So, I take it then that sexual behavior amongst conservatives is very different than amongst me and mine. Maybe six months between first date and first base. While we dirty fucking hippies are up to our eyeballs in sweet, sweet nookie, you guys spend your time discussing trade balances and Federalist theory.
Good. Serves you right.
Because, generally speaking, that’s what abortion supporters rely on to make their case, since there are quite a few (many, actually) women who would flatly tell you that they feel no remorse over their abortion, don’t regret it and pretty much didn’t bat an eyelash. In fact, as Guttmacher points out, “after an abortion, women frequently report feeling relief and happiness”. Of course, that doesn’t fit into the whole rhetoric so…
I was being facetious on the lying bit. Anyway, ignoring the fact that legalized abortion mitigates contraceptive use, just look at data from Guttmacher. Right off the bat, approximately 46.3% of women who have abortion use no contraceptive method whatsoever. Of the remaining women who were using contraceptives when they became pregnant, 13.6% of them were using the pill, 27.6% of them were using the male condom and 7.3% of them were using the withdrawal method (those are the three most popular methods).
Of course, it’s important to note that 53.7% of women who obtain abortion don’t become pregnant despite using contraceptives. In fact, a large portion of that 53.7% weren’t using contraceptives at the time they became pregnant. For example, for pill users 75.9% reported inconsistent use at the time they got pregnant:
-45.1% simply forgot to take pills
-15.9% were away from home and didn’t have pills, though they had sex anyway
-10.3% ran out of supplies
-7.7% were sick
-2.1% didn’t think they would have sex again, but they did
-1.6% didn’t feel like taking pills
-0.3% reported their partner didn’t want them to take any pill
-0.2% thought they might have wanted to get pregnant
-3.6% report some other, undisclosed reason
For condom users 49.3% reported inconsistent use at the time they got pregnant:
-20.4% didn’t use because they didn’t think they’d get pregnant
-14.3% didn’t have one but had sex anyway
-12.8% didn’t expect to have sex, though that didn’t stop them
-7.1% simply forgot about it
-5.6% didn’t feel like using one
-3.5% reported their partner didn’t feel like using one
-1.0% reported that their partner was supposed to bring one, though they still had sex
-1.0% said their partner wanted me to get pregnant
-0.5% were forced to have sex
-0.5% thought they wanted to get pregnant
-0.5% didn’t care if they got pregnant
Now even granting you the 45.1% of women forgetting to take the pill (we’ll chalk that up to simple human error) and the 7.7% who was sick (as sometimes taking other medicine can interfere with the pill), I think it’s safe to say that approximately 22.9% of pill users and 46.8% of condom users weren’t exactly using the aforementioned methods as their primary form of contraception, since they weren’t using them at the time they got pregnant. If you add them to the other 46.3% of women who obtain an abortion when they weren’t using any type of contraceptives at all, you’d find that to add up to over half of all abortion cases.
Good luck explaining that.
You’re going to be hard pressed to argue this. Consider this. The repeat abortion rate has gone from about 15% in 1975 or so to 48% today. Further broken down, you’d find that approximately 29% of women who obtain abortions for that year are getting their second one, 12% are getting their third one and 7% are getting their fourth or higher one. How do you explain that as anything other than woman using abortion as a form of birth control? Let’s be frank; exactly how serious do you think women are treating abortion when they have two, three, four , five-- sometimes even fifteen abortions (because they’re an abortion addict)-- in their lifetimes? How exactly are women treating abortion as a difficult decision, when the majority of women to have abortions weren’t even using contraceptives to prevent themselves from having to make that decision in the first place? If having an abortion is such a hard decision, then why is a woman less apt to try to prevent a situation when she might need an abortion from occurring the more accessible an abortion is for her? You don’t see the disconnect there?
Indeed it is. High rates of repeat abortions and most women obtaining an abortion when they weren’t using any contraceptives at the time gives a lot of credence to my assertion.
If you do nothing to protect your teeth, one could indeed infer that.
I do, but then you typically construct a straw man.
Sure I care, but that’s not what’s being discussed here.
…And speaking of straw men…
Those are your words, not mine. I’m just pointing out that legalized abortion is met with a change in behavior, that change being that:
(1) Women are more likely to engage in “risky” sex (which leads to higher STD and pregnancy rates) and
(2) Women are less apt to use contraceptives, instead relying on abortion, than they otherwise would be in the absence of legal abortion.
