Both Death Penalty and Abortion or Neither

Great Debates
101

It doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t. Both of them are in places they aren’t wanted. We grant a degree of autonomy to homeowners, surely there’s a far greater argument for autonomy over one’s own body.

There aren’t nearly enough foster homes in the U.S. to take in the electively aborted fetuses in the U.S. (I estimate a million per year, conservatively at least half that number) if said fetuses were able to finish their gestation. Are you considering the actual consequences of your ideas, or is slapping on a “murder” label sufficient to stop all further analysis?

102

This too depends. For instance if you shoot a missionary just for being on your property it will be a far more severe crime then shooting a thief.

One can argue the same thing about welfare receipients, the handicapped, and the aged they’re far more burdened to society then the future economical potential of fetuses however we do not kill them for it is murder.

103

I feel I should point out that you often don’t have to shoot the thief (or missionary) in order to remove them from your property but the removal remains the homeowner’s right. If they die in the process, that’s just an unfortunate side-effect. I don’t doubt there have been cases where police were called to remove a trespasser, who resisted, got tased, and died as a result. I wouldn’t take it as a valid argument to reduce the rights of homeowners, though.

One can so argue, but I’m not because it’s irrelevant. There’s a object lodged inside your body. You want it removed. I don’t see the value of outside interference, here. It’s not really any more complicated than that. It may become more complicated when and if medical science reaches the stage where a fetal transplant (to be moved alive to an alternate womb) isn’t any more of a burden or risk than a conventional abortion, but I gather that’s some time away.

In any case, I’m not sure how many innocent people were executed in the U.S. in the 1950s. Is it comparable to the number of American women who would die if abortion rights were rolled back to what they were in the 1950s? To keep capital punishment out (if that’s what one wants), how aggressively is abortion to be banned? In addition to pointing out that there aren’t nearly enough foster homes or adoption-seeking families to take on the extra million babies per year, I feel I must ask what kind of law-enforcement resources would be put in play after an abortion ban. As I see it, the moral issues are a matter of personal choice, but the short-sightedness is palpable. There aren’t enough homes to place the forced-born babies and there aren’t enough prisons to place the ban-defying women. It’s as though the law is assumed to magically enforce itself.

104

There have been cases where people were arrested for shooting a trespasser.

Abortion actually is not very likely to kill the women anyways contrary to the urban myths and going by utilitarian numbers more babies would be saved then any remotely conceivable number of women who might die due to abortion.

105

Considering that a thief isn’t parasitically living in and drawing upon your body, yes it isn’t the same as a forced pregnancy. Thievery is morally superior to that, by far. And a fetus isn’t a baby anyway.

What foster homes? And morally, killing a fetus isn’t murder. If you pass laws calling it murder, that just means you’ve created a category of “murders” that it is ethical to commit.

Illegal abortion is much more dangerous. As is having a pregnancy without access to medical care, which would be a side effect since no hospital would dare to give a pregnant woman care for fear of being accused of abortion if she miscarries. A situation our anti abortion “Mexico City” policy helped produce all over the world, by the way; women died on the steps of American funded hospitals because they didn’t dare take care of her and endanger all their other patients by losing their funding. The anti-abortionists never cared, or outright gloated of course; every woman who dies is a victory for them.

And then there’s the fact that many of those babies you are forcing women to birth will die when they are shoved into garbage cans or otherwise disposed of. Or they’d grow up neglected because they are born to parents that never wanted them or outright hate them for being weapons used to beat women down. And no, they won’t go to non-existent foster homes.

106

Actually, there aren’t enough foster homes available to take in all the kids who are already in the system. And there aren’t nearly enough adoptive homes for the kids who need to be adopted, either. Sure, people are going out of the country to adopt babies…but we’ve got an awful lot of older kids, or babies who are not perfectly healthy, or babies who are not white.

I suppose we could always bring back the orphanages. Because institutionalizing kids is such a great idea, we need more disassociated kids who grow up to become disassociated adults.

107

Before you repeat this yet again, let me just say: so?

You’re ignoring two inconvenient problems in one sentence:
[ul][li]There’s no place to put these saved babies[/li][li]Women will die in proportion to how aggressively the ban is enforced. Cases were very rare immediately prior to Roe v Wade in large part because illegal abortions were being performed by medical professionals while law enforcement was often content to look the other way, but picture an aggressive ban in place. A few hundred OB/GYNs are rounded up in sting operations. Mifepristone and similar abortifacients are banned outright, with possession and sale made into felonies. Websites describing herbal abortions are censored. Women travelling to Canada or Mexico or elsewhere are required to undergo pregnancy tests before departure and after return. There is no magical mind-control ray that will stop a million American women a year from not wanting their pregnancies, yet the efforts to ban abortion deprive them of methods that are safe, forcing them into risky options or infanticide, and the death and injury rate will climb accordingly.[/ul][/li]
Please stop being willfully short-sighted. If you want abortion banned, how do you plan to go about doing so and what will you do with the new class of criminal you have created? By banning something that a great many Americans will still want very much, you’d be encouraging something akin to a modern Prohibition, and the blatant lawbreaking, official corruption, criminal enrichment and occasional violence that entails.

