I won’t agree with that. I don’t care if it is my own mother stuck in my womb. I need to have control over the destiny of my body, and I cannot agree to any situation where another entity can have greater control of my physical being when I have committed no crimes. We have a word for when a government permits another entity to be in control of a human’s body. That is slavery. And slavery is never permissible, even if subjecting a few people to slavery (and hanging the threat of slavery over an entire population) will save any number of lives.
Let’s imagine that a law were passed that made abortion illegal (except for rape and the mother’s life) starting one year from today. I’m adding a year to get people used to the idea and on some serious birth control.
What would be the short and long term consequences?
Societally, I think it’s too broad to say. I don’t think that people would actually act until the law was enforced, both because passivity is at an all-time high in this country, and because the situation has yet to directly affect people. I think you would begin to see the biggest reaction after about a year after the law was passed.
MLS did a great job of outlining the social issues and mores which were in place when abortion was first legalized. Society, however, has changed.
We are currently in a situation in our country where funding for prenatal care, education, pre-school care and child care programs have been chopped significantly. It is no longer a great social stigma to be an unwed mother. Moreover, it is no longer a great stigma to be on welfare. In some sectors of society, it has become increasingly acceptable not only to have children out of wedlock in order to collect ADC, but also to deliberately avoid marriage so that such benefits do not cease. It should be noted also that this has occurred [to my witnessing] primarily in poorer sections of the country, such as the inner cities and rural Appalachia.
There is no assumption that, concurrent with the passage of legislation banning abortion, that there would be the massive inflow of money needed to expand the necessary child-support programs. Private sector funding might well compensate to some degree for the short term, but in the case of a poor economy, one cannot expect that to continue for the long term – and no religious or private organization could afford the billions of dollars which would be needed. Therefore, it would also be a logical assumption that with the upsurge in children, we would have an increasing lack of facilities and funds for child care and assistance.
I think in the long term, we would see a sizable and unsupportable increase in the number of people on welfare, and further, the number of people on welfare who, due to lack of training and/or education, would not be able to get jobs which were adequate to support a family. It would have a definite effect on the tax base in the country, not to mention the educational and sociological levels.
Would there be fewer unwanted pregnancies?
I don’t see why there would be. There is, in this scenario, no increase of funding for sex education programs which would adequately ensure that people were actually TAUGHT about birth control and birth control options. [Sexual education programs which try to enforce abstinence are not, to my view, adequate to promote unwanted pregnancies. You’re going to tell married people they just shouldn’t have sex if they don’t want more children?] More to the point, there is no room in this scenario for the provision of adequate and inexpensive birth control to be provided to the poor and lower middle class.
It would be wonderful to assume that parents would adequately teach their children about responsible sex. But that’s not an assumption we can make, and further, parenting can only go so far. We also will never see the end of misleading information such as “virgins can’t get pregnant on their first time”, or “if I pull out before I finish, you won’t get pregnant.”
Finally, we have a society which is constantly exposed to sex through various outlets; it’s a given that any intelligent, healthy adolescent is going to be powerfully curious about such an interesting thing – and a given number of them are simply going to believe that it couldn’t happen to them. [Remember, this segment of the population believes it can’t die, either.]
Would there be an increase in child abuse? (my great fear)
I’d think you’d see a frightening increase in the number of child abandonment cases. And yes, as the age of the parents decreased, and the parents became less and less experienced, I think you would see an increase in child abuse. When you have children having children, you can’t expect much.
Would there have to be large scale orphanages?
We’d need them [see abandonment above], but I have no idea where the funding would come for them. Nor do I think the funding would be forthcoming.
I think there will always be a market for the adoption of healthy, perfect babies. I think that what we will see is an upsurge of babies which do not fit this criteria – and it is those which will be dumped upon the system for care.
Would there be a huge number of 'back alley abortions?"
I think you would most definitely see them, yes. I think you would also see rampant abuse in whatever exception, if any, was left open – to the point that the pro-lifers would then go to eliminate that exception.
More to the point, I think that the upper segment of society would largely be unaffected by this legislation. I can definitely see upper middle class mothers with pregnant teenage daughters taking them to a complaisant doctor who could swear blind that she was having difficulty with the pregnancy, and it had to be terminated. Or forcing the daughter to swear she had been raped. [I think you would see an astonishing increase in the number of reported rape cases, actually.]
