9 ms·

And we see how this has worked out for abortion. The 0.10% case of either saving a woman's life or in cases of rape and incest as turned into the justification

And we see how this has worked out for abortion. The 0.10% case of either saving a woman's life or in cases of rape and incest as turned into the justification for aborting 189 babies for every 1000 live births -- or in the african american community 487 babies for every 1000 live births. Once you open the flood gates, you will have plenty who kill themselves who otherwise wouldn't with just a little bit of extra support.

thatfrenchguy 5y ago
And a lot better societal outcomes. Unwanted babies suck and end up having bad lives, negatively affecting their parents’ lives as well.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Too bad we can't ask unwanted babies if they would rather have been born into a bad life. This isn't directed at you, but I have had countless conversations about this very topic. The detriments are greatly overstated. I've found usually people are talking of these things outside looking in in an ideological vacuum, and not an experiential one. Let's take societal outcomes for african americans, as an example. What people don't realize is, when people speak of abortions in a vaccuum (and lets be frank -- it's usually white liberals who champion it the hardest), the elephant in the room is with african american women carry out the disproportionate volume of abortions, and the the overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood locations being located in poor and black neighborhoods. There is a large argument now that is catching on in many african american communities that maybe if we had the estimated 11 million more black babies born in this country, black representation would be much better off in all matters of the socioeconomic and political spheres, resulting in better lives overall for the general population. In 2015, in association with National Black Pro-Life Coalition, Protecting Black Life, and National Black Pro-Life Union met with CURE to deliver a congressional report detailing all of these facts, and making the strong case that the economic and societal impact of all the abortions in the black community is far greater. I encourage everyone to read it: https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/HHRG-115-JU10-Wstate-ParkerS-20171101-SD001.pdf https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/...
  - coliveira 5y ago
    If society wants more babies, the path is easy: provide financial help for couples and single mothers. The way it currently is, abortion is very attractive.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      Yep. Carlin had this right; it's not being pro-life, it's being pro-birth. From birth until they turn 18 and can join the military, fuck 'em.
      - coliveira 5y ago
        Exactly. People seem to forget why birthrates were so high in the past. It is not just lack of abortion (which happened), but the fact that more children would provide additional help in the daily farm work. In other words, it was very cheap ho have children and the financial benefit existed. In a post-industrial society, these incentives are reversed. It is very expensive to have children, and there are no financial incentives. That's why we have the declining birth rates everywhere we have an economically developed society.
    - draugadrotten 5y ago
      Financial help is not all it takes to stop abortions. There are welfare states such as scandinavian ones where the financial help for having children and/or being a single mother is very generous. A single mother with 6 children can receive financial aid to the equivalent of a senior software engineer salary without having to work at all. Source: https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lika--mycket-pengar-med--bidrag-jobbar-anda/ https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lik... Even with these levels of financial support, abortions are common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends
      - Nitrolo 5y ago
        I'd just like to point out that raising 6 kids is very much hard work, even if you're a bad parent I find it hard to describe it as no work at all.
ehnto 5y ago
There are other reasons people want to get abortions, such as knowing they can't provide for the child or give them a safe/stable household. Adoption is rare, and the foster system in most countries absolutely ruins kids. So those aren't good alternatives.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  This goes along with my thesis that if given the proper support, we would avoid the majority of them.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I'm not certain there is a level of foster care that could provide good outcomes. I think that's a bit of a pipedream. If your argument is instead that a shitty life is better than no life at all, I couldn't really disagree. But I think it's somewhat inhumane to bring a new life into the world knowing it will be suffering.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
      I think the main reason kids in foster care suffer is that the kids are already old and have been through a traumatic situation that caused them to have to be put into foster care. That trauma plus the transition can leave emotional scars. Another problem is the foster parents cannot fully take in the kid. The kid can be taken away from them by the government and given back to the kid's original parents. Putting a newborn up for adoption is different, it doesn't have either of those problems. There are 2 million families in the US waiting to adopt a newborn.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    We should provide free birth control and better sex education. Morning after contraception should also be free -- a fertilized, un-implanted egg is not a human -- it's a potential human.
    - Thorrez 5y ago
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Do you have citations for the numbers you provided? Thanks! (I’m genuinely asking because it never occurred to me that you can track the amount of a private medical procedures occurrence across states and stuff…)
- symlinkk 5y ago
  https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/pdfs/ss6907a1-H.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/pdfs/ss6907a1-H.pdf Although the numbers are a bit different here, maybe he’s referencing a newer data set. Still it’s shocking: > non-Hispanic Black women had the highest abortion rate (21.2 abortions per 1,000 women) and ratio (335 abortions per 1,000 live births)
  - dimitrios1 5y ago
    No sorry, it is my numbers that are outdated. I was referencing a 2015 congressional report. Abortion rates have been declining sharply over the past few years, so that's good news at least.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      Depends on why. If rates have been declining because people are more educated about birth control and family planning, that's good news indeed. If it's because of new restrictions on access to abortion, that's not fixing the problem at all.
pstuart 5y ago
> kill themselves Many would disagree with that characterization.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  potato potatoe -- it's ending a life.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    At week 4 the embryo is the size of a poppy seed. It's technically alive, but it's not an actualized being. Your concern may be genuine but it is misplaced.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Unless you're vegan, you participate in the ending of life as well. At the stages of development when most abortions are performed, the life that is being ended is much less of a life than that of a cow, or pig, or chicken, or even fish, that ends up being killed for food. If people truly believe that ending abortion is a moral and ethical issue, then the only consistent stance is to also be vegan and push for laws requiring everyone else be vegan.
jeffbee 5y ago
Eh, spurious reasoning. The 0.10% case is not the underpinning for the right to abortion in the United States. In our jurisprudence the right to abortion is guaranteed by the constitutional right to privacy. So, your argument starts from a false premise, and the facts that happen to be true don't redeem it.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> The 0.10% case of either saving a woman's life or in cases of rape and incest as turned into the justification ...for nothing. The right to abortion isn't premised on any of those, in general. The only one that is particularly relevant as a justification is protecting the life of the mother, and that mostly has to do with abortions later in pregnancy, Cobstitutionally. Otherwise, the justification of abortion is bodily autonomy.
- tomasdore 5y ago
  Bodily autonomy? Is that a thing in the law? What's the justification for the drugs laws then?
  - scotty79 5y ago
    Bodily autonomy means you shouldn't be forced to do something with your body, not allowed to do everything with it.
    - Chris2048 5y ago
      That would cover forced conception/abortions, but how does it cover the right to an abortion? It's not like becoming pregnant is "being forced to give birth"; if it is the distinction is meaningless since not allowing <x> is forcing you to not do <x>, and forcing you to do <x> is disallowing you to not do <x>.
      - scotty79 5y ago
        Becomming pregnant is not being forced to give birth but being forced to carrying pregnancy to term and giving birth is being forced to give birth. But you are right. This distinction is meaningless by itself. What actually has meaning is if what we are forcing/forbidding you to do with your body puts your health and life at risk for some other benefit, for example for benefit of a single new other human. Forcing someone to carry pregnancy to term to save the life of this new human is like forcing someone to giva a kidney to save some other person's life. It's commendable but it shouldn't be obligatory.
armchairhacker 5y ago
Holy crap those numbers are awful. Personally I'm slightly on the side of pro-choice, but we really need to educate people more on birth control.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Bafflingly, the same political forces that oppose abortion also oppose both birth control and sex education.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    And homosexuality, despite it not resulting in children. And welfare. And mandatory paid maternity leave. And...basically everything that would actually ensure children are not a burden on the parent.
  - pstuart 5y ago
    Hmmmm, maybe abortion for those people isn't about protecting babies but is really about subjugation of women?

