"Pro-life" and "pro-choice" are both stupid expressions

Great Debates
241

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
No, I don’t think abortions will be minimized with strict abortion laws (and I’m curious about your basis for believing so), just that a lot of people are going to end up punished for no good reason and I think my government’s law enforcement resources should be spent elsewhere.
[/quote]
It seems absolutely inarguable that creating a legal restriction will reduce the number of abortions to some degree. What is so unique about abortion that among all the criminalized acts in the world, it would not to any extent be affected by a ban? Sheesh, does every f@#$ing thing have to be an argument in this thread?

No, it implied you’d be opposed to a reduction of abortions resulting from a ban. I see now you seem to hold the interesting position that an abortion ban would not materially reduce abortions.

242

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
It seems absolutely inarguable that creating a legal restriction will reduce the number of abortions to some degree.
[/quote]

Evidence suggests otherwise.

Because a sufficiently desperate woman will use a coat-hanger in the privacy of her home. The effect of shutting down abortion clinics where the procedure is now extremely safe just means forcing women into situations that are not safe. How this represents a net benefit escapes me.

If you’re going to assert facts that have no supporting evidence… yeah, pretty much.

I’m not alone, as per the MSNBC cite linked above and the study to which it refers. Please give in broad general terms the abortion ban you would like to see created, how it would be enforced, and what the penalties would be.

243

Yes, yes, the Guttmacher Institute. Clearly they have no axe to grind. I’ll wait for the results to be peer-reviewed, thank you.

What is the change in the rate of abortions pre and post a ban in the same place? That would be a more meaningful comparison.

244

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Yes, yes, the Guttmacher Institute. Clearly they have no axe to grind. I’ll wait for the results to be peer-reviewed, thank you.
[/quote]
Well, the World Health Organization was involved, too. Feel free to suggest a counter-authority, if you have one in mind. Meanwhile:

New York Times: “Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told” (regarding states that passed parental notification laws), 2006

And I don’t know how you feel about Human Rights Watch, but they’ve found Nicaragua’s sweeping abortion ban was very effective at creating a climate of fear, not so much at reducing abortion (pdf report).

Sure, if good statistics were available. The problem is finding a venue that once had abortion, has now successfully banned it (i.e. the law wasn’t repealed through constitutional or similar challenge), and yet offers reliable numbers on the change in abortion rates. Those in power who passed such laws have a natural disincentive to allow reliable reporting of abortion rates that show no net drop, or the increases in pregnancy-related deaths and injuries. If you can find reliable stats, please link. Until you can, you can hardly claim it is “inarguable.”

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Bryan, I don’t need to look too far. The notion that abortion rates are the same, regardless of rich / poor, legal / illegal, is contradicted by the stats in the same cite you provided. Let’s look at Africa, where access to abortion is severely resticted. There is no section with greater than 24 abortions, including illegal ones, per 100 live births, with a low of 14 per 100 live births in western Africa. Compare that to “developed countries,” where access to abortions (as noted in your cite) is largely legal, and the rate is 50 per 100 live births (105 per 100 live births in Eastern Europe, for Pete’s sake).

The article you provide doesn’t support its own lead sentence. The conclusion it draws, again, is ridiculous on its face. Why in the world would legal restrictions not lead to fewer abortions?

246

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Bryan, I don’t need to look too far. The notion that abortion rates are the same, regardless of rich / poor, legal / illegal, is contradicted by the stats in the same cite you provided. Let’s look at Africa, where access to abortion is severely resticted.
[/quote]

Access to everything is severely restricted in Africa, as is the nature of poverty. These are not examples of nations that once had open access to abortion and have now banned it; rather they are nations with historically few or no freedoms of any kind. As a minor note, if you’re going to trumpet low abortion rates in Africa, please reflect on female infanticide rates in this places as well, since they are in effect the post-natal abortion of an inconvenient pregnancy.