You don’t have to like it, and you can set up as many straw men as you like, but facts are facts and they’re not going to go away no matter how much you dislike them.
Well, actually, has it been firmly established that STD and pregnancy rates (I assume you mean out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but invite clarification if you don’t) are significantly higher in the U.S. now than in pre-Roe times, because of abortion?
But assuming they are… well, that’s just a nuisance price of freedom, I figure. Similarly, the women who rely on abortion. Does it really matter if a thousand American women a year get an abortion, or ten thousand, or a million? Their “reliance” on abortion doesn’t strike as significantly different from their “reliance” on other aspects of modern medicine. I’d like there to be regulation to ensure the process is safe, but beyond that, I don’t much care how common the practice is, nor do I get why anyone should care, unless they were debating the financial cost or something.
And those are indeed my words - I’m describing my views of the situation and I’ve invited you several times to describe your own. I don’t know what facts I’m allegedly disliking, here. Some women engage in risky sexual behaviour, they’re less apt to use contraceptives, they get unintentionally pregnant more often… Even if true, so? Banning abortion (or trying to regulate it to weed out the women who, I guess, are “abusing” the right) is, I figure, not a good solution to the alleged problems and I’m prepared to explain why I believe so, though this may not be the thread to do it, and it would just be a retread of numerous past abortion threads anyway.
I glossed over that, and I can tell you that you missed the point, which was merely to show that, in this instance, Starving Artist in correct in saying that liberal policies have led to higher STD rates and even a change in sexual behavior for the worse (though perhaps not middle schoolers giving others blow jobs in school level).
No, I don’t think I missed his point - I just don’t agee that a loosening of sexual mores (assuming this has happened, and to the extent to which he describes) is a bad thing. If there are indeed negative consequences like increased STD rates, deal with them like you do other modern problems, and hopefully not by wistful nostalgia for times past. Heck, we’ve got lots pf problems that didn’t exist or weren’t significant 30 years ago. Similarly, many things that were problems 30 years ago have faded away. That’s life.
None of that is what I was responding to. You seemed to be saying that women go around thinking that instead of buying cheap contraceptives (or getting them free or insisting the man take some responsibility) they instead decide that paying hundreds of dollars for an invasive procedure, that they may not be able to get locally, is a better idea.
And many women have major trouble getting their partner to use one. You are aware that there are a decent number of women out there that let men walk all over them, right?
So - women don’t use condoms. Yes, they can go buy them but after that everything is essentially out of their control.
Just as you saying something doesn’t make it true. If nothing else, I seriously doubt that many people “weigh the costs of having an abortion to the costs of having a child”.
Honey, I’m a conservative in most areas and I am here to tell you that this particularly bias is full of shit. As abortions because less easier to get, the birth rate goes up. And no I’m not going to bother with a cite because if nothing else its simple logic - if a women becomes pregnant, which can happen no matter how much birth control she uses or how much she restrains “herself” (hahahahahahaha!!!), if she cannot abort, there is going to be another birth. There are going to be even more underage mothers, even more drug addicted babies, even more kids in foster care because folks like you want to force every pregnancy to term and cannot see the realities of birth control/rape/incest/abuse/prostitution/TV’s movie of the week.
On this board, I seriously doubt anyone actually ignored your cites. More likely they viewed them either as biased or incomplete. And told you so. Or perhaps after having done that over and over and over, etc they did ignore you.
So, it is only the woman at fault when she gets pregnant?
As I’ve told you before, I don’t answer posters that cannot be bothered to keep enough of the discussion in their responses that I can keep track of what is being said.
What you need to find is a cite from an unbiased, respected source, that takes into account all factors, not just the one(s) you are currently pushing. For example, your “cite” assumes that a rise in STDs must be because abortion is available, which is just stupid. Most of the birth control methods do not keep one from getting STDs, so it’s a lack of condom use not “let’s take a chance on getting pregnant” that is causing the rise if any of STDs.
Indeed they do. I’m going to let you in a little secret here; humans aren’t exactly logical in their thought patterns all the time. It’s not an issue of contraception vs. abortion, but rather contraception/abortion vs. having a kid. As it is, you don’t have much of an argument at all or even a leg to stand on, simply because you’re arguing against a pretty well established fact and empirical evidence which shows that women use contraceptive less and engage in risky sexual behavior more often than they would if legal abortion is unavailable or out of their reach. Quoting the second link:
Again I point out to you that just because you don’t like something does not mean it’s untrue. I can give you three or four separate studies on this which all come to the same conclusion.
