# You, sir. Yes, you! Are a partisan asshole. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 6, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780 "2011-08-06T23:10:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/281 "2011-08-16T21:53:16Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’ve read this several times and can’t understand it. I’m _guessing_ that it means since the poor can’t afford to have children, they will have fewer children, and if that’s a correct interpretation, the statement is clearly incorrect, since there are lots of poor Americans having children they can’t afford, even with abortion being legal. No, it means that when you’re poor, getting pregnant will mean you have another mouth to feed, you are far less likely to fall pregnant than you would be sans abortion, and far less likely to fall pregnant than is another woman who is higher up on the income bracket than you are. (I mean, unless you want to take the decidedly conservative\* stance and argue that poor people just love to pop out babies.) > [@](#): > > Well, increased poverty, increased unemployment, increased crime. Cities sliding into (or more rapidly sliding into) poverty and decay. Of course, that’s actually secondary to my default view that the government has no business regulating how many children a citizen should have - abortion exists and is a safe procedure. I can see no justification for denying access to it. I can vaguely imagine a legal restraint on someone who’s had _too many_ children, more than they could possibly care for, but regulating abortion? I don’t see the value. The first is definitely false, and I’ve constantly asked you for a cite for this to no avail. If banning abortion would increase poverty, then you should have seen a subsequent, attributable decrease in the poverty rate in the U.S. when abortion was made widely legal. But you don’t. As to the second, I’m guessing you’re operating under the assumption that the number of jobs are fixed, and that adding more people into the labor market will mean that more people go unemployed. But this is ignores two key points. What about the value added through raising a child (i.e., companies adding workers to keep up with the increased demand for their services related to raising a child) or the job sectors which grow as the population grows (such as the housing market)? The third is questionable and there’s a big debate on it. And the fourth, quite frankly, is baseless fearmongering and made without any kind of supporting evidence. It is, simply put, ridiculous. > [@](#): > > What’s the value of chancing it? You’re dismissing a concern of post-ban problems for what post-ban benefits? Moral satisfaction? A possible reduction in STDs? I don’t get it. Again I ask you, what problems? Listen. If you’re going to keep harping on about these problems, at the very least state what these problems are and some kind of evidence showing they are likely to happen. All you ever do is keep going on about all these problems that are likely to occur and you expect people to accept that they’re likely to occur simply because you say so. That’s not going to work, especially since I can point directly to evidence in many cases which contradicts your assertions. …And less people who get killed under the guise of choice. > [@](#): > > I dunno, vaccines “solved” polio and they’ve solved numerous other disease-related problems. We _could_ have controlled measles by closing all the schools and playgrounds and raised children in isolation from each other, but this would be an overkill “solution” while a vaccine is much simpler. Frankly, I’m baffled and troubled by morality-based resistance to HPV vaccinations, and I expect similar resistance will pop up if someone suggested giving 12 year-olds a hypothetical anti-gonorrhea shot, even if it meant eventually reducing gonorrhea cases in the U.S. to, say, mumps levels (~6000-7000 per year, about 1% of gonorrhea totals). The vaccine connection is direct and obvious, the abortion connection rather less so. That’s great-- especially about the morality based opposition to HPV vaccinations [/sarcasm]-- but it doesn’t much address the underlying issue, as I said. > [@](#): > > And I can understand that, but I don’t see how that entitles questionable statistics, questionable hypotheses and questionable conclusions in pursuit of questionable goals. Which one of my statistics or hypotheses is questionable? I actually take care to look things up. You, on the other hand, as you have a knack for doing, make claims and them provide no kind of evidence of your claims. That I don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/282 "2011-08-16T22:03:01Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Wait, _after_ Roe? Yes, after Roe. Did you expect them to peak _before_ it? > [@](#): > > So of gonorrhea cases (which occur at a lower rate than pre-_Roe_ times), 25% are attributable to abortion access? This is more-or-less the argument, right? I know gonorrhea alone doesn’t comprise all STDs, but it’s being used as an indicator, right? Ah ha! I found a [better](http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats07/trends.pdf) graph for gonorrhea rates. But yes, that is the argument. Look at how the rates of gonorrhea sky rocketed between the late 1960’s and mid 1970’s. