oh. dear god.

The BBQ Pit
81

That’s so exactly right!! All the sex education in the world isn’t going to do any good when a teenager gets to thinking that bad things only happen to other people. No, it’s not just teenagers who think like this, and no, not all teenagers think like this, but it’s a fact that future consequences are less of a worry than the here and now when you’re a teenager. If it feels good, you’re not going to want to stop because of something “stupid” that only happens to other people. Don’t tell me that some teenagers don’t think like this - I was a teenager, and I remember doing some of the stupidest things ever - even though I knew better - because I honestly thought that everything would turn out ok for me.

Abortion is wrong, but not worse than bringing an unwanted child into the world. I’ve seen young people bring poorly-timed babies into the world, I’ve seen them raising their children to believe that welfare is a normal way of life and is owed to them, I’ve seen children emotionally neglected by parents who were too young to know how to do better by their children, I’ve seen children raised to think that drugs are a normal social activity, I’ve seen kids cop the blame for everything that went wrong in the parents lives by fault of their birth, and I’ve seen the next generation being raised to be poorly educated, emotionally neglected, welfare oriented, self destructive, socially impaired future drug addicted teen parents, and thought that perhaps abortion would have been a kinder solution after all. Some teen parents are wonderful. Some are not. Abortion is not a good thing, but it is something that should be available for those who feel they need it.

82

By “much more dangerous” I mean that a woman giving live birth is more than 10 times as likely to die due to complications as a woman having a legal abortion How much more depends upon how early in the pregnancy the abortion occurs. In New York State in 1998 the mortality rate for women giving birth was 10.1 deaths per 100,000, or about 1 woman in 1000. This is the only neutral source I could find without spending hours, which I ain’t gonna do.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the mortality rate for abortion during the first 8 weeks is 1 in a half million, making it 500 times as dangerous to give birth as to have an early, legal abortion; 1 in 17,000 at 16-20 weeks (17 times as dangerous) and 1 in 6,000 after 21 weeks, (still 6 times as dangerous).

First trimester abortions make up 9/10 of all abortions and are 1/100th as dangerous as giving birth. To be fair, though, giving live birth in a hospital attended by a doctor is pretty safe. A woman is more likely to be killed in a car accident during the pregnancy than she is to die due to complications from childbirth. But relatively speaking, abortion is much safer than the alternative.

83

Thank you for the info, Number Six. However…

10.1 deaths per 100,000 is 1 woman in TEN thousand, which puts your other numbers in a different perspective. That makes childbirth only 50 times as dangerous as an abortion in the first 8 weeks, 1.7 times as dangerous as an abortion at 16-20 weeks, and actually makes childbirth SAFER than an abortion after 21 weeks.

This actually turns it into an argument against late-term abortions…

84

My claim: 15-year-olds (boys or girls) generally should not be trusted as the sole voice in decisions about their bodies.

His claim: 15-year-old girls are so weak mentally that they are not capable of deciding on their own to have sex, rather they are completely at the coercive mercy of boys and men.

The fact that I reject his claim while making mine is hypocritical or brainless? Yes, I feel that the teenagers are generally not mature enough to be making intelligent decisions regarding sex, pregnancy, birth control, and abortion. That does not mean that I feel they are unable to make such decisions, just that they won’t be informed decisions.

Where in the world did I claim that teenagers should have access to birth control without their parents permission? enPhantBlanc suggested that women were unable to handle birth control issues without at least some assistance from their partner, I contest that proposition.

However, if somebody is going to provide a chemical substance to a child, their parent has the right to know about it. I have no problem with barrier forms of birth control being freely available to children. As I’ve said, I have no problem with teenaged sex (I enjoyed immensely, myself) but I do stand by my contention that teenagers, as a general rule, are not capable of making informed decisions about sex and its consequences.

The first three times I had sex, it was unprotected. Why? Because I was stupid! Not because I didn’t know how babies were made, not because there wasn’t sex education in my school (there was), not because I knew that an abortion was possible. Simply because I figured I was invicible (as someone else said) and that is just another word for stupid.

However, I fail to see the hypocrisy between that stance and any position I’ve made previously.

If you feel that once a teenager is capable of bearing children then she should be in full control of her body (I don’t remember if it was you that said that or someone else) then we’ll just have to disagree. But I don’t see hypocrisy in my opinion.

85

Thanks for the correction. You’re correct about late term abortions, but at that point the danger level is very close, and I still don’t see it as a compelling argument for outlawing abortion. Overall, the ratio is about 10 to 1, which I think meets my claim that giving birth is “much more dangerous” than an abortion on a relative basis. On an absolute basis, neither is very dangerous. The safety issue really isn’t one.

86

I thought it was awful, the girl was a slut, and kept screwing, using abortion as her fall back method of birth control, nice.

87

Oh, definitely not.

I would agree. Like I said, I wasn’t dubious of the claim, I just hadn’t ever seen numbers like the kind you presented before.

88

claimed no such thing

suggested no such thing

They are not synonymous, sillypants. If you look up “invincible” in Roget’s do you find “stupid” associated with it? The word you mean is perhaps “delusional?” Or maybe just “young.” Neither of those is synonymous with “stupid.”

Just try to say what you mean, sugarbeet.

89

Thinking you are invincible when you are not is stupidity. There may be a good reason for it, but it remains stupid. I can use a softer word, if you want: youth, immaturity, hubris, sillyness, ignorance. But it all boils down to ignorance of the world and your place within it. Stupidity. People get so riled up when I say that children are going to exhibit signs of stupidity. Well, of course they are. Stupid is the state in which we all begin, and stupid is the state in which we’ll die, though hopefully to a lesser degree.

[quote]
The child ho does not necessarily choose to become pregnant: she may be made pregnant against her will. (I am not talking about rape as it is commonly defined, that is to say, stranger rape. I’m talking about the male partner refusing to use birth control and the child being either overpowered or argued into acquiescence. Both of which situations, of course, are a reasonable person’s definition of rape, but they are not rape as it is commonly defined.)

[quote]

I still say that statement (and your follow-ups) are equivelant to the paraphrased claims in my last post. Unless you are saying that your hypothetical girl who is manipulated into sex without real sex and forced to rely on her partner for birth control is the rare exception, I am going to take issue with it. If you think it is the norm, I would like some more evidence other than a vague recollection of something heard somewhere, somewhen.

90

here, per the OED illustrative quotes omitted, is what “stupid” means:

I think you and I have given ample evidence that many of these forms of the English word “stupid” apply to us. But I can’t see where you have evidence for your conclusion that a person about whom you know nothing except her age, sex and some things that happened to her is/was stupid or behaved stupidly. You cannot categorically say that because x happened to her and because she did y she is stupid, because you don’t know enough about her situation.

huh?

when did I say this?

We mustn’t redefine words a la Humpty Dumpty. We must resist the urge to make straw men of our opponents. We must try not to babble. These aren’t webposting rules, of course, I don’t presume to be in the club. But these are rules people have to learn before they can communicate. Otherwise, we’re not having a conversation, are we? We’re amusing ourselves making papier mache dollies out of the dictionary.