only education" isn't any more effective than "abstinence only education." The only real solution is to combine the two.

And once again, someone's stance on contraceptives has little to do with their stance on abortion.

Someone believes A.
Someone believes B.
B is false.
Therefore A must be false.

THAT is the fallacy that you are using.

Them being wrong about B doesn't mean they are wrong about A. You have to attack the first claim all on its own, disregarding B.

[Annie53]

Originally Posted by samyn on the green

Not true at all. The alley abortion is an old overused red herring. While millions of babies are chopping up into a bloody pulp now the backroom hanger abortion was relatively rare. Since the legal abortion is so ubiquitous more women die now from a legal abortion then they did from the illegal abortion. With the barriers to degenerate sex removed - along with the media constantly touting the virtues of transient sex- is it any wonder that what was a few hundred abortions a year is now a few million a year. With millions of abortions there is going to be a load of collateral damage.

This is not only about a genocide. The survivors of sexual degeneracy suffer just as much, What about the horrorshow of increased divorce, ruined families and sexuality transmitted diseases enabled by abortion?

Do we have classes about how to safely jam our hand into operating blenders? We know the repercussions of that so we all avoid that. If the repercussions of transient sex is disease, chopped up baby, guilt, busted family, poverty and other horrors why should we have clinics embedded in our communities educating our children on how to transit this minefield of horror? Would it not be right just to avoid the danger entirely?

See this is where the genocide comes in. These vipers are there to guide the children into the abyss and provide a facade of safety into what is a very dangerous "place". In this zone of sexual degeneracy lies death, disease and destruction of the building block of civilization -the family- maybe not in this generation but certainly in the foreseeable future.

Originally Posted by smartalx

Please show me where we advocated abstinence only. Do that and I'll show you three places where in this thread I advocated abstinence first, contraceptives second.

Here are two.





I don't think Samyn was advocating abstinence only either.

Ummmmm........I think he was. And that is who I was replying to.

[Blue Hue]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

If you follow the link and look at the abortion rates listed by country, you will see that the Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate of all the countries on the list. Germany is second. I've been to the Netherlands and Germany. They are two of the most sexually liberal countries on the planet. So, if empirical data means anything, the implication might be that if you are genuinely trying to lower abortion rates, then the most efficient approach might be to encourage more sexually liberal attitudes. I'm sure this will seem paradoxical to you, but in addition to the empirical evidence, there are also a variety of good theoretical reasons to think that sexually liberal social attitudes can be beneficial, including lower abortion rates, less unwanted pregnancies, and lower rates of violent crime.

I am answering this again as I mis-interpreted question. Smartalx has replied to it exceptionally well of course, however its important to my self to answer a direct question put forward.....

In my opinion the abortion rates in the Netherlands as well Germany are an absolute abomination. To describe these abortion rates as low , only in reference to present world statistics is mis-leading.

As well , as smartalx points out , the people in these countries are of an entirely different culture. Theres a different social theme re family.

The entire world is at war with... degradation in reverence, to the human being . The family unit provides the framework... to a progressive society. It is the foundation to stability in society...We all know that !

Suggestions to digress into the nothingness of a "free for all" as a speculative guess in order to ..
"rest" with ill perceived low abortion rates is a sorry conclusion in a sorry world.
Thats all Ive got to say on this suggestion.

[smartalx]

Originally Posted by Metlakatla

I think that it does.

Otherwise...those opposed to abortion (and I'm one) who are also opposed to contraception have deeper issues at play. Basically they are trying to impose their own morality on others.

Abortion is disgusting but education and access to contraception are going to prevent it on a larger scale than any amount of preaching.

Once again...

They believe abortion is wrong.
They believe contraceptives are wrong.
They might be wrong about contraceptives.
If that's the case that doesn't negate their contention that abortion is wrong.

It's fallacious to think so. There is no direct correlation or cause and effect between the first statement and the second. Proving the second is false does not prove the first is false.

And anyway you haven't proven the second false anyway. But we do know that The Pill was a direct cause of the sexual revolution so we do have proof that contraceptives encourage a liberal permissive attitude towards sexual behavior. Then the question boils down to this one....

Which is better....

• An oversexed culture with contraceptives that are so ineffective that millions of unintended conceptions will occur each year.
• A prude culture with fewer contraceptives where fewer than a million unintended conceptions occur?

