Most pro-choicers have it all wrong.

Great Debates
481

Sure. Of course once it’s a newborn baby, the entire abortion debate becomes irrelevant, no? Why work backwards into the pregnancy and assume all other elements (i.e. infant rights) remain fixed?

In any case, I’m just pointing out that your two attempts to define the scope of this debate have omitted something. There’s no “however” that’s going to argue away the omission, as I see it. Either expand your definition, or choose to ignore what falls outside it as irrelevant or insignificant, as you see fit. I won’t be offended either way.

482

Sorry, but that’s not how it works around here. If you assert that the pro-life movement is largely unconcerned and uninvolved with helping children or mothers or whomever, you need to provide evidence for your assertion. It’s not my job to prove your unsupported statement is false.

483

Yes, I agree, this is absolutely silly.

You pointed out that pro-life is an inaccurate term, I believe, because a literal reading of it is misleading. Now, do you deny the fact that the average person knows full well what the term pro-life means and refers to? Do you need me to provide you with similar pointless cites showing what pro-life means?

Your objection is hypocritical, since you have no such objection to pro-choice. That’s my point. You can’t have it both ways. The fact that you think I need you to show me what pro-choice is generally accepted to mean tells me yet again that you are completely missing the point.

484

Back from my business trip. The long-term results of less dead babies would be, less dead babies. Again, I don’t accept the need to cost-justify the continued existence of an innocent life. I require no subsequent benefit, not for babies, toddlers, teenagers, or adults. More emphatically, I hold that it’s wrong to kill an innocent, a belief that is axiomatic for me. This is the essence of my point about irrelevance. Pointing out the effect of abortion on crime statistics is as accurate and irrelevant as pointing out the effect of executing toddlers below the poverty level on the same crime statistics.

485

No, it does not imply that. Why would you think so?

486

It’s unfortunate but not surprising that you’ve declined to look at the effects your beliefs, if written into law, would have.

487

This is a cheap shot and a deliberate misreading and oversimplification of what I told you I believe. Unfortunate but not surprising.

488

You’ve been given more than enough opportunity to describe (even hypothetically) what you think the long-term effects of an abortion ban would have, and even invited to analyze various U.S. states were abortion has become near-impossible.

I believe you believe that abortion is wrong. That’s fine. However, you’re attempting to refute facts with belief (as opposed to other facts), and that’s not so fine.

489

Gosh, thanks for the opportunity. Do you actually understand what the term, “irrelevant” means? I’m not asking you to agree with my assessment, only to acknowledge it.

So, do you support killing toddlers below the poverty line? This is not baiting–I am sincerely interested. If you accept the fact regarding abortions effect on crime statistics, then it seems to me you’d likewise accept that this would have an inexorable and favorable effect on crime stats. Will you ignore this effect in supporting the ban on exterminating poor toddlers? Will you refute facts with beliefs?

490

Oh, I acknowledge it. It’s just useless in any practical sense. You may as well be demanding I acknowledge your choice of favourite colour.

You never seem to have understood, despite my repeated attempts to explain, that I’m not using crime statistics to justify abortion rights. Rather, I’m using crime statistics to demonstrate that there are real-world effects and that abortion rights isn’t some casual take-it-or-leave-it proposition where the decision has no ramifications. By your own statements, you axiomatically find all results irrelevant. It’s my stance that they are not. Crime stats are useful because they can be measured with some objectivity, while cycles of poverty, women forced to give up higher education when they become pregnant, women who are trapped in abusive relationships etc. are more difficult to pin down though they collectively aggravate the environment in which crime by teenagers is likely to go up. Consequences do matter even if you believe a woman doesn’t have to right to terminate a pregnancy if she wants to.

Anyway, no, I don’t advocate the selective slaughter of underprivileged toddlers. Did you think I would say otherwise? I think post #369 provided a useful explanation of my stance. In short, crime statistics are not a reason to advocate abortion rights, but they should give pause to someone who wants to form a rational argument to curtail abortion rights. I’m sorry if this sounds like a “heads I win, tails you lose” position, but I have repeatedly invited anyone to show evidence that banning abortion will have positive effects (preferably beyond the tautological “more babies = more babies” position). Frankly, if enough positive effects could be demonstrated, it could provide leverage that the right of an individual to remove unwanted items from one’s body could be overruled. As in all cases of individual rights, a sufficiently strong societal need can overrule them (i.e. banning the false yelling of “fire” in a crowded theatre, or search warrants allowing law enforcement to enter a citizen’s home). What is the critical societal need that justifies banning elective abortion and is that need greater than the negative results of doing so?

