Difference between revisions of "Abortion"

Revision as of 18:13, 24 July 2011

About

Abortion is the killing and removal of a fetus before birth. It is generally only an issue with regard to human birth, where it is forbidden by many religions and opposed by others. It is also illegal in some countries, and more countries make it illegal as the fetus comes closer to term.

In the United States, proponents of legalized abortion generally describe themselves as "pro-choice", while those who seek to restrict or criminalize abortion generally describe themselves as "pro-life". Feelings on both sides tend to run very high, but extremists on the "pro-life" seem to have a greater tendency towards extreme actions, e.g. making threats against doctors who perform abortions, and even occasional acts of bodily harm or murder.

Positions

anti-abortion: generally views killing of any fetus, at any developmental phase, as murder
- pro-life: opposes abortion in the name of promoting life, generally opposes violence too but some violent anti-abortionists call themselves "pro-life" nonetheless
- Claims of those who oppose legal abortion include:
  - /eugenics: the primary goal of abortion choice advocates is based in eugenics
  - /black genocide: a primary goal of abortion choice advocates is that of reducing the number of black people, or possibly eliminating them altogether.
  - /profit: abortion doctors and clinics are primarily motivated by money
    - The real money is in 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions; nobody wants to do 1st trimester.
  - /damage: abortion causes more damage than good; choice advocates ignore this fact
  - /industry: abortion is a huge industry (this is related to, but separate from, the profit claim)
  - Abortion for boutique eugenics: editorial arguing that abortion will inevitably be misused
pro-choice sees abortion as an unpleasant necessity, while working to reduce the need for it

Discussion

legislation:
- /legality: Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be legal?
- /public funding: Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be publicly funded?
ethics:
- personhood: at what point does a fetus become a person, and acquire the right to live?
science/facts:
- Human gestational development: the stages of development of a human embryo/fetus
- /reasons why abortions are requested
- There is some evidence that the legalization of abortion in the U.S. led to a dramatic decrease in the crime rate at approximately the time when the "ghost children" (the kids who would have been born if abortion had remained illegal) would have been reaching adulthood.
  - See: Freakonomics, ISBN 006073132X, and commentary by Orson Scott Card
  - Obviously this does not prove a connection, but the evidence deserves further examination.
  - If a connection can be established, then there also remains the ethical question of whether a decline in crime is worth the cost of the increase in abortions (costs and benefits for this particular outcome, or in other words: How much less crime? How many more abortions?), to which some groups might well answer "no".

Related issues

reproductive issues

Notes

Need some documentation about extremism on either side; it should be easy enough to find news items about pro-lifers bombing or vandalizing abortion clinics, but I'd also like to hear about anything bad done in the name of pro-choice. Items about arguably positive actions taken by either side may also be relevant, e.g. the woman who goes around buying up abortion clinics and changing their mission to be consistent with the pro-life point of view – which is at least a peaceful and lawful method of working against abortion even if you don't agree with the goal. --Woozle 12:40, 2 August 2006 (EDT)

some stats on abortion clinic incidents

Links

Reference

Wikipedia:
- Abortion
- Abortion debate
- Roe v. Wade led to legalization of abortion in the U.S.
Conservapedia : Hippocrates prohibited abortion, and it's a billion-dollar industry in the US and Western Europe
dKosopedia
SourceWatch (Reproductive health)

Official Positions

1995-03-25 Pope John Paul II restates the Catholic Church's position on abortion and other "life" issues, with links to keyword indices

News

2014/07/11 [L..T] What We Don't Talk About When We Don't Talk About Abortion "I had an abortion four years ago. I just recently decided to start talking about it."
2014/05/05 [L..T] Why I Filmed My Abortion
2014/04/29 [L..T] Google Removes Deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Center Ads
2014/04/27 [L..T] GOP War on Women: Mississippi Could Soon Lose its Only Abortion Clinic
2014/03/14 [L..T] The Day I Decided to Have an Abortion
2013/01/02 [L..T] Hypocrisy? Hobby Lobby fights government mandate to give employees access to birth control coverage on religious grounds, yet makes millions on products primarily from China where 7 million abortions and forced contraceptive surgeries a year take place "...one company stands out in its perceived civil disobedience lawsuit fighting the government mandate to give employees access to birth control coverage. Citing violation of religious beliefs, the owners of Hobby Lobby, the David Green family, doesn't want to provide access to birth control they think will induce abortion, although according to Tulsa World they have covered other forms of birth control in the past."
2008/07/02 [L..T] Women Say Economy Was Factor In Getting Abortions “There were 13,843 abortions performed in Minnesota in 2007. Of the women who listed a reason for their abortions, 40 percent cited economic concerns – the largest share since the state started collecting detailed abortion information a decade ago.”
2007/11/21 [L..T] O'Reilly: "War" on Christmas part of "secular progressive agenda" that includes "legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage" “...decrying the purported "war" on Christmas, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly claimed that "it's all part of the secular progressive agenda ... to get Christianity and spirituality and Judaism out of the public square."”

to be filed

2007-04-21 How Media Mistakes Fueled the High Court Abortion Ruling by Gloria Feldt, Women's Media Center: states that there is no such thing as a "partial birth abortion", but this term is apparently used to refer to Intact dilation and extraction
2007-04-19 Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Women's Health by Amy Goodman
2006-06-21 Anti-Choice Legislators Have Gone Too Far (should eventually go in anti-abortion article)
2006-01-27 Abortion-rights and anti-abortion groups share some values

Video

1992 When Abortion Was Illegal: Untold Stories: includes some anti-abortion arguments in the comment section
2006 Lake of Fire A documentary showing realistic and extreme views on abortion.

