NiteHawk wrote:refect wrote:im pro choice. those who are pro life that is cool. believe what you want. im not gonna try to fight or disagree with you. to each his own. now i feel abortion is good for a good amount of reasons. what if a woman is raped and she gets pregnant? i dunno bout you but if i was a girl i woudlnt want to have a baby that came from a pregnancy like that. think of how messed up it would sound. yeh i got raped thats how you came into this world kid. your dad is some f'd up guy who i hope is dead now. so it is good for that. also think about how they used to do abortion back in the day...a hanger or some completely unsanitary method that could result in death from infections and bleeding and stuff. get rid of abortion and more people will do it dangerously. at least let them have the choice to do it a little more safe. now im gonna get on pro-life, and like i said nothing is wrong with being pro-life. i hear all them out on what they are saying and why they think it is bad. i feel you all on what you are saying, but it is not like you are forced on abortion. abortion is something you do if you want it done and can live with the fact that you are killing an unborn child. so if you dont like abortion and are against it then you simply have the choice to not go and do it and stay with your beliefs. why take the time to stress and care about someone thousands of miles away. abortion is like drugs in a sense. drugs will never go away. no matter what they do. no matter how hard they try people will find other ways to get high or ways to get around it. thats just the way it is. abortion is the same way. so it's gonna be there whether you like it or not. i say as long as it is there at least let it be done safely.
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In 1973 there should have been a really sharp drop in women dying. The chart, however, shows that there was no such drop. The line didn’t even blip. The previous rate of decline actually slowed, to flatten out in the late 70s and 80s. According to the U.S. vital statistics, as anyone can see, legalization of abortion did not save almost any women’s lives.
The problem with that argument is that the number of illegal abortions was pretty much negligible compared to the times when Sulfa and Penicillin were introduced. The relative decline between 1967 (initial legalization) and 1980 is around 93%, and between 1973 (Roe v. Wade) and 1980, it is around 50%. Really, there is a drop.
Still, you are right in pointing out that antibiotics have saved the lives of women undergoing illegal abortions much more than legalization did. One question does remain: what if legalization of abortion predated the development of antibiotics?
My position on this is pretty much the same as refect's. Though pro-life is a nice ideology, and it would be nice if we didn't need abortion, there do remain many problems with pregnancy. To name a few:
* Cost (both during and after)
* Pain
* Involuntary pregnancy (especially rape, but also accidental pregnancy)
* Passing on inherited diseases
* Overpopulation (though that's more of a problem in the developing world than the developed world)
* Effect on women's careers, from a mere delay to being let go
Also, eighteen years after the legalization of abortion, crime rates dropped dramatically across the nation. They dropped earlier in states that legalized abortion earlier (Donohue & Levitt, 2001, p. 379). The authors of this source caution, though, that this data should not be misinterpreted "as either an endorsement of abortion or a call for intervention by the state in the fertility decisions of women. Furthermore, equivalent reductions in crime could in principle be obtained through alternatives for abortion, such as more effective birth control, or providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime" (Donohue & Levitt, 2001, p. 415).
If we could actually provide the better environments mentioned above for children, we might be closer to achieving a pro-life society. However, I strongly doubt that would happen, especially in our capitalist society. Thus I remain unconvinced that pro-life is nothing more than a utopian wish.
Resources
Donohue III, J. J. and Levitt, S. D. (2001). The impact of legalized abortion on crime [Electronic version].
The Quarterly Journal of Economics, CXVI, 379-420.
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Damn it! I've done too much proper citing for class this week and haven't gotten my mind off of it!
One of the few things we don't agree on.
Sam-I-Am
And no, your career is not dead if you have kids. Its just tougher to do things. My wife was upper-middle management at Disney/ABC when we first had Dylan in the NICU at Stanford. For 11 weeks we juggled schedules and business trips and school, but we did it. I even took a final once with Dylan on my shoulder because Christy was in New York and I had nobody to watch him. We played that corporate game for two years before Christy was able to stay at home with Dylan. I won't even mention checkups, regular doctor visits, and numerous tests and studies to make sure he was developing ok. We scrambled for two solid years.