I’m willing to concede that abortion rates vary from place to place, mainly because it didn’t occur to me to assume they were consistent. Rather, I see no evidence that a ban works to make women choose not to abort if they ever had the choice to begin with. I’m sorry if this seems like backpedalling or goalpost-moving or whatever, I’m just pointing out that controlling women is easy in environments where casually violent control of everything is the norm.

I did find it interesting the rates were highest of all in Eastern Europe. I can think of several possible reasons for this, involving a combination of decent medical care (one of the very few positive things I can bring myself to say about communism), official atheism posing no religion-based barriers, and ignorance about and lack of access to contraception.

In any case, the article’s claim that abortion rates are “the same” most likely refers to the final total stat, which appears on the chart you referenced. The top bar shows the “World” rate, divided about equally between “safe” countries (where abortion is mostly legal) and “unsafe” ones (where it is mostly not).

Okay, for the heck of it, let’s say it does. Given 1000 women with unwanted pregnancies in a place with a ban, can we make some reasonable estimates of:
-How many will meekly accept their condition? (I predict a small number)
-How many will seek illegal abortions anyway? (I predict a large number)
-How many of this second group will suffer death or injury as a result? (I predict a significant percentage of a large number)

Even putting aside issues of personal freedom, my concern is that the number of children the law saves is lower than the number of women killed, and the children being saved aren’t wanted anyway, so what’s the point?

247

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Access to everything is severely restricted in Africa, as is the nature of poverty. These are not examples of nations that once had open access to abortion and have now banned it; rather they are nations with historically few or no freedoms of any kind.
[/quote]
Regardless, the very stats in your article not only don’t support your contention, they contradict it. Don’t change the subject, please.

No, I will not. You’re moving the goal posts. That was not the point in contention, and I won’t be distracted by it (which is not at all the same as saying it’s not important).

No, you just provided a cite with these lead sentences…

…again, a notion the same article contradicts when it depicts the statistics behind this contention. If this was the thesis of the study, then our pals at the Guttmacher Institute indeed have an axe to grind, and for MSNBC to simply repeat it, contradicting itself in the same article, is extremely sloppy journalism.

Well, it does seem like backpedaling, or, to put it differently, if you’re going to assert facts that have no supporting evidence, expect to get called on it.

If that’s what they meant, they are sure as hell ignoring a whole lot of contradictory data in their own f@#$ing article.

There is no reason to conclude what you’re speculating. I’ll wait for JThunder to drop in, but as I recall he has debunked the “bazillions of women died by coat hanger abortions when they were illegal” myth on multiple occasions, if you care to search.

248

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Regardless, the very stats in your article not only don’t support your contention, they contradict it. Don’t change the subject, please.
[/quote]
Do they? The statement describes an average and you’re looking at the source data. Of course they don’t match.

The issue of infanticide is relevant because it addresses the issue of how seriously these women don’t want a child. They would have aborted a female fetus if they had access to the ultrasound technology (as women in India and China do) but instead had to wait until the child was born - and killed it. I take it as an indication that trying to force a women to have a child she doesn’t want is a losing battle.

I expect exactly that, and will accordingly modify my statement to take new evidence into account. You raised an objection to the article’s claim and I’ve considered it. Your objection has some merit about the numbers, but I find it ultimately doesn’t change anything about the reality.

It doesn’t have to be bazillions; it just has to be as many or more than the number of babies brought to term by women who were forced by fear of prosecution, or who wanted an abortion but couldn’t get one because the doctors have all been arrested. It must be nice to imagine a world where every pregnant woman is overjoyed and eagerly anticipating motherhood. That just isn’t the world we live in, though.

