(Very) Basic Economics and Abortion
| January 22nd, 2006
I’ve been debating abortion a little on the comments of Post Tenebras Lux (from which I swiped the title of this post). I’m reposting some of my comments here. somewhat edited.
Xon wrote (in part):
How successful has the war on drugs been at lowering demand for pot? How successful was prohibition at lowering demand for alcohol?
Let’s introduce another concept from (very) basic economics into the discussion: elasticity of demand. I’d argue that for pregnant women who don’t want to be mothers, the demand for abortion is extremely inelastic. If I’m correct, then raising the price of abortions - for instance, by making abortions illegal - will have a relatively small impact on demand.
The problem with before-and-after Roe v Wade abortion rate comparisons is that too many people mix up the rate of legal and reported abortions - which obviously went up post-Roe - with the rate of abortions. But in fact, there were about a million abortions a year in the US in the few years before Roe - about the same as there were in the few years just after Roe.
What we need, to lower abortion, is a substitute for abortion. Attacking the supply side won’t do much to lower abortion rates, but attacking the demand side can work. For instance, policies which push birth control on teenagers (including the importance of always using two types at once) so hard the teens get bruised. Countries like Belgium have used this sort of policy to have the lowest abortion rates in the world. I don’t understand why pro-lifers have so little interest in imitating that.
Lux comment-writer Matt Weber responded:
Nothing. But you’re not understanding the concept of elasticity of demand. If something has an inelastic demand, that doesn’t mean that making it more expensive won’t have any effect on demand, just that the effect won’t be especially large.
Look, let’s say we ban drinking alcohol. That will lower demand for alcohol - but there will still be a huge demand remaining, and the black market will be substantial. That’s because demand for alcohol is pretty inelastic; you can raise the cost a lot, and people will still want it. People want alcohol very badly.
Compare that to banning RCA brand alarm clocks. Such a ban would probably be totally successful, because the demand for RCA alarms is very flexible; people will switch to Sony or Panisonic alarms and never notice the difference. Pretty much no one wants an RCA alarm badly.
Which would you guess the demand for abortion is more like - the demand for alcohol, or the demand for RCA alarms? I’d say the former. Women who want abortions often desparately want one; they’ll take on substantial trouble, risk and expense to get one.
Will you lower demand on the margins by banning abortion? Of course. But it won’t make a very big difference, because the demand for abortion is pretty inelastic.
The countries in the world with the lowest abortion rates are countries where abortion is legal - without exception. No country has ever succeeded in getting to a really low abortion rate by banning abortion.
Do you believe in the marketplace or not? If you do, then you have to admit that when the demand is high enough, the market mostly finds a way around barriers - and that includes legal barriers.
The only way to have a really low abortion rate is to lower demand, rather than banning supply. That means pushing birth control on teens as if it were oxygen, and also providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers.
Will that have negative side effects? Maybe. But if pro-lifers are serious about lowering the abortion rate, they should be willing to consider the trade-offs. What good is an “idealogically correct” approach to lowering abortion rates, if it doesn’t actually work very well compared to other methods?
One method is to do a representative sample survey and ask women if they’ve had an abortion. This will lead to an underestimate of the true number of abortions, since people are strongly motivated to lie about having committed illegal acts (and even where it’s legal, many women prefer not to admit having had an abortion), but it’ll at least give you a baseline to work from.
Xon responded:
Dammit, why must it always come down to evidence! :-P
Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (”…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal.” From Christopher Tietze, “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).
Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; a sudden, large increase in abortions should lead to a corresponding sudden decline in the birth rate. So if Roe caused a big jump in abortions in its first few years, we’d see it as a decline in the birthrate. So what actually happened after Roe was passed?
Year Births Birthrate
1973 3,136,965 14.9
1974 3,159,958 14.9
1975 3,144,198 14.8
1976 3,167,788 14.8
1977 3,326,632 15.4
1978 3,333,279 15.3
1979 3,494,398 15.9
1980 3,612,258 15.9
Similarly, what happened when Poland banned abortions in the 1990s? If pro-life policies reduce abortion significantly, there would have been a spike in Poland’s birthrate. But Poland’s birth rate remained steady. (See Reproductive Health Matters (Volume 10, Issue 19 , May 2002): “The restrictive abortion law in Poland has not increased the number of births.”)
There are three questions this brings up, in my view.
First of all, has the pro-life movement actually been proposing that we treat abortion as if it were murder?
I’d say not. The most recent federal partial-birth abortion ban, for example, said that mothers absolutely cannot be punished for their part in abortion; doctors could be punished by a fine.
Is there anyone in the world willing to endorse this policy for a murdered five year old child? A mother hires a hit man to kill her five-year-old child; if that happens, should we have a law saying that no matter what the mother cannot be punished, and the most that happens to the hit man is a fine?
The argument that pro-lifers can’t consider what is practical, because of their unshakable moral commitment to treating abortion as murder, falls apart when we look at the laws pro-lifers propose.
Second question: Is the “let’s do it both ways” plan viable, or are abortion reduction strategies a binary, one-or-the-other choice?
I’d say it’s one or the other. The U.S. has a two party system; no matter how nuanced our personal positions, the real choice we make is between column D and column R. One party supports policies that have actually led to low abortion rates in the real world, but opposes a ban. The other party opposes policies that have actually led to low abortion rates, but supports a ban. And that’s our choice.
And it’s a choice that matters in the real world. If the US had an abortion rate as low as Belgium’s, that would mean something between 700,000 and 800,000 fewer abortions a year, according to my seat-of-the-pants calculations.
Which brings me to my third question. In a system that forces us to choose between one or the other, which is better: 700,000 murders potentially prevented, or 700,000 murders not prevented plus an official statement calling abortion murder?
I don’t know what Xon’s position is. But the pro-life movement as a whole clearly favors the latter policy. And I find that incomprehensible. Putting abstract principle above 700,000 lives doesn’t seem like a supportable position, to me, and certainly undermines the pro-life claim to be motivated only by caring about what happens to babies.
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Very well said, Amp.
One thing that I might add is the assertation that if the pro-lifers want to go with the strategy of
they need to start embracing these better ways before they try to outlaw abortion, as the first priority. They’re the ones who have the problem with the results of legalized abortion, not us—therefore they are not justified in demanding that we give up our rights while we wait for them to stop attacking things that decrease the demand to exercise them.