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/283 "2011-08-16T22:30:35Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > No, it means that when you’re poor, getting pregnant will mean you have another mouth to feed, you are far less likely to fall pregnant than you would be sans abortion, and far less likely to fall pregnant than is another woman who is higher up on the income bracket than you are. I’m sorry, if that’s your claim, I would need some solid supporting evidence because on its face it sounds absurd. > [@](#): > > (I mean, unless you want to take the decidedly conservative\* stance and argue that poor people just love to pop out babies.) No, but rather that poor people love to have sex (as do middle-class and rich people, generally) and by banning abortion, you’d be removing a major remedy against unwanted children. The middle-class and wealthy will still have access to the remedy (since they can travel to venues where abortion is less restricted), but the poor will disproportionately not. Further, the cause-and-effect you’re hoping for is wildly optimistic - the deterrence value of prison has not eliminated crime, nor (by any likely mechanism I can see) will the deterrence value of an unwanted child eliminate recreational sex, and even if it could, is it really worthwhile to try to eliminate recreational sex? But let’s assume the deterrence will work on at least some people, who will step up their use of contraceptives and otherwise take reasonable precautions to keep recreational sex from turning into (unwanted) procreational sex. Contraceptives have well-established failure rates. The deterrence then becomes a punishment for the unlucky, a Russian-roulette system of justice that will randomly force the considerable burden of an unwanted pregnancy and unwanted child on, say, one percent of American women, when a well-established, safe and effective remedy exists but is arbitrarily denied. If individual determination means anything, and it is a frequent rallying cry among conservatives, I’d have thought it included the right of an individual to tell government to keep out of things that are none of its business, and especially not to impose a religion-based value the individual does not share. > [@](#): > > The first is definitely false, and I’ve constantly asked you for a cite for this to no avail. If banning abortion would increase poverty, then you should have seen a subsequent, attributable decrease in the poverty rate in the U.S. when abortion was made widely legal. But you don’t. We don’t? Standards of living haven’t improved since 1973? If not, there are numerous causes, including the disappearance of blue-collar jobs and such, so I’d be curious how much of this could be attributed to abortion. I don’t see how banning abortion could possibly _help_ matters (though I remain open to a good argument demonstrating otherwise), and I can’t see how upward-mobility, in which some percentage of the the poor improves their lot and moves into the middle class, wouldn’t be negatively affected by lack of access to abortion. Girls who might have gone on to college won’t be able to, or at least not as early, if they are unlucky enough to get pregnant in high school, assuming they finish high school at all. > [@](#): > > As to the second, I’m guessing you’re operating under the assumption that the number of jobs are fixed, and that adding more people into the labor market will mean that more people go unemployed. But this is ignores two key points. What about the value added through raising a child (i.e., companies adding workers to keep up with the increased demand for their services related to raising a child) or the job sectors which grow as the population grows (such as the housing market)? The third is questionable and there’s a big debate on it. And the fourth, quite frankly, is baseless fearmongering and made without any kind of supporting evidence. It is, simply put, ridiculous. Okay, what about the value added? Will an increase in the numbers of babies in poor neighborhood stimulate the diaper industry? The children’s clothing industry? Is that worth the loss in productivity of a young woman removing herself from the job market to care for a child she didn’t want? In any case, restricting her individual choice for some vague economic benefit strikes me as unjustified. If the U.S. needs extra babies that badly, let them offer payments to young women to encourage them to reproduce, rather than force them into it. And, no, I wasn’t of the opinion that the number of jobs are fixed. That kind of thinking feeds fear of immigrants, not babies. > [@](#): > > Again I ask you, what problems? Listen. If you’re going to keep harping on about these problems, at the very least state what these problems are and some kind of evidence showing they are likely to happen. I have stated what the problems are and I have given my arguments. > [@](#): > > All you ever do is keep going on about all these problems