so as not to hijack this thread on “pro-abortion”, I’ve created this thread.
The original thread really dealt with pro-choice (IMHO. I know puddleglum disagrees). This thread deals with Pyrrhonist’s viewpoint as a true pro-abortionist.
I’ll continue my debate in a bit when Pyrrhonist enters.
Terribly sorry. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=83913
Is the actual thread I’m taking this debate from. That link in the OP will only get you to my reply page of that thread which you can only access if you’re logged on as me. So if you can access that, I’ve got a serious problem on my hands.
Okay, I admit it. I’m pro-abortion. I think in a perfect world the pro-choice stance would be ideal, but you know as well as I do, this isn’t a perfect world. While it would be great for a woman to always retain the rights to do with as she pleases with her body, I think that right could be overruled by the detrimental effects of overpopulation and overcrowding. It is a matter of what is worse: a women losing to right to choose “birth” or an overpopulated country? I think even the threat of overpopulation is much worse.
Whether you agree or disagree with the threat of overpopulation, (that is a whole different debate), I think it is important to decide what you think would be the most harmful in a worst case scenario.
I guess, in a SDMB grand tradition, this thread could be subtitled: Ask the Pro-Abortionist.
Fire Away!
OK, first two and most important questions I could ask:
Have you gone in for sterlization or vasectomy?
If not, why not?
Secondly, I don’t see this country as being overpopulated. Certain areas of it, yes, but not all of it. We have room to expand and we’ll have ways of dealing with those expansions.
As far as your argument about losing natural resources go, we can compensate. Not enough water? HA! The world is 3/4 water. Just build a cost efficient desalinization plant. Not enough energy? HA! Goodness gracious great ball of fire hanging over us that provides more than enough energy for all our needs. We just need better solar cells to harvest it.
But here’s the irony. We can reduce the population through extreme means (i.e. forced abortions), but doing so means more work for the rest of us. Each of us will have to work harder to fill society’s roles and, in a generation, there will be even less people left to replace us. They’ll have to work even harder…or stop working on certain projects.
So by decreasing the population, we never will get a good desalinization plant. We never will get good solar panels. You might say “who cares? We won’t need them then.” But what else will we no longer invent because people no longer have the time to invent it, nor the ability to spend time in a specialization researching it?
I had a vasectomy in 1996. 
Why expand? Does it really make sense to do so? More isn’t always better.
I’m glad you agree that certain areas of the country are overpopulated. Shouldn’t something be done about it in those places at the very least? How would you prevent other areas of the country from becoming overpopulated?
The current US population is around 284 million by and estimated to grow to 337 million by 2025 and 390 million by 2045. That is a increase of 106 million in about 45 years. That is going to require a lot of pristine open space to accommodate such a large number of people. Do you think a Bureau of Population Redirection (an agency that would facilitate growth in low density areas) would be somehow preferable to population reduction.
I’d rather have the open, undeveloped spaces over more strip malls and subdivisions.
I’ll buy those for a quarter when they are on the market.
You’ve got the Cortez approach by committing current resources on the theory that a future invention will rectify the problem. Maybe you’re right, but I’m not an optimist. Find solutions for the problems here and now with the technology current available. When something new and better comes along, then by all means use it, but don’t bet the bank on it.
Not necessarily so. The possible desalinization plant and solar cells aren’t slated for some unborn child to develop in the future—there are people working in the here and now, so decreasing population would have little effect—other than giving a scientist a little more breathing room to think and discover. There would still be future scientists working in a decreasing population, so they get the chance to invent other useful as well.
As the population goes down, so does the demand for goods and services, there would be less folk to shop at Wall-Mart, so there would be fewer Wall-Marts and Wall-Mart employees. There is no reason to believe that some scientists are going to be stuck in some low level tasks that would otherwise assigned to the great unwashed in continuing population expansion.
Active encouragement of abortions would be a tool (among others) in helping reduce population growth. As for the Pro-Abortion stance, I think it would be preferable to reward women (possibly through tax incentives or maybe through cash payments) to voluntarily abort pregnancies before making the procedure mandatory. And before someone decides to rip me a new one, I couldn’t see abortion becoming mandatory for at least twenty to thirty years—or until there is some kind of crisis and resources and space become scarce.
Here’s a half-cynical/polemic, half-serious question: Rather than forcing women to abort, why don’t you volunteer to commit suicide, and encourage others to do so? You’ve already lived, I assume, a relatively full life–why not give others the same opportunity?
