Abortion

Overview

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.

Sub-issues

The policy debate is mainly over the following two sub-issues:

Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be legal?
Under what circumstances (if any) should abortion be publicly funded?

Arguments

Pro

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".

Con

Abortion for boutique eugenics

Currently there is an in utero test for Down syndrome. That testing, combined with abortion-on-demand, has made people with Down syndrome an endangered population. By some estimates, 90 percent of these people – who, if allowed to live, can live happy and healthy lives – are aborted. What is to stop parents from aborting children who are are a specific sex? As science progresses, there are more and more tests that can be performed in utero. What is the next issue what will provoke abortions? Hair color? Political affiliation?

My mistake, the next issue appears to be that doctors want to "screen out" all male embryos that may contract autism due to family history. [1]

Responses to Con

Abortion for boutique eugenics (response)

Any tool can be misused: just because a tool can be used for bad things does not mean that it should be outlawed for all uses. You have to weigh the costs and benefits. If a given tool is found to be prone to a particular misuse, then the issue to be addressed is how to prevent that specific misuse without losing the overall benefits of the tool.
As long as it is the parents making this decision, it is not clear what the harm of this particular outcome would be.
Just because someone with a screenable condition could live a happy and healthy life doesn't mean that they will, nor does it mean that they might not actually prefer to be aborted so the family can start over and try again (and give birth to a kid who might have a much happier, more fulfilling life). We can't know for sure, because we can't ask them (especially the ones who are born unable to communicate, or born with insufficient mental capacity to be able to grasp the question). We have to use our best judgment; you can't not decide in these cases.

Other/Mixed

none yet

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)

Reference

Wikipedia:
- Abortion
- Abortion debate
- Roe v. Wade led to legalization of abortion in the U.S.

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

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

Humor

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