They don’t like the side effects of our rights to choose not to be pregnant, they need to find something to eliminate the side effects without damaging the rights. There are many things that reduce the demand for abortion without eliminating the right or messing with the availability. The fact that the pro-lifers haven’t embraced these is telling.
And I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to know, if they don’t support contraception, sex-ed, financial help, et cetera to reduce abortions when they’re legal, how the hell could they be trusted to support them if abortion becomes illegal and from their perspective all the important problems are solved?
I disagree with whoever-it-was, obviously, regarding making abortion illegal—even if I had the goal of reducing abortions as much as possible. Any decrease in abortion that is not demand-based is a violation of the rights and autonomy of the women who are denied abortions in order to make that decrease. The only legitimate way for there to be no abortions is for there to be no demand for abortions, and if that were the case there would be no reason for a law against abortions because there would be no abortions.
100%-effective birth control, convenient and free and available to everyone, male or female, who wants it; encouragement to take it even if you don’t intend to need it; an end to rape; completely comprehensive, compulsory sex education that everyone recieves before they need it; an end to the stigmatizing of single and teenage mothers, universal, affordable health care, maternity and paternity leave, convenient, readily available, affordable, high-quality child care, a living wage, welfare and unemployment benefits for whomever needs them, and counseling and support for anyone who feels overwhelmed by family- or parenting-related issues or life in general.
Or, an incubation tank that creates a perfect copy of the environment in a uterus, complete with a means of delivering nutrients and oxygen and removing waste from a developing embryo or fetus, with the proper balance and amounts of everything it needs tailor-made for each week of gestation, so that anyone who wants an abortion can come in and have one, with the embryo or fetus placed in such a tank to grow to infant stage; sufficient funding to provide the technology and employees to manage them free of charge to the woman who had the abortion; and a culture that made no distinction between biological children and adopted children, to the point where every aborted pregnancy resulted in a preemie-ward-grown baby soon to be adopted by someone who is ready to love him or her.
Either of those scenarios, or both together, are the only ways that the abortion rate could rightly and legitimately zero out. Assuming, of course that the aspect of abortion that the pro-lifers want to end is the embryos-being-killed part and not the women-controlling-their-own-bodies part. Sometimes I wonder.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Blog for Choice Day
Excuse this brief interuption. Pictures of knitting and cats have graciously stepped aside for Blog for…
This comment was written by Rhymes with Mango.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
But it has always seemed clear to me that they are not interested in babies. What they are interested in is fetuses and the untrammeled innocence and untaintable purity that fetuses represent to them. This has always seemed to me to be the underlying motivation for those who would institutionalize their opposition to abortion by making abortion not only illegal, but by defining it as murder.
I wish I had more time to flesh out what I am saying here, but my bed calls. I start teaching again tomorrow and I need my sleep. Perhaps I will post more on this on my own blog.
This comment was written by Richard.Report this comment to the moderators
January 22nd, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Thank you. This is one of the more original pieces I’ve seen on this topic today. I truly appreciate that.
This comment was written by Rowan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:07 am
I broadly support Amp’s position on abortion and disagree with the people he’s arguing against. That said:
Xon isn’t saying above that abortion=murder in a strict sense (the view Amp attributes to him), he’s saying that abortion=unjustifiable homicide. In common law countries abortion’s never been murder, because you’ve never been able to murder someone who hasn’t been born. Abortion’s always been a different crime - such as “child destruction” or so on.
Whatever you say about the pro-life movement, they’ve been consistant in maintaining that abortion is a form of unjustifiable homicide and should be recognised in law as such.
Aren’t you begging the pro-choicer’s question here? The question is “is the demand for abortion inelastic?”. Not “is the demand for abortion inelastic for pregnant women who don’t want to be mothers?”. The suggestion is that people who don’t want to be mothers will be less likely to get pregnant should abortion be banned.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:14 am
Impressive post.
I agree, that is the argument. But does that argument really make sense?
It sounds almost like women are getting pregnant (where is the man in question, I wonder?) just to have an abortion. Or, perhaps more fairly, the argument is that women aren’t taking necessary steps to avoid possible pregnancies because of the availability of abortion (or that women deliberately delay the decision on whether to become a mother or not to include pregnancy). Some ugly stereotypes here.
The actions of pro-lifers betray them: Pro-lifers generally have little interest on making contraceptives and sex education widely available (thus making it less likely that women just get pregnant). Kudos to the ones who are fighting the demand side.
I think the fact that birth rates have been constant and that the number of abortions has not been reduced by pro-life policies is an empirical evidence on the invalidity of the argument people who don’t want to be mothers will be less likely to get pregnant should abortion be banned. That is covered in the post too, then.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:25 am
Small addition to Kyra’s list of things that would have to happen for abortion to disappear through lack of demand: an improvement in medical science such that any condition that might afflict a woman during pregnancy can be treated without additional harm to her or risk of harm to the fetus.
This comment was written by Nick Kiddle.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:32 am
I don’t know whether this has been discussed before, but…
I object to the characterisation of the abortion prohibitionist stance as ‘pro life’. Abortion antiprohibitionist advocates should not be buying into their opponents’ propaganda.
Firstly, ‘pro life’ does not describe any part of the abortion prohibitionist agenda. They wish to prohibit abortion; that is all. There is nothing inconsistent with abortion prohibitionism and support for the death penalty, for example, or the war in Iraq. The only life that the prohibitionist stance is ‘pro’ is the alleged life of the foetus, and to call it a ‘life’ is to beg one of the central questions in the debate.
Secondly, in practice it is antiprohibitionist who are more likely to oppose the DP, the war, support medical care for all, etc., so they have a better claim to being ‘pro life’ than the prohibitionists.
‘Pro choice’, while not ideal, does at least accurately albeit incompletely characterise the stance: We are in favour of allowing pregnant women the choice to have an abortion. ‘Abortion antiprohibitionism’ is arguably a better term.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 6:02 am
The suggestion is that people who don’t want to be mothers will be less likely to get pregnant should abortion be banned.
To be more blunt, there’s a sincere belief from anti-choicers that without abortion as a fallback position if contraception fails, women will quit having sex. Since most anti-choice activist groups are already moving towards agitating for bans on at least some female-controlled contraception, that seems to be the final goal overall–make women stop having sex or in lieu of this, be punished for it by repeated child-bearing.