Humor

2006-08-01 Thinking of the children (D.C. Simpson, I Drew This): right-to-life vs. early childhood welfare

Quotes

David Brin said, in a sidebar to part 2 of "The Real Culture War":

JESUS AND ABORTION:

Consider the trap that the left has fallen into regarding Jesus.

Back in the sixties, much of the clergy leaned leftward and away from supporting the Vietnam War. The image of Jesus was that of a bearded quasi-hippie in sandals, who preached that the rich should give their very shirts to the poor. What has changed? Certainly not the passages of scripture that were quoted then. Passages that would make Jesus seem... well... rather socialistic in any era.

Then came abortion. It gave the right a handle by which to reclaim Jesus. By declaring ideologically that any fertilized cell is a full human being, radicals turned any abortion - even many forms of birth control - into baby killing. And despite all his other socialist leanings, Jesus would have to take sides against baby-killers, right? Voila! Suddenly the moral high ground no longer belonged to the left. That is, in the eyes of anybody who could be talked into seeing a human being in a fertilized egg. When that became a major dogma of the right, millions went right along.

So the left lost Jesus. And with Jesus went the churches. And with the churches... well...

Must all liberals play this game between two sides who insist on waging social war over fertilized cells? At risk of incurring ire from some of my feminist friends, I don't see any reason to declare absolute all-or-nothing positions on a subject so murky and ill-defined as when human life begins.

Imagine some liberal group declaring: "All right, there may be some changes afoot that we don't like. A new Supreme Court may start pushing at the fringes of Roe-vs-Wade. We may need to raise millions in "scholarships" to fly poor women from red states to New York...

"But let other groups handle that. We refuse to get involved in abortion. We welcome anti-abortion people who want to work with us on other matters, helping the poor (as Jesus would want), questioning capricious or ill conceived wars, raising the minimum wage, preserving God's Earth. Let other groups be proudly secular, or even pagan. We are going to reclaim the man who walked in sandals among the poor, feeding them from a loaf and a fish."

