Talk:Abortion

While the extremists of the pro-life crowd has been hypocritical, killing doctors, blowing up clinics, etc. the majority are not like that at all, and there is even one lady (sorry, can't find a link right now) who is simply purchasing abortion clinics and making them wellness clinics.

The pro-choice movement has been smart with the creation of Planned Parenthood whose goal of pushing abortion as the primary option has been working wonders. Win the war without firing a single shot. Eugenics by any other name... Midian 16:12, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Eugenics

"Eugenics", as I understand it, is based on the idea of "improving the species" by selective breeding – choosing which people are allowed to reproduce, and with whom they will do so – and forced sterilization. Both of these tools involve coercion and control from outside. Abortion, on the other hand, is under the control of the person seeking the abortion... so I'm not really seeing the connection. --Woozle 18:50, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Midian replies

Selective breeding is part of it. Preventing the "undesireables" from breeding, or killing their offspring, is also necessary to work toward a majority of the "master race." From your own linked article (you should have read it) "Eugenics has, from the very beginning, meant many different things to many different people. Historically the term has been used to cover everything from prenatal care for mothers to forced sterilization and euthanasia." "from...to" indicates everything in between.

If you can convince pregnant mothers their only choice is abortion, that's one method of preventing them from being born, saving killing them later (euthenasia). Murder is murder. Cutting of the umbilical cord does not a person make. Midian 18:58, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Woozle replies

(Responding in a bit of a hurry; I did skim the article for references to abortion, but didn't have a chance to search thoroughly. Still, just because a eugenics program might use abortion as a tool does not mean that all abortions are part of a program of eugenics. Also... if it can mean a wide variety of different things, then what do you specifically mean by it?)

I would agree that coerced abortion would be a problem worth fighting. The choice whether or not to have an abortion should be strictly the mother's, at least as long as she is legally an adult. I would also add that there certainly can be economic pressures which come to bear more strongly on some groups (e.g. poor people) than others. This imbalance could be seen as being deliberately engineered to decrease the population of certain groups (i.e. eugenics), but that doesn't mean it actually is.

It sounds like you're suggesting that there actually is some kind of eugenics program in effect, and that this program is using abortion as one of its major tools. I'd really like to see more about this, if you have any links or references or anything, because that's very much the kind of thing I like to try and bring to light here (whether or not I agree that it's happening).

And finally... "murder is murder"... we need to define our terms. Would I be wrong in thinking that you define "murder" as "the killing of a human", and that you agree that neither a human sperm nor an human egg qualifies as "a human", but believe that the two together, once a successful fertilization has occurred, is "a human"?

--Woozle 19:52, 28 July 2006 (EDT)

Midian replies

A few separate issues so I'll try to break them down.

Separate Entity

At what point does a fertilized egg become a separate living entity? Why do most on the "pro-choice" side seem to think it is all about cutting the umbilical cord, allowing for partial-birth abortions? I find the practice abhorent, and it should be illegal. At what point, really, should the rights of the innocent unborn child come into play, however?

This is the issue of personhood, if I'm not mistaken. Key issue. --Woozle 16:16, 2 August 2006 (EDT)

Legality

Despite the fact that only .02% of abortions occur to due to rape, I don't believe abortions should be illegal. I do believe, however, that the government should not use tax money (our money) to fund abortions for anyone except those .02%, otherwise that is forcing me to indirectly support the murder of the innocent unborn child.

Abortion policy is really two issues, isn't it -- (1) when/if it should be legal, and (2) when/if it should be publicly funded. I've updated the article page to reflect this... although both issues hinge heavily on the basic issue of the ethicality of abortion, which (again) seems to hang almost entirely on the issue of personhood. --Woozle 16:16, 2 August 2006 (EDT)

Addressing the Wrong Issue

The "pro-life" crowd is so busy addressing the abortions, they miss the root cause and are fighting a losing battle. If they spent the time, energy, and money on educating people into making proper choices instead of fighting with those who have already made a bad choice, they would prevent the situation in the first place.

