Down here, we're having a ton of political adds (more than I've ever seen.) Most of the R adds are 'he voted for Obamacare, and the Stimulus' and that's bad. The Dems are more like 'he's waved a gun around, and he ripped off by price gouging'...
Its principles vs. personal attacks. I greatly prefer the R method.
bump
I'm independent but I lean towards voting for Republicans because of my viewpoint regarding a single serious issue.
Which one, you don't ask because you don't really care?
Abortion.
If we lived in a perfect world, I'd say abortion should be illegal. We don't live in a perfect world. Women are going to seek them whether they're legal or not. I mean seriously, since when did a petty thing like laws stop someone? I'd much rather keep them legal and performed by licensed doctors as opposed to some guy with a coat hanger. If we lived in a perfect world, I'd say ban them and execute the doctors. Unfortunately, we don't.
You should check out the movie Vera Drake if you're interested in that.
(Doing Therapy)
The fact that one party clings so desperately to abortion might be a tell as to what that party's truer nature is.
Now, me, I support the effort to reform and takeover the Republican Party because it has a bunch of unprincipled hacks in charge who basically want to do Socialism and Amorality Slow instead of Hit the Pedal Now! like the Dems want to do.
Women are going to seek them whether they're legal or not....I'd much rather keep them legal and performed by licensed doctors as opposed to some guy with a coat hanger.
This particular argument is flawed by the facts.
Go back to the days of illegal abortions, and suppose that the rate of fatalities among mothers was as high as ten percent. It wasn't that high, but let's suppose that one in every ten of the hundreds of women seeking abortions died.
Now fast forward to today, and say that the death rate from legal abortions is only one in a thousand. It's probably higher than that, but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
So when ten people per hundred died and there were a thousand abortions a year, that was a hundred deaths.
And when one person per a thousand died and there were several hundred thousand abortions every year, that was several hundred deaths.
The fact is, more mothers are dying from complications from legal abortions than ever died from complications from illegal abortions, simply because despite being safer they are far more common.
That does not include the death toll among the children. And please take note that when women kill their children after they have been born, we prosecute them for murder pretty quickly, and the result is that those murders get a lot of press coverage because they are so uncommon.
--M. J. Young
This particular argument is flawed by the facts.
Go back to the days of illegal abortions, and suppose that the rate of fatalities among mothers was as high as ten percent. It wasn't that high, but let's suppose that one in every ten of the hundreds of women seeking abortions died.
Your argument is flawed by the fact that we don't live in a perfect world. I'm sure these statistics will be quite comforting to the woman seeking an illegal abortion and finds a guy with a coat hanger. It's not a perfect world.
And, I've been told that legal abortions have in fact been a major contributing factor to less over-crowding. There is even some evidence that it has helped to curb crime. The majority of abortions are done to poor women. Their children would be more likely to become violent criminals.
I never would have thought I'd see myself arguing in favor of this. If we lived in a perfect world, I'd agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, we don't.
(Doing Therapy)
Accidental double posting.
I think you missed the point.
Since abortion is legal, more people do it; therefore, more people die from the complications related to abortion. Legal abortion is safer than the coathanger approach; however, it is not 100% safe. What MJ is saying is "Suppose 1 in 10 girls who did an illegal abortion died, and suppose 1 in 10,000 died who had a legal abortion. Now suppose the fact that it is illegal will prevent 90% of all abortions. Thus, many more abortions will occur in a legal environment, and in the end you will have more mothers dying than if abortion were not legal."
Of course, that doesn't even begin to crack the problem I have with it; that is, I've never met a person who is pro-abortion who was themself aborted.
No, I got the point. I'm not sure that you got mine, but that doesn't really matter. Like I said, I never would have thought I'd see myself arguing in favor of it. You should check out that movie Vera Drake. It's a true story of a woman who performed back-alley abortions.
I see both sides. If we lived in a perfect world, I'd have it abolished in a heartbeat.