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-==Overview==
+<hide>
-[[Category:Issues]][[Abortion]] is the killing and removal of a fetus before birth. It is generally only an issue with regard to human birth, where it is forbidden by many religions and opposed by others. It is also illegal in some countries, and more countries make it illegal as the fetus comes closer to term.
+[[page type::article]]
+[[thing type::process]]
+[[category:issues]]
+</hide>
+==About==
+[[Abortion]] is the killing and removal of a fetus before birth. It is generally only an issue with regard to human birth, where it is forbidden by many religions and opposed by others. It is also illegal in some countries, and more countries make it illegal as the fetus comes closer to term.
 In the {{USA}}, proponents of legalized abortion generally describe themselves as "[[pro-choice]]", while those who seek to restrict or criminalize abortion generally describe themselves as "[[pro-life]]". Feelings on both sides tend to run very high, but extremists on the "pro-life" seem to have a greater tendency towards extreme actions, e.g. making threats against doctors who perform abortions, and even occasional acts of bodily harm or murder.
-==Viewpoints==
+===Positions===
 * [[anti-abortion]]: generally views killing of any fetus, at any developmental phase, as [[murder]]
 ** [[pro-life]]: opposes abortion in the name of promoting life, generally opposes violence too but some violent anti-abortionists call themselves "pro-life" nonetheless
-** [[Abortion for boutique eugenics]]: editorial arguing that abortion will inevitably be misused
+** Claims of those who oppose legal abortion include:
-** [http://www.abortionfacts.com/dr_willke/connector_july_98.asp The Truth About the Abortion Business]
+*** [[/eugenics]]: the primary goal of [[pro-choice|abortion choice advocates]] is based in [[eugenics]]
-*** {{anonuser|166.89.220.56}} (who posted this link) says: "It's all about the money, and the damage (physical and mental) is ignored."
+*** [[/black genocide]]: a primary goal of [[pro-choice|abortion choice advocates]] is that of reducing the number of [[black people]], or possibly [[genocide|eliminating them altogether]].
-**** Right. How many rich abortion doctors do you know? How many money-hungry people take jobs where they are likely to get shot at and killed, have their businesses vandalized and destroyed, and face angry right-wing protesters on a regular basis? {{woozle/init}}
+*** [[/profit]]: abortion doctors and clinics are primarily motivated by money
-***** 7 abortion doctors killed in 15 years, while tragic, does not make the job any more dangerous than bus driver.
+**** The real money is in 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions; nobody wants to do 1st trimester.
-****** Some numbers for this, please? How many abortion doctors are there, how many murders, and what is the fatality rate for bus drivers? Also, how does the murder rate of abortion doctors compare with the rate of abortions vs. live births? (If it's the same or higher, then you could say the same of abortions: tragic, but not any worse than bus driver fatalities.) --[[User:Woozle|Woozle]] 22:02, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
+*** [[/damage]]: abortion causes more damage than good; [[pro-choice|choice advocates]] ignore this fact
-******* Most recent statistics I can find[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/us/01tiller.html] states 4 [abortion doctor murders] since 1993. Every death is tragic, yet this does not make the job more dangerous than policemen (150 deaths per year [http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/1999/Jun/wk5/art05.htm]). While the chance of death is something to think about when deciding your profession, it seems obvious monetary gain overwhelms that decision.
+*** [[/industry]]: abortion is a huge industry (this is related to, but separate from, the profit claim)
-******# The comparison with police fatalities is somewhat more valid than bus-driver deaths, but all that this shows is that abortion doctors do not face greater mortal danger than policemen (...which is probably false, as far as personal risk: there are far fewer abortion doctors than police -- and I suspect the numbers go down another order of magnitude if you look only at late-term abortion doctors). Quite aside from the fact that a doctor living in a civilized country should ''never'' be in danger from anything but her/his patients and their illnesses, abortion clinic doctors and workers face [[:File:2009-01-26 abortion clinic incidents.ods|much more frequent incidents]] of vandalism, picketing, and other implied threats which are bound to be extremely stressful &ndash; and which may even target their homes and loved ones, rather than being restricted to the workplace.
+*** [[Abortion for boutique eugenics]]: editorial arguing that abortion will inevitably be misused
-******# More to the point, though: How does this lead you to the conclusion that monetary gain is the primary factor in deciding to become an abortion doctor? None of the information you have presented relates to this. Do you have data on the salaries of abortion doctors? How do they compare with similarly-skilled doctors who do not perform adoptions? Take [[2009-05-31 Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church|recently-murdered George Tiller]] as an example: "In addition to protests outside his clinic, his house and his church, Dr. Tiller had once seen his clinic bombed; in 1993, an abortion opponent shot him in both arms. He was also the defendant in a series of legal challenges intended to shut down his operations..." If he was only in it for the money, don't you think he would have changed specialties over a decade ago? I'd be very surprised indeed if you can come up with a single example of an abortion doctor who wouldn't do better materially by staying out of abortions.
-****** This comparison is not valid; a murder is far more tragic than an accidental death in the line of duty, and that comparison also does not take into account the regular ''threat'' of harm and actual material vandalism committed.
-****** Presuming your comparison is accurate, my point still stands: abortion doctors are not in it for the money.
-******* So why do they do what they know is permanently damaging to both the developing human and the mother when there are far better options available for 99% of the cases?
-******** How do you know there are far better options available in 99% of the cases? (And what are those options?)
-**** ''What'' physical and mental damage?
-***** If you argue against some abortions on the basis of physical/mental damage to the mother, then you must also support abortions when they are done to ''preserve'' the mother's physical or mental health.
-****** Obviously. This isn't about ideology, but about the ACTUAL well-being of fellow humans, both walking, and gestating.
-***** Post-abortion depression occurs in the majority who undergo abortion. While not as common, the inability to conceive after an abortion is another known side effect.
-****** My understanding is that women seeking abortions are warned of these side-effects, and still consider them preferable to the side-effects of attempting to carry the child to term.
-*** Article is an interview with [[Eric Harrah]], purportedly a former "abortion clinic chain operator" (is there really such a thing as an "abortion clinic chain"?) and now a Christian ''(which of course makes his testimony highly suspect, "reformed" Christians being notorious for making stuff up -{{woozle/init}})''
-**** His Chritianity is in doubt, he currently professes to no longer follow Christ, however, his abortion stance is the same: Pro-life after having been a planter of many abortion clinics in the Northeast.
-*** AbortionFacts.com is a project of an organization called [[Heritage House 76]] ([http://www.hh76.com/ web site]), ostensibly a pro-life organization ([http://www.hh76.com/mission.asp mission statement])
 * [[pro-choice]] sees abortion as an unpleasant necessity, while working to reduce the need for it
 ===Discussion===
 * '''legislation''':
-** Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be [[legality of abortion|legal]]?
+** [[/legality]]: Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be [[legality of abortion|legal]]?
-** Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be [[public funding of abortion|publicly funded]]?
+** [[/public funding]]: Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be [[public funding of abortion|publicly funded]]?
 * '''ethics''':
 ** [[personhood]]: at what point does a fetus become a person, and acquire the right to live?
 * '''science/facts''':
-** [[Human pre-birth development]]
+** [[Human gestational development]]: the stages of development of a human embryo/fetus
 ** [[/reasons]] why abortions are requested
 ** There is some evidence that the [[wikipedia:Roe v. Wade|legalization of abortion in the U.S.]] led to a dramatic decrease in the crime rate at approximately the time when the "ghost children" (the kids who would have been born if abortion had remained illegal) would have been reaching adulthood.