The problem with this viewpoint, besides being unnecessarily cruel and invasive about stuff that’s none of their business, is that it’s based on some false belief that in the past the threat of pregnancy forced women to refrain from having sex. More likely is that it put constant strain on relationships between men and women because while both want sex, only the latter “paid” for it, meaning that negotiations about frequency, etc. were bound to be tense.
This comment was written by Amanda.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:20 am
The only way to have a really low abortion rate is to lower demand, rather than banning supply. That means pushing birth control on teens as if it were oxygen, and also providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers.
Those certainly are ways to lower demand for abortion. But there are other considerations:
1) Teach the virtues of abstinence, from both a moral and a practical viewpoint. This has gotten a bad rap because of the efforts on some people’s part to teach this to the exclusion of all other viewpoints. But that doesn’t mean that it should not be a strongly emphasized part of the curriculum. It would also have the side effect of cutting down on STD’s, as it did in Uganda.
2) Making adoption a much more attractive option might encourage more single mothers to have their children and then give them up. A friend of mine adopted a child, and you’d have thought they were signing up for the CIA the way they were investigated. The whole process sounded like it was engineered to discourage people from adopting children. I’m also given to understand that there are a lot of sleazy operators in the adoption industry as well. Perhaps this could be cleaned up and made more easy for both the mother and the prospective adoption parents.
Do you think that providing painfully generous welfare support for single mothers encourage an increase in the number of single mothers? Do you consider that desirable, undesirable, or neutral?
As far as measuring the abortion rate by observing birthrates pre- and post-legalization, I’m curious to know what the abortion/live birth ratio is. Perhaps the rate is so low that significantly increasing the abortion rate would not appear to change the birthrate significantly. Perhaps there are some kind of “baby boom” effect from an imbalance of the number of women at various ages I wanted to give an example, but I found myself stymied by the “birthrate” statistic. Is that births per 1,000,000 people? Per 1,000 women? Per 100,000 women between the ages of 15 - 45? I don’t understand.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:22 am
Firstly, ‘pro life’ does not describe any part of the abortion prohibitionist agenda. They wish to prohibit abortion; that is all. There is nothing inconsistent with abortion prohibitionism and support for the death penalty, for example, or the war in Iraq.
What does the Iraq war or the death penalty have to do with opposition to abortion?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:39 am
Nothing. It has something to do with a person styling themselves as “pro life”.
This comment was written by Daran.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:12 am
Ron:
Abstinence is NOT a moral choice. It is a very pragmatic approach to not getting pregnant (for women at least) but it is not a moral choice.
There is nothing moral about denying yourself something that is healthy, pleasurable, natural, and one has a strong urge to do.
This “deny yourself because it makes you a better person” is, at best, incomplete and at worst, harmful. The denial is not moral: denial is only moral if your denying to inflict harm on another person. (although, why one would naturally want to inflict harm on another is beyond me).
Denying yourself for the sake of denying yourself is harmful: it makes you frustrated and fixated. For moral actions, moderation is key.
You may disagree with me, of course, as is the right of every American to come up with your individual moral code. But to claim that YOUR moral code is the ultimate, and that is the one that should be pushed is discriminatory and harmful. At the same time, it has the very real effect of demonizing people (most likely women) for choosing it as a moral decision.
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January 23rd, 2006 at 10:56 am
A very interesting article in the New York Times today by William Saletan. Three Decades After Roe, a War We Can All Support It also speaks to the fact that reducing the need for abortion (i.e. reducing unwanted pregnancies) should be something that both camps should embrace.
As a staunch pro-lifer (or “anti-choicer” if it makes you feel better) I would definately be all for reducing unwanted pregnancy first and working on moral sexual issues with my teens second. Of course, we had this discussion some time back and I was accused of keeping my children ignorant because I didn’t want schools to be preaching “when” to have sex. What was lost in that discussion was that I had no problem with schools teaching about birth control.
This has been brought up before and I still don’t know where this comes from. I am a republican right wing evangelical Christian so I would guess I am the quintessential anti-choicer and I have yet to hear anyone I know nor have I read any “like-minded” commentators I read indicate in any way they are “moving towards…bans on at least some female-controlled contraception”. I would really appreciate some links regarding this assertion since it apparently is happening with “most” groups but I know of none.
This is what I am guessing - Christian anti-choice groups are against most “morning-after” pills because they are primarilly abortive. Therefore, they are no better, in their minds, than abortion. Although pro-choicers would maybe disagree that they are abortive, the devil is in the details. Since most abortion providers don’t classify you as “pregnant” until implantation, anything that prevents implantation prevents pregnancy and therefore is contraceptive. The opposite view is that the “pregnancy” (carrying of a new life) begins at conception and therefore anything that ends it is abortive.
The only other thing I have seen in Christian circles is some grumbling about oral contraceptives. Since the last resort of these pills is to prevent implantation, and therefore they have at least an abortive potential, some (very few) Christians are against them as well. Although I have heard this stance in some circles it would be a great exageration to say that “most” are of this opinion.
Well, I would agree to a point. Christian believe heterosexual sex inside of marriage is the only sex that God blesses, therefore this is a moral choice outside of that circumstance. Inside of marriage, it would turn pragmatic. It should be pointed out, though, that any prolonged abstinece inside of marriage would be viewed as problematic, at best, inside Christian circles. At any rate, inside marriage, abstinence is not considered a viable birth control method for Christians (they use contraceptives or rythym methods). Conversely, when Christians talk about abstinence, they are universally speaking of extra-marital behavior. Therefore, for them, it is a moral choice. They don’t deny it is “healthy, pleasurable, natural, and (something) one has a strong urge to do”, they simply believe it is only morally allowed within marriage.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:57 am
What Amanda said about morality.
Abstinence is being pushed in sex-ed curricula as the best way to avoid both pregnancy and STDs, just as it always has been. Other methods of prevention frequently get short shrift in classrooms, to the detriment of student health and safety, but not abstinence. Abstinence-based sex-ed is status quo, and its effects on lower pregnancy and STD rates will continue to be exactly what they are now: sadly insufficient, and far less effective alone than pro-abstinence plus comprehensive safer-sex education.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
Substitute “most doctors and healthcare providers” for “abortion providers” in that sentence, and you’d be telling the truth. The idea that pregnancy starts at implantation isn’t an anti-medical minority viewpoint adopted for political reasons; that is in fact true of “life begins at conception.”