108

I will answer collectively:

If abortion as described is made by law a crime the majority of women will at the least have second thoughts about having abortions. Even if only a small portion doesn’t have abortions (say 50%) it will still be a small number. Also people are not idiots, most people fanatical enough to have an abortion will know herbal formulas and a lot of doctors. Look, the USA is a first world country, if we ban abortion it will be like Ireland not some Latin American Third World state.

Also what is so dangerous about orphanages? Orphanages are less likely to be abusive then foster homes.

109

Your “small number” is, in the U.S., about half a million per year, so that’s 500,000 extra babies and 500,000 “fanatics” who chose to defy the law and get an abortion anyway.

As for Ireland, women of means who want abortions travel to the U.K. or elsewhere, while poor women remain stuck with more children, thus reinforcing their poverty. Not an example I’d want for my country.

Speaking of my country, post-ban, I anticipate a number of new clinics being set up right at the border to serve American woman in the northern states. Since Canada is indeed a first-world nation, these procedures will be perfectly safe. As for American women in the southern states who are contemplating going to Mexico… that’s a little bit more of a gamble, but probably not too much.

What, if anything, are your thoughts on this? You have a ban, but by your own admission, it’ll be broken by anyone sufficient determined or, as you say, “fanatical”, so what use is it? The wealthy or geographically fortunate (i.e. less than an hour’s travel from a national border) can ignore it at will, meaning it only applies to a subset of your population. That doesn’t sound fair at all.

Well, perhaps they can use “herbal formulas”… yes, “herbal formulas” of uncertain purity or effectiveness, which have not been subjected to safety trials. No-one will ever die from that. And they know “a lot of doctors”, huh? Well, what’s the penalty for a doctor who violates the ban? Imprisonment? Loss of license? If enforcement of the ban is anything more than a joke, surely “a lot of doctors” will be quickly reduced to “a few” to “none”, won’t it? Heck, that’s already happening in isolated areas where local regulations and local harassment have driven doctors out of the business, leaving local women to fend for themselves and/or face lengthy trips to find care. I’m not aware of any small-scale pro-life utopias blossoming as a result.
You haven’t thought this through at all and you’re studiously ignoring any uncomfortable questions. Your position is nothing more than “Gosh, it would be nice if abortion was banned”, which as empty wishes go is of exactly that same value as “Gosh, it would be nice if abortion was banned and flying unicorns offered free 24-hour pizza delivery service.”

110

Already abortion is going down as a trend and continuing to do so every year. Also I am willing to face the fact that not every abortion will be prevented however even if it saves only 10,000 babies I believe it is correct to do so. Also I favour other programs to go along with the abortion ban: ie more opportunities for pregnant women, a general mobilization of the unemployed into national service, scientific research, promotion of birth control, and so on.

111

Do you have a cite to back this up?

112

Here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/26/opinion/26sat2.html

113

No matter how many women suffer or die in the process, and no matter what happens to the children you force into the world. Women after all are just breeders; and there’s a 50/50 chance that any of those “babies” might be a real human being, a male.

And yes, that is how sexist your approach is. You are decreeing that women are inferior to mindless creatures; that it doesn’t matter how much women suffer you will force them to act as incubators.

Even assuming you actually mean that it doesn’t matter. In the real world, stopping abortion is all about punishing women. A society where abortion is illegal will be a society where women are disdained, exploited and abused. Women would be lucky if they retained the vote, much less get anything more than they have now.

And “a general mobilization of the unemployed into national service” sounds like it would amount to a nationalized version of slavery under another name. Especially under a society vile enough to outlaw abortion.

114

Would RU-486 be illegal under an abortion ban? It’s certainly seen by many as an abortion drug. If it’s made illegal, wouldn’t that offset some of the decline in abortion, as your cite implies?
Anyway, if contraceptives become more widespread (despite efforts by many of the same people who seek to ban abortion) I could imagine the abortion rate dropping to almost nil. It should remain legal, though. Even 99% reliability means thousands of unintended pregnancies per year in a country the size of the U.S.

In any case, so far I haven’t heard anything about how the ban will be enforced. So far it sounds like the mere existence of a ban will have the effect Curtis wants. So let’s go with it, I propose the following:

Abortion is hereby banned with a maximum penalty of five dollars. Investigation of violations of this law are the sole jurisdiction of the newly-formed Federal Abortion Regulation Agency. All FARA officers are appointed by the President and must receive the confirmation of two-third of both houses of congress. The annual budget of FARA is hereby and permanently fixed at one dollar per year.

There. A ban with no teeth. It satisfies the moral imperative that some people feel and yet affects no-one, unless they let it.

115

Your cite does not say what you think it says:

(The so-called “Abortion Pill”)

116

Orphanages are not good places to raise children. Kids raised in orphanages tend to have a lot of mental and emotional problems.

Also, a comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it. The only real difference is how safe the procedure is for the woman involved.

Your premise is flawed.

117

Well, as a backup there’s always prisons and workhouses.

118

“Please sir, can I have an abortion?”

119

Yes, those are also good options for kids who are not adoptable for one reason or another.

120

No abortions for you!