"Now all of a sudden, every black politician and every politician on the left is saying, “If Roe is struck down, this will have a disproportionate impact on poor black women,” which means they think it is a more fitting fate for a child to be killed in utero than to be born to a poor black woman."
Yeah, maybe it is. And take out the 'black', because that applies to all poor women. They want an abortion because they may already have children and whether they do or they don't, they probably can't afford another mouth to feed. And yeah, when you look at how unwanted children are often horribly abused, yeah, suddenly birth looks like a fate worse than death.
I remember reading a story many years ago about a woman (can't remember her colour) who got arrested because she let one of her children starve to death. She had eight, I can't remember if this was the eighth or the ninth. She just left her in her crib and let her starve to death. I can't remember if the father was around. She told the cops she "didn't want her, didn't love her." And I wondered, What's worse? Slowly starving to death, unloved and unattended in your crib, or being taken from the womb when you have no consciousness to know what they're doing?
Where's the father in all this? Will he be around to take care of and raise his sperm donation? Will he be abusive? I don't care WHAT colour the parties are. Did Daddy know how to use a condom? Did she tell him "No condom, no whoopie"? If you want to keep it black, six million mothers last year may want to know where the sperm donor is (or perhaps not). I'm sure at least some of those are single fathers, and maybe two dozen of those fatherless kids are the work of Elon Musk, Nick Cannon and Herschel Walker. But you get my point. Every child a WANTED child. Yeah, there are worse fates than getting aborted. Just ask all the kids who were horribly abused and neglected by fucked-up parents who died in agony because no one loved them, no one wanted them.
Only some people abuse children. It is definitely not true that many people are ready to perpetrate the type of abuse you mention if a child comes from an unplanned pregnancy.
It is not true that the choice is between being aborted and being horribly abused. If poor women could count on adequate support if they become mothers or have another child, less women would choose abortion.
Not every unwanted child is abused (my father wasn't, an 'oops' baby that caused my grandmother to cut off my grandfather entirely, although she did love my dad and felt bad later about not wanting him initially) but plenty are, and ideally every child is wanted. Poor women suffer the most since they're the ones left to take care of the children if daddy-o(s) don't stick around to help. It would help immensely if we subsidized birth control for *everyone* (not just the poor) and also, if we could get serious about reducing poverty.
But I've heard and read some people say they wished their mother had gotten an abortion. And given how tough life is overall for everyone, I think 'right to life' should be altered to 'right to a GOOD life'.
>Poor women suffer the most since they're the ones left to take care of the children if daddy-o(s) don't stick around to help.<
Everything in life is harder for poor people. This is not exclusive to child-rearing. I don't get why being poor suddenly gives one an excuse to ignore moral norms and responsibilities. Well, I sort of get the leftist ideology behind it, but still. It's simply wrong and bad. If you are poor, *too bad*. You still have a duty not to literally murder your own offspring. Of all the things, that one is certainly not too much to ask.
The idea that poor people somehow "can't afford" children is also completely silly in a nation where the poor are more likely to be obese than the wealthy. Yes, children do bring financial hardship, and we do need to take more steps to alleviate that in my opinion, but the idea that a child is somehow going to starve in the United States is completely silly and does not happen outside of willful neglect.
>And given how tough life is overall for everyone, I think 'right to life' should be altered to 'right to a GOOD life'.<
But with the caveat that if we think you're not likely to live a "good" life, we will murder you as a child in order to spare you the theoretical suffering?
Interesting. You show a lot more feeling for a fetus than you do for the mother who has to raise it.
Look, I'm not poor and I can tell you aren't either...but can't you see how this is about more than a child's 'right' to life? How it's also about having a tolerable life? Which you can have growing up poor, and you can have a rotten life growing up with much more, but boy oh boy, can I see the right-wing 'f-u' ideology on display here. You really don't know why the poor are obese? It's not because they have too much money, it's because they have so little. The crap food is the cheapest. McDonald's gives you a LOT of food for very little money, but it lacks nutrition. To eat well, you have to spend more. Go check out a Whole Foods if you don't believe me.