Basically, if you have the money and alternatives for a way out, I think the avenue would be there. The people who are going to be stuck on the wrong end of the stick are poor women and teenagers with no support at home.
Would there be more research into other methods of birth control?
There are any number of birth control resources on the market now.
I doubt it. The push is simply to stop women from being able to abort. I don’t think anyone is thinking much farther than that. Although, given the probable market, I think drug companies might well try, given the profitability.
Would people get more responsible with their sexuality?
One point. I cannot agree with the philosophy that every unwanted pregnancy is due to total irresponsibility on the part of the partners. I highly doubt this is the case.
It is entirely possible to be responsible to the nth degree – and still get pregnant. The condom breaks. The pill fails. You have an adverse reaction to damn near every spermicide on the market and are limited in what you can use which is reasonably effective. Further, are you aware that some forms of birth control are not available to all women? I, for example, as a primipara, have been utterly unable to get an IUD – yet I am one of those who has great difficulty with pills and spermicides. I would also have to go to considerable trouble to try to get my tubes tied – although a man with no children has no trouble getting a vasectomy [proof positive, my first husband, who was vasectomized at age 25, before we ever dated or married.]
Just some thoughts there, and maybe I’m less of a hijacker now.
I also wanted to bring up a few things which have been answered, or which have been brought up. Thanks for the response, il Topo.
I have to say that I kind of expected this would be the response…which leads to a second question. First, if it is murder to take the life of a fetus, why should we have any exceptions at all? And secondly, if we have such exceptions, what precisely will prevent those exceptions from being abused?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m entirely for such exceptions. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I also think we’d see mothers with 16 or 17 year old daughters taking them to complaisant physicians and getting the physician to swear blind that there was a complication that required abortion.
I actually agree that the father should be a part of the decision making process, by the way; no more fair for him to be treated like a breeding boar hog than it is for the mother to be a brood sow. However, as it is the mother’s life and not that of the father which is at risk, I do believe it is only fair that the final decision be one which harms the mother least. It would be unconscionable for someone to not only be able to get a woman pregnant, but then use his leverage to put her in a life-threatening position.
Brian’s pretty much said everything else I would have said and better besides. Although, JThunder, I, too, would like to see a cite from a more scientific source [and a non-pro-life source] about the definite causal relationship between the passage of Roe v. Wade and the upsurge in child abuse. It could also be pointed out that divorces began to become more common, more socially acceptable and easier to obtain about that time. Of the two, I would say that the upsurge in divorce, and the subsequent occurrence of single parent households would have had a lot more impact on child abuse than legalized abortion.
Further, child abuse laws were not, as you assert, first passed in the 80’s. Congress passed the Child Abuse and Neglect Treatment Act in 1974. Similar state laws followed. There were also several national cases that brought the problem to the attention of the public about this time. From this, it can be seen that the time frame for the beginning of abuse monitoring is roughly around that of the passage of Roe v. Wade.
To use a Carlin-ism, I have no ending for this, so I take a small bow. Well, actually, I’m heading off to get the car repaired. But that’s all I had to add.
I had no idea so many pro-choicers would, if faced with the choice, actually kill an innocent child (not abort a fetus, but actually kill an already born and living child) than be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy (e.g., subject themselves to 9 months of “slavery,” even when the slavery is typically brought on at least partially by acts of their own doing).
If I hadn’t heard it straight from you folks, I would have figured it was radical pro-life hyperbole intended to wrongfully demonize the average abortion rights supporter. If someone had accused you of such a casual disregard for the lives of society’s children, I would have defended you. Apparently I would have been wrong to do so.
This is indeed a surprising development.
Are your views about the expendability of children uniform throughout the pro-choice movement? Or are the few posters here unique in this regard?
The problem with your ‘I had no idea’, il Topo is that in your little scenario you keep calling a fetus a child.
I don’t, and many of the other people here don’t, share that belief with you.
The alternative to remaining pregnant is to terminate the pregnancy by means of either chemical or surgical abortion. So long as you refer to that as ‘killing an innocent child’, I suppose you can proudly pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself for figuring out how evil all the pro-choice people are.
I would not kill my neighbor’s kid to end my own pregnancy, but I would go to a doctor and have some mifepristone administered to me.