that are likely to occur and you expect people to accept that they’re likely to occur simply because you say so. I’ve describe the likely mechanism through which the problems can occur. If someone disagrees with my ideas, let them. > [@](#): > > That’s not going to work, especially since I can point directly to evidence in many cases which contradicts your assertions. I’m not sure that you can, and I don’t think you have, frankly. Your counter-evidence strikes me as more wishful thinking than anything else - “if we pass a law, people will be forced to be moral” - more or less. > [@](#): > > …And less people who get killed under the guise of choice. So how may abortion-related deaths are there per year in the U.S.? Can we reasonably expect this rather small number to go up or down after abortion is banned? > [@](#): > > That’s great-- especially about the morality based opposition to HPV vaccinations [/sarcasm]-- but it doesn’t much address the underlying issue, as I said. I don’t know why this would generate sarcasm. HPV _is_ a sexually transmitted disease for which a vaccine exists and there _have_ been (to my mind) cases of unreasonable resistance on tenuous moral grounds. I don’t expect these cases are all that common, or at least I hope not. > [@](#): > > Which one of my statistics or hypotheses is questionable? I actually take care to look things up. You, on the other hand, as you have a knack for doing, make claims and them provide no kind of evidence of your claims. That I don’t understand. Well, I have to step out for a bit so a more detailed summary will have to come later, but my overall view of your cites and claims is that they contain a lot of unsupported conclusions, a lot of disregarded evidence and a lot of wishful thinking, mingled in with the implied axiom that sex is evil. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2011, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/284 "2011-08-16T22:40:24Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > … is it really worthwhile to try to eliminate recreational sex?.. Just to be perfectly clear, no. Definitely “no”. ---
**Author:** ![curlcoat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea5d25/32.png) [@curlcoat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curlcoat)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/285 "2011-08-17T00:05:39Z")
OMG **OMG** , you’ve been busy! I’ll be cutting this down to only those things that seem to have anything at all to do with the subject, as well as cutting out those things that for some strange reason have no reference to the original posts… :dubious: > [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > Funny (hah!). You seemed to laugh at one just a few hours ago. Actually, you seem to laugh at them in general. You don’t understand the difference between “many” and “any”? > [@](#): > > That… is such a BS statement. For your sake, I hope you’re not a woman. It is precisely because I am a woman that I understand what happens if a woman cuts sex off from her man. > [@](#): > > Nope 🙂 Then you shouldn’t be giving her relationship advice, hmm? > [@](#): > > How, on Earth, is that dodging and weaving? If anyone is dodging and weaving, it would be you, as you didn’t even attempt to provide a valid response to what I typed. That you understood anyway. > [@](#): > > Honestly. If you’re not going to read, then do me a favor and stop responding. Heh. Funny one from you. > [@](#): > > Hmmm, really? Yes. That is me telling you what sort of cite I consider valid. Now, if you assumed that your cites didn’t measure up to that I’d say you have an issue with your cites, not me. > [@](#): > > It’s called “using a search engine”. Yes, Google is a search engine. And if I had any reference points on the first two PDFs, I might take the time to search them for their backgrounds. OTOH, since you seem to prefer to “cite” using things that cannot be easily followed up on, I don’t think I’d bother spending the time looking for whatever you are hiding. > [@](#): > > You see, if she’s the only one who is going to be affected physically, then she has an increased vested interest relative to the man to not become pregnant if she doesn’t want to. After all, it’s her body, right? Of course, your thinking causes this to be untrue, because she doesn’t have to be a mother when she chooses not to be, while a man has to be whatever the woman decides for him to be. In this case, the burden of preventing pregnancy falls almost squarely on him, as he has no recourse of action once she does fall pregnant, whereas a woman can simply waltz into an abortion clinic the same day (_points to NYC_) and solve all her problems. OK, lets carry this responsibility stretching thing of yours further then. Man, prior to having sex with woman, tells her that he never wants to have children. Woman smiles sweetly and says oh that’s ok, I’m on the pill!, so he doesn’t use a condom. She lied, she gets pregnant, she hits him with child support. Man should have taken some responsibility there, eh? > [@](#): > > Which was an outright lie, as no such thing was assumed. The authors analyze the rates of STD’s