3.5%.
I’m not sure whether to either laugh or cry. I didn’t know that a woman was obligated to have sex with a man. Seriously. What kind of ridiculous argument are you making? If a woman’s partner doesn’t want to use a condom or any form of protection, she can say ‘no’. To say everything outside of buying the condom is outside of her control is horseshit. She doesn’t have to let the guy stick it in (but that’s a novel idea, right?). She has total control over the situation. It takes two to tango.
You do realize that the majority of abortions are done precisely because the woman obtaining the abortion deems raising a child to be costlier than it is to have an abortion, correct? I find it hard to believe that someone could make the above assertion in any amount of good faith.
My God. Not only are you dumb, but you can’t read.
First of all, no one said anything about the birth rate. Birth rate, in fact, is irrelevant as it’s entirely possible the birth rate could actually go down by making abortion illegal, as there would be fewer pregnancies per 1,000 people due there being a decrease in the total number of pregnancies per year as women either forgo engaging in activities they would if abortion were legal or use contraceptives they otherwise would have ignored. Even though you’re content to ignore this, it’s worth repeating; a change in abortion’s legal status would be met by a change in people’s behavior. Second of all, women who do not have sex, unless they’re raped, capable of parthenogenesis or are the Virgin Mary, do not become pregnant. Third of all, f the best counterargument you can come up with is fearmongering (especially when it’s contradicted by actual empirical evidence), then you might as well not even bother to respond. It’s a waste of my time. You can waste your own time if you wish, though.
At any rate, you give conservatives a very bad name.
No, they flatly ignored it. People tried calling me out on my claims-- calling them false, stupid, ridiculous, asinine and whatever else came to mind-- but when I provided proof of my assertions, they conveniently disappeared. I can pull up a few examples of this if you so choose?
At any rate, there is nothing biased about the sites I gave you. In fact, you can’t even point out what’s biased about them. As it is, all you’ve done is just scream “Biased! Biased! Biased!” over and over again. What you mean to say is that you don’t agree with them, so you feel the need to dismiss them as biased even though you cannot point to any bias within either them or the authors.
Unilateral decision making power begets unilateral responsibility, don’t you think?
I gave you a cite-- two, actually-- from an unbiased source yet you threw them out. Apparently, unbiased to you means someone you agree with. Hell, you didn’t even attempt to argue against anything in the links I gave you. I don’t even think you read them.
But moving on, your post is precisely why you read things presented to you before responding. Otherwise, you make yourself look utterly foolish.
The site I gave you assumes no such thing. From the first link.
Any other contentions you want to make? Face it. The simple fact is that you have no response. I can’t engage in an honest debate with someone who refuses to engage in an honest debate.
Seems to me a lack of banking regulations has hurt the U.S. far worse than any conceivable lack of sexual regulations.
Just saying.
They very well might have. But it doesn’t matter, since that’s not what’s being discussed here.
Well, it touches on what I was discussing. Even if every single thing you’ve claimed (and, why not, what Starving Artist has claimed) about human sexuality and reproduction was 100% true…
… so what? Humans giving each other diseases and getting each other pregnant are things that have been goinjg on for a long long time. I’m hard-pressed to imagine it poses even a fraction of the threat to modern American society that you (and Starving Artist far more so) have implied (and preemptively, I ask you not to bother claiming that me claiming you’ve implied threats to society exist are a straman).
I have to admit, I don’t get why others are arguing these points with you. They could save a lot of time by just saying “for the sake of argument, assuming you’re right… what’s the big deal?” You’d have to establish some dangerous effect of sliding morality, for example, unchecked (or even significantly increased) crime. Increased infant mortality? Decreased life expectancy? I’ll gladly and cheerfully stipulate to any number of ethereal claims, like an American born into modern liberal society has an increased chance of growing up to be an immoral person, or eventually and forever burning in Hell, but as far as I can tell, the whole sexuality-needs-regulation argument is tackling trivial or nonexistent real-world problems. A rise in the rate of illegitimate births (even granting for the sake of argument that it is actually happening)… so?
I’m not even sufficiently grossed out by the idea of grade-school blowjobs (again, granting for the sake of argument that they actually occur) to demand additional laws to stop them, or a reshaping of public morality to discourage them, or whatever the conservative “solution” is or might be.