Whichever is preferable is debatable (and outside the scope of this thread) but you can not deny that the two choices are accurate. You can argue if a prude culture ever existed but you can't deny that prior to the sexual revolution we did not have rampant conception. Sure it happened. But not in nearly the numbers we see today.

[gizmo980]

Originally Posted by Metlakatla

I completely agree.

The shelter I worked at did not recieve funding to provide overnight shelter. We closed at 7 PM. I know for a fact that some of the kids had to make a choice between literally freezing to death and spending the night somewhere in exchange for sex. And people wanted to deny them condoms, and then condemn them if they chose to terminate the pregancy.

I recall one girl...her name was Jenny. She couldn't go home because her mother's "boyfriend" was always attacking her. The foster parents available did not want to deal with older children. Sometimes she gave it up for a warm place to sleep and I used to give her condoms. But obviously it wasn't an option all the time, because Jenny froze to death while sleeping in the park one night in the early spring.

That's really sad. And yet people continue to push abstinence-only education, force clinics to shut down, and then scream and yell when these women are only left with two decisions - abort or suffer greatly. Oh yeah, and where are all these supposed "loving families anxious to adopt" while these kids are in foster care? I'm not necessarily saying they'd be better off dead, but maybe they'd have been better off not being conceived in the first place. After all, the more unwanted pregnancies we prevent, the fewer women who will have to make a choice.

[vkhmini]

Originally Posted by samyn on the green

Needed? Since when do babies need to be killed? None of them need to be sliced/diced, or sucked out/drowned. There is no need accept to meet the an outside agenda of genocide.

How do you create a silent genocide? Remove the repercussions of sexual degeneracy and promote a promiscuous lifestyle. The fruit of rampant transient sex is death, violence and the dissolution of the family. All of which we see happening in the black urban communities most targeted by Margret Sanger's eugenics movement. The fruit of the murder practiced inside her planned parenthood clinics on every ghetto corner can be viewed in the jails the projects and in the explosion of out of wedlock births.

What? No response Samyn? Have you gone off to sleep? I can see that copy of "Bray, Michael (1994), A TIME TO KILL: A Study Concerning the Use of Force and Abortion", Portland, Oregon: Advocates for Life Publications. It's probably on the table by your bed along with your photo of Butch Paugh.

[gizmo980]

Originally Posted by smartalx

Once again...

They believe abortion is wrong.
They believe contraceptives are wrong.
They might be wrong about contraceptives.
If that's the case that doesn't negate their contention that abortion is wrong.

It's fallacious to think so. There is no direct correlation or cause and effect between the first statement and the second. Proving the second is false does not prove the first is false.

Your sense of logic is the only fallacy I see... whether or not proving #2 wrong affects #1 is not an issue, but the fact that #2 (when correct) DOES affect #1 is undeniable. Another set of points for you:

1. Increasing sex education and contraceptive use reduces unwanted pregnancies.
2. Reducing unwanted pregnancies reduces abortions.

I really don't see how you could debate that! And yes, contraceptives do fail at times, usually due to user error... but if they work 90% of the time, that still equals 90% fewer unwanted pregnancies. I'm no statistics or mathematics expert, and even I can do the math there.

[vkhmini]

Still no Samyn? Must be lying in bed, stroking that photo of Butcher Paugh.

[smartalx]

Originally Posted by gizmo980

I never saw that quote until just now... after all, this thread is well over 100 pages now! Not sure I understand it either, so I'd have to go read everything leading up to it in order to comprehend. I see no correlation between killing somebody's dog and replacing it (like they wouldn't know? C'mon, I'd know my dog if I were blind!), and having an abortion when you don't want a pregnancy. Are you saying women replace their aborted babies, or what? Seriously not getting this argument.

It's a question of responsibility. It doesn't have to be a dog. Let's say you broke your neighbor's garden gnome. The gnome had huge sentimental value because the guy's great grandmother bought it for him and it was the last thing he has that connected him to her. Now you break it and instead of going to him with honor and decency and respect, you cowardly head to Garden Ridge Pottery to try to find one that looks just like it. That is the same kind of responsibility that abortion is. It means that your responsibility isn't about the other person. It's about protecting yourself. It means your responsibility isn't towards accepting the consequences of your actions. It means your responsibility is about minimizing the consequences of your actions.... ON YOURSELF.