Catsix, I thought the question preface of “Set aside abortion for a second…” made the question clear that I was referring to a commonly accepted “child”. Are you saying I inadvertently mislead even sven and Bryon Ekers with the question? I was trying to talk about killing born children, not unborn fetuses, in comparison with carrying a pregnancy to term to produce such a child. I was trying to find common ground: “We all love children,” the born ones, that is. I was so startled to hear that that common ground was in question, I started a new thread on the topic: Which is worse: infanticide or having to bear an unwanted pregnancy to term? I optimistically expect the thread topic to hold for approximately 10 posts before it degenerates into a copy of this one and others before it.
It’s like asking me if I’d kill my neighbor’s four year-old in order to not be pregnant.
Killing an already existing child does not make a pregnant woman un-pregnant and has no bearing over whether or not she’s carrying an unwanted pregnancy in the first place, so it is not a logical question.
Or at least their newborn, yes, but not “to end the pregnancy.” I asked it merely as a moral comparison of relative evils to see if our moral framework was even remotely similar enough to allow discussion. Blalron is the first one who indicated that infanticide was the moral equivalent of abortion, and that both were ok. I asked my question more out of rhetoric than anything else, and I was surprised when people indicated what I thought was agreement with Blalron.
We currently have exceptions to the general prohibition against killing. Self-defense is one of them. Generally, it is useful if one is in reasonable fear for one’s own life due to a threat from another, one can defend oneself from the other, including with deadly force. But note, if I create the threat myself, I am not allowed to defend myself. I can’t set up someone in a situation in which they can only but kill me, and then justify my killing them “in response”. So the analysis of this exception is probably pretty fact specific, as it is in any self-defense scenario.
The same things that keep the other legal exceptions to the killing prohibition from being abused.
Your question goes to enforceability, not to morality. I can see many problems regarding enforceability.
I was pretty sure that Il Topo was refering to an “unborn child” or a fetus. I’ve gotten used to pro-lifers using “child” to refer to a fetus and assumed that is what was going on. That is why it is hard to argue when people keep using language itself(Like “child” or “pro-abortion”) to make their points.
Tricky ground, since that doesn’t reflect actual law. If you injure a person, causing a life-threatening illness, you may be required to pay punitive and/or compensatory damages, but as far as I know, you’ll never be forced to donate blood or tissue.
If that were the case, imagine a man who assaults another man, seriously damaging his victim’s kidneys or lungs. The perpetrator has clearly participated in the act that created the dependency (on dialysis or a ventilator) but should the assailant be forced to donate a kidney or lung to the victim, assuming organ compatability?
I don’t believe involuntary organ harvesting of criminals is being seriously considered anywhere in the U.S., though allegations have been made that China performs such surgeries after executions, of which there are plenty.
Anyway, that’s just a tangent off the idea that if you are responsible for someone else’s medical condition, then you are required to donate your own body toward their recovery. It strikes me as a form of slavery, and thus legally untenable.
Well, it was misleading because it sounded like typical pro-life rhetoric (i.e. “fetus” = “child”) and because the subject of infanticide is irrelevant to the subject of abortion, except that restricting access to abortion may increase the rates of infanticide.
By the way, I don’t love children (I prefer kittens), but I recognize their importance and have no problem extending civil rights to them. Fetusses, on the other hand…
Then let’s address them. That is, in fact, the problem I consistently have with the pro-life arguments: very few are thought through to fruition. Several of the questions I’ve brought forth [and understand, I completely realize how difficult they are] have ended up being addressed with, “Yes, it’s difficult, we’ll worry about it later.”
However, this is a huge, huge change to make to American society. We cannot, in the interests of our society and our economy, simply pass a law like this and have nothing in place to deal with the ramifications.
If, as it is asserted, one pregnancy for every four live births ends in abortion [a number I quibble with, but I’m taking the high road for the sake of argument and the number several pro-life groups assert is true], the fact is, using the numbers provided by the pro-life movement, we are talking about an increase of 20% in the number of children being born per year. Twenty percent. That number is tremendous. Even assuming the number MIGHT go down slightly [although that cannot be proven and it is not an assumption I care to make] chances are, it probably won’t be by much. All this, as we have yet another population boom generation which is just now coming to reproductive stage. Scary.