Of course, if you personally don’t care about performing the grim but necessary cost/benefit analysis where individual rights are balanced against society’s needs (at least on this particular issue), then none of this will matter to you. That’s fine. If you keep asking the same question, though (exaggerated strawman though it is), this is the only answer I have for you because I am willing to make that analysis. I’m even willing to make necessary compromises. As a result, I don’t get a perfect world (by my standards) but one I can feel sufficiently comfortable with. If you feel my analysis is wrong, present an analysis of your own. Claiming analysis is irrelevant is not convincing.

491

Well, the cycle has not advanced much from unborn to toddler. If you accept the effect for abortions, you needn’t crunch too many numbers to concede the same effect for exterminating poor toddlers.

Yes, this does indeed seem like a non sequitur. If crime stats don’t provide a basis for advocating abortion rights, they aren’t a basis for keeping them in place. Crime stats are relevant relevant to abortion rights, or they aren’t. The effects are either important, or they aren’t. Your position seems incoherent.

No, you aren’t willing. You cling to the foundation of your argument only when it serves you. If exterminating poor toddlers were the law of the land, would you support overturning that law? Why would you curtail that right in the face of such a benefit?

492

The distinction between fetus and toddler is a significant enough factor. Besides, if we’re going to convey human rights on our citizens, we may as well start at birth.

You’ve said that before. I ask again that you read post #369.

If I may clarify, the basis for keeping abortion rights in place is a respect for the right of individual freedom for women. Crime stats (and all other effects, good and bad) only come into play when you start analyzing the effects of removing abortion rights.

Well, you say they aren’t, I say they are. How is that incoherent?

Why would I cling to the foundation of an argument when it doesn’t serve me? I use (or “cling to”, if you prefer) the foundation of my argument to build an overall position on an issue. What are you talking about? Are you suggesting it’s bad to be firm on an issue, or something? You’ve described the foundation of your stance as “axiomatic” several times. Are you “clinging” to it? :confused:

You keep bringing up exterminating toddlers, as though this was the inevitable result of a pro-choice position. Are rates of toddler-cide higher in states where abortion is freely available than in states where it is not? Seriously, I don’t know, I’ll have to check the FBI stats.

Anyway, you seem stuck on the assumption that for me, reducing crime is worth any price, perhaps because you think it demonizes me or forces me on the defensive, I don’t know. Hopefully for the last time:

If you want society to curtail an individual right, you need a good reason, hopefully by pointing out the significant positive results to society of the curtailment or the significant negative results to society of not curtailing. Crime rates (which are definitely not the only result, as I’ve said several times) show a somewhat negative result. I am waiting for you or someone to describe a sufficiently large positive result that will make the increase in crime as well as the curtailment of the rights of women as they relate to this issue tolerable. So far, I’ve seen numerous claims that continuing to let them keep the right is massively negative, but these boil down to “dead baby”. It is a negative result, I’ll admit, and I’d personally like to see broader education and use of contraceptives to reduce (ideally to zero) the number of unwanted pregnancies. I can’t, however, see it as negative enough to justify the curtailment. It’s an arbitrary determination, I admit, one that involves for me the least amount of discomfort. The “safe, legal and rare” position is perfectly fine with me.

Anyway, the bolded part of the above paragraph is extremely important. In fact, the bolded part is so important that I’m even willing to shrug off the whole crime stat thing simply because your persistence in (willfully?) misunderstanding it has become tiresome (yes, you have actually caused me to regret bringing up a valid point through your determination to misread it). I personally still believe it is relevant in the way I have repeatedly described, but you’re latching onto a misinterpretation as an excuse to dodge the main point (i.e. the bolded portion of the above paragraph). So, what positive results of an abortion ban can you foresee that make the curtailment of the rights of women as they relate to this issue tolerable, crime stats completely notwithstanding?

I genuinely would like to hear some actual facts. What you find to be axiomatic does not need to be repeated.

493

Huh - on investigation, the FBI reports only 504 murders of children 4 and under for 2004. The don’t break it down by state, though, and I can’t seem to find a nice tidy chart ranking the states by abortion availability.

Little help, here? I admit it’s really just a mildly interesting intellectual exercise. It might also be interesting to compare pre-Roe infanticide rates.

494

The U.S. infanticide rate doubled between 1970 to 2000, from 4.3 to 9.1 per 100,000 children under age one. Roe v. Wade in 1973 appears to have had no positive effect.

495

This is begging the question. Is the distinction you note related to being unborn, in the mother’s body? Or something else?

If that accurately represents your position, then the effect on crime is a tangent, and it still doesn’t make your position coherent. The effect on crime is neither a goal, nor is it reason enough to install abortion as a choice. But it is relevant in determining whether or not abortion should remain a choice. Um, okay. That makes sense. If you think #369 clarifies that somehow, you’ll need to explain.