Maybe the neighbor would be better off not knowing that the replacement isn't the same. But it's not up to you to make that determination. He deserves to know that the gnome he smiles at when he's gardening isn't the actual one his great grandmother gave him. It would be disrespectful of you to allow him to continue to look at that garden gnome with warmth. If you tell him the truth, maybe he will ask you to replace it and send you to Garden Ridge himself. Or maybe he'll ask you to repair it. Or maybe he'll just forgive you, say it's just a thing, and your friendship means more, especially now that you had the respect to come to him directly. Whatever it takes to make it right, it's not up to you. It's up to him! He was the person wronged. Not you.

That is the flavor of responsibility that goes along with abortion. The baby was the one wronged. Not you. You are the person IN THE WRONG! It's up TO YOU to make it right for the person who is wronged!

THAT is what responsibility means. Your definition is completely wrong.

Responsibility = Accepting that you are at fault for your mistakes, and taking whatever subsequent steps YOU feel are the most responsible.

Absolutely completely wrong. See? Can you see the correlation between the dog, the garden gnome and abortion now? It's not up to you to decide what to do with the broken garden gnome. It's up to the neighbor that you wronged.

Nobody can define it further, because we all obviously have a different idea of "the right decision." If I got pregnant tomorrow, I'd have the baby because I'm in a place where I can handle it - 34 years old, advanced education, supportive family, etc. But if I were a homeless crack addict, I might believe the more responsible choice is to abort. See how it works? It's called personal choice and personal decisions about our own bodies and morals.

And what about the body of the person you created and who has yet to have the opportunity at life? Why abort them? Why not give them up for adoption?

I can remember 7 responses...

1. It's up to the woman to decide. (To which I reply, "says who?" To which the pro-choice side will reply, "the court." To which I will reply, "this is the only case in US law that permits a private citizen to make a legal definition that results in the death of another individual. I don't think there is any legal ground for it. It opens up a precedent for abuse, which we are seeing right now. And I think when the SCOTUS gets its head out of its tukus it's going to change its position.)
2. It's her body. (The fetus is a unique life with human DNA that is different than the DNA of the mother. But it is related to the mother so it is not a parasite. It was put into the mother by the mother's actions. (We'll get to rape in a moment) Whether or not she used contraceptives, she made the mistake. She should bear the consequences when denying them means someone else doesn't get to live.)
3. Why should a woman be forced to bear the burden of 9 months of pregnancy? (Your discomfort is a small price to pay if it means someone else is allowed to live. Adoption is the only compromise possible. And it at least allows the woman to accept her responsibility and to not shun the consequences of her actions. It allows her to be mature and to do what is best for the life she created.)
4. What about rape? (I understand how awful it must be. I am closer to it than I wish I was. So I understand. But women have been giving birth to babies conceived from rape for thousands of years. They have been loving these children all of this time and considered these children blessings in disguise. Silver linings to an otherwise tragic event. What has happened is women have developed a sense of entitlement to "succeed" and if loving a baby stands in the way of that then she would rather kill it before she can fall in love with it.)
5. What about babies who have disabilities? (I've already addressed this but I'll repeat it anyway. This is saying "it's better to be dead than to have a disability." And that is a very serious stretch. In fact it's discrimination against people with disabilities. You are telling every person who was born blind or deaf or with a mental defect that they are better off dead. That's not up to you to decide. And it is NOT up to the mother to decide. It's up to the living being to decide if they are happy. The vast majority of people with disabilities are HAPPY that they were given the chance to struggle with life.)
6. What about incest? (First this depends on the assumption that the kid will be born with defects. This isn't inevitable and even if the baby has birth defects, see above.)
7. Foster care is terrible. (Most newborns get adopted right away. Even kids with disabilities get adopted. Did you know that there are waiting lists specifically for children with disabilities? That's right. There are some humanitarians who when given the choice to adopt a healthy baby and a baby with special needs, they will choose the baby with special needs. Kids who have trouble getting adopted usually START in the foster system after they have grown some.)

I think that's it.

I have never said such a thing, and actually find it to be rather offensive... having a personal connection with the disabled myself, I would never imply it was better to be dead. But again, if it's not my body it isn't my place to make that decision.

Well, that's good to know. I apologize if I was mistaken about you. But you do understand that some people participating in this thread do feel that way.

MAN! I have GOT to get to work! You people are killing my career!