Great, then we agree on everything except the use of the term anti-choice. And I am sorry that you are so consumed by the language that you cannot see past it to the reality of opposing viewpoints on the issue. I think that getting caught up in a term that is very fitting, and then making your disagreement with it into a major concern, is a bit hysterical and makes me take you less seriously.
I’m not willing to read this whole long thread, but have you all noticed that the OP was a troll? Just curious.
Well, Catholics believe contraception is immoral as well. They’d rather pharmacists didn’t stock contraceptives either.
That said, it looks like they haven’t recanted their original position. I’ll have to update the person that told me that in the first place.
Well, there appear to be two issues conflated here and used interchangeably. The first is a woman’s right to her own body, the second is the desire to control population growth. If a woman is willing to submit to one invasive surgery, then why can’t that be substituted with another one if the woman’s life is not at risk? Is her desire to not have that child more important than the fact that said child could survive independently from the mother? I say that as someone for whom a well developed welfare state is important. I recognise that we as a society would have to contribute more for children whose parents do not want to raise them (which may not be the case with the father).
I think population growth would be better mitigated by the use of contraception than abortions past the point of viability. At any rate, 24 weeks is the cut-off period in the US for when doctors attempt to deliver the child, which corresponds just about to brain activity if I recall correctly. Which seems like a reasonable limit for abortions.
By the way, waiting periods for abortions are quite different from waiting periods for guns, in that the perceived morality of having an abortion and available vendors decrease the longer one waits.
The thing about viability, again, is that it’s so far from “you can’t abort because that fetus could live on its own” that it’s almost offensive to make the assertion. The 520 gram (roughly as heavy as a pint of milk), 23 weeks gestation preemie that is considered medically viable and “could live on its own” has maybe a 1 in 5 shot at survival and only after hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical technology are brought into play. And those 1 in 5 who do survive almost universally have a diminished quality of life forever with multiple disabilities and complications, some arising specifically because of the medical technology used to save their lives.
And getting down to brass tacks, viability means absolutely nothing if continuing a pregnancy is going to cause a woman to lose her job, lose her housing, lose her safety or lose her wellbeing. It means less than nothing.
So a lot of people are unthinking about the issue, so the hell what? Roughly 33% of American adult women have had an abortion. A number regret it afterward – in no small part due to religious guiltmongering – so 30% in opposition sounds just about right.
The reality is that waiting periods are onerous, they are ruinous, they do not do anything to change how many abortions occur. They are functionally purposeless.
And again, this is not surprising because people don’t think and don’t have to think about the end result of the policies they claim to support. And we don’t talk about it. We don’t, as a nation, have any discussion about who the women are who seek abortions in the second trimester and why. We don’t talk about why banning second and third trimester abortion outright would be absolutely devastating to the already most vulnerable amongst us.
But then, we as a nation support a whole plethora of policies that show we don’t actually give a shit about the most vulnerable amongst us, so even if we were talking about it, I don’t really expect that too many people would start to suddenly care.
Perhaps your trying to insult me makes your argument more appealing to you, I take
that with a grain of salt!
Weither you believe I was able to see the miscarriages I had years ago, that is your right, belive is not fact.There was a show on TV a couple of years ago that showed the burial pile of bones of unborn babies by where there was once houses of illrepute.
I use the Bible,because it seems most of the people who are just Pro-Birth seem to be Christians, and I am well aware that their are other people of other faiths, or none, that oppose abortion. And very few want to pay taxes or really help a born person through the first 18 years of their lives!
My feelings would not be hurt if you decided to ignore my posts, that too is your right.
So what? We’re not proposing that the doctor deliver the baby, alive, in leu of the abortion. We’re saying what we, as a society, think we should do with a pre-term, viable baby that the mother no longer wants. But instead of just criticizing, why don’t you tell us what your views are? What alternative do you propose?
There are laws preventing her from losing her job. I don’t know where you’re getting this “lose her housing” from. I didn’t realize that babies were dangerous (lose her "safety?), and “wellbeing” is a mushy word that could mean almost anything. If her health is threatened, that’s another story.
