# Analyzing the Social Calculus Behind the Republican Anti-Abortion Stance **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 9, 2011, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770 "2011-04-09T08:26:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770/61 "2011-04-11T12:06:23Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > There’s not enough rolleyes in the world for how childish you were just now. > > I’m sorry, I think you may have dropped some words here? I do the same thing. I would like to respond if you care to clarify. > > It’s certainly true that the odds of conceiving in any one, umm, “attempt” are mall. Yet it does happen and when we act on that presumption we are giving in to our evil will. > > Eons upon eons. Yes, all humans are as a great tree, spread out through time, and the smallest twig may grow to a mighty branch. Yet the twig and the branch are the same stock, the same life. One twig may be cut short while another blooms. This does not in any way change the moral impact of killing a twig. If we cannot save it, then that’s not our “choice.” > > Hardly. They represent only one-half of human potential. They cannot grow. They can never change, except through conception. > > Huh? I wasn’t arguing religion particularly. It doesn’t matter much to me what Buddhists think. What wrong is - is wrong. > > Actually, I have a big problem with some of the heroic measures they take these days. I accept deat, even if I do not like it. But there is a huge difference between accepting our limited power over it and > > Actually, famine and starvation is caused (and has been proven many times) to be a result of political failure or evil, not high birthrates. There’s plenty of food available where people are allowed to develop and economy. Famine areas are caused byn politial elites (for one reason or another) targeting and destroying wealth, freedom, and often food supplies directly. > > And yet, we give and give generously to charities around the world. I don’t know what you ask, but we do sacrifice for others and we do support others. The anti abortion crowd uses the word when life begins, and they believe it is at conception, life is in the father’s and all ancestors, even if one believes the Adam and Eve story it still is a passed on thing. To me it is when person hood begins and a person is not a person until it can be recognized as such. When there is not enough food,etc. for 1 child and the parents have more they are not acting responsibly (in my opinion); If birth control is a sin as some religions teach, then having children you cannot afford is a bigger moral wrong. That is why I would like to see every woman have the morning after pill available to her, that would help prevent having children who she thinks may starve to death, or she was unable to care for emotionally, physically or financially, and as a man showed how to use condoms in Bali, it is making a better life for a few children than having a lot of children that need more food etc, than the parents can afford to care for. The fact that there are so many people starving to death, living in such poverty is due in great part to the fact that they are not getting enough of the necessities they should have, and some personal responsibility should be born by the parents. There are indeed times when things come up beyond a parents control, but many children could have a better life were there less of them for a family to support! Every child that is born should have the necessities, from birth to adult hood and as it is there are hundreds of thousands who do not, so not enough help is available, which to me means, the population is too large for people to handle. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770/62 "2011-04-11T15:16:21Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Exodus 22:-24: **Curtis** , I’m not going to excoriate you for this one because I assume you’re debating in good faith. However, the passage you meant to quote has nothing to do with abortion: [QUOTE=Exodus 21:24] If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. [/QUOTE] The writer was clearly talking about nonconsensual premature inducement of labor. Not a consensual abortion. Now, if you can provide any evidence whatsoever that women obtain abortions by standing nearby during fistfights, then I’ll grant you that this passage has some relevancy. Or, if you’re discussing situations in which physicians (or laymen) abort foetuses without the consent of the parents. You’re not, though; you’re claiming that this passage is a Biblical prohibition on abortion, and it just isn’t. In any event, even if the passage explicitly said, “abortion is murder”, there’s an easy way to determine whether it’s really something we need to pay attention to- look at it in context. [QUOTE=Exodus 21:20-22] Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property. [/QUOTE] The Bible is about as useful a moral guide as the collected works of Pauly Shore. ---
**Author:** ![Sandwich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/22d042/32.png) [@Sandwich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sandwich)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770/63 "2011-04-12T17:28:35Z")
> [@OttoDaFe](#): > > My personal view, for what it’s worth (not much), is that abortion is a tragedy for all concerned. And that it’s an intensely personal decision that should be reached without interference from outside entities, either governmental or religious. A personal view which seems very common in the US, even among the ‘pro choice’. In Europe, the consensus appears to be that abortion is a minor inconvenience for those directly involved. I suggest that that difference casts an interesting perspective on the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770/64 "2011-04-12T19:41:08Z")
Quoth **smiling bandit** : > [@](#): > > For me, life is life. I do not assign “values” to human life of varying kinds, and note that people who do always somehow wind up assigning a much higher value to whatever class they personally belong to and/or admire. From the very moment of conception, a new being is born, one which develops at an absurdly rapid pace. I’m almost certain that you _do_ assign different values to varying kinds of human life. If you came down with cancer, and the doctor excised a tumor out of you, would you demand that the tumor be kept in culture with a plentiful supply of agar in a petri dish, for the rest of its days? Or would you be OK with the hospital just incinerating it as hazardous biological waste? I suspect the latter, but that tumor is indisputably human and indisputably alive. I think that one of the biggest problems with the abortion debate is all this irrelevant focus about human life. Human life, per se, doesn’t matter one whit. What matters is personhood, and the sooner everyone involved realizes that, the sooner we can hope to actually get some resolution on the debate. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2011, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770/65 "2011-04-15T10:56:32Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Obviously not, since they’re pro-abortion. They are not Pro-Abortion but pro-the life of the already born! All they do is want the constitutional rights of others upheld! We are a secular government with separation of Church and State; our laws are not based on religious beliefs. Abortion upto a certain point is legal. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/analyzing-the-social-calculus-behind-the-republican-anti-abortion-stance/577770.md?page=3)