Why? What is your point? If the basis for abortion rights is respect for the individual rights of women, then the effect on crime stats is–I’ll say it again–irrelevant, a red herring. Yet you insist they be a factor for those who want to ban abortion, people who (like you!) see the effect as an irrelevancy. Sorry, makes no sense.

See above.

Because you would at least be logically consistent?

Again, your point is relevant only when you want it to be. It needn’t be a factor in assigning abortion rights, but it should be a factor in removing them.

I bring it up because I see it as analogous, not inevitable.

Spare me the impatience. The reason for curtailing the right is to protect the “higher” right of another individual. Now, I understand you don’t agree with that. But others do, right? It is at this point where you should realize that asking me to justify the ban by citing the positive results it will produce ignores the basis for my opinion. Just as you indicate that the right you recognize for the women in question is reason enough for abortion to be a choice–something that seems axiomatic to you, whether or not you use the word, something requiring no additional crunching of crime stats–I don’t see the need to develop a cost-benefit justification. There is a need only if I accept your premise, which is that abortion rights start as a given, as inherently justified, as a choice so obviously beneficial that I need to parse crime stats and develop other such meaningless data points. I don’t accept that premise.

Talk about tiresome bullshit.

Here’s your cue to ignore my explanation as to why I don’t accept your premise and to express your exasperation over my not complying with such a “reasonable” request.

496

So neither of you accept the other’s foundational axioms? Well, that settles it, then - debating is pointless, and this just becomes a forum for witnessing.

497

I actually agree with you, for the most part. In fact, I think that’s my major point: Bryan’s axiomatic foundation demands a counter-argument from me that my axioms do not require. In abortion threads, the debate is often a non-starter, once there’s no issue of facts. There’s nothing “dishonest,” there’s no “willful misunderstanding” involved.

498

Pretty much; inside her, attached to her. Seems significant enough to me.

No, I’ve made several good-faith attempts to clarify. I would understand if you don’t agree with my position, but to persistently claim that it’s incomprehensible is too transparently willful. You’re ignoring something along the way, and I suspect on purpose. I’ll give it a final shot:

Let’s assume that abortion rights are the current status quo (if you refuse to grant that, then the rest of this is pointless - and this is without making any moral statment about abortion itself, its just a statement that it is well established in the U.S. and has been since 1973). It has been accepted as an important civil right for a large segment of the American population and exercised about a million times a year. Taking away this right requires a very good reason. I’ve asked repeatedly that such reasons be suggested and oh, by the way if and when you come up with a good reason, you should also take into account a potentially bad reason - increased crime, the linkage to abortion being strongly suggested by various statistical analyses.

That is as direct as I can make it, and if you still claim you can’t understand it (as opposed to just disagreeing with it), then I don’t know what else I can say to you.

It’s clear you find the whole “looking for good reasons/taking into account bad reasons” process irrelevant; and that the “very good reason” abortion should be banned is because it’s a self-evident evil (thus yielding a result that is “obviously beneficial”). There’s no argument I can give or am interested in giving that is likely to change your stance on that. Fine. But simply pointing something out as a self-evident evil is not sufficient to make a major alteration to a civil right affecting millions of people, as abortion does. For starters, there are a lot of varying opinions on what constitutes a self-evident evil, and the opinion on abortion (unlike, say, toddler-killing) is far from unanimous.

But by definition saying something is axiomatic isn’t an explanation. In fact, I don’t recall anything even resembling an explanation from you. Could you be so kind as to reference a post number or numbers where you feel your explanation has been most effectively expressed? I acknowledge your axiomatic premise (and I’ll stipulate that I have one, too) but I’d like to see what reasoning you build based on your axiom that lets you prove that a major change to abortion law (i.e. banning it with some exceptions for mother’s life and such) won’t create more problems than it solves.

499

While the overall “abortion debate” may not actually be possible, the OP’s thesis can certainly be countered - remember, the OP (whatever happened to the OP, anyway?) would have us agree that the debate is a simple binary:

Of course, I don’t agree with that bolded bit, but that’s not my point, my point is that there can certainly be debate over the OP

500

Well, through the vagaries of timing, my axiom is reflected in the current legal situation and your axiom is not. If you want to change that situation, you have to give compelling reasons. If we were having this discussion in, say, 1965 and I wanted to change the situation and make abortion legal, I’d have to provide compelling reasons, well beyond just shouting “Women’s rights are an axiom!” over and over.

It might be an interesting exercise to pretend it was 1965 and I was writing on behalf of some women’s rights organization and arguing to get the laws changed, but I seriously doubt there’s anything I could say that wasn’t said better by the crusaders at the time. I’d probably start with cycles of poverty and go from there.