Ah yes, the old trick of dismissing the other side as “unthinking”. This is a thread about a “moderate” stance on abortion. Frankly, my own views are not moderate, and I recognize that. Yours seem to be what I’d call “fringe”, although you haven’t spelled them out. And there is nothing wrong with you holding very radical views on abortion. Just don’t call them moderate. We’re discussing what we think will get Democrats elected.
Tell us what you think Obama’s position should be, and how that will help him get elected.
We are? Well, I suggest a message of “we’re trying to fix the economy, but the Republicans are too busy obstructing our efforts and trying to pass useless laws restricting American freedom.”
There is no pre-term viable baby unless it’s birthed. So if the pregnancy is terminated, there’s nothing to be concerned about.
Well, first, we stop conflating issues of post-birth babies with those pregnant people, because they’re not equivalent in any measure. Second, we don’t use changeable metrics to determine whether or not a person may exercise their constitutional rights. Third, we work out of reality, and recognize that the few abortions which occur post-“viability” are happening for very specific reasons and a ban on them would be the worst sort of interference in personal matters imaginable.
Which are meaningless when you can’t do your job while pregnant, (due to risks, or due to the necessity to look a certain way – models, actresses, dancers – or physical demands, like construction work) or if you get fired “for cause” while pregnant (legal), or fired because your boss decides that you’re not capable of fulfilling job duties while pregnant (also legal, even if they were duties you couldn’t fulfill before, like carrying boxes with 20 reams of paper or lifting the bottle into the water cooler) or get bullied out of your job while pregnant (happens regularly). By the time you find a lawyer (which you pay for with wishes and dreams) to fight the discrimination, file a lawsuit or EEOC claim and get to a resolution, years are going to have passed.
One of the drawbacks of not being employed is often not being able to afford your housing. There are also numerous situations in which women are kicked out of where they are living when it becomes obvious that they’re pregnant. Additionally, women who live in halfway houses, sheltered living and other social care arrangements are regularly unable to remain in those places when pregnant.
Pregnancy vastly increases the risk of intimate partner violence, including homicide. Murder is the #3 cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. Continuing a pregnancy with a father who is already violent toward you makes it functionally impossible to ever cut ties with your abuser and puts your life on the line.
Health doesn’t just mean oops, kidney failure. Mental health is an important aspect of health, and stress kills. How stressful do you think being forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy is? On a scale of 1-10 give me a ballpark.
Chalking such stances up to a lack of reflection is actually quite generous. If I were to believe that people really thought about what the impact of such restrictions were, and yet still held them, I would be forced to believe them monsters. I’m trying to be kind and give them the benefit of the doubt.
My views are actually very mainstream amongst actual pro-choice people. We vote for dems – most of them, at least – not because their views on reproductive rights are a match for our own, but because they’re closer than anyone else’s. I am vastly and deeply uninterested in any concept that the democratic party and its members should cede any further ground in the reproductive healthcare battle to the anti-choice contingent in order to get elected.
President Obama’s stance on this issue isn’t going to win or lose him this election, period, so the question is moot. His stance is not going to help or hinder downticket races, either, so again, not worth discussing. And single issue voters on the issue of abortion aren’t going to vote for President Obama or any democrat anyway, because they’re either anti-abortion single issue voters or so vehemently pro-choice that neither the POTUS nor anyone in his party will satisfy.
Good point. As I think I said very early on, the Democrats are actually pretty open to views across the spectrum (from pro-life to pro-choice). At this point, I think we’re just arguing about what a moderate stance on abortion would be.
tumbledown: I’m not really up for a “break every post down, sentence by sentence to parse it” type of debate on this subject. I’ll just say that you never stated what your views are, and your claim about “actual pro-choice” voters is just a No True Scotsman fallacy. But you are right about Obama. That was my mistake. This thread is more about getting elected to the House, where you have lots and lots of conservative districts and to which the more moderate candidates do appeal. The Dems do OK in that department, but the reason they did so well in 2006 (aside from anti-Bush sentiment) is that they elected many fairly conservative House members.