in early legalizing states versus states which had their abortion laws changed by Roe v. Wade to test the hypothesis that legalized abortion abortion caused a change in sexual behavior. If that hypothesis is true, you should see states which liberalized their abortion laws early have divergent STD rates from those states which did not change their abortion laws, and a convergence later once Roe v. Wade rolled around. I was going to ignore all of this repetitive stupid but I’ll address this one. IF you are summarizing that study in good faith, then you have just shot yourself in the foot. Any study that looks at only one or two factors for something that can be affected by multiple things is, at the very least, flawed. So, if all they looked at was “when was abortion legalized” and “rate of STDs”, they missed a world of factors that would affect the latter. Such as just because abortion was legal doesn’t mean it was available. > [@](#): > > Quite possibly because-- and this is a total guess-- it’s irrelevant since they don’t care about what percentage of STD’s were contracted using a condom or the pill? 😕 You are honestly saying that you are not aware that condom use severely reduces the likelihood that one will contract a STD? If so, it’s no wonder you can’t see the flaws in this study. > [@](#): > > Quite possibly because-- and this is a total guess-- it’s irrelevant for similar reasons stated above. Only if the authors were trying to prove that abortion availability leads to STDs. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/286 "2011-08-17T06:53:38Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’m sorry, if that’s your claim, I would need some solid supporting evidence because on its face it sounds absurd. I’m actually not so sure why you think it sounds absurd. It actually makes sense when you think about it. The less options you have either prevent or deal with an unwanted pregnancy when you cannot afford to do so, the less likely you are to get pregnant. But regardless, [here](http://forum-network.org/lecture/abortion-and-economics-fertility) is something for you to watch. Of course, I’m sure you don’t want to watch a 50 minute video, you can skip to 32:35 to 37:45. If you don’t want to watch five minutes I’ll summarize for you. When abortion is legal, the number of unwanted births go down but the number of pregnancies go up. At this point, that really should be no surprise since I’ve posted about four or five different studies which corroborate this. As far as the poor go, in 1980 Harris v. McRae came along, which upheld the constitutionality of congressional restrictions on abortion funding. In other words, the Federal government effectively stopped funding abortions for poor women, though states themselves could still pick up the tab for said abortions if they wanted. In the states where no Federal funds went towards abortion, and the state did not pick up the tab, the overall abortion rate fell but the birth rate did not increase, signaling an offsetting decrease in pregnancies. In other words, when abortion was made more difficult and poor women no longer had their abortions subsidized, effectively putting them out of reach, said women changed their sexual behaviors and became pregnant less often than they otherwise would have. > [@](#): > > This paper considers whether state Medicaid abortion funding restrictions affect the likelihood of getting pregnant, having an abortion, and bearing a child. Aggregate, state-level data and microdata from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are applied in the empirical work. Changes in laws resulting from Supreme Court decisions create a natural experiment which is utilized to examine fertility behavior. Multivariate models controlling for state and, in the NLSY, personal characteristics are also estimated using alternative fixed effect specifications. We find that Medicaid funding restrictions are associated with a reduction in both the number of abortions and pregnancies, resulting in either no change or a reduction in births. [Link #1](http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5066.html) > [@](#): > > As of January 1997, 34 states were enforcing restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortions. Determining whether these restrictions affect women’s reproductive decisions was the object of a fixed-effects log-linear analysis using 11 years of data between 1978 and 1992. Results indicate that abortion rates in states with Medicaid funding restrictions are 2% lower than rates in states with no such restrictions. However, when the supply of abortion providers and the demographic characteristics of the state population are taken into account, the difference is no longer statistically significant. Medicaid funding restrictions have no impact on birthrates, and the result is the same regardless of whether the empirical model takes into account provider availability, demographic characteristics and state sentiment toward women and reproductive rights. [Link #2](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9323500) Imagine that. > [@](#): > > No, but rather that poor people