Amanda conceded that point: it’s a choice that fits into some moral codes. It doesn’t fit into others. That means that it shouldn’t be presented as the moral choice when we’re talking about a curriculum that is neither Christian nor designed for that subset of Christians.
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January 23rd, 2006 at 11:21 am
I didn’t mean it as such.
I appologize, I wasn’t clear in my quoting. I was referring to Antigone’s post at this point.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 11:42 am
I see. I didn’t mean to jump all over you.
I don’t have a problem with introducing the question of responsibility into the issue of whether or not to have sex. In good safer-sex education, that question is paramount. The possibility of hurting someone, endangering someone, or fucking someone over is a real one, and people are encouraged to think very carefully about it. Without that concern, protection doesn’t really make sense. The problem with “morality” is that it tends to mean morality the way Amanda interpreted it: continence, chastity. Having sex is just wrong, full stop. It’s damaging and insulting to you, your partner, your future partners, their future partners, etc. That kind of morality I have a problem with, particularly given its demonstrated potential to muddy issues of responsibility to one’s health and the health of one’s partners, and the way it inevitably conflates “contamination” and “filth” with transmission risks.
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January 23rd, 2006 at 12:21 pm
[...] Ampersand has up a post on the (basic) economics of abortion. I encourage you to read it, no matter what side of the pro-choice/pro-life aisle you’re on, and perhaps we can take up a discussion in our comments section. There’s a lot to talk about. [...]
This comment was written by LIBERTY BELLES » The Economics of Abortion.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:45 pm
Yeh, I didn’t read her exactly that way (or wasn’t that clear on it) but let’s go with that. Actually, let me see if I read you right.
Historically, there has always been a “sex is bad…period” element out there. I am ashamed to say that this probably was propagated in Christian circles first and even more ashamed that there are some in the Church who still hold to this belief. If it is that that you are getting at, I totally agree with your points and emphasize, from my perspective, that even for those who choose to wait until marriage to engage in sex it is very damaging.
Even if I set my moral perspective aside, I can sympathize with what y’all are saying, especially if the approach to abstinence is one-sided like you outline.
And I have read the statistics on abstinence education and they are not great so far. Abstinence only programs are abysmal. The curriculum may be bad but my guess is it is more likely that those being “educated” are simply not interested, (or in the heat of the moment lose interest) in staying abstinent. If that is the case, other methods too avoid the ultimate tragedy, the unwanted pregnancy, need to be employed.
(I also should point out that I am no saint. In my youth I certainly did not practice what I now preach. Having two teenage daughters sure changes ones perspective on a great many things.)
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 12:53 pm
… too avoid the ultimate tragedy, the unwanted pregnancy…
The ultimate tragedy is unwanted pregnancy? Honestly, I’d put AIDS (or a host of other, potential fatal, diseases) as a worse tragedy.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
For anyone who might be interested, I have done my part to keep this discussion going by responding to this post over at my blog.
This comment was written by Xon.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Although measuring something as hidden as illegal abortions is always difficult, the best pre-Roe scholarly assessment came to a figure of about a million abortions a year (”…prior to the adoption of more moderate abortion laws in 1967, there were 1 million abortions annually nationwide, of which 8000 were legal.” From Christopher Tietze, “Abortion on request: its consequences for population trends and public health,” Seminars in Psychiatry 1970;2:375-381, quoted in JAMA December 9, 1992).
Methodology?
Another option is to look at what happens to birth rates; a sudden, large increase in abortions should lead to a corresponding sudden decline in the birth rate. So if Roe caused a big jump in abortions in its first few years, we’d see it as a decline in the birthrate. So what actually happened after Roe was passed?
Year Births Birthrate
1973 3,136,965 14.9
1974 3,159,958 14.9
1975 3,144,198 14.8
1976 3,167,788 14.8
1977 3,326,632 15.4
1978 3,333,279 15.3
1979 3,494,398 15.9
1980 3,612,258 15.9
Uh - Amp, Roe occurred in January of 1973. To see what effect Roe had on births, you really need to include some statistics from 1972 and before for us to compare these to.
1963 4,098,020 21.7
1964 4,027,490 21.0
1965 3,760,358 19.4
1966 3,606,274 18.4
1967 3,520,959 17.8
1968 3,501,564 17.5
1969 3,600,206 17.8
1970 3,731,386 18.4
1971 3,555,970 17.2
1972 3,258,411 15.6
(1971 and before based on a 50% sample of births, except for 1967, which was based on a 20-50% sample of births)
source.
Ultimately, birth rates seemed to be going down anyway, so it is not apparent that Roe has much of an effect.
It sounds almost like women are getting pregnant (where is the man in question, I wonder?) just to have an abortion. Or, perhaps more fairly, the argument is that women aren’t taking necessary steps to avoid possible pregnancies because of the availability of abortion (or that women deliberately delay the decision on whether to become a mother or not to include pregnancy). Some ugly stereotypes here.
I don’t think that people are saying that women literally decide not to use birth control because abortion is available. What is being said is that the availability of abortion makes the consequences of getting pregnant far less burdensome, and therefore decreases the motivation to (a) abstain from sex and to (b) be religious about proper use of birth control. In other words, when abortion is available, people will be more likely to have sex, and will be more likely to be careless about birth control; this is not to say that anyone is deciding that birth control is unnecessary.
As for stereotypes: I don’t care if they’re ugly. I want to know whether or not they are, on average, accurate.
In any case, nik (#5) makes a good point: Amp’s use of live-birth statistics to show that the number of abortions did not rise significantly makes the assumption (without any support) that the number of unwanted pregnancies was not at all impacted by the legalization of abortion.
Steve Sailer has argued that legalized abortion increased the unwatned pregnancy rate, so that a large proportion of the abortions post-Roe were likely from pregnancies that wuld not have even occurred without Roe.
The idea that this is impossible, or that suggesting such carelessness is simply “perpetuating a stereotype,” is unrealistic, I think, and comes from a sort of middle-class assumption that everyone thinks like us, that is, “the availability of abortion would not affect my decision to use birth control, so it wouldn’t affect anybody else’s, either.”
The countries in the world with the lowest abortion rates are countries where abortion is legal - without exception.
Does “without exception” refer to how legal abortion is or to the constancy of the trend of pro-choice countries having low abortion rates? That is, are you saying that in the countries with the lowest abortion rates, all abortions are deemed legal, or that there are no exceptional countries with low abortion rates and where abortion is illegal?