Our government does not adequately care for the unwanted children that are being brought forth now. Look at the recent case regarding the child Rilya in Florida, where Social Services dropped the ball so badly it was unbelievable. I can think of three or four others without even trying that I’ve read about in the news. [Another case, local for us, was the one where the mother locked the child in a closet for several years. Social Services fumbled that one tremendously as well.]
We would be actively exacerbating the existing welfare levels through this legislation. There would be no way to avoid it. We can’t simply say, “Oh, well, make them get a job after a while.” What kind of job can a teenage mother or a college dropout get that can support herself and a child? What kind of job can a responsible teenage father who drops out of school to ‘do the right thing’ by the girl he impregnated possibly get besides flipping burgers? We can go on all day about how and why they should not have done that – but there’s an awful lot of stuff in the world that goes on that shouldn’t. If the point was simply personal accountability, I could swallow that. However, the fact is, the fallout from this affects a LOT more than just the parties involved.
For example, an increase in the welfare rolls means higher taxes. Higher taxes, of course, means more and more people having less and less to take home. However, I, for one, will not pay my tax dollars to support an increasing welfare load. I doubt I am alone in those beliefs. If that makes me Scrooge because I wish to support the welfare of my own family with the sweat of my labor rather than increase a non-productive sector of society, so be it. I’m being honest about it up front; I dare say there will be a number of anti-abortion folks who will be up in arms after the first few years of seeing their income drained away. Idealism’s great, but at the expense of your own family? It’s one thing to get in a group and verbally abuse women who are attempting to get abortions; it’s another to have to give up a third of your pay instead of twenty-odd percent, for example, so that you can support the increase in unwed mothers on welfare and the increase in child program costs.
Even more frighteningly, we risk crippling our future as a country by condemning people to dead end jobs and inadequate education. That drop-out college mother could have been a doctor who discovered a cure for cancer. The teenage father who has to flip burgers at McDonalds [if he’s lucky] could have been a Nobel prize winner. It’s often asserted that an abortion could kill the next Beethoven; it is just as accurate to say that the inability to get an abortion could rob the world of not one, but two such contributors to it.
Finally, it is not enough to ban abortion unless one is also prepared to follow through with measures to help deal with the unavoidable consequences of that act. Yet I have yet to see a single pro-life organization that has dealt adequately with this, and most with pro-life views do not address it, either. The grim practicality of the situation may seem brutal, but reality quite often is.
This is what pro-life proponents need to be addressing. Not just the ethics, not just the “feelings” of the situation – but the hard, cold rational facts of the fallout that will occur should they get their way.
And actually, I’m very grateful that the topic has been addressed in this way. These, too, are issues which would arise from an abortion ban, and should be considered appropriately.
…or “anti-choice.” I actually agree with you. One problem is that I often try to use other people’s language when I debate them so that we don’t have to argue about the language (which I hate doing since it results in no progress whatsoever). I clearly screwed up here when I accidently slipped back into my own language in mid-sentence. I said “bear an unwanted child” when I should have said “give birth to an unwanted child” or “bear a fetus to term.” The problem is compounded by the fact that I was slowly backing into a point that really isn’t obvious from my post. So in effect, I pretty much irreparably damaged the debate and my credibility, as I stumble around trying to explain a screw up that is just that: a screw up. No way to make it reasonable, really…unfortunately for me. :smack: Such is life.
That’s a good point as far as it goes, since specific performance and other forced actions to rectify situations are often not used in lieu of cash.
But the analogy does break down somewhat since I take it that “injury” means “making another dependent upon oneself”? (That’s the only way I can see the analogy applying, unless you are saying the mother is somehow “injuring” the fetus before potentially being required to donate nutrients). So given that, the situation does change a little.
If I injure you and walk away, that is one thing. I may have to pay you money later.
But if I hang you over a cliff and walk a way, or bury you in a hole, I may be required to help the authorities locate and save you to stop an ongoing crime in which a person may die.
My point was that it’s very hard to draw the line anywhere and say, “This is life, this is not.” It’s not a solvable problem. The real question is, “What gives you the right to draw the line for the mother? Who made you her God?”
