Some of those stories are sad – a lot of them seem to be teenagers, being pressured into either abortions by their parents, or else being forced to continue picketing. Or they’re just so confused, and seem to feel, “I HAVE to do this.” Gah.
How has it harmed society? I’d say by all this stupid bickering when we could be educating teenagers about proper birth control – if you want to reduce the number of abortions, promote condom use. (But I doubt we’ll see that happening any time soon)
Oops. Answered in subsequent post
I am doing research. Here is the wiki article on abortion in Russia.
A quick search by birth rate has yielded nothing. If someone can come up with historical birth rate statistics for Russia that would be cool. Otherwise I’ll see what I can do later.
Maybe but since abortion is available in the US (for free even) it argues against the notion that it is legally available abortion that is at the root of this issue. If it was then why wouldn’t the US be in the same boat?
Well 2007 was a blip for one thing. The birth rate has gone down significantly in America, and particularly so amongst non-immigrant populations. So a baby boom in one year does not a demographic trend make.
I’m not sure what you are looking for here. I was trying to say that your view of the harm of abortion isn’t really a harm of abortion, it is a harm of birth control. In other words, if these Russian women suddenly could not get abortions legally, I don’t think, in the long term, the birth rate would rise because other forms of birht control would become more widespread to replace abortion.
Legal abortion has arguably harmed society in creating a painfully intractable point of political and cultural division with zealots on both sides.
But, that might still exist if Roe v. Wade had gone the other way.
Not so.
Follow my link to the New York Times article and click on the “Upward Trends” graphic in the article (I cannot link to the graphic directly).
Since 1980 (as far as that graphic details) the birth rate in the US as trended almost exclusively upwards and is at an all-time high.
Missed the edit:
Whoops! My bad…:smack:
That graphic details birth to unmarried women only as on the rise.
Sorry.
Ok…sorry for multi-posting. I should’ve done all this legwork initially.
Anyway, looks like from a low around 1976 the number of children per woman has been trending up ever since (albeit slowly). (cite)
Especially since a lot of people who oppose abortion also hate birth control.
I’d also like to note that Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Looking at the chart I linked in post #30 the birth rate was already plummeting and indeed only barely slid a little bit more till 1976. After that birth rates trended upwards.
So again, looks to me like abortion has had no impact on the overall birth rate (in the US at least).
I don’t know how you can connect loose moral standards to having a legal medical procedure.
I must admit, I am kinda stumped by the OP because the answer should be blatantly obvious, gross strawmen notwithstanding. Is this some kind of “what color is George Washington’s white horse?” trick questions?
I guess that reflects the boomers and children of boomers having kids then. Interesting.
Based on your graph it looks like the TFR plummeted between 62 and 75. Roe was in 73 and wide-spread birthcontrol became available what in the early 60s?
This is one of the silliest “debates” I’ve seen in this forum.
The OP doesn’t offer any position one way or the other. A couple of posters suggest legalized abortion provides a focal point for disagreement, but acknowledge that illegal abortion would result in the same disagreement. So all that is left suggesting any “harm” is a general, unexplained suggestion of “loosened moral standards.”
Seems the answer is pretty clear - legalized abortion has not harmed society.
Now if we wanted to discuss idiots gunning down doctors in churches…
Yep…early 60’s although that is just for the oral contraceptive. Other contraceptive methods have existed long before that albeit not as effective or simple.
I doubt oral contraception was the issue here though. First I would presume it’d take time for oral contraception to become mainstream. Second, I think the dip was precipitated more by the baby boom bubble. From 1945 - 1960(ish) we had the post-war spike in births (the baby boom). Once those families were settled with all the kids they wanted there was a predictable dip. By 1960 the parents who generated the baby bubble were done. Their kids were, at most, 15 or so and not likely to have kids for another 10 years or so. Add in women’s lib which was picking up steam and more young women attending college than in the past and there is your dip. Eventually those people wanted kids too so the slide flattened out.
You could use this line to argue in favor of slavery, or human sacrifice, or the total subjugation of women. We can probably agree that society is more refined (less coarse) in places where these practices are frowned on.
As for abortion, pro-choice advocates generally take pains to say they are not in favor of abortion per se, but in favor of a woman’s right to choose. The message is that abortion is something we as a society should seek to minimize. Why is that? I think it’s because we all understand that on some level, abortion is the cessation of a human-in-the-making.
Also in this thread is the inevitable debate over the use of the word “baby”. It’s probably appropriate to refer to an early-stage pregnancy subject as an “embryo”, a later-stage subject as a “fetus” and a subject that has reached viability as a “baby”.
Many pro-choice advocates suggest that a fetus is not a baby until it emerges from the womb, and that it is therefore a woman’s guilt-free choice to cease the brain and heart functions of a subject that could be safely delivered. In fact, this practice is not substantially different from killing a baby in its crib. Anyone who sees these two acts as remarkably different is inexcusably wrong–in the same way that someone who thinks slavery, etc. is OK is inexcusably wrong.
The fact that “only” a few thousand late-term abortions occur each year, and probably even fewer after viability, is not an argument in favor of continuing this barbaric practice.
I am, by the way, wholly and unreservedly in favor of a woman’s right to choose abortion through at least the fourth month of pregnancy. As with other rights, this one comes with responsibility–to make the decision as early as possible in order to minimize the “human-ness” of the life being ended.
So to the original question, the cost to society is the loss of life, just as the cost of automatic weapons or swine flu is the loss of life, however you define it.
But consider what the impact of legalizing actual murder would be. Everyone would carry guns, the death rate would soar, and people would live in fear. The harmful impact on society would be obvious. Besides the harm being that abortion happens, no such harm can be found in this case. Contraception can be considered just as harmful if you’re the Pope