Once upon a time, in the not that distant past, when all the 'good and smart' people were in favor of eugenics, there was this lady, no, woman, who undertook a little project to get black ministers to help their congregations be more likely to get sterilized or whatever.
She did it because she felt that the worse sort of black people were propagating without thought.
She called it the Negro Project. Her name was Margret Sanger, and she was the founder of Planned Parenthood.
It might be true that killing off 'undesirables' would make things smoother for the rest of us (a doubtful contention for at least four reasons), but its a moral horror.
So we have to accept that sometimes a stupid girl is going to bleed out in a warehouse when she could simply have gone to a free clinic, delivered the baby safely, and given it up for adoption. Its not a perfect world, but I don't see why the perfect has to be the enemy of the good.
========
I did come up with an idea for a screenplay last year. In it, Margret Sanger is a vampiress who has to survive by feeding on black children.
So we have to accept that sometimes a stupid girl is going to bleed out in a warehouse when she could simply have gone to a free clinic, delivered the baby safely, and given it up for adoption.
Well, I surely wouldn't want to have to be the one to explain that to the stupid girl as she's bleeding out. That's all I'm saying.
I'm a little shocked.
MJ you made a pretty bold statement with absolutely no reference or source.
So when ten people per hundred died and there were a thousand abortions a year, that was a hundred deaths.
And when one person per a thousand died and there were several hundred thousand abortions every year, that was several hundred deaths.
The implication here is that the legalization of abortion has caused abortion rates to grow over 30000% (30000% is from using 1000 as the "a thousand abortions" and 300,000 as the "several hundred thousand abortions").
This is a very bold statement, which goes against the information I've seen that says abortion rates are similar in legal and illegal conditions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/news/12iht-12abortion.7863868.html
I'll get a different source later too, but figured I'd get this up there first.
90% of all statistics are made up on the spot 100% of the time.
Hmmm... apparently, that article you have provided has done nothing but to muddy the issue further, as I'm inclined to believe that these figures aren't necessarily close to exact; I'd personally have felt more comfortable if they were based solely on autopsy results and hospital records than including hearsay and rumor, er, that is, secure witness testimony;
though it still hasn't cracked the ice on my issue.
90% of all statistics are made up on the spot 100% of the time.
Yeah, and 6/4 of all people have trouble understanding fractions.
Abortion rates similar in legal and illegal conditions? That's got to be wrong.
Well, it's in the NY Times, so you know what that means.
I am willing to read other literature sources that refute it, but seeing as I've seen absolutely no refuting evidence I'm going to go with what statistics there are.
I would say that it's self refuting; the reporter's source is suspect.
The New York Slimes. The newsletter for the Liberal Establishment.
Please provide a study or proof that states differently. I admit the New York Times has a heavy liberal bias, which is why I tend not to read it, but they were not the ones to do the study.
Arguing that you are right because the other side has provided questionable facts where as you have provided no facts is a foolish standpoint.
My facts were present in the evidence you presented.
It clearly says that the evidence supporting the claim was procured partially by interviewing women about people they knew of who had had abortions.
In this country, we call those urban legends.
As I've said, if the study only included hospital reports and autopsy results, I'd find it much more believable.
Glantri,
Its just that the arguement is soooooo ridiculous. I am not sure what percentage of abortions would still continue under an illegal situation, but its obvious that it has to be less.
Nobody's ever been smacked in the face with an Apollo moon rocket under full boost, but I'm willing to stipulate that such would be fatal.
Its just that the arguement is soooooo ridiculous. I am not sure what percentage of abortions would still continue under an illegal situation, but its obvious that it has to be less.
I wouldn't dismiss it out of hat like that Eric. When Prohibition was in effect, and alcohol was illegal, that didn't slow things down one bit. I've heard it said that alcohol was illegal, but no one really noticed.
(Doing Therapy)
I would argue that Prohibition did slow things down one bit;
one bit wasn't enough to keep like everyone out of jail.
