Send them to camp in Montana? We need to get some of those states out there populated anyway.
Didn’t the guys in Freakonomics say something to the effect that (statistically) abortions merely delay, but don’t reduce childbirths?
Politically, my wife and I are pro-choice, but morally we never would have had an abortion.
It’s a complex issue.
If anti-abortionists supported birth control at every opportunity, I’d have more respect for their political position. But in fact, most anti-abortionists also want government control of gonads to extend to the outlawing of contraception.
I posted this on the Great Debates board a while back. It’s from the WaPo and goes to addressing some of the draconian anti-choice laws in a mirror image fashion:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-proposal-for-moms-to-be-like-abortion-rules-its-for-their-own-good/2013/05/24/5594f204-c3bd-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html
Abortions are heredity? If your mother had them, so will you???
Let me explain the idea of CHOICE: When you are pregnant, you can choose to terminate. And anyone who doesn’t think the “pro-life” people have abortions is wrong.
I daresay that the ratio of pro-life vs. pro-choice giving birth is about 50 - 50.
While it certainly could be a factor, I don’t think it will be a large factor in today’s world with such freedom of information. It would be more of an influence in isolated subcultures (such as some Mormon sects) where there is reduced interfacing with the outside world.
Furthermore, in order to win modern America demographically, you will need to take over the hearts and minds of city dwellers. Once you move to the city it is very hard to avoid the influence of outside cultures, and population density may have a socially liberalizing effect even above the forced cosmopolitanism (or maybe the cause and effect is reversed, that socially conservative people have avoided cities throughout history because they don’t like them for some reason.)
So in short, as the children of pro-lifers grow up they will not be able to avoid influence from surrounding people and cultures. Your parents are not your the only influence on your values: there is also the entire rest of the surrounding culture plus your own thoughts.
Well I certainly know that political opinions are an inherited trait and cannot change, just like eye color.
Unlike sexual preference, which is a choice that can be changed if you pray hard enough:rolleyes:
And, for instance, they might pay more attention to their children’s education – and we know that education is correlated with liberal views.
I hadn’t heard that, but it certainly makes sense.
Exactly: lots and lots of people are like that. The original argument seems to imply a dependence of issues which, in my opinion, are much closer to independent.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m pro choice. I would not personally make that choice, except in tragic circumstances (my life is on the line, or the fetus has a problem that wouldn’t allow it to have much of a life). But I think the choice should be there for everyone.
I think that if people think abortions are wrong, then they should make EVERY EFFORT to not have one in their lifetime.
It does strike me, however, that a fetus is becoming “viable” at a much earlier point after conception these days. A 24-week pregnancy is viable, most of the time. A 30-week pregnancy is practically a slam-dunk, in terms of the baby’s likelihood of survival.
That doesn’t really leave an enormous window between the >12 week abortion and the <24 week baby. Doesn’t it make it harder for a woman to make that choice, after 12 weeks?
And so much of the stigma of being unmarried and pregnant has lifted, as well. It’s not gone entirely of course, but it’s certainly a lot more acceptable now than it was back when abortion WAS illegal.
Your friend is right … Democrats will keep killing their own children until the whole line of hethans dies out. Then everybody left will be Moral and Good, and just get secret abortions when they really really need them.
I don’t know a lot of people who are pro-life who have pro-choice parents. I know a metric shitload of people who are pro-choice who have pro-life parents.
If pro-life ever prevails it will be because we learn something about human life that is currently not in the cards. I don’t see society ever telling a single woman that she MUST have see a month long pregnancy to term and then give up the child for adoption or derail her life and raise the child herself.
No matter how much I agree or disagree with it, I don’t see society doing that effectively. You think 3d printers are going to moot gun laws, well there are things pregnant women to end pregnancy have been doing since at least as far back as we have recorded history.
It certainly would be difficult to enforce. The same people who hate “Big Government” would have one of the most intrusive governmental agencies possible if life were protected by law from the moment of conception. That was, I think, the key genius to the Roe decision: it all comes out of privacy. How else can they know you’re pregnant. My thought is that as privacy becomes more and more of a major public issue, abortion rights would logically ride the coattails.
