Abortion

#101

I posted this in another discussion forum a while back. There was a lot of back and forth on the spirituality of it but not anything of substance. Here it go.

There is little mention of brass tacks in this thread so i will add some. In the USA, there are almost 600,000 abortions every year. There are numerous reasons that a woman CHOOSES to get an abortion, but none of those are really relevant for this discussion.
What would happen if it were illegal? With an infant mortality rate of 6.8 per 1000 live births, that would leave 595,920 more babies born every year. With a us poverty rate of 13% to 17% that would mean between 77,000 to over 100,000 additional children born below the poverty line every year. Assuming that every parent who could afford it would raise a child, and we go for minimum poverty levels, that would mean 77,495 babies born every year to parents who couldn’t afford it. Now, parents who cannot afford to raise their kids have four choices.
1: Give the kid up for adoption
2: let their children starve to or not take care of basic medical needs. Both can often lead to complicated conditions later on in life that cost even more money to treat.
3: Get some form of govt. assistance
4: Commit crimes, such as drug dealing, prostitution, or theft
This is real, not a moral argument
The first , while it sounds good, is not. There are over 120,000 unadopted kids in the US right now with an additional 600,000 in child services ie, with parents who CANNOT take care of them.
The second is horrible. Nobody wants to see a child starve, except maybe a Nazi. Having to choose between food and medical care is nothing but desperation.
The third is what a lot of people do. Welfare, food stamps, emergency rooms and low income clinics.
The Fourth, well, poverty and crime are like chocolate and peanut butter, white and rice, stink and sh!t, “Moral” politics and personal infidelity/corruption

 What all of these things have in common is money. I'm not sure how other nations do this but this is how it works in America . 
 The first, state governments provide $30,000 per child in the CPS. Add up the unadopted and cps kids and multiply that by 30,000 and you get $21,600,000,000. That is billions of TAX dollars. thats not counting the aborted kids either. 
 The second, when people are too poor to buy medical care, they go the the ER for treatment. When they fail to pay, the cost is passed on to those who are insured or the taxpayers. 
 The third, well, who funds the government, the individual taxpayers as most large corporations use loopholes to not pay any taxes 
 The fourth, even if the cost of the crimes directly is not factored in, the cost of policing, prosecution, defending and incarcerating those who commit said crimes is huge, and is paid for by taxpayers like me.

Kids cost money, and in the USA when those who can’t or won’t take care of the kids, the taxpayers do, often with horrible results, from abuse, to fraud, not to mention kids who grow up never knowing thew love of a parent.
So, if a woman knows she can not or will not raise a child properly, having the option to terminate the pregnancy is a good thing, for her, other children, the taxpayers and the nation as a whole and that is why abortion needs to be and should be legal.
thanks for reading.
J

PS. isn’t it ironic that conservative politicians, that speak of eliminating social services of all kinds, who have a “moral” argument against abortion never seem to have a plan to pay for all the additional kids that would be born if it were illegal?

Poverty: https://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/
Abortion: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5713a1.htm?s_cid=ss5713a1_e
Infant mortality rate: https://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_imrt_in&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+infant+mortality+rate
thats all I can put up now, I have to go to work

#102

Okay. You are making judgments about a person, and the human race in general. You aren’t taking all factors into consideration when forming your belief. Deductively, we can say you are being judgmental. So, are you stipulating that being judgmental ISN’T a negative?

#103

Can we get some source on that Wall 'o Text? May be useful in the future.

Anyway, I’ve established my view. As far as I’m concerned, to kill potential is to kill a future child, but this does not equate to a moral issue with abortion. Odds are, the child of a mother who wishes to abort would not be the treated as well or brought up as well as they could be, making them more likely to be a drain of society, and as such it would be best to prioritize our limited resources to those more “valuable” (relative phrase, I know). Not to mention the concept that if a mother does not give birth early on, I suspect they would wait until they are in a stable relationship, which is better for the child.

#104

What factors am I failing to consider? I said that humanity has good people in it, I’m just saying it’s naive to think that humanity is good in principle all of the time. I think history has proven that time and time again with war, racism, sexism, hate crimes, etc. I’m not being judgemental in just stating my opinions on the human race, as I see it, based on what I’ve seen in my life and backed up by everything I’ve ever leared about in world history. What am I missing?

#105

So you are saying that you can make a sweeping generalization that such as you have and it would be accurate? That is takes into consideration all factors? You aren’t taking specific groups, political, and sociological factors. You are just saying that from your observations, that you are qualified to make a generalized statement that applies to humanity as a whole.

You are oversimplifying the situation. You are breaking things down to levels that cannot be justified and making sweeping judgements based on this.

Abortion in a complicated issue, and judging someones motivations is so difficult it may even be impossible. It’s more important to talk about the rights of a person. The right of a woman to protect her own body from anything negative that is be subjected to it. The rights of the fetus should also be considered. I wouldn’t say I’m pro life or pro choice. Abortion is a sad thing, but I think a woman should be allowed to protect herself from harm. Enduring a life changing pregnancy IS harm.

#106

Okay we are getting no where with this conversation with you thinking I’m being judgmental and overgenalizing and me thinking that ur not reading everything that I’m writing and being hypocritical. So yeah I’m bowing out of this conversation…

#107

wtf fuck off

#108

Millions of unborn babies murdered with every fap :wink:

#109

@Drakey You are right, Drakey, this discussion about whether or not you are judging people is not going anywhere.