I'm not saying I think abortion should be illegal; you know how when you lose your job, you have to apply for unemployment and present your case initially? and sometimes they deny you after speaking to all interested parties? and then you can appeal the decision and present your case in full with all interested parties present, and an examiner determines whether you should receive benefits or not?
A system like that, where you have to apply through a controlled legal system, makes a lot more sense to me than one person having the power to make the decision to terminate someone's life and just going and doing it. It still doesn't make perfect sense to me, as I don't really see the difference between killing a child and killing a child, but at least then there would be more control over who is getting abortions, why they're getting abortions, etc.
As a man, I can honestly say that if a woman ever killed my unborn child, I would sever all ties with her.
As a man, I can honestly say that if a woman ever killed my unborn child, I would sever all ties with her.
Funny, I was half expecting that to end with "I would sever her jugular vein."
(Doing Therapy)
If I posted that to a public forum, wouldn't it come up in The People v. Kyler Young?
;P
I'm really quite surprised-MJ didn't mention in his statistics (accurate or not) that a large part of that difference is due to societal change and population increase, not just the dangers inherent in the process.
I'm sure these statistics will be quite comforting to the woman seeking an illegal abortion and finds a guy with a coat hanger. It's not a perfect world.
No, it's not a perfect world. But a woman seeking an illegal abortion knew that there was a high risk of death, and so she took that risk into account--she was desperate, in other words. A woman seeking a legal abortion thinks that nothing will go wrong, and it will be inconvenient to have a baby and less inconvenient to have the problem resolved by a safe medical procedure. I can't say that it's more unsafe than a lot of other medical procedures. Brain surgery is more dangerous. Open heart surgery kills a higher percent of patients. Even bowel resections are more dangerous than abortions. But you only do those surgeries if the alternative is that this person will probably die without the surgery. That means if it's 70% likely you'll die if you don't get the surgery and 0.1% likely you'll die with it, you get the surgery. The problem with abortion is that the probability of death is considerably greater if you get the surgery than if you don't (for the majority of patients). Yet it is treated as if getting an abortion is the same sort of thing as using a condom or taking an antacid. It is a risky procedure even under the best conditions, and because of the sheer numbers of people who undergo this procedure thinking it is safe, far more are dying of these safe legal abortions than ever died of the unsafe illegal ones.
And which is harder, John--explaining to the families of one hundred women that the woman died because she took the risk of a dangerous illegal abortion she knew was dangerous and illegal, or explaining to the families of ten thousand women that the woman died because she took the risk of a supposedly safe legal abortion?
And, I've been told that legal abortions have in fact been a major contributing factor to less over-crowding. There is even some evidence that it has helped to curb crime. The majority of abortions are done to poor women. Their children would be more likely to become violent criminals.
Indeed, the majority of abortions are performed on poor women. That's largely because there are more poor women than rich ones. Yet there are intelligent blacks who believe that abortion is racist--an effort to eliminate the black people by terminating their pregnancies--and in fact the majority of abortions are of minorities. The notion that you're killing the people who might become the criminals is kind of silly. By the same argument, you should go into ghetto elementary schools and gun down classrooms full of children, since maybe a dozen of them would have become criminals as opposed to only a couple in a comparably-sized middle-class elementary school.
--M. J. Young
I seem to have cross-posted with a dozen people.
Mike, it has been probably fifteen years since I read the statistics. The evidence in the nineteen eighties strongly supported the contention that abortions had become far more common and frequent since they had been legalized the decade before than when they were illegal.
I also think the prohibition argument is spurious. Alcohol had been legal and socially accepted, and then with the rise of societal objections it became illegal. Because of the social change that pushed the prohibition amendment through to ratification it seems likely that alcohol users were already a minority. They continued to be a minority, and organized crime found ways to exploit them. But the prohibition years were also among the most economically prosperous for other reasons, and alcohol use was legalized again during the depression, no doubt in part because before prohibition the federal government taxed alcoholic beverages and making them illegal cut into the tax base--which mattered once the economy collapsed.