I don’t understand the effort others show to try to prove you wrong, when even if you’re right, it doesn’t really matter.
Yeah, self fail. This is why we should be able to edit after five minutes.
Ignore this. This is wrong, as I was thinking of the pregnancy rate for some reason 
However, birth rate is still irrelevant, since that’s not what I was talking about, but rather the raw number of pregnancies per year. Even if you get fewer pregnancies per year, you could still end up with a higher birth rate.
I think everyone can agree that high(er) STD rates are a bad thing. And so would grade schoolers giving each other blow jobs.
But is it a problem that needs regulation? Or just parents slapping their kids upside the head?
Yes, I was going to reply more-or-less as Bosstone has. Granting for the sake of argument that these things are occuring and that they are bad things, what’s the proposed solution?
Lower taxes?
Okay, I’ll admit, I laughed.
Presuming that the root problem is parents not teaching their children properly, obviously this is a result of the parents being overtaxed and therefore needing to work ridiculously long hours just to make ends meet. Lower taxes, folks increase their take-home pay, and they don’t need to work as hard, giving them time to teach little Billy that blowjobs are not okay.
What, no blowjobs?
None at ALL?
Go on, pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
OMG, your premise appears to be that liberals are guilty of corrupting the society at large, because they advocate a sexual freedom that leads to abortions and STDS. Suppose this were no longer true? The “morning after” pill, better preventative practices, education, etc, could largely erase those issues.
Still have a problem then? Put bluntly, is your problem that you consider promiscuous sexual behavior in and of itself to be immoral and corrupt?
This may be true of the terminally stupid, but to try to claim this is the default position for the majority? No.
Unbiased sources, who researched all the factors, or just the one you are trying to “prove”? If you provide these studies, will they be PDFs alone, or will they be linked to whoever funded the studies and/or whoever did them?
Hahahahahahaha.
Then, you are stupid. However, that has zero to do with what I said.
You really have no idea how many women live do you? Actually, it appears that you have no idea how most people live. We’ll just take one example of situation where a woman is going to lack control of the situation. Asshole husband who has been caught cheating but the wife cannot afford to divorce him. She wants him to wear a condom so she doesn’t catch any diseases he may have, he says no. She doesn’t service him, he may decide to abandon her. That’s just one situation. Men who are not allowed to “stick it in” don’t tend to, er, stick around.
No, I don’t realize that. For one thing it completely ignores the large number of women who never want to have children for any reason. It also ignores the women who don’t want that child because:
That’s just off the top of my head - there are MANY reasons why women get abortions that have nothing to do with the cost of raising a child. Hell, it seems to me that the cost of raising a child is one of the last thing women consider since so many have kids they cannot afford.
Do you really believe this shit? Honestly? Women should not have sex unless they want to get pregnant? Leaving aside how women might feel about this, do you really only want to have sex as often as it takes your wife to get pregnant a couple of times?
Fearmongering? Where?
Uh, yeah. Given recent events I’m not sure anything I do or say is going to make an impression. Besides, I said I was conservative in most areas so obviously I am going to have opinions that won’t go down well with someone who is a rigid conservative.
No thanks. I try not to read any of your screeds other than those directed at me because of the sheer volume if nothing else.
I wouldn’t know since there was no background given with those PDFs.
Well, for one thing, consistently posting something as “proof” of your argument in a way that it cannot be easily researched…
Well, that’s quite the exaggeration. What else are you exaggerating?
Nope!
Unilateral decision to have sex?
You say it but cannot or will not prove it. I see that you are ignoring the rest of the requirements for a cite to actually be considered proof - respected source, that takes into account all factors, not just the one(s) you are currently pushing.
Actually, I did, and you go on to address it below. :dubious:
I don’t waste time reading anything that starts out with serious logic flaws right off the bat, so apparently this was past the first page. Do you not have a problem with “As long as the use of these birth control methods does not systematically vary across states and over time,” or "…As discussed previously, data on the use of contraceptive pills are available only at the national level for most of the period studied. Since we use year fixed effects, it is not possible to net out the effect of possible changes in pill use. Presumably this is not troublesome since birth control pills were available nationally prior the period we examine in this paper. " or really any part of that quote? They are assuming the level of use of the pill because the data wasn’t available!
Uh huh.
Yeah, I know, but I appear to have (sort of) broken my left leg and am not supposed to be moving around much. I’m BORED! 
I see the Dr again tomorrow afternoon, so it may turn out that things will change.