I grew up in a third world nation and I have to say that for a long time I’ve shared Pyrrhonist’s fears of global over-population. I’m not sure which country you lot are talking about but I assume the U.S. Now the the U.S. may not be in danger of over-population any time soon but if you could see the rates at which people in certain other countries are breeding, you would be worried too. Many families in India, Pakistan etc. have over ten children!! (Incidentally, often in the hope of producing a boy/as many boys as possible.)
I don’t think forced abortion is a pleasant solution, but what is? Should we just wait until the Earth overflows? Or maybe people in problematic countries could be given some sort of monetary incentive to postpone/limit offspring? Would this be economically feasible?
Oh how grand and egalitarian of you, pldennisob! Sure I’ll give some dumb kid a break. Lemme borrow a gun. :rolleyes:
Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve got the long-lived and mean gene, so reaching a hundred years of age is not impossible. You’ll just have to put up with me a decade or two past the midway of this century.
I doubt there would be enough funding in the problematic countries to achieve this—either to cover the costs of an abortion or provide incentives for women not to have children. I’m not an expert on Third-World economics, so I can’t be sure, though I’ve seen indication that such countries could implement or sustain such programs. Of course, there are free alternatives like famine and plague, which show up every now and then. The leaders of these countries will have to decide what is best for their populace.
Given the arguments that Pyrrhonist has used to back a “pro-abortion” stance, wouldn’t it be much simpler to perform sterilizations, rather than abortions?
I’d really like to see you flesh out this idea of yours, Pyrrhonist. If you were to have your way, how would it work? Children allowed to those who can afford it economically? A set number of children each woman is allowed to birth? A set age that a woman must finish reproducing by? What are your criteria? How would you enforce it?
Ah, nothing like a good Logan’s Run reference!
The State ain’t taking my guns away, law or no law: Reason #217
As this debate seems to be running toward manditory abortion, and I agree with that premise about as much as I agree with mandatory sterilization (that is, not at all), I’ll do my cheer for Education! Planning! Pills! and be on my way. Pro abortion on demand, to anyone who wants one, without a permission slip or prohibitively high costs, YES. Abortion forced on anyone who doesn’t want one, NO.
I too am pro-abortion, but I wouldn’t have to be if people weren’t so ignorant about birth control. Of course it’s way easier not to get pregnant in the first place than it is to terminate a pregnancy: this is true physiologically, emotionally, and financially. There are no benefits of abortion that couldn’t be enjoyed as much or more by practicing contraception before the fact, and when everyone in the world has access to contraception and information on how to use it effectively, then maybe I won’t have to be pro-abortion.
With greater access to educational resources and less stigmatization and secrecy about matters related to reproductive health, women all over the world would get pregnant less frequently, thus having more resources (her own health, nutrition, housing, income, education, etc) to provide each of her children, if any. Until contraceptives and family planning information (including population control measures) are available to everyone who has sex worldwide, there must be a way to terminate unintended pregnancies.
I am in no way saying that people who don’t know about family planning, where babies come from, or how to have protected sex are stupid. Far from it - they are just underinformed due to cultural, religious, or economic factors that make it difficult to get them information.
As an aside, beadalin, your idea of having women reproduce only before an arbitrary cutoff age is looking the wrong way: women should have to achieve a certain age before reproducing. It’s common sense (in America at least) that most 20 year olds and younger do not have the resources to adequately provide for a child. Sex ed here should be geared toward the idea that one primary outcome of sex is babies (unless you do something to prevent them), and that babies require resources. Generally, people don’t have those resources on hand until they have some sort of stable job/home/other adult things.
Forgot to add:
Plus, if everyone had children just a few years later, the population would grow less quickly, thus alleviating some of the problem.
The more people make responsible reproductive descisions voluntarily, starting now, the less likely radical solutions will be implemented in the future. People should wait until they’re well educated, married, and have a solid income before having kids and they should limit themselves to 2. It’s just like saying people should recycle; I’m not advocating government mandates on behavior, but it’s responsible citizenship.
People should use contraceptives dilligently, but if a single/poor woman gets pregnant, she should get an abortion, IMO. It’s a moral imperative here in the *real[i/] world.
Again, if we can nip population problems in the bud, we can forstall the need for radical solutions, but the anti-abortions movement, the Catholic Church, et al, need to get with the program instead of being part of the problem.