And, at this point in time, it’s the Republicans who really need to worry about retaining moderate candidates, as one after another gets flushed out in this purity test that they seem to be obsessed with.
According to the Holmes and Rahe stress scale, “pregnancy” in general rates as 40 life change units. They do not distinguish between planned and unplanned pregnancies, though divorce may be comparable at 73 life change units. Is an appropriate solution to divorce to kill one’s spouse before it occurs?
By these logical contortions, it shouldn’t make a difference whether a doctor uses forceps or a hand drill to deliver a baby.
Five pages and we still haven’t touched upon all the angles. The topic of this post is, “Why do some oppose abortion? What’s the underlying motivation?”
I will treat these as axioms, though they are highly debatable:
-
We choose the morality that puts our personal characteristics in the most favorable light.
-
Corollary: Moral rhetoric is a form of posturing. (As is RO.)
-
We are creatures of habit, conceptual and otherwise.
Like many on this board, I consider myself a cerebral kind of guy. So if I sidestep emotive issues, that’s a feature, not a bug. But for most IRL, the superficial and visual similarities of 2nd semester fetuses to humans are not dismissed lightly. For me, it’s pretty easy, as I “know” it’s irrelevant - I routinely and even automatically override certain intuitions that I distrust. Many feel otherwise: they may even be wary of such abstraction. [sup]1[/sup]
Picking some nits:
Der has an apocalyptic take on pretty much everything:
Der: Anti-abortionites don’t seek to oppress all women, only a perceived class of women. “Sluts” in the terminology of Rush. You implied this later on, but I think this qualification is relevant.
John Mace likes to search for middle grounds, to make conservatives seem reasonable:
John Mace: Viability is a function of medical technology, which may permit 1st trimester support some day. Would it be worth it to rent and maintain an artificial womb for a fetus that won’t have brain waves for many months? Why? Because the fetuses look like babies? So do Cabbage Patch dolls. Say the rental fee is $300,000, or six times a worker’s annual income. How can this be sensible? Sure the fetus has the potential to be human. But potentiality doesn’t have much traction. I have a definite interest today that my father was not on a business trip during the night of my conception. I don’t think I had the same interest that morning though.
I think Der only has a slice of the issue. The alleviation of human suffering is not the sole moral sentiment, though liberals pretend otherwise.[sup]2[/sup] Purity or sanctity, which are grounded in revulsion, is another.[sup]3[/sup] So opposing abortion can signal opposition to promiscuity. In fact it can signal condemnation of promiscuity, and we all know how fun RO can be.
I think there’s another appealing aspect. There’s never really a perfect time to have a child: in practice you just have to dive in. Quite a few pregnancies are unplanned or let’s say partially planned. Opposition to abortion, even if only on a personal level, can making having a child an act of responsibility, resolving such pragmatic self-doubt.
Now for separate and additional reasons, I think this view is mistaken: in an overpopulated world, one less child is a wonderful thing. But this last stance isn’t exactly a crowd pleaser. And hey, maybe I’m just engaged in environmental posturing.
A sense of responsibility can be deployed in multiple directions.
[sup]1[/sup] Oh yeah, and I also posture as a US ultra-liberal whose views happen to be entirely reasonable – they are even centrist by OECD standards. That this shtick doesn’t apply that well in this context -some developed countries restrict abortion more than the US-- is irrelevant as this schtick is a habit.
[sup]2[/sup] That is, liberals such as myself pretend otherwise.
[sup]3[/sup] I have been wanting to launch a thread on Jon Haidt’s theories for years now (since 2007), but I’d rather do it outside of silly season, which is once again upon us. 2007 NYT! article.
I certainly do in threads explicitly set up to explore middle ground, like this one. I don’t consider my own position to be in the middle, but I don’t let that blind me from seeing that the middle might be to the right of me (in this case). The fact is, there is going to be a huge mismatch between the “middle ground” in American political thought and “middle ground” on the SDMB.
