You can’t just abandon a child in the woods, for example. You CAN place the child for adoption, but even then, you are taking legal steps to ensure that the child will be taken care of – in keeping with your parental responsibilities.
As I said though, you can’t arbitrarily abandon your responsibilities. By definition, a responsibility is something that you CAN’T simply reject.
If you could ensure that the unborn child would be taken care of, then YES, you could transfer your parental duties to someone else. That isn’t possible though - and it certainly is NOT what occurs during an abortion.
Of course they do. So what? In 1997, the last year for which data are available, close to 90% of abortions occurred in the first trimester. Over 55% occurred within the first 8 weeks - just about as soon as you could reasonably expect, given human biology. This seems to me to be a strawman argument. Just because the fetus has these features is not in itself in independent reason to favor choice or to reject choice. That decision should be based on other factors. I wish you’d stop bringing this up, as I think it really adds nothing to the discussion.
And so? It was still far less accessible prior to 1973. After it became absolutely legal, child abuse skyrocketed.
As I said, those are the statistics we have available… and they do NOT support the claim that abortion.
I don’t know about per state statistics, but the reports DID occur prior to the mid-80’s, when new child abuse laws prompted better reporting.
That would be problematic, since the vast majority of statistics–economic, political and scientific–do not prove any definite causation. By and large, causation can only be proven in the hard sciences, such as physics and chemistry (and to a lesser extent, biology).
aynrandlover, I understand the distinction you’re drawing. BUT - it is very tricky, especially in the context of the abortion debate (not to mention the war on drugs, but that’s a different thread) to declare that a fetus is a “person” for some purposes but not others, because next some pro-life activist will (rightly, by his/her lights) try to use that wedge of “Well, the fetus is a person for purposes of this law” to argue, much more convincingly in that case, against abortion. If the mother has the absolute right to abort pre-viability (forgetting for the moment certain allowable restrictions) because her right to self-determination trumps the fetus’s right to life (in the model I explicated earlier in this thread), why shouldn’t that right extend to ingesting whatever the hell she wanted to? I don’t condone it, nor do I think it is “right”, but I can’t countenance outlawing it, because that fundamentally contradicts my firm belief that, previability, the woman’s right is paramount. Even if someone started drinking, smoking, etc. post-viability, I’d have trouble “protecting” the fetus against activities that are legal for the mother to engage in.
I don’t agree, JTC - what about economic behavior? Monetary policy is all about correlation and causation. E.g., an increase in the Fed funds rate is highly correlated with a lagging decrease in new home buying. The Fed raises rates, and a few months later, voila! Home buying goes down (because mortgage costs have increased, the bond market has gone up and the stock market has tempered a bit). Similarly in psychology, correlation can be shown retrospectively to be linked to causation. I’m not looking for absolute mathematical “proof”, but intuitively it would seem to me that allowing abortion on demand would cut down on the number of unwanted births, which births could lead to abuse by reluctant parents. The converse - by allowing abortion, parents get the message that their kids’ lives are less valuable (Damn, I could have aborted you) and so abuse them - seems counterintuitive to me. That’s why I’m not convinced by the statistics. In fact, I don’t know what happened after 10 years, but that latter scenario (kid born before Roe, parents pissed that abortion wasn’t available because they would have chosen it if it had been, parents consequently abuse kids) could conceivably make the argument counter to the one you want to make.
In such situations, correlation can be detected, but causality is ASSUMED. In other words, economists usually can’t prove that a causal relationship exists, but they often assume that it does.
In fact, one of my old Economics professors candidly admitted to the class that his field was rife with such assumptions.
In other words, should we reject established correlations? Should we demand that causality be explicitly demonstrated? We certainly could – but by doing so, we would be rejecting virtually huge chunks of modern psychology, economics, political science and epidemiology, among other fields.
No, it’s not like saying “we shouldn’t outlaw murder, because people will kill each other anyway.” Yes, women will get abortions whether they’re illegal or not, but coat hanger abortions can hurt the mother as well as the fetus.
I apologize, because I thought we were arguing whether or not abortion should remain legal.
Oh, that is exactly what we are arguing Its just that we (as a board) have seemed to focus the issue on whether or not the fetus is expendable/a child/covered under the same laws, not on whether or not the mother is an issue. The line is blurry indeed.
Don’t get the wrong idea from this. I’m still pro-choice, but I don’t think that Stoid made a very good argument for the pro-choice side. When you have unprotected sex you can usually expect the fetus to “park” in your uterus. Your argument makes it seem kind of unfair; you’re inviting the fetus in and then making it leave.
Thieves can also get hurt by security gunfire while robbing a bank. Should we make bank robbery legal, so as to protect them from getting hurt?
Besides, coat hanger abortions are EXCEEDINGLY rare. (See http://www.ohiolife.org/qa/qa21.asp.) Also, as I already pointed out, the overwhelming majority of illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians with access to professional medical facilities. There’s no reason to believe that this would change if abortion were outlawed right now.
Also, as I already pointed out, the overwhelming majority of illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians with access to professional medical facilities. There’s no reason to believe that this would change if abortion were outlawed right now.
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Many liscensed physicians are also law-abiding citizens who would stop performing abortions if they were made illegal.
You can reasonably expect that, yes, but thanks to modern science, you can make it leave. Thanks to birth control and abortion, having a child is no longer a natural consequence of sex, so let’s stop manufacturing it as one so.
And my own case was a classic one: I was barely 18, and yes, amazingly arrogant and foolish, thinking what all kids think: “It won’t happen to me”. It took two years for it to happen, but it did and I ended up pregnant.
But after that, in the ensuing 20 years between the abortion and the sterilization, I never got pregnant again. I learned my lesson.
Some of them would stop, sure. However, many would continue doing it under the table. As Planned Parenthood itself admitted, the OVERWHELMING majority of illegal abortions prior to 1973 were performed by licensed physicians.
Y’know, this is the third time I’ve pointed this out. Is this truly so difficult to grasp?
Huh? Where did I claim that the abortion rate would remain constant? You seem to be confusing two separate issues.
(Takes a deep breath.) For the fourth and last time, what I said is that illegal abortions were typically conducted by physicians. This debunks the myth that the majority of illegal abortions were performed using rusty coat hangers. In fact, there are few – if any – documented cases of women using coat hangers to perform abortions.
THIS IS NOT THE SAME as saying that the number of abortions would remain constant if abortion were outlawed. It’s not even close! I honestly can’t understand how anyone would conflate the two issues.
Just in case you’re still confused…
Even if we were to assume that 100% of all abortionists – without exception – were to go underground, this still wouldn’t mean that the abortion rate would be unchanged. The abortion rate isn’t primarily determined by the number of abortionists. Common sense dictates that it would be primarily determined by the number of women who seek the abortions and their ease of access to such.
History shows that only a small fraction of all abortions were done by non-professionals. Planned Parenthood itself admitted this. Remember that.
Its just that we (as a board) have seemed to focus the issue on whether or not the fetus is expendable/a child/covered under the same laws, not on whether or not the mother is an issue. The line is blurry indeed.