Absolutely. This is why it is so mystifying that much of the pro-life crowd seem to be largely against any kind of sex education... (not to mention against homosexuality, which both (1) reduces the number of accidental pregnancies, and (2) adds to the number of families seeking to adopt, which could be a great boon to pro-adoption efforts... but I guess if they've decided homosexuality is evil, then they wouldn't want innocent children being tainted.)

Personal Responsibility

Honestly, if you look at the problem as a whole, abortion is about avoiding responsibility for our actions. This is a major issue this country has as a whole. We want all the freedoms, without any of the baggage that comes with it. We want to be able to choose to act indiscriminately, and then when it comes time to pay the piper, find a way out of it. Anyone who makes the CHOICE to have unprotected sex, an act that knowingly causes pregnancy, then they need to accept the responsibility of the action they chose. If they aren't prepared to be pregnant, they shouldn't choose the action that causes it.

It may be that for some people, but speaking as part of a couple which is totally abstinent by choice, it's not the main reason for a lot of people. I also personally know at least one couple who had at least one child as the result of protected sex (I can't be more specific/certain because I haven't pried for details), so it's not always the individual's fault.

The main reason I think it should be legal is that no kid should have to come into a world in which s/he isn't wanted, or can't/won't be taken care of properly. It's not doing anyone any favors, including the kid, to fight for her/his "right to life" if that life is going to be lousy. Until our society has reliable means of providing for kids born into such circumstances, I don't think it's unreasonable to at least allow abortion as an alternative to handing every mother an "unfunded mandate" to raise every single accidental fertilization because it's somehow more moral to do so. (Whew, that was a sentence and a half...) --Woozle 16:16, 2 August 2006 (EDT)

more response from Woozle

Something has occurred to me in the time since I annotated each of your points above.

You argue (if I understand correctly) that abortion is effectively a eugenics program directed against poor people. However, if you don't fund abortions for poor people (more broadly defined as "those who can't afford abortions"), then:

• only non-poor people can afford them
• which means poor people breed less controllably to themselves
• and also breed more than everyone else

This strikes me as more unfair to poor people (and to the children, forced to come into the world for lack of affordable abortion) than it is unfair to the "unborn children", who are unborn and don't yet have enough braincells to care (assuming we're talking about, say, first-trimester abortions) whether they live or die. Existence is not always preferable to nonexistence (and this early in the process, the child has very little to lose).

In other words, this (lack of public funding for abortions) is worse than eugenics, as it selectively fails to prevent destruction of the lives of people who have already been born and even grown up and perhaps educated to some degree, and who therefore may give a fig if their lives are ruined. Those who are already rich or reasonably secure financially can do what they want, but poor people get to breed more poor people whether they like it or not.

Also...

"addressing the wrong issue": actually, it seems rather disingenuous to suggest that the pro-choice crowd are addressing the wrong issue by focusing on abortion instead of providing contraceptives and proper sex education, when it is the pro-choice folks who have done most of the work on that front and the pro-life folks who have been fighting against it.

"personal responsibility": it seems to me that this is a bit of a red herring (as well as being an appeal to guilt). Above, for example, we haven't been talking about ourselves, but people with fewer financial resources to draw on in an emergency. I can't speak for all those who support maximum access to legalized abortion, but I've never personally been in a situation where someone I knew wanted an abortion – much less as a result of promiscuity or contraceptive carelessness. (In the "protected sex accident" I described earlier, the couple went on to have the child and two others, all of whom are now in elementary school.) I am arguing from principle and personal belief (as explained at length elsewhere, and thus open to the same examination as any other views on this site), not because it would make my life more convenient.

I think most pro-choice people are arguing from those same principles, not from the short-sighted motives you ascribe to them.

So... have you changed your mind, or are there any points I haven't yet answered adequately?

--Woozle 08:10, 8 June 2007 (EDT)