And say what you will about things like waiting periods, if 70% of the country is in favor of it, I wouldn’t call it a conservative position. Not in American politics.
We’ve had threads about that in the past, but for the record: no, I don’t think it’s a reasonable position to have that we’d spend $300k saving every fetus that would be aborted (something like 1M per year in the US). That would be about 10% of the entire federal budget.
Still, I’m not prepared to make policy decisions today based on what technology might exist 100 years from now. We can cross that bridge when we get there.
Sure, in American politics, i.e. within that fairly specific, limited, and somewhat skewed environment. What if I proposed that the Americans could do away with all their abortion laws and nothing bad would happen as a result? If that seems far-fetched, then I’d have to ask what your expected worst-case scenario would be.
OK
I would say that there is not objective way to determine whether the results would be good, bad or neutral. They would certainly be different, and so some people will think it’s good and some will think it bad.
For me, personally, I don’t think it would be particularly bad. I’m not comfortable with abortions on 8 month fetuses, but I can’t imagine a doctor who would perform such a procedure. Almost all abortions are performed in the first trimester anyway.
You mean the ones that helped cripple the party, and then mainly lost the next round of elections?
No, I mean the ones you have to take if you want a majority. If you don’t care about having a majority in the House, then I guess you don’t need them.
Well, I’m veering off from my main point in that post[sup]1[/sup], but FTR I meant “Middle of the US”, not “Middle of this board”.
That said, we could drill further into some of that polling. Pew had an interesting treatment. Support for abortion varies with question wording and in this case the wording didn’t mark out substantively different policies: Consequently, the results of surveys on this issue can vary widely with subtle differences in wording. As long ago as the early 1980s, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found a majority of Americans (59%) opposed to allowing a woman to get an abortion “if she decides she wants one no matter what the reason.” But in a CBS News/New York Times poll at around the same time, a comparable majority (65%) favored permitting a woman to get an abortion if she wants to have one “and her doctor agrees.” Taking that span of 41% - 65%, I’d say that about a quarter of the country has rather soft opinions on abortion restrictions. Electorally, one might speculate that they are highly unlikely to swing their vote on the issue, though there might be a few cases. More generally, it’s not enough to target the median voter on any given topic: salience must be considered as well.
So as not to misrepresent Pew, I’ll note they do support John Mace’s claim: Moreover, while the public unambiguously backs the legal right to abortion, there is broad support for an array of restrictions on abortion. Polling in recent years has shown large majorities favor such measures as mandatory waiting periods, parental and spousal notification, and a prohibition on late-term abortions.
…In contrast to the public’s conflicted views on access to abortion, its opinions on the Roe v. Wade decision are fairly clear. There is consistently strong support for Roe and equally widespread opposition to its repeal. In this case, differences in question wording appear to have little effect.
[sup]1[/sup]The main theme being I guess that both sides have varying motivations for their ostensibly moral positions, and that this sort of positioning is a form of posturing.
I think where many of us here differ from the vast American public, is that we don’t consider abortion, especially early in the pregnancy, to be a moral issue. Safe, legal and rare. I don’t really care about the “rare” part, even if most Americans do. Other than it’s better to avoid a surgical procedure, that is. Sort of like it’s better to not have to have a root canal, but having one isn’t a moral issue.
Obviously there are pro-life people on this MB and pro-choice people here who don’t fit that profile, but I think the percent who don’t see it as a moral issue on this MB is far greater than that of the US public.
Since they largely aren’t there anymore*, and when they were there showed no interest in doing anything but opposing causes I’d support, that’s not true at all. What’s the point in a “majority” that you get by doing what you don’t want to do, and your enemies do want you to do? That’s basically surrendering and declaring it a victory. It’s better to fight a rearguard action as a minority to contain the damage than it it to throw away everything you are fighting for in order to create a fake majority that destroys everything you wanted to achieve by having a majority.
- Conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats suffered the most electoral losses
Spoken like a true Tea Partier.