According to this Guttmacher study, northern and southern Africa have a very low abortion rate, despite abortion being moistly or completely illegal (judging from the proportion of abortions, 96 and 100%, respectively, that are illegal).
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Thing is, the alternative doesn’t involve flinging condoms at seventh-graders. Abstinence is a kind of protection, and it’s included in any discussion about how to protect yourself. It’s the best way to prevent STD transmission or pregnancy. It’s a good thing.
I think that the reason abstinence-only education tends to fail is because it introduces the morality question in a bad way. Transmission risks are non-negotiable. Morality is incredibly slippery, particularly when you’re dealing with people who really, really want to do an immoral thing. Once you conflate safety and morality considerations, the morality considerations will become subject to a lot of equivocation, and the safety considerations will suffer.
And when a dichotomy like “sex bad, abstinence good” gets imposed on the grayscale spectrum of higher-risk/lower-risk behaviors, you’ll have kids concluding things like, “Unprotected oral sex isn’t ‘really’ sex, so it’s better than intercourse with a condom,” “Well, I’m going to hell anyway, so why bother using protection?” All of the things that make you safer–planning, protection, careful discussions, regular testing, sobriety–make you a bad person.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 2:47 pm
I personally would automatically include this under the heading of “comprehensive sex education.” Probably the most important and far-reaching aspect of sexuality is deciding when and whether and why to have sex, and the emotional factors resulting from that decision, its application, and other people’s reactions to it.
I consider it highly important from a feminist point of view that everyone be able to make their own, uncoerced, unpressured, fully informed decisions regarding the choice to have or not have sex, to have access to all the support they need to live that choice safely, and to have their decision accepted by everyone whom it might affect and ignored by everyone else. And most of all, the self-esteem and courage to realize that they don’t owe anybody the obligation to change their ways for some other person’s amusement or convenience.
The thing is, it has to be realized that in many cases, contraception will beat out abstinence because it’s simply so much more convenient to avoid pregnancy by taking a pill every day, than it is to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex full-time when sex is something you greatly enjoy. Abstinence requires a significant behavior modification from people who enjoy sex—contraception does not.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:06 pm
A few have taken issue with Ron F.’s assertion that to teach abstinence ( as it hasn’t been taught forever, but even the Pope has a mother and all that) is an indefensible solution to the abortion wars, but I also take issue with his number 2 point. That is, adoption. Since we all know adopted children and many of us have adoption in our own families, we don’t always want to recognize that the rosy picture they are presenting of adoption post-illegal abortion is probably false.
Anti-choicers love to speak of adoption in unbelievably facile terms, as if bearing a child and giving it away were the simplest, most logical transaction in the world. All they have to do is imagine giving their own children away to see that this is untrue, but never mind, they don’t do that.
Why I really don’t like the “adoption is so easy” pushers is that I don’t think these people are really admitting what adoption can be like in a world where there is no abortion and/ or no good birth control. They think adoption has always been this well thought out choice, a sacrifice of a “redeemed” young mother, but really we only see it that way now because, ironically, it is a choice now. It won’t take much research by anyone to see that adoption’s history has often been one of coercion and shame and abuse. Think “Magdalena Sisters”.
Of course, even if the “seller’s market” were to end in the US, probably adoption wouldn’t go back to being how it was at times before. In this country. Maybe. But what about all of the children in orphanages around the world? What if there were a glut of white babies here? Orphanages in developing countries are frequently abysmal places, and many improve only after pressure from adoptive parents in developed countries. Will they remain so if women here are forced to go through with unwanted pregnancies?
The anti-choicers false view of adoption as the happy solution with no bad outcomes should no longer go unchallenged.
This comment was written by Elena.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:11 pm
[applause for piny]
Self-loathing does not equal responsible views on sex.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:15 pm
The U.S. has a two party system; no matter how nuanced our personal positions, the real choice we make is between column D and column R. One party supports policies that have actually led to low abortion rates in the real world, but opposes a ban. The other party opposes policies that have actually led to low abortion rates, but supports a ban. And that’s our choice.
But do we have to accept that it’s going to continue to be that way? It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan that these reproductive questions got so deeply divided between columns D and R. That’s fine for those whose beliefs are fully in line with either the Ds or the Rs, but there are people who refuse to accept that as unalterable. At the same time that we vote now for Door #1 or Door #2, we will continue to advocate for another path.
This comment was written by LAmom.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:34 pm
I wouldn’t (and didn’t!) say that adoption does not have it’s pitfalls. I’m saying that it can have good outcomes, and that steps should be taken to maximize those. It’s not a solution for everyone, by any means. But I am proposing that it could be a solution for more people than it is now.
Abstinence is a moral choice. It may not be your morality in particular, but it’s a choice that is in accord with the prevaling morality, and certainly the parental opinions, of the communities that most of these kids are a part of.
We’re not just talking religion. Abstinence also means that you are much less likely to be the parent of a child you are not emotionally, financially or physically prepared to take care of. It means that you are less likely to have to go through the trauma (or be a factor in someone else having to go through the trauma) of an abortion or of childbirth. It means that you are going to neither pass along or get an STD and thus will not bring harm to yourself or someone else.
Now, in some people’s morality, none of that is a problem. You can see numerous postings thoughout the threads on this site and (I’d guess) hundreds of others that will show that a number of people’s moral codes in this area boil down to “I’ll take my pleasure as I see it, and if someone else gets stuck with a burden, too bad.” Do you then think that because this is a moral choice, we should not teach it? Do you think that because many people don’t learn this lesson and do it anyway, and have done so since antiquity, we should not teach it?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Oy vey.
I suppose I should have put an impossible amount of disclaimers in the statement as to define the fact that I consider those assumptions ugly primarily because I don’t think they are accurate. Truth is, on average, beautiful (even if it is not always “nice”).
That is, I believe the majority of women are religious about abstinence/birth control, and the ones who are not can probably not be helped by punitive measures (the ignorant/stupid ones, the nonconsenting ones etc.) The obvious solution is to reduce ignorance.