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Interestingly, while looking for relevant statistics, I came across a Cecil column from 2004 that addressed this very issue. The gist: immediately prior to Roe, many individual states had relaxed or repealed abortion laws and even elsewhere most abortions were being performed (illegally) by doctors, so the death rate was pretty low. To find really bad numbers (i.e. plausibly as many as 10,000 deaths/year in the U.S.) requires going back several decades, before the widespread use of penicillin. To assert that an abortion ban won’t bring back carnage is short-sighted. If the ban has any meaning at all, sooner or later a few doctors who are caught performing abortions will be jailed, scaring the rest out of the business. The ban will do nothing to stem the demand, of course, which will rapidly be filled by non-doctors and (presumably now-illegal) shipments of RU-486-related drugs of questionable purity. I expect antibiotics will ensure the death rate won’t return to pre-penicillin levels, until the government starts to track down and eliminate abortion-related antibiotic use. The more draconian the enforcement in the name of protecting babies, the worse it’ll get for women. This is why I like to ask pro-lifers what kinds of laws they envision, how they will be enforced, and what the penalties will be. I don’t often get an answer.

And, of course, the benefit to society of a ban still escapes me.

250

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
The ban will do nothing to stem the demand, of course, which will rapidly be filled by non-doctors and (presumably now-illegal) shipments of RU-486-related drugs of questionable purity.
[/QUOTE]

Doesn’t need to be RU-486, since they won’t outlaw misoprostol which can be used for the same purpose (though my understanding is that in the US it’s usually coupled with RU-486).

Right now, women might be ignorant about some of these other options, but misoprostol is a known abortifacient and, if surgical abortion were outlawed, the use of such a drug would go through the roof.

I believe that once the word was out, the number of abortions would likely increase over today, since there are barriers between lots of women and abortion now. Make it worthwhile to establish channels for illicit abortions and those channels will absolutely be established.

251

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Do they? The statement describes an average and you’re looking at the source data. Of course they don’t match.
[/quote]
Bryan, please, this is ridiculous. The world stats, even as you interpreted them two posts ago, do NOT support the lead contention of the article–they contradict it. As they do the contention you were trying to provide evidence for. You picked a bad source, that’s all. Stop spinning.

We can speculate all we want I suppose. You indicated initially that abortion restrictions would not materially affect the number of abortions. Now you’re explaining how women deal with just such an effect.

Bryan, what reality? The reality that is supported by the stats in your article? Abortion restrictions miniize abortion rates, a notion support by both common sense and statistics. As I said before, must every f@#$ing thing be an argument in this thread?

Right, right, every single woman eagerly anticipates motherhood. That’s what I’ve been asserting. :rolleyes:

Bryan, if you read Cecil’s article, the one that said that there were 39 deaths due to illegal abortions th year immediately prior to Roe v Wade, you can’t possibly conclude that this somehow supports the notion that more women (one is too many, of course) will die than children aborted. I’d suggest that Cecil implies there was NEVER plausible support for 10,000 deaths a year. Sorry, your “tipping point” formula doesn’t hold water, and I can see that now you’ve reverted again to baseless speculation.

The benefit, from a pro-life perspective, is obvious. That at least can be acknowledged after such strenuous attempts at rebuttal?

252

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
I’m sorry, I honestly don’t know what you’re asking. I don’t know how to answer it. Are you asking me if a woman who becomes pregnant has no real pregnancy risk because she can always abort it? What does that have to do with my contention that the fetus has not willingly assumed any risk?
[/QUOTE]

The fact that you were contrasting the foetus’ lack of risk assumption with the mother’s. By showing that the mother also has no assumed risk, the contrast falls away and there is no difference between levels of “innocence”, in my view.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Any of us who are distinct humans with a linear unity of identity that begins and progresses from the moment of conception.
[/QUOTE]

See, again, that’s just your say-so, not a given. I don’t acknowledge that a blastocyst has any “unity of identity”

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Um, yes.You’re begging the question. What makes this a potential person?
[/QUOTE]

Are you serious?