thatfrenchguy 5y ago

And a lot better societal outcomes. Unwanted babies suck and end up having bad lives, negatively affecting their parents’ lives as well.

dimitrios1 5y ago
Too bad we can't ask unwanted babies if they would rather have been born into a bad life. This isn't directed at you, but I have had countless conversations about this very topic. The detriments are greatly overstated. I've found usually people are talking of these things outside looking in in an ideological vacuum, and not an experiential one. Let's take societal outcomes for african americans, as an example. What people don't realize is, when people speak of abortions in a vaccuum (and lets be frank -- it's usually white liberals who champion it the hardest), the elephant in the room is with african american women carry out the disproportionate volume of abortions, and the the overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood locations being located in poor and black neighborhoods. There is a large argument now that is catching on in many african american communities that maybe if we had the estimated 11 million more black babies born in this country, black representation would be much better off in all matters of the socioeconomic and political spheres, resulting in better lives overall for the general population. In 2015, in association with National Black Pro-Life Coalition, Protecting Black Life, and National Black Pro-Life Union met with CURE to deliver a congressional report detailing all of these facts, and making the strong case that the economic and societal impact of all the abortions in the black community is far greater. I encourage everyone to read it: https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/HHRG-115-JU10-Wstate-ParkerS-20171101-SD001.pdf https://www.congress.gov/115/meeting/house/106562/witnesses/...
- coliveira 5y ago
  If society wants more babies, the path is easy: provide financial help for couples and single mothers. The way it currently is, abortion is very attractive.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Yep. Carlin had this right; it's not being pro-life, it's being pro-birth. From birth until they turn 18 and can join the military, fuck 'em.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      Exactly. People seem to forget why birthrates were so high in the past. It is not just lack of abortion (which happened), but the fact that more children would provide additional help in the daily farm work. In other words, it was very cheap ho have children and the financial benefit existed. In a post-industrial society, these incentives are reversed. It is very expensive to have children, and there are no financial incentives. That's why we have the declining birth rates everywhere we have an economically developed society.
  - draugadrotten 5y ago
    Financial help is not all it takes to stop abortions. There are welfare states such as scandinavian ones where the financial help for having children and/or being a single mother is very generous. A single mother with 6 children can receive financial aid to the equivalent of a senior software engineer salary without having to work at all. Source: https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lika--mycket-pengar-med--bidrag-jobbar-anda/ https://www.expressen.se/gt/gt-granskar/shukri-hade-fatt-lik... Even with these levels of financial support, abortions are common - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Sweden#Trends
    - Nitrolo 5y ago
      I'd just like to point out that raising 6 kids is very much hard work, even if you're a bad parent I find it hard to describe it as no work at all.