love to have sex (as do middle-class and rich people, generally) and by banning abortion, you’d be removing a major remedy against unwanted children. The middle-class and wealthy will still have access to the remedy (since they can travel to venues where abortion is less restricted), but the poor will disproportionately not. You know the biggest “remedy” against unwanted children? Not having an unwanted pregnancy to deal with. (But that’s misogynist or something to that effect.) > [@](#): > > Further, the cause-and-effect you’re hoping for is wildly optimistic - the deterrence value of prison has not eliminated crime, nor (by any likely mechanism I can see) will the deterrence value of an unwanted child eliminate recreational sex, and even if it could, is it really worthwhile to try to eliminate recreational sex? First of all, it’s not being “wildly optimistic”. It’s called observing the data regarding what happens in real life, though I find that you’d rather constrain your arguments to some fantasy world. Second of all, why do you continue to engage in straw men? You’re going to be hard pressed to find where I said anything about eliminating recreational sex. You do this a lot, and I think you do it because you do not have an actual rebuttal to the things I type out. > [@](#): > > But let’s assume the deterrence will work on at least some people, who will step up their use of contraceptives and otherwise take reasonable precautions to keep recreational sex from turning into (unwanted) procreational sex. Contraceptives have well-established failure rates. The deterrence then becomes a punishment for the unlucky, a Russian-roulette system of justice that will randomly force the considerable burden of an unwanted pregnancy and unwanted child on, say, one percent of American women, when a well-established, safe and effective remedy exists but is arbitrarily denied. I’m sorry, but what am I trying to deter again? > [@](#): > > If individual determination means anything, and it is a frequent rallying cry among conservatives, I’d have thought it included the right of an individual to tell government to keep out of things that are none of its business, and especially not to impose a religion-based value the individual does not share. First of all, thus far, you’re the **only** one who has mentioned religion. Second of all, individual determination is a meaningless phrase. I can’t run outside, rob someone and then claim I have some right to self-determination. As it is, I’m curious as to how you decide what is and isn’t the government’s business. > [@](#): > > We don’t? Standards of living haven’t improved since 1973? If not, there are numerous causes, including the disappearance of blue-collar jobs and such, so I’d be curious how much of this could be attributed to abortion. I don’t see how banning abortion could possibly _help_ matters (though I remain open to a good argument demonstrating otherwise), and I can’t see how upward-mobility, in which some percentage of the the poor improves their lot and moves into the middle class, wouldn’t be negatively affected by lack of access to abortion. Girls who might have gone on to college won’t be able to, or at least not as early, if they are unlucky enough to get pregnant in high school, assuming they finish high school at all. I do hope you realize you can have a high standard of living while also having a high, comparatively speaking, poverty rate, correct? Why don’t you try again? Or, better yet, why don’t you-- for once-- actually go out and try to find a source for your claim? Not that I haven’t pointed this out before, but I’ve noticed that you tend to make claims, yet never provide any kind of backing to your claims, even if I ask you to do so time and time again. > [@](#): > > Okay, what about the value added? Will an increase in the numbers of babies in poor neighborhood stimulate the diaper industry? The children’s clothing industry? Is that worth the loss in productivity of a young woman removing herself from the job market to care for a child she didn’t want? No idea. Of course, I wasn’t the one who made an unsupportable claim (that banning abortion will result in more unemployment) and then refused to answer the question posed to him _wink wink, nudge nudge_. > [@](#): > > I have stated what the problems are and I have given my arguments. I know for a fact I’ve pointed this out to you before, and I guess I’ll do it again. You’re not making any arguments. In fact, all you’re doing is making a bunch of assertions that either (1) lack any requisite evidence (I think I may have seen you post one source ever for any of your claims when I’ve asked) or (2) simply contradict empirical evidence. Just imagine if I tried arguing as you do. That is, I make a claim, refuse to provide any evidence of my claim and then continue to assert the same thing over and over again even when someone posts evidence which contradicts my claims. I’d literally be swamped by at least ten posters calling me all sorts of names or by posters taking a jab at conservatives, in general. > [@](#): > > I’m not sure that you can, and I don’t think you have, frankly. “If