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
No right is meaningful without the right to live. That’s self-evident, isn’t it?
[/QUOTE]

Not to me.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
The mother’s right to self-determination, for example, is meaningless if she hasn’t the right to live.
[/QUOTE]

I disagree. Less meaningful, maybe, but meaningless? Certainly not.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
And I’ve already told you that I consider it axiomatic that living human beings, for the most part, have the right to continue living. Why do you assume otherwise?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t know, the fact that you have to qualify it with “for the most part”? That doesn’t make for a strong axiom, in my opinion.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Is it simply axiomatic for you?
[/QUOTE]

No, I don’t believe in inherent rights.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
And the debate is advanced somehow if we assume the antecedent is that the fetus has lesser rights?
[/QUOTE]

No, but the debate is advanced if we start from a position of not assuming anything about the foetus’ rights, which is my starting point.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
That’s convenient but silly, isn’t it? How can the unborn child’s inherent value be a function of the mother’s mood at the moment?
[/QUOTE]

There is, IMO, no inherent value. People only have the value we (as Society) choose to give them. I want to live in a Society that assigns more value to an actual member rather than a member in potentia. Therefore I am pro-choice, pro-abortion, or whatever you wish to call it..

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Very kind of you indeed. I’ll point out that it is a sentiment advanced in this very thread, and I used this as a reference point to show I understood that position though I don’t agree with it.
[/QUOTE]

But it is not a position I have advanced. I have a daughter I’ve watched since she was 12 weeks past conception, I wouldn’t say even a blastocyst has no value.

253

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
The fact that you were contrasting the foetus’ lack of risk assumption with the mother’s. By showing that the mother also has no assumed risk, the contrast falls away and there is no difference between levels of “innocence”, in my view.
[/quote]
That doesn’t change the baby’s status, even if we concede (I don’t) that the mother and father typically do NOT create the circumstance that puts the child in peril. They must at least accept the risk that someone will be in danger, especially to someone like you who doesn’t assess the fetus as valueless, right? The baby, not so much, right?

Well, you’re denying basic facts then. A child has a unique identity, one that follows a linear progression all of us not in denial have no trouble recognizing. You can say that identity doesn’t assume some nebulous aspect of “personhood,” but that identity exists nonetheless.

Yes. You yourself are not in the “a fetus is a valueless blob of tissue” camp. Why would this seem an odd concept to you, even if you disagree with it by degree?

Is there anything inconsistent at all to you over how disturbed you are over others deeply held beliefs while you expect others to have no issues with yours?

No, meaningless. If I kill her, I have abrogated a right that renders all other rights meaningless.

Whatever. I was trying to head off silly counters like, “Well, what if Jeffrey Dahmer is trying to kill you and your only escape is to kill him, then Hitler shows up and…” No right is absolute, I would posit.

Including the mother’s right to choose? Or does that one have a special, sacred status?

Nonsense. You are absolutely assuming something about the fetus’s rights–that they don’t exist, or they are lesser at least, as a starting point. Again, you beg the question as much as you accuse others.

Yes, as a practical matter that’s true. I’d advance a different social policy myself.

Good for you. You’re coming around perhaps. :wink:

254

Too late to edit–“accept the risk” in the first paragraph would be better read as “acknowledge the risk” in the sense Mr. D was questioning this.

255

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
That doesn’t change the baby’s status, even if we concede (I don’t) that the mother and father typically do NOT create the circumstance that puts the child in peril. They must at least accept the risk that someone will be in danger, especially to someone like you who doesn’t assess the fetus as valueless, right? The baby, not so much, right?
[/QUOTE]
The “acknowledge” version makes this a leeeetle more palatable to me, so OK - the “risk” being acknowledged is the fact that the foetus is at risk of abortion, then? I’m OK with that.
[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Well, you’re denying basic facts then. A child has a unique identity, one that follows a linear progression all of us not in denial have no trouble recognizing. You can say that identity doesn’t assume some nebulous aspect of “personhood,” but that identity exists nonetheless.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t agree that personhood is nebulous, but otherwise, OK, I don’t think we actually disagree - there is definitely some continuum from fertilised egg to delivered baby, I agree.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Yes. You yourself are not in the “a fetus is a valueless blob of tissue” camp. Why would this seem an odd concept to you, even if you disagree with it by degree?
[/QUOTE]

It’s the issue of “potential” versus “actual”. So, as I understand it, your stance is that a foetus is a full, cmplete person?