Have you seen the web site for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement? I don’t know their url, but I know you’ll find them if you do a search. They have a lot of information in one place.
Roll away. I was just curious as to whether your principles involving decreasing population and density extended as far as yourself, or only as far as forcing them on the next guy. I now have my answer. I just hope for your sake nobody decides to, um, abort you.
andros I liked the one by the VHEMT. Hey, if that’s what they want to do, more power to them. My guess is that they’ll go the way of the Shakers.
BTW, why are they so concerned about how many children are dying a year when they want to kill us all off?
Pyrrhonist, I’m still not understanding this concept. Forcing abortions upon the populace would cost money. But those with the least amount of money are most in need of your suggestions. So would you propose that the US spend its money killing off the rest of the world’s problems or should we just pray none of them save up and move to DC to buy minivans?
Also, our economy is based upon there being enough people to fill the roles we’ve created by having this many people to fill it. It’s all one big circle. But if we reduce the population steadily, we’ll also have to reduce the types of professions out there. There won’t be enough people to fill those roles. There also won’t be enough replacements in the next generation and we’ll have to reduce yet again.
This means more than just the Starbucks example I gave in the other thread. This means that
a) R&D
b) specialization
c) cutting edge professions
or all three will be the first to go. We’ll have to not only shrink society, but voluntarily shrink what society is capable of. This is a good thing?
Sterilization could be considered a viable option to abortions in the future, but not at this time. For the most part, sterilization procedure are permanent, though there has been some success in reversibility.
The purpose of mandatory abortions would be to reduce the population size, not deny a woman a child. An abortion would fix an immediate problem for a current pregnancy: Jane Doe might have to undergo an abortion for her first pregnancy depending on whatever conditions where governed on population reduction. (I personally favor meeting an income requirement as at least one of the conditions). But Jane Doe could meet the conditions at her second pregnancy and no abortion would be required.
If you want to get all science fictiony, then it would be possible that in the future people would be “inoculated” against fertility at a young age, much like everyone is inoculated against certain diseases, then could made fertile again when all the conditions for child bearing have been meet. If that level of medical technology were ever made available and practical, then I’d find it preferable to a pro-abortion stance.
Enforcing the mandatory abortions would be much trickier. For a number of reasons, I don’t think armed police dragging women off to Family Planning Clinics would be a good idea. Rogue pregnancies would be better off being treated along the same lines as tax evasion. There would be severe financial penalties upon transgressors. Perhaps the loss of civil privileges like voting and driving would also be in order. Jail time for most wouldn’t be practicle in most cases, but I could see it for willfull and repeated offenders. I wouldn’t let the father off the hook either: a man who tom cats around and creates many babies is just a accountable and could be sentenced not to sire anymore offspring.
Where does the gun control fit into this discussion?
Unfortunately I think it would cost a lot more to educate the populace into reducing population growth and be less effective.
The fact that I’ve had a vasectomy shows that I’m more than justing forcing my ideas on the next guy. I do practice what I preach. As for aborting me, well… Twenty or thirty years from now when resources are low, who is to say that your kids or grandkids will not want to “off” oldman Pyrrhonist for his supply of resources. But that would be okay. Right?
Maybe this is where manhattan’s gun control reference comes into play. I’ll need guns to protect myself from pldennison’s descendants. BANG! BANG!
I said before that the cost of sending a child to public schools costs more than an abortion. I don’t have the expenses for either, but you’d have to prove a medical producre would be more costly than a K to 12 education to convince me otherwise. It would cost more upfront, of course, but in the long run it would save money.
Where does this end. By this reasoning the population would always have to increase from generation to generation, but our planet has finite rescources and living space. Sooner or later, the population growth would be higher than the recources and ability to support it. At the very minimum, at some point, population growth would have to be stopped.
What comes out of the backend of a horse.
Technological advancement is not dependent on the sheer number of people we can fit on the planet. Quality, not quantity counts. Countries like China and India have a larger populations than America, but I don’t see the strides in technological development happening there. In fact there is evidence to believe that China steals and buys our technology.
Andos: I wouldn’t really support VHEMT. They’re more echo-nutty than I and I’m not generally in favor of eliminating the human species, just reducing it size.
The person who tries to force an abortion on my family dies. He dies whether or not he has the State backing him. No discussion, no debate, no negotiation.
Hope that helps.