you ban abortion, foster care/adoption agencies will become crowded with hundreds of thousands of unwanted children!” > [@](#): > > Your counter-evidence strikes me as more wishful thinking than anything else - “if we pass a law, people will be forced to be moral” - more or less. What you call wishful thinking I call fact-based assertions. What do you have against reality? > [@](#): > > I don’t know why this would generate sarcasm. HPV _is_ a sexually transmitted disease for which a vaccine exists and there _have_ been (to my mind) cases of unreasonable resistance on tenuous moral grounds. I don’t expect these cases are all that common, or at least I hope not. Because people being opposed to the HPV shot has nothing to do with anything I’ve typed out thus far, or probably will type out in the near future. > [@](#): > > Well, I have to step out for a bit so a more detailed summary will have to come later, but my overall view of your cites and claims is that they contain a lot of unsupported conclusions, a lot of disregarded evidence and a lot of wishful thinking, mingled in with the implied axiom that sex is evil. …Yeah. Good luck with that, because you’re going to need it. I won’t be holding my breath, though. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2011, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780/287 "2011-08-17T12:01:55Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > When abortion is legal, the number of unwanted births go down but the number of pregnancies go up. At this point, that really should be no surprise since I’ve posted about four or five different studies which corroborate this. I accept your cites as 100% true. I just don’t see any reason to particularly care what the number of abortions are. > [@](#): > > You know the biggest “remedy” against unwanted children? Not having an unwanted pregnancy to deal with. > > (But that’s misogynist or something to that effect.) Maybe, but it’s more accurately described as magical thinking. Unwanted pregnancies have always occurred throughout human history. They’re not going to go away with the passing of a law, or even the passing of a law and vigorous (even totalitarian) enforcement of that law. Your statement is comparable to: “You know the biggest ‘remedy’ against crime? Not breaking the law.” “You know the biggest ‘remedy’ against disease? Not getting sick.” “You know the biggest ‘remedy’ against juvenile delinquency? Not letting juveniles be delinquent.” You’ve invited other posters in this thread to face reality. Now I extend that invitation to you. > [@](#): > > First of all, it’s not being “wildly optimistic”. It’s called observing the data regarding what happens in real life, though I find that you’d rather constrain your arguments to some fantasy world. Well, your argument seems to be, more or less, “restrict abortion and the number of unwanted pregnancies goes down, though the number of unwanted children goes up - legalize abortion and the number of unwanted pregnancies goes up, but the number of unwanted children goes down.” The “wildly optimistic” part is admitting that (_your_ number) this will lead to 400,000 more unwanted children and not recognizing the likely resulting problems. > [@](#): > > Second of all, why do you continue to engage in straw men? You’re going to be hard pressed to find where I said anything about eliminating recreational sex. You do this a lot, and I think you do it because you do not have an actual rebuttal to the things I type out. I went with “eliminate recreational sex” because I can’t otherwise figure out _what_ your goal is. What do you think “Not having an unwanted pregnancy to deal with” actually entails? A woman should have recreational sex with contraceptives, which have an established failure rate? A woman shouldn’t have recreational sex at all? Even if every American woman of childbearing years (say… 50 million of them?) diligently and perfectly used two contraceptive methods - say condoms _and_ the Pill, and generously assuming 99%/year reliability for both - that’s 5,000 unwanted pregnancies to women who were being, by any reasonable standard, responsible. And denying this segment of the population access to safe abortion for the crime of being unlucky accomplishes… what, exactly? I remain unclear on your goals. I _get_ that to you abortion is evil, but the desire to turn this into legislation baffles me. In hindsight, I guess one could say to the 5,000: “Well, you shouldn’t have had sex at all, if you weren’t prepared for the consequences - and now you have to take responsibility,” but it doesn’t strike me as useful, nor is it a strawman interpretation of your stance - I’ve seen you say variations on this theme multiple times. What else can I conclude but you want people to suffer because they had sex? > [@](#): > > First of all, thus far, you’re the **only** one who has mentioned religion. Well, if your opposition to abortion is wholly non-religious… good for you. Feel free to explain your reasoning sometime. > [@](#): > > Second of all, individual determination is a meaningless phrase. I can’t run outside, rob someone and then claim I have some