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Is there anything inconsistent at all to you over how disturbed you are over others deeply held beliefs while you expect others to have no issues with yours?
[/QUOTE]

I don’t expect others to have no issues with my beliefs. I expect debate, rather than the other side to assume my fundamental beliefs hold for everyone. You’ll notice I tack an “IMO” or similar on things that are my beliefs, the ones I expect to have to defend in debate.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
No, meaningless. If I kill her, I have abrogated a right that renders all other rights meaningless.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t agree. Up until the point that you kill her, unless you interfere with the other right, it still exists in as much as any right does.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Whatever. I was trying to head off silly counters like, “Well, what if Jeffrey Dahmer is trying to kill you and your only escape is to kill him, then Hitler shows up and…” No right is absolute, I would posit.
[/QUOTE]

But some rights are more absolute than others?

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Including the mother’s right to choose? Or does that one have a special, sacred status?
[/QUOTE]

No, I expect to have to defend that right in debate just like any other. You plan on making me do that anytime soon?

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Nonsense. You are absolutely assuming something about the fetus’s rights–that they don’t exist, or they are lesser at least, as a starting point.
[/QUOTE]

No, I’m not. starting from a position of “defend any and all rights” is not the same as saying “no rights exist” The distinctiojn may be subtle, but it is there - functionally, I’m saying “The right may or may not exist - make your case!”. No assumptions are inherent in that argument AFAICT.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Again, you beg the question as much as you accuse others.
[/QUOTE]

If I don’t make any positive affirmations of existence of rights, it’s not possible for me to commit that fallacy , IMO.

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Yes, as a practical matter that’s true. I’d advance a different social policy myself.
[/QUOTE]

An impractical one, perhaps?

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Good for you. You’re coming around perhaps. :wink:
[/QUOTE]

To what? Seeing some value and seeing overriding value are not the same thing by a long chalk.

256

[QUOTE=Stratocaster]
Bryan, please, this is ridiculous. The world stats, even as you interpreted them two posts ago, do NOT support the lead contention of the article–they contradict it.
[/quote]

Don’t they? The “World” stat shows similar abortion rates per thousand for what the study considers “safe” and “unsafe”. I can expect arguments about how well these labels line up with “legal” and “illegal” (i.e. not everywhere abortion is illegal it is necessarily unsafe, as in the U.S. just prior to Roe) but I don’t see the blatant contradiction you’re claiming with the article’s premise: “Abortion rates same whether legal or not”.

By all means, give me a better one. Find a nation with decent health care, reliable medical statistics and a ban on abortion that actually works, in the sense that women in that country don’t in large numbers seek illegal abortions or go abroad for them. Off the top of my head, I’d pick Ireland, which by European standards has a fairly restrictive abortion policy, which in 2006, prompted 1295 women (a figure considered a likely underestimate) to relatively liberal England for the procedure.

Yes, I’m pointing out that women denied remedy will seek it elsewhere. Besides, isn’t the general pro-life claim that killing a inconvenient fetus is equivalent to killing an inconvenient baby? I don’t see a problem in claiming the reverse is also true, that if abortions aren’t allowed to occur at the third month, a lot will simply happen after the ninth.

Do they? They allow the state to punish women and force them to either travel or risk an illegal procedure, or have a child they don’t want. The benefits of this continues to escape me, because babies are not in such short supply that this infliction is necessary.

You know, you can actually write out the curse word if you want. I doubt anyone here will be offended.

Are you acknowledging that some don’t, because that would be great - you would be recognizing the nature of the problem. These women are not evil or wicked or anything in particular - they simply want to not have a child. I don’t see the value in thwarting this desire or punishing them for seeking to fulfill it.