But, reducing the number of unintended pregnancies is an area where pro-lifers and pro-choicers can be allies.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:36 pm
The fact that abstinence is also a pragmatic choice doesn’t mean that it’s not also a moral one. A choice can be both pragmatic and moral. I would propose that in many cases, morals develop from the understanding, though experience, that short-term desirable choices can lead to long-term undesirable outcomes.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Daran said:
Nothing. It has something to do with a person styling themselves as “pro life”.
Well, I’m sorry, Daran, but I’m completely missing your point. Please excuse my denseness. Could you elaborate?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:40 pm
All of the things that make you safer”“planning, protection, careful discussions, regular testing, sobriety”“make you a bad person.
It’s not the things that make you safer that make you a bad person. Or a good one. They contribute to it, of course. But the central point is what you plan to make yourself safer to do.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Once you conflate safety and morality considerations, the morality considerations will become subject to a lot of equivocation, and the safety considerations will suffer.
Something I have run into in “drugs are bad” discussions with kids. I end up making sure that 1) I present very factual information - I don’t lie about the bad effects/consequences to try to scare kids, and 2) I keep the morality and the scientific arguments clearly separate.
One thing I do say is that moral codes exist for a reason, and despite some apparently widespread opinions to the contrary that reason is generally not to jerk people around; they are the distillation of hundreds or thousands of years of experience. Moral codes should certainly be examined in the face of knowledge and experience. For example, it’s not appropriate to regard other humans as your property because they are a specific gender or relation to you, or a different race/nationality, even though this is still viewed as moral in many areas of the world. But you should come to learn about the ones prevalent in your culture and understand them before you decide to break them.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I consider it highly important from a feminist point of view that everyone be able to make their own, uncoerced, unpressured, fully informed decisions regarding the choice to have or not have sex, to have access to all the support they need to live that choice safely, and to have their decision accepted by everyone whom it might affect and ignored by everyone else.
Kyra, if a 15-year old girl decides to start having sex with her boyfriend, do you think that her parents should not pressure her to not do so, but should provide her with support?
I would agree with your statement for a 21-year old person. I think we’d all disagree with it if the person involved was 12 - for one thing, it’s pretty evident that such a person could be presumed to not be fully informed since, although they may have all the scientific evidence in front of them, they may not yet have the judgement to weigh it properly. The question then becomes, where do we draw the line? And how? And who has input - parents? Religious leaders? The law (e.g., the concept of statutory rape)? “Everyone” is a bit broad ….
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:09 pm
LA Mom wrote:
No. But most folks will insist upon us all adhering to the status quo because they are scared shitless of the unknown. Even a known quantity that makes you miserable is somehow prized above an unknown quantity that might not.
I’d add that a lot of Demo flag-wavers who continue to champion their party as flag-wavers of women’s rights should wake up and notice the egg on their own faces. Undermining of Roe started with the Hyde Amendment, way back in the 1970s, and has continued ever since. It is useless to pretend Roe staying on the books is the be-all and end-all of reproductive rights. It is also useless to pretend that the situation is merely a matter of incompetence on behalf of the people who we elect and pay to defend us. I think it’s time to face the fact that the line between incompetence and malice was crossed by the leadership some time ago.
Full article here.
Since it has become obvious that the average Democrat will put up with any shit from the leadership, there isn’t much hope for real change. The best one can hope for is that once Roe is overturned and the S.C. is completely full of Neanderthals, the Democrats will at least have to find a new boogeyman to bullshit their rank-and-file with.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Thanks for proving my point, Ron. This is exactly what I’m talking. Having sex makes you a bad person. Having premeditated sex, therefore, is even worse. It indicates a deep-seated moral failing, rather than a momentary lapse. It means that you knew exactly what you were doing.
So if you sit down with your partner and discuss risks, safety measures, history, you’re a nasty, nasty slut. If you use protection or go on the Pill, it’s worse than having unprotected, unplanned sex. If you have sex while falling-down drunk, you can pretend you were under the influence and therefore not completely in control of yourself.
This moral calculus plays itself out in countless abstinence-educated teens. ( “I’m not gay, I’m an alcoholic!” is also a pretty familiar dynamic to us homos.) It’s a very real, very dangerous outcome of making abstinence a moral decision.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Daran, in comment 8: Firstly, ‘pro life’ does not describe any part of the abortion prohibitionist agenda. They wish to prohibit abortion; that is all. There is nothing inconsistent with abortion prohibitionism and support for the death penalty, for example, or the war in Iraq.
It doesn’t necessarily follow, but the Roman Catholic Church official stance is against both abortion and the death penalty. But, it’s telling that the RCC has focused its ire on abortion, and not on the death penalty. RCC officials have not threatened politicians who support the death penalty with withholding of Communion or excommunication, but they have to pro-choice politicians, most notably with John Kerry in 2004.
Give the RCC faint praise for at least outwardly stating that they’re anti-birth-control, which means they’re more in league with the Junior Anti-Sex League from Nineteen Eighty-four than the fundies. The fundies, for tactical reasons, aren’t going to talk about birth control, but the unethical pharmacists who ally themselves with the movement will.
The fact is that the anti-abortion movement is wholly a religious movement seeking to punish pleasure outside of basking in God’s glory.
They seek to punish pleasure through law, disease (including unwanted pregnancy), or guilt. Pretty much all sexual activity is sinful in the eyes of the fundamentalist, even masturbation.
Hence laws against fornication, sodomy, pornography, and abortion, and the cluck-clucking of fundamentalists at women who were forced to give up children for adoption, AIDS patients, and people with herpes. (Heathen medical science has helped cure some venereal diseases, lessened the problem of herpes flareups, and turned AIDS into a chronic disease rather than an acute killer. Those doctors who flout God’s will will pay with an eternity in Hell, though.)
Of course, the fundies embody H.L. Mencken’s definition of puritanism: “…the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
This comment was written by Aaron V..Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Most more traditional societies in Africa favor a very high birthrate, to ensure that sons (ie, wives of sons) survive to take care of the parents when parents are old, and to ensure adequate farm labor when children are younger - even the youngest walking children can feed fowl and graze animals. However, there are studies suggesting that at least some of the African HIV transmission due to non-placental, non-sexual causes is due to illegal abortion, and that this may be more important than ritual circumcision/female genital mutilation, also a known factor in transmission.
The demand for abortion goes up as a society modernizes and it becomes more likely that children will survive to adulthood, more necessary to educate such children, and less likely to use children for home-based or factory-based child labor for survival of the family as a whole. Children in excess of one or two sons become expenses, not economic assets, to the family. Selective abortion of female fetuses still comes into play because in many rapidly developing or mixed-economy countries, females do not support their family of origin, and in some of the religious/ethical traditions there is a requirement for sons to perform ancestor rituals (Hindu, Confucian).
