# Abortions **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 31, 2016, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691 "2016-03-31T03:25:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691/121 "2016-04-06T19:50:07Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > I’m saying the same thing. But you’re questioning their beliefs based on their actions, and I’m questioning their actions based on their beliefs. Maybe you shouldn’t. Given the highly political nature of this issue, I’ve no doubt people will pretend otherwise to get 90% of what they want, when being truthful will get them only 10%. If every woman-hating anti-choicer says that they hate women and want to punish them for sex, they’d get almost no support. But they don’t have to say that to make stupid laws restricting abortion under the guise of protecting them. Factually, they are wrong, so I’m left with either thinking they’re stupid or malicious, and I choose malicious > [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > And some of them do that. Don’t paint them all with a single brush. And as I already noted, some have other reasons for opposing some of those that have nothing to do with “hating women.” For instance, one can oppose making contraception free because they don’t think things should be just handed out for free, regardless of what they are. Who does that? How many Republicans have been vocally supportive of and voted for specifically expanding abortion rights and making contraception widely available in opposition to the religious lobby and their new favorite term of “religious freedom”? We all know its not religious freedom, how many Republicans call them out on that? Guys like Mike Pence in Indiana were inundated with anger and protests, that’s why they changed their minds. Its not because they suddenly felt women deserved to be treated like human beings, its because they didn’t take into account the reaction > [@Arcite](#): > > I wouldn’t say they want to “help babies,” so much as that they want babies to be born. One might call them pro-natalists. They’re just obsessed with babies being born. That doesn’t mean they want to punish women. How would you even prove that? We have many instances where Republicans glibly dismiss women’s concerns. Why pretend there’s a different reason when its so plain? > [@Arcite](#): > > None of the above. They don’t “know” that women will get abortions in back alleys and at home and die. Of course they do, we have data from living memory where such things happen. We can see it still happens in places where abortion is banned. It takes little effort to connect the two. Now if you want to claim these people are simply horribly stupid, then I can believe that too, but I think they are more malicious than stupid > [@Arcite](#): > > They think if they can criminalize abortion, all these evil men getting these poor innocent girls pregnant then cruelly abandoning them will instead be forced to “man up” and marry them, and everyone will live happily ever after in a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a golden retriever. This would only work if most abortions only fall into this situation, but in fact there are plenty of abortions that happen to married women and women already in relationships. Plus, more than one anti-choice Republican have been caught making excuses for the abortion they helped get for their relative or mistress. Your argument only works if these people are ok with abortions within marriage > [@Arcite](#): > > They don’t “know” that most kids will have sex even if you tell them to abstain, they think they’ll listen and not do it. Of course they know, there is plenty of evidence to show that abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work, doesn’t reduce pregnancies, doesn’t reduce STD rates, and many of the highest rate of teenage pregnancies happen in red states. At this point, if they don’t know that, they are either lying or willfully ignorant. Again, I choose to believe they are malicious > [@Arcite](#): > > (Or they don’t care because they’re so pro-natalist that even if the kids have sex and get pregnant, babies will be born, which is the greatest thing in the world.) And I think you’d be hard pressed to find any significant number of people telling women they will “incur wrath if they step out of line sexually” or “taking a patriarchal tone on women’s bodies,” compared with the number telling men they will incur wrath for violating one of God’s precious unique snowflakes. Maybe you’re right, but I don’t often hear these people telling men not to have sex, only women. The same kind of tone and culture creates the “slutshaming” that women go through. Have you ever heard anyone in public say that a man is tainted for having sex with women? Compared to how many women are told they are tainted if they have sex? > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > You’re really pushing a lot of logical consistency onto them. It’s unjustified. Why? > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Most Americans believe in Hell. But do they really? If they _really_ believed that being a bad person resulted in infinite, eternal suffering, don’t you think that people would be a little more… pious? > > Logically, we might conclude that these people don’t _really_ believe in Hell. And yet they say they do, and some of their behaviors (like fear) are consistent with that. I don’t think a lot of them do, or they are simply pretending. > [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > The reality is that people don’t always think through all of the logical consequences of their beliefs. Or the consequences are so horrifying that they actively avoid thinking through