Then you didn’t read the same column I did, in which he prints (without argument) Goodman’s follow-up that accepts the 10,000 figure as being pre-penicillin. The dramatic drop in the death rate didn’t occur magically - it involved antibiotics and doctors performing the procedure, though it was illegal. What do you think will happen if abortion was banned, and I mean seriously banned, with law-enforcement officers padlocking clinics and arresting doctors and such, not just some toothless on-paper ban? Would it be fair to say doctors will stop performing the procedures, the quality of medical care for women seeking abortions will drop and death rates will start to rise? In combination, mifepristone sales will dramatically increase and if those are restricted as well, other remedies will be sought. Wealthier women will travel to Canada or Europe, leaving those women too poor to have abortion options to have their children, some of whom will be abandoned or killed. If any of this seems implausible to you, feel free to suggest an alternative likely course of events.

Sure, I guess you get the satisfaction of forcing women to have babies they don’t want. Most of these woman will be poor (as wealthy women have the means to get an abortion despite legal barriers) and having an extra child will only reinforce that poverty. Forgive me if I don’t share in your glowing sense of accomplishment as you count up babies, ignoring all else.

257

Here’s a more direct link to the information cited above, since you might not care for a summary from what I assume you will view as an axe-grinding organization:
UK Department of Health Statistics on abortions performed in Engliand on women from Northern Ireland, pdf file, table 12a

258

[QUOTE=MrDibble]
It’s the issue of “potential” versus “actual”. So, as I understand it, your stance is that a foetus is a full, cmplete person?
[/quote]
I don’t worry about nebulous characterizations like “personhood.” The fetus is a human being, and as such is entitled to certain rights IMO.

All rights exist until they’re interfered with. The point is that I can interfere with your right to personal property, but your right lo live would still exist. Not the other way around. There is no more fundamental right in that sense. (Seems inarguable to me.)

Yes, as noted above.

I stated my assumptions: all human beings are endowed with certain rights, a circumstance I find absolutely axiomatic. If the right to live can be dispensed with so easily, no right is meaningful.

259

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Don’t they? The “World” stat shows similar abortion rates per thousand for what the study considers “safe” and “unsafe”. I can expect arguments about how well these labels line up with “legal” and “illegal” (i.e. not everywhere abortion is illegal it is necessarily unsafe, as in the U.S. just prior to Roe) but I don’t see the blatant contradiction you’re claiming with the article’s premise: “Abortion rates same whether legal or not”.
[/quote]
We can be done now. I don’t believe you think that the lead sentences of the article are supported by the stats. The statement “there are similar percentages of legal and illegal abortions, if we roll up the world totals” is not AT ALL the same as saying “whether or not abortions are legal, women will obtain them at similar rates” or “Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday” or “experts also found that abortion rates are virtually equal in rich and poor countries.”

A simple reading of the statistics prove that all of these latter statements are false, and at this point I have to assume your insistence otherwise is dishonest. I’m done.

260

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Don’t they? The “World” stat shows similar abortion rates per thousand for what the study considers “safe” and “unsafe”. … I don’t see the blatant contradiction you’re claiming with the article’s premise: “Abortion rates same whether legal or not”.
[/QUOTE]

You can’t add up statistics like that.

Assume you had statistics on 21 countries

  • 10 countries where abortion is legal, and 30 abortions per 100 live births
  • 10 countries where abortion is illegal, with 1 million live births per year, and 10 abortions per 100 live births
  • 1 country where abortion is illegal, with 10 million live births per year, and 50 abortions per 100 live births

By averaging up the stats from around the world, like the study you linked to, we would conclude that in countries where abortion is illegal, there are, on average, 30 abortions per 100 live births, just like in the countries where abortion is legal.

Even though it would be mathematically correct, it would be a meaningless statistic.

The one country with the huge population and the high abortion rate is skewing the results for all countries where abortion is illegal. The high abortion rate in that country is due to the specific socio/economic environment in that country, and we can’t just lump the stats from that country with the rest.

More importantly, the statistic has no explanatory or predictive power: it doesn’t tell us whether, in the countries with illegal abortion, the abortion rates would increase, decrease, or stay the same, if abortion were made legal.

Taking an average and then declaring “Abortion rates same whether legal or not” is a dishonest (or blatantly stupid, showing no understanding of statistics), summary of the results.