(My friend says that governmental regulations are already “enslaving” him! Imagine how a pregnant woman would feel under a system that examined her for a discontinued pregnancy!)
Did you point out that he’s arguing in favour of evolution?
Legalize 45th trimester abortions!
I heartily endorse this idea.
11 year olds are generally OK. It’s when they hit their teens, for the most part.
Don’t you know? Women are supposed to able to carry a fetus to term, then hand it over to a straight, married couple like a sack of laundry and never look back. I’ve actually heard anti-abortion protestors say “Every woman regrets an abortion. No woman regrets an adoption.”
I wouldn’t give this sort of argument much credence. To me, it’s about as solid of an argument as the idea that gays don’t have kids, so they’ll be gone in a few generations. First, it ignores the simple fact that sometimes kids have different opinions from their parents; in fact, it probably happens more often than not. Second, it’s WAY too simplistic of an approach to the issues. IMO, abortion is virtually always oversimplified as an issue, and the complicating factors will continue to change as there are further advances in contraceptives and medicine, not to mention other things like economics, crime, population, etc. Third, it just doesn’t seem like demographics are trending that way, just the opposite, actually. The only way I could really see that trend changing is if there was a very real effort to breed and indoctrineate the trend in the opposite direction, which just doesn’t seem achievable on such a large scale.
So fucking glad this is just someone commenting on such an argument instead of someone actually making it!
BTW, my biggest problem with pro-lifers is not their position, but the fact that nearly every one of them thinks it’s because tells them they have to be. It doesn’t. There’s nothing there but a poem that talks about God knowing you before you were even conceived, which is somehow converted to mean that termination after conception is wrong.
I read these anecdotes years ago and nothing makes me angrier than the sheer hypocrisy of Pro-Lifers who obtain abortions.
I think things will change drastically socially when we become able to sustain fetus life by transplanting or artificial womb. Morality will compel pro-lifers to put their financial and physical ‘money where their mouth is’, and the actual death of the fetus isn’t any part of the reason pro-choicers feel personal integrity and private choices of their bodies is of paramount importance.
At a very early stage a fetus is a clump of cells that needs a human host to grow, like a tumor. I’d have no objection to a tumor removed from me being grown in a jar or someone elses body provided it didn’t have legal recourse for child support. I can’t see pro-choicers making an objection to that if their stand is the fetus hasn’t gained personhood and it doesn’t put me out
Though, now that I think about it I’d have a problem with devout believers who spout “thou shalt not spill your seed upon the Earth” gathering up my sticky socks.
Grin! I wish to hell I had thought of that! (Yes, he is a creationist!)
That was the big deal-killer for me: even if there is a correlation between parental politics and the politics of their kids…it’s a weak one. And as you say, it might even be a negative one!
That’s why I brought it to the Pit. Some ideas are just Pit-worthy.
Oops, missing a noun? And, yeah, a lot of them take the view directly from God (via Pastor Jones.) I’ll grant, though, that many may take an anti-abortion view because it’s icky. Women’s insides and fetuses and blood and yuck. So it should be banned. (Of course, appendectomies should also be banned…)
I both anticipate and dread that day. It opens the way for a “compromise” that annihilates privacy. Once the option is available, there are far too many legislators who would make it mandatory. And if mandatory, how can it be enforced without registration of all pregnancies?
Also…will parents be responsible for expenses of child-rearing? Modern adoption allows a “walk away from it all” option; will this be retained in an era of tens of thousands of incubator orphans?
That said, the technology would have so many benefits for people who want children, and to prevent fetal death from complications arising in pregnancy, so, yes, we should develop it.
Grin. That, too. So far, most of our liberties are fairly well protected. I can use the Lord’s name in vain (I know a guy who named his dog Jehovah!) and I can keep a statue of Athena in my library. The freedom to wank is deeply precious and must be defended!