right to self-determination. As it is, I’m curious as to how you decide what is and isn’t the government’s business. I’ve see you use this argument before and it didn’t hold water then, either, trying to make some tenuous analogy between controlling what happens to your own body to the freedom to rob, rape and kill others. If you get pregnant, I’ll defend your right to choose whether or not to continue that pregnancy, but if you want to go stick up a liquor store, you’re on your own. This does not strike me an unreasonable line of demarcation. > [@](#): > > I do hope you realize you can have a high standard of living while also having a high, comparatively speaking, poverty rate, correct? Yes, some parts of the U.S. are extremely wealthy and some parts are barely more than third-world slums. I figure banning abortion aggravates that disparity, in addition to being an intrusion into civil rights. > [@](#): > > No idea. Of course, I wasn’t the one who made an unsupportable claim (that banning abortion will result in more unemployment) and then refused to answer the question posed to him _wink wink, nudge nudge_. You’ve cited Guttmacher a few times so I guess you accept it as an authority, right? Well: > [@Guttmacher](#): > > The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependent. [Source](http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html), emphasis added. So if we are to take these women at their world, a significant number of them fear that an unwanted child will interfere with their employment. Further: > [@same source](#): > > Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children). So a lot of abortions are being performed on women who are poor. If those abortions are denied, is it not obvious that these women will find it harder to escape poverty? Are children raised in poverty more likely or less likely to be unemployed as adults? These are not random ideas I’m just making up. > [@](#): > > I know for a fact I’ve pointed this out to you before, and I guess I’ll do it again. You’re not making any arguments. In fact, all you’re doing is making a bunch of assertions that either (1) lack any requisite evidence (I think I may have seen you post one source ever for any of your claims when I’ve asked) or (2) simply contradict empirical evidence. Oh, I’m not seeing the contradictions you claim. And I cheerfully admit the dire consequences I’m predicting are the hypothetical (though likely) outcomes should the U.S. nationally ban abortion. People will continue having sex for fun, and women will continue to get inconveniently pregnant. This is hardly the stuff of fairies and unicorns. > [@](#): > > Just imagine if I tried arguing as you do. Seriously? I would love that. I’d like your whole _country_ to reason the way I do. I honestly think you’d be better off. > [@](#): > > That is, I make a claim, refuse to provide any evidence of my claim and then continue to assert the same thing over and over again even when someone posts evidence which contradicts my claims. I’d literally be swamped by at least ten posters calling me all sorts of names or by posters taking a jab at conservatives, in general. Isn’t that happening already? Isn’t the frequent complaint from SDMB conservatives that they get swamped by name-callers and jabbers and whatnot? What exactly do you think would change? Incidentally, I don’t think your description of my arguing style is accurate, but no matter. If you think you have a valid hypothesis, give it a try sometime. Emulate what you claim is my arguing style (though with a conservative basis) and see if the amount of name-calling and jabbing increases, decreases, or stays about the same. For what it’s worth, I’ve never noticed any particular quantity of name-calling and jabbing directed my way, even from SDMB members I disagree with. That is to say, I’ve gotten into arguments with individuals here and there (to me, the more memorable such arguments aren’t over some liberal/conservative wedge, but science vs. woo), but I don’t recall choruses of people jumping in to take unprovoked shots at me. I’d be amused if they tried. > [@](#): > > “If you ban abortion, foster care/adoption agencies will become crowded with hundreds of thousands of unwanted children!” And this strikes you as implausible? To each his own, I guess. > [@](#): > > What you call wishful thinking I call fact-based assertions. I know you do, and that’s why we disagree. I’m confident that my position is better-reasoned than yours and more cognizant of reality. > [@](#): > > Because people being opposed to the HPV shot has nothing to do with anything I’ve typed out thus far, or probably will type out in the near future. You’re not opposed to HPV vaccinations? Good. Please pass that on to all the conservatives you know. I’m mildly curious why Rick Perry felt compelled to apologize for his 2007 pro-HPV-vaccination actions just the other day. Was that directed to the religious crowd or the anti-vax crowd? Or both? If you end up voting for him eventually, please keep this in mind. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-sir-yes-you-are-a-partisan-asshole/591780.md?page=14)