Glaivester presents 1963-1972 US live-birth stats and rate. Note that although the 1969 rate (pre-any-state-legalization) is 17.8, the rate was gradually dropping since 1963 (and before then as well). The late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s cohort had larger family sizes than following cohorts, and were in fact larger than pre-WWII family sizes. The rate in 1972, 15.6, is slightly higher than 1973 and 1974, 14.9, but note the rate rises again in the late 1970s. The rate drops more between 1971 and 1972 (17.2 to 15.6) , a year when abortion was available in New York and Hawaii (I think) but not in the other 48, than between 1972 and 1973/1974 (15.6 to 14.9 and 14.9), when abortion became available in all states. This suggests that the demographic shift in live births rate is related to broader social change (wider use of birth control is the most obvious, increase in women’s participation in labor market another) and PRECEDES legalized abortion availability.
This comment was written by NancyP.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Glaivester presents 1963-1972 US live-birth stats and rate. Note that although the 1969 rate (pre-any-state-legalization) is 17.8, the rate was gradually dropping since 1963 (and before then as well)…This suggests that the demographic shift in live births rate is related to broader social change (wider use of birth control is the most obvious, increase in women’s participation in labor market another) and PRECEDES legalized abortion availability.
To be fair, I never denied this, and in fact, made a shorter version of the same point myself:
Ultimately, birth rates seemed to be going down anyway, so it is not apparent that Roe has much of an effect.
My reason for including the statistics was not to disporve Amp’s contention, as I admitted that the stats did not seem to indicate that Amp was wrong. I included them because including only the statistics for the years after abortion tells you nothing about how the legalization of abortion affects the birth rate because it lacks a control.
As for the issue of Africa, my point was simply to disprove the assertion that every society with a low abortion rate had legalized abortion (if that was what Amp was saying).
However, there are studies suggesting that at least some of the African HIV transmission due to non-placental, non-sexual causes is due to illegal abortion, and that this may be more important than ritual circumcision/female genital mutilation, also a known factor in transmission.
In other words, the level of abortion in African countries may be higher than listed on the table. Perhaps, but the Guttmacher study I cited attempts to include illegal abortions in its equations: 96% of the north African and 100% of the south African abortions it tabulates are illegal. In other words, there could be a significant number of HIV infections caused by illegal abortions without the statistics I cited being inaccurate.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Amanda,
To be more blunt, there’s a sincere belief from anti-choicers that without abortion as a fallback position if contraception fails, women will quit having sex. Since most anti-choice activist groups are already moving towards agitating for bans on at least some female-controlled contraception, that seems to be the final goal overall”“make women stop having sex or in lieu of this, be punished for it by repeated child-bearing.
To the extent that the anti-choice movement also opposes contraception they tacitly admit their true intentions.
No one could rationally believe that unmarried women will cease to have sex or that, facing modern society, would use abstinece within marriage to control the size of their families.
On the other hand, women would certainly face extremely strong social incentives to marry young or to face the perills of having many children without the added support of a man…
This comment was written by Lorenzo.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Well, your first statement is partially right. It should read (this is from the Fundie perspective so don’t everybody freak) “The fact is that the anti-abortion movement is wholly a religious movement seeking to punish sin outside of basking in God’s glory. They seek to punish sin through law, disease (including unwanted pregnancy), or guilt” No “Fundie” I know gives a rip about your pleasure or lack thereof. They do care about sin, even yours.
Now, is this good policy? I don’t think so. I think that we need to be an example to the world but the world makes up their own mind. When we don’t follow this policy, we get Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Not exactly the type of spokespersons I would prefer as I don’t think they convey what the rank and file really desire.
The second part of your statement is almost right, but pretty much bull. Certainly sexual activity inside of marriage is not sinful (unless it is forced, of course). Maybe you meant to exclude in-marriage sexual activity, but that isn’t apparent from the statement.
Considering masturbation, Christians are split into three camps. There is a “no problem with it” camp, a “no not ever camp”, and a “it’s permissable but has implications that can cause significant relational problems.” The “no problem” camp is across the board. certainly there are those in liberal denominations that are more “post-modern” that think it is a natural expression of sexuality. There are also many traditional older generation people who actually allow it to prevent men from having to carry out their sexual desires through fornication. (I have many older relatives that are very conservative that have alluded to it in conversation). The “not ever” camp is predominantly purity proponents who consider it a form of “self-sex” (i.e. not sex with your wife) and therefore consider it either fornication or adultery depending on your situation. Most of these people are closely associated with or are recovering from pornography or other sexual addictions or problems. The final camp understands where the “not ever” camp is coming from but realizes that there is actually no admonition in scripture against masturbation so they are relunctant to say it is, without exception, sinful.
The reason I go through this is to point out that stereotyping “fundies” based on whatever feminist propoganda you have read or heard or based on the few actual personal contacts you may have with them creates a very warped and false impression of who we really are. In reality, we are a much more varied group of people than you could possibly imagine.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:17 pm
There it is again. Where do you get this? I have yet to have any person who has made such a statement actual provide any evidence that it is true. I’d be willing to read any feminist material you could provide just so I could see the name of any anti-choice organization that supposedly holds this position. Seriously, I know of none and these are the circles I move in. It certainly is not true of evangelical Christians who supposedly, according to Aaron V., ARE the anti abortion movement.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Sorry, grabed the wrong quote - it actually was
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I don’t deny that there are some feminist writings that stereotype evangelicals (or fundimentalists, if you’d prefer). But a great deal of the stereotyping is caused by the people that are in the position of being evangelical spokespersons, such as Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson. And although you personally disagree with those two (to your credit), I don’t think they could have reached their current positions without at least some support from ordinary rank-and-file evangelicals.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Absolutely, even a majority of support. But it is not an overwhelming majority and the rest of us are a pretty varied bunch.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
No “Fundie” I know gives a rip about your pleasure or lack thereof. They do care about sin, even yours.
I know it’s the job of the clergy to eliminate sin within one’s flock, but when it comes to abortion and the denial of prescribed birth control, it becomes legislating one church’s morality. I am as uncomfortable with Catholic or some Christian doctrine becoming law as I am with mandating that the Jewish position of mandatory abortion if the pregnancy endangers the woman’s life.