>Interesting. You show a lot more feeling for a fetus than you do for the mother who has to raise it.<
Feeling bad for someone doesn't give them an excuse to murder their own offspring.
>Look, I'm not poor and I can tell you aren't either...but can't you see how this is about more than a child's 'right' to life? How it's also about having a tolerable life?<
Why don't you go and ask all those poor souls subsisting on McDonald's if they'd rather that they were never born, and instead cut apart in the womb by surgical instruments? If any of them answer yes, you should inform them that since we have a Second Amendment in this country, if their life is truly nothing but intolerable suffering, there is a guaranteed pain-free way out that they can access quite easily. See how many of them end up deciding to take that option.
Then understand that is the choice you are saying that we should make for them, ahead of time, before they ever have any agency of their own.
Enough with your faux concern for the poor, P.O. You're not here for an honest conversation, you're hoping to start an ideological food fight. You're not going to get it. Not here.
Life is hell as an abused kid no matter *who* your parents are. I'm killfiling any future comments from you in my email because I'm done with you.
The idea that a woman would choose abortion so that she will not abuse the child post-birth is some truly bizarre logic. Do women really sit there thinking to themselves, well I know that if I have this child I'm going to abuse them? Even if they did, what about the option of just like, y'know..... not abusing the child? We tend to condemn child abuse rather than make excuses for it and act as if it's some kind of unavoidable force of nature.
Truly strange thinking, but people do often have to twist themselves into knots in order to confirm their priors on this issue.
The problem with the Black community is the women aren’t aborting their first babies…and they aren’t marrying the baby daddy. It’s pretty obviously the worst of both worlds which is actually the best argument to outlaw abortion because it isn’t being used like it is in the white middle class community which uses it to delay pregnancy and make one a better marriage match.
Why would it be okay to abort your first child but not your third? In what universe of reasoning could that possibly make sense? Props for managing to come up with some of the weirdest abortion non-logic I've yet seen.
I don't think that aborting the first pregnancy can be seen as a good way of delaying motherhood. Women do have access to contraception.
The idea that a woman should abort her first pregnancy - or any other pregnancy she has not planned - also strikes me as deeply inhuman. One of my cousins was an unplanned child, the first child of his mother. He is now a brilliant writer and translator with a PhD. I am very happy that my grandparents were firmly against abortion and did not pressure my aunt to abort her pregnancy.
And even if one sees abortion as an acceptable way of delaying motherhood, aborting the first pregnancy would not be enough for plenty of women - lots of women now go through many relationships and sexual encounters before "settling down" (if they "settle down"). We live in the times of Tinder, many women are having sex with men they had just met, men who often see them only as sex objects.
A rape baby could turn out to be brilliant…all of the babies we slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan could have turned out to be brilliant. Women should do what is best with the caveat that younger eggs will produce healthier babies generally speaking. Older mothers that plan everything and have a partner are on average better parents than younger mothers that don’t plan things.
Yes, the idea that poor women horrifically abuse unwanted children is a very strange way of justifying access to abortion. Of course there are many cases of terrifying abuse, but one has no right to jump to the assumption: "This is what poor women do to unplanned children, they starve them to death etc." This idea reflects the way the poor are often perceived by affluent people.
People who abuse children don't do it because of lack of access to abortion. In fact, there are horrific cases of parental child abuse even in countries where women have had access to free abortion for many years.
No. I think birth control should be subsidized for *everyone* and I'd *also* like to see women force men to wear condoms more. There's no such thing as a man who will turn down sex if you require a condom. Apart from creating unwanted children one or both parents may be ill-prepared to raise (regardless of financial status) it also protects one from sexually transmitted diseases. Just read this morning that congenital syphilis is skyrocketing in the US. Condoms, ladies. *Make him* wear them. If he refuses he can go somewhere