Yes, I know, people are stupid, they make bad decisions and we should prevent them from making such decisions sometimes. It does not mean they are bad or self centered, they are just stupid.

Not when a girl put herself in those situations because society has failed to give her opportunity to do something else with her own life. She has probably had a lot of forced choices in her life, forcing her not to have an abortion would make things worse. What would she do then? She would make an illegal abortion, there would be a lot of stress involved (because someone said she can’t do it), increasing the risk of death.

Yes, I agree, she shouldn’t need to make abortions, but the one to blame for not giving her a proper job, or at least some dignity for her to demand a condom from her clients, is society.

There are certainly bad examples of when abortion is a bad decision. For instance, in Brazil, the leader of Universal Church (a Christian religion) said that abortion could be used as a method for family control instead of condoms (because, you know, condoms are from the devil :hmph :slight_smile: . But your example… I honestly think that abortion is the best decision in that case.

I think she was lucky.

That is a good point. However, I find it too easy for someone with a stable life to tell that prostitute she can’t have an abortion. That is why I said “first give her a job, then judge her”, which means: first you give her all the good conditions in which you are today, then you tell her not to have an abortion.

That kind of proves my point that people are stupid, not mean. This is my opinion: in the end, if you put yourself in the place of the people that you say to be bad, knowing all the circumstances and knowing how much education those people had, you won’t think they are bad. Most of the times, you will say they were bad after placing yourself in their place, but that is just because you put yourself in their place with your experience and knowledge, not theirs.

#110

bawww go try to take away another marginalized groups rights

#111

lol

#112

FWIW, I’m with Fancy Pants. She is right, someone that have never gone through an undesired pregnancy can’t know what it is like, what it feels like, what are the complications and the troubles you have to go through.

EDIT:

Awesome point of view, JohnWorfin. I would say your line of thinking doesn’t take one thing into account: undesired pregnancy is often related to poverty. In other words, the amount of complications and money involved in taking care of those children who would not have been born would increase.

#113

lol o rite i forgot how women totally are never discriminated against or marginalized thanks for telling me about how my firsthand experience is wrong good thing we’ve got you to mansplain

#114

I would not go too far into the “women are discriminated against” direction. Women themself discriminate other women as often as men. That is one of the few reasons man CAN discriminate against women but women can rarely discriminate against men: Women are ununited.

#115

I have nothing against abortion, but it’s really up to the woman herself to choose to abort or not to abort.

#116

I think it should be a choice, up to the woman and her partner.

However I think abortions should be performs early on, in the first couple months. Late-stage abortions I’m less okay with.

#117

/\this/
If people have a moral or spiritual or psychological issue with abortion, they don’t have to have one. For everyone else, it needs to be safe and legal.

#118

Pretty much.

Some religions don’t allow blood transfusions, but we haven’t banned those.

(though I wouldn’t put it much past the republicans to try)

#119

First off I just want to say that I would much rather have a debate with someone like you. You seem to respectfully listen to what I am trying to say and then proceed to give me your counter argument all the while keeping an open mind. I don’t like when other are unwilling to listen with an open minded spirit and just reject you opinions outright while telling you how badly they think of you because of said opinions.

That being said this woman, my wife, was NOT at all lucky with how she was raised and was not given even a little bit of help to get her where she is today. She was treated the worst possible way that you could imagine… beat, sexually assaulted as a child, neglected (she was abandoned by her mother regularly for years at a time), basically mistreated in every way possible. Needless to say it was by HER decision only that SHE decided to not let that be her life. No one was there to help her do her school work even as a child and no one helped her put herself through college as an adult. She made a conscious choice to not be like her mother and worked her ass off (even as a child) to get where she is to day. There was no luck, charity, help, or any thing else other than her perseverance and hard work that got her out of that horrible situation.

So ill say it one last time… people should stop blaming society for all of their problems because if this woman can make something out of her life than anyone can (my father has a very similar story to this one), no luck involved just a decision and hard work.

Okay maybe I should have be more clear because I think I was being unclear in what I was saying or at least how I worded it. In my defense I was writing my responses from the touch screen keyboard of my phone so I didn’t put a ton of thought into my wording or go crazy with examples. I never meant to imply that I thought that the woman was being selfish for being a prostitute (I honestly think all “victimless crimes” should be legalized), from my point of view her selfishness comes in when you look at the fact that she let herself get pregnant that many time and also because she chose to do drugs and have this life style before, during, and even after having a child that she decided to keep. She was being selfish because she only cared about her self and her next fix during these times and didn’t care whose life she destroyed to get it , be it the unborn fetuses or her daughters.

Like I said I prefer to not speak on my opinions about abortion so I was never arguing on weather I thought that was right or wrong, so that too wasn’t an issue for me.

Also this woman chose this life style and was not forced into anything she didn’t have to make any “forced choices”, she didn’t have the greatest life growing up but she had a mother, father, and step father that provided with all you need for a normal life. In a nut shell what I was saying is that some people make choices based on self centered reasons and then use abortion as a quick fix to their problems when their problems could be solved by putting on a damn condom. I was also saying that humanity as a whole is more self centered than they are morally righteous as been shown by my experiences, world history, crime statistics, etc…

#120

mkay thats nice but the only reason women do that is because misogyny is so accepted as a part of society that they don’t realize what they’re doing

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