ehnto 5y ago

There are other reasons people want to get abortions, such as knowing they can't provide for the child or give them a safe/stable household. Adoption is rare, and the foster system in most countries absolutely ruins kids. So those aren't good alternatives.

dimitrios1 5y ago
This goes along with my thesis that if given the proper support, we would avoid the majority of them.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I'm not certain there is a level of foster care that could provide good outcomes. I think that's a bit of a pipedream. If your argument is instead that a shitty life is better than no life at all, I couldn't really disagree. But I think it's somewhat inhumane to bring a new life into the world knowing it will be suffering.
  - Thorrez 5y ago
    I think the main reason kids in foster care suffer is that the kids are already old and have been through a traumatic situation that caused them to have to be put into foster care. That trauma plus the transition can leave emotional scars. Another problem is the foster parents cannot fully take in the kid. The kid can be taken away from them by the government and given back to the kid's original parents. Putting a newborn up for adoption is different, it doesn't have either of those problems. There are 2 million families in the US waiting to adopt a newborn.
- pstuart 5y ago
  We should provide free birth control and better sex education. Morning after contraception should also be free -- a fertilized, un-implanted egg is not a human -- it's a potential human.
  - Thorrez 5y ago

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

Do you have citations for the numbers you provided? Thanks! (I’m genuinely asking because it never occurred to me that you can track the amount of a private medical procedures occurrence across states and stuff…)

symlinkk 5y ago
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/pdfs/ss6907a1-H.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/pdfs/ss6907a1-H.pdf Although the numbers are a bit different here, maybe he’s referencing a newer data set. Still it’s shocking: > non-Hispanic Black women had the highest abortion rate (21.2 abortions per 1,000 women) and ratio (335 abortions per 1,000 live births)
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  No sorry, it is my numbers that are outdated. I was referencing a 2015 congressional report. Abortion rates have been declining sharply over the past few years, so that's good news at least.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    Depends on why. If rates have been declining because people are more educated about birth control and family planning, that's good news indeed. If it's because of new restrictions on access to abortion, that's not fixing the problem at all.

pstuart 5y ago

> kill themselves Many would disagree with that characterization.

dimitrios1 5y ago
potato potatoe -- it's ending a life.
- pstuart 5y ago
  At week 4 the embryo is the size of a poppy seed. It's technically alive, but it's not an actualized being. Your concern may be genuine but it is misplaced.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Unless you're vegan, you participate in the ending of life as well. At the stages of development when most abortions are performed, the life that is being ended is much less of a life than that of a cow, or pig, or chicken, or even fish, that ends up being killed for food. If people truly believe that ending abortion is a moral and ethical issue, then the only consistent stance is to also be vegan and push for laws requiring everyone else be vegan.

jeffbee 5y ago

Eh, spurious reasoning. The 0.10% case is not the underpinning for the right to abortion in the United States. In our jurisprudence the right to abortion is guaranteed by the constitutional right to privacy. So, your argument starts from a false premise, and the facts that happen to be true don't redeem it.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> The 0.10% case of either saving a woman's life or in cases of rape and incest as turned into the justification ...for nothing. The right to abortion isn't premised on any of those, in general. The only one that is particularly relevant as a justification is protecting the life of the mother, and that mostly has to do with abortions later in pregnancy, Cobstitutionally. Otherwise, the justification of abortion is bodily autonomy.

tomasdore 5y ago
Bodily autonomy? Is that a thing in the law? What's the justification for the drugs laws then?
- scotty79 5y ago
  Bodily autonomy means you shouldn't be forced to do something with your body, not allowed to do everything with it.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    That would cover forced conception/abortions, but how does it cover the right to an abortion? It's not like becoming pregnant is "being forced to give birth"; if it is the distinction is meaningless since not allowing <x> is forcing you to not do <x>, and forcing you to do <x> is disallowing you to not do <x>.
    - scotty79 5y ago
      Becomming pregnant is not being forced to give birth but being forced to carrying pregnancy to term and giving birth is being forced to give birth. But you are right. This distinction is meaningless by itself. What actually has meaning is if what we are forcing/forbidding you to do with your body puts your health and life at risk for some other benefit, for example for benefit of a single new other human. Forcing someone to carry pregnancy to term to save the life of this new human is like forcing someone to giva a kidney to save some other person's life. It's commendable but it shouldn't be obligatory.

armchairhacker 5y ago

Holy crap those numbers are awful. Personally I'm slightly on the side of pro-choice, but we really need to educate people more on birth control.

kibwen 5y ago
Bafflingly, the same political forces that oppose abortion also oppose both birth control and sex education.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  And homosexuality, despite it not resulting in children. And welfare. And mandatory paid maternity leave. And...basically everything that would actually ensure children are not a burden on the parent.
- pstuart 5y ago
  Hmmmm, maybe abortion for those people isn't about protecting babies but is really about subjugation of women?