them. Regardless, their actions appear inconsistent because they simply haven’t bothered to figure out what the properly consistent action would be. > > It’s the same with abortion. I’d agree that their [some pro-lifers] actions are more consistent with misogyny than believing abortion is murder. But I believe them when they say they are the latter, simply because I also don’t think they’ve really thought through their position. Between dishonest/logical vs. honest/illogical, I assume people are the latter. Illogical only works up to a point. When one refuses to look at the science, refuses the information we have at our fingertips, then that illogic turns to malicious ignorance. There is absolutely no reason that most of these people cannot spend a little time reading and have most of their questions answered. There are piles of data on what works and what doesn’t. I’m completely unsympathetic to the cries of honest ignorance because if you feel strongly enough to stand outside of a clinic and shout at women, then you should be able to go online and find the answers to these questions yourself on wikipedia or something. I’m unmoved ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691/122 "2016-04-07T01:23:29Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > It shouldn’t be. All this talk about fetuses, and when does life begin, and are they people and oh the poor babies is all a smokescreen. The issue of being pro-choice or anti-choice comes to one, simple, straightforward question: > > Do you believe women have rights? No offence, but that is _precisely_ the kind of approach that polarises, and tends to extremism. If you insist that the _only_ question is “do women have rights?” you’re framing a discourse which _a priori_ excludes all other questions. Does the foetus have rights? Is there a societal interest to be protected? Etc. You are ruling out any examination even of whether these are valid or relevant questions, because you have adopted an axiom which says that they aren’t. And, unsurprisingly, if you insist on approaching the issue in such a simplistic, reductive, univalent way, you end up with extreme positions. Thus we have people opposing laws designed to recognise the rights of actual women who have chosen _not_ to have abortions because they are concerned about the implications those laws might have for hypothetical women who _would_ choose to have abortions. And that’s absurd. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691/123 "2016-04-07T01:43:49Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Whether the fetus is wanted is irrevelant as well. Personhood is a function of how advanced the development of the fetus is, not whether it’s wanted. > [@UDS](#): > > You can regard inducing an (unwanted) miscarriage as an injury to the mother. > > _ **-snip-** _ > > And whether the pregnancy is wanted is very relevant. Unless you’re trying in a roundabout way to criminalise medical abortion, you need to make sure that doctor administering an abortion to a patient is not committing the offence. Whether the mother wants the pregnancy is just as relevant as whether or not you want your leg when someone by accident or design removes it. If you have gangrene or bone cancer, and you authorize a doctor to amputate your leg, he is not committing a crime, but if you are hit by a drunk driver, and your leg is torn off, that’s a crime (I think some states call it vehicular assault). It’s “mayhem” if someone cuts off your leg to get rid of an identifying tattoo, before leaving you for dead, but you don’t die. If someone tattoos your leg per your request, that’s legal. If someone does it against your will, it’s assault, as well, FWIW. You can authorize the removal of healthy tissue from your body too, for example, to donate a kidney, or bone marrow, but someone can’t commit an Urban Legend against you, and remove your kidney, leaving you in a bathtub of ice, with a note to call 911. That’s assault. And probably also a form of theft, even though human organs have no monetary value. ---
**Author:** ![rsat3acr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@rsat3acr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsat3acr)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2016, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691/124 "2016-04-07T02:19:44Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > ah, this old one. Who is going to adopt the baby? There are, right now, over a million children available for adoption in the US. No one wants them. If we somehow magically stop all abortions, that’s around 300,000 new unwanted babies every year; since Planned Parenthood is being shut down and it prevents 500,000 abortions every year, we get a new 800,000 unwanted babies added to our million that we already have. After ten years we have a total disaster of 9 million unwanted kids. > > And that’s completely overlooking the fact that for many women seeking abortions, the pregnancy and the childbirth itself is just as big a problem as ending up with an unwanted baby. Let’s say you are poor, and really need your three part-time jobs in order to feed the two kids you already have. How are you going to keep working them all while heavily pregnant? > Being pregnant is not a pleasant, benign experience. Even the least complicated pregnancies and childbirths inflict permanent damage on a woman’s body. Even with the best of care, some women still die. I’d guess a lot of those non abortions wouldn’t be put up for adoption, their moms would keep them. A bunch would however be added to the adoption pool. Of course if every pro-lifer would just adopt one child… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortions/750691.md?page=6)