I’m missing your point, I think. You seem to be saying that there are more differences between an early stage fetus and a late term fetus (thus the distinctions in the law resulting in difficulty in procuring late term abortions) than there are between a late term fetus and a baby (thus the similarities in how difficult it is to terminate each of them), but I suspect that is not your point.
I’ll spell it out for you. Lying on the floor before me is a three-day old embryo and an 8 1/2 month old fetus. I could accidentally step on the three-day old embryo without feeling much emotion at all. Whoops! Sorry about that, I’ll get the dustpan. Stepping on the 8 1/2 month old fetus is an entirely different matter.
I could also comtemplate the death of a fetus that is about the size and shape of a salamander with about the same emotion as the death of a salamnder (I wouldn’t want to kill either creature, but I wouldn’t get terribly upset about the death of either.)
At some point, a fetus whose death I can contemplate with equanimity becomes a fetus whose death would bother me. But I can’t tell you exactly what that point is. I don’t think anyone can. I don’t think YOU can make that call for anyone other than yourself. I DEFINITELY don’t think you should make that call for anyone else, and frankly I’m quite puzzled as to why you and so many others are so very eager to do so.
** You are the one who is saying that reality depends on human perception and understanding, not I. I am the one who is saying that reality exists regardless of our perception or understanding.**
Yah, those are your words, but I think what you mean is that reality means what you says it means, and not what anybody else says it means. And that’s ALL you’re saying.
Overturning Roe V. Wade means big gains for the Dems nationwide, as their base is unified and a lot of former Repub women jump ship over this issue. Probably enough to gain the White House and Congress indefinitely.
Repubs would be faced with a tough prospect – move toward the center and risk offending the social conservatives, or stick to their current constituency. They lose either way, as supporting abortion rights would be a deal-breaker for their Catholic and funnymentalist bases.
This is why it will not happen under the current Supreme Court, which is the biggest crew of partisan hacks ever to befoul the justice system.
Another likely outcome: if abortion is legal in Canada (or if it becomes legal) look for a lot of abortion providers to set up shop just across the border. Doubt it’ll happen in Mexico, given that country’s Catholicism. We might also see the advent of “hospital ships” which sail outside the three-mile limit to perform abortions.
Look for more conflict between the states and the federal government, as some states legalize abortion and the DOJ tries to shut them down.
Look for a lot of news stories in the media about women dying in back alley abortions. Pro-choice folks will make the most of these stories, and they will be nasty and distressing and they will make the anti-choice folks a LOT more unpopular. Fox News of course, will not cover any of these stories.
With abortion safely outlawed, the Catholics will turn their guns toward birth control. There’ll be a concerted effort to outlaw all forms of birth control. Don’t know if the funnymentalists will go along on this one, though, but the Catholics have enough political clout to at least get it on the agenda in a lot of places.
But it’s all moot, because the Supreme Court will NOT damage the political prospects of their lords and masters.
A few points in response -
[ul]
[li]Much of what you post seems to assume that the primary locus of responsibility for dealing with the changes you expect is government. Many pro-lifers (not all) would respond that primary responsibility for raising children should remain with the parents. The degree to which government can or should assist is a different thread, but it is not necessarily correct that it is logically inescapable to link outlawing of abortion with enormous increases in government expenditures. [/li][li]Most of your objections could equally well have been made to the outlawing of slavery - that lots of newly released slaves would enormously increase unemployment, that poverty rates would skyrocket, etc. If there had been a welfare state in place in America in the eighteenth century, we could have argued that the American economy could not absorb all these new additions to the labor force. [/li][li]I personally am wary of arguments that imply “we can’t implement such and such a morally correct action, because it would cost too much”. The cost of an innocent human life is not infinite, but it is very high. I have heard anti-death penalty arguments that life in prison is cheaper than the almost mandatory appeal process that lasts for years, but this does not address the concerns that executing the guilty (and thereby saving lives) is still worth the cost. Similarly, if you can assume for the sake of argument that a fetus is a human life, arguments in favor of abortion based on the idea of saving money on social services sound like tobacco companies arguing that since smokers die earlier, states did not suffer a net loss of health care funds from smoking. [/ul][/li]
Obviously, it is going to be difficult to see the force of the above arguments unless you can get past the objection that “slaves are human and fetuses aren’t!” Assume for the moment (if possible) that they both are.