More to the point, abortion was illegal in the United States and also against the standard code of medical practice (Hippocrates taught that doctors should never perform or induce abortions). Only very desperate women sought abortions prior to Roe v. Wade. By the 1980's, abortion was being touted as a simple method of birth control--why use a condom when you can get an abortion. Condoms only came back into vogue later in the decade when it was recognized that Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was a Sexually Transmissible Disease. Before the end of the decade, more unborn had died in legal abortions than the number of American soldiers killed in all wars other than the Civil War, including Viet Nam.
I haven't looked at the statistics for quite a while. However, it is clear that the percentage of women getting abortions prior to Roe v. Wade was drastically smaller than the percentage of women getting them subsequently.
I mean, think about it rationally. Prior to Roe v. Wade, anyone who performed abortions had to do so secretly--to be caught was to be jailed, convicted of manslaughter at the least. The people who did it were either doctors who had already been stripped of their practice rights or people with a modest knowledge of anatomy trying to make a buck. If you wanted an abortion, you asked the people you trusted and eventually found the one guy in your city who performed them, going one night when you would be the only patient there.
By the eighties, there were multiple clinics in most cities in which several doctors worked full schedules using streamlined procedures, and still waiting rooms were filled with women awaiting their turn. They advertised their services and got referrals from other doctors and from organizations like Planned Parenthood. By the nineties, obstetricians who refused to perform abortions were being pressured by the government and threatened with denial of payment medicare and medicaid patients. Anyone who wasn't doing them was in danger of being sued by patients who wanted one.
You can't tell me that there weren't a lot more abortions after they became legal.
--M. J. Young
I don't ascribe increase or decrease until I see numbers, it's just how I am. Logical thought all too often fails in predicting the human race.
However, it is clear that the percentage of women getting abortions prior to Roe v. Wade was drastically smaller than the percentage of women getting them subsequently.
It is not clear. Until numbers are given to verify, studying the human condition is never clear.
As to abortion being used as a simple method of birth control that doesn't hold much credibility.
Abortions cost a lot of money as to where you can find clinics with free condoms.
Abortions aren't exactly the most pleasant experience for the woman to go through.
I believe there is a responsibility on a doctors part if a woman comes for multiple abortions to be psychologically tested, I'm not exactly sure where I heard this so it may be wrong, but it's not integral to my point and there's a chance someone here will know for sure on the subject.
Between the first two points, simple use as birth control is pretty rare.
Roe vs Wade. The landmark decision of how to cross a shallow stream......
As to the first point, many clinics provide payment plans to assist women in getting the abortions.
As to the second point, pregnancy is never easy, and a woman facing the question is facing one of which would be better, having an abortion or having a baby? Neither is always exactly the most pleasant experience for a woman to go through.
These days, abortion is less viewed as a form of contraceptive and more accepted as a way of getting out of the responsibility of raising a child.
Since nobody's pointed me towards a person who was aborted and is pro-abortion, I'm sticking by my feeling on the subject.
Do you listen to DC Talk? They did a song called "Children can live without it"
"They can fight, but they cannot win. They can scream, but none will hear them. Don't know that our conscience will die, if we take away the freedom to survive?"
double posting
Payment plan or not an expensive item is still expensive. I can get a payment plan on a giant flatscreen tv, but it's still going to be expensive to buy.
I wasn't saying raising a child is easy, I was saying that abortion isn't used as a simple method of birth control along the lines of a condom, as was inferred.
I'm also not trying to convince you to feel any other way on the subject. My replies have been entirely on the basis that what I believe is a false statement was made with no numbers backing it up.
doublepost
Ok, thanks for being such a pain in my ---. Anyway, this is what you wanted, right? On wikipedia, the article regarding abortion in the United States, reference #63.
"After 1973, legalization of abortion led to an approximately tenfold increase in the number of abortions..."