Considering masturbation, Christians are split into three camps. …The “not ever” camp is predominantly purity proponents who consider it a form of “self-sex” (i.e. not sex with your wife) and therefore consider it either fornication or adultery depending on your situation.
I come from Catholicism and a mother who had that belief drilled into her for a long time, so that colors my view.
Certainly, I did not imply that Christians view marital sex as sinful, although some would probably think sex for pleasure instead of the explicit intent of producing a child is sinful. (What about same-sex civil marriages or same-sex religious marriages?)
I came to the view of fundamentalist Christians (and some Catholics) being anti-sex and anti-pleasure through my own observation, especially of conservative Catholics (who sometimes were born-again) I knew growing up. Feminist theory had absolutely nothing to do with it, and I part ways with both some feminists and Christian conservatives in my First Amendment absolutism.
This comment was written by Aaron V..Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Aaron - fair enough. I follow you now. And I should say that it is true that there are many Christians who deny the pleasure aspect of sex (I think I mentioned that before). What a shame.
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Aaron V. writes:
The fact is that the anti-abortion movement is wholly a religious movement seeking to punish pleasure outside of basking in God’s glory.
If you say “wholly”, then it’s not a fact. There are secular, non-believing people who are anti-abortion (link to Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League).
This comment was written by LAmom.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Glaive, point well taken.
LAmom, fair enough. But one could say that the anti-abortion movement is “overwhelmingly a religious movement” and that would be pretty darn accurate.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 8:41 am
Ampersand writes:
Indeed. And is America a theocracy yet? “Very nearly, dear.”
My heart aches for the women of America (or anywhere) who have to fight for the right to control their own bodies, from access to sex education, to contraception, to the morning-after pill, to abortion. It despairs of the Christian women upholding patriarchal control - control in the most blatant and brutal way, trying to drag America back to the dark ages. (Or forward to ‘The Handmaids Tale’?) I want to offer up something by way of contrast.
In Sweden there are members of the ruling Social Democrat Party trying to find ways to provide foreign women with access to the free - yes - free - abortions that are the right of every Swedish woman. This attempt even includes illegal immigrant women, and how to achieve this for them without at the same time undermining the police and immigration authorities. This is what the separation of Church and State can look like. (though more than this is needed…) Sorry if I’m off topic here, but isn’t there some way a legal challenge can be mounted against the blending of these in your country? Because if Fundamentalist Christian morality around sex and sexuality and abortion etc. informs the laws of the land, something very basic to your democracy has been lost even inside the democratic process.
You are very informed and intelligent people on this blog, so I’m not suggesting I know something more than you do about how to meet this challenge in your own country, but I sure hope y’all give your foreign liberal allies something to shout about come your mid-term elections!!!!!
As to the ‘justifiable homicide’ comments above - if personhood is ever legally deemed to begin at conception - can ‘anyone’ explain to me how such a law could be anything other than total and absolute patriarchal control when the vast majority of women in the world ‘want’ access to safe and legal abortion should the need for it arise? That is, most women will never consider abortion to be ‘murder’ or ‘homicide’, in any degree, regardless of any man-made ‘law’ that says it is. What could be more stark?
This comment was written by cicely.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 9:05 am
So, you are saying that you prefer a country where there is not equal protection under the law when it comes to a right to life? Who decides then, which lives are worthwhile and which we can discard? Such a law would not be “total and absolute patriarchal control”. It would be a balancing of the acknowledged women’s right to privacy and control of her own body vs. the right to life of the unborn person. In general in our society, right to life trumps privacy and “bodily integrity” (short of life and death) rights. Not always, (I think there are cases where your property rights can justify you killing someone) but generally. That is not a hard call to make and has nothing to do with patriarchy.
Now, that isn’t to say that an argument can’t be made that abortion rights trump the right to life of the unborn. But no one in the pro-choice camp will go there because it acknowledges their greatest fear - that the fetus will indeed be considered a person. So, they wait cowering in the corner for the inevitable to happen.
At best, I think that kind of justification would be a very uphill battle.
It would be interesting to see how Sweden classifies the unborn. My guess is that they don’t consider it a person. Or, they may have less “right to life” protections for persons than we do. I don’t know. All I know is that if someone prefers their laws, then they should go live there. I hope they don’t mind 60% taxes as well.
As far as the personhod argument in general, it has nothing to do with patriarchy either. It has everything to do with biology. I’m afraid you are stuck with this one as the objective biological facts don’t change depending on which country you go to.
Get a grip. Feminist hysterics only feed the patriarchal paradigm you wish to escape from. Besides, no one is trying to revert to the “dark ages”. A “Victorian utopia” is the more likely.;-)
This comment was written by gengwall.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 9:13 am
As to the ‘justifiable homicide’ comments above - if personhood is ever legally deemed to begin at conception - can ‘anyone’ explain to me how such a law could be anything other than total and absolute patriarchal control when the vast majority of women in the world ‘want’ access to safe and legal abortion should the need for it arise?
If the vast majority of women in a democracy with universal suffrage (e.g., the U.S.) want a given law to be passed, it should pass, given that there are more women than men of voting age. It might take two or three elections to get the job done, but eventually they’ll get it. So if such a law is passed, perhaps the underlying premise of “the vast majority of women ‘want’ access to safe and legal abortion” might be false in such a case.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 10:23 am
In Sweden there are members of the ruling Social Democrat Party trying to find ways to provide foreign women with access to the free - yes - free - abortions that are the right of every Swedish woman.
I’m curious as to how the Swedish government and whatever documents the government is based on justifies taking money from people by force (i.e., collects taxes) to fund abortions for free for whoever wants one. Why should anyone have to pay for that?
This attempt even includes illegal immigrant women, and how to achieve this for them without at the same time undermining the police and immigration authorities.
Especially people who aren’t even citizens of the country. And good luck on that “without undermining” bit.
This is what the separation of Church and State can look like. (though more than this is needed…) Sorry if I’m off topic here, but isn’t there some way a legal challenge can be mounted against the blending of these in your country? Because if Fundamentalist Christian morality around sex and sexuality and abortion etc. informs the laws of the land, something very basic to your democracy has been lost even inside the democratic process.
There is no process within American government that requires the governmental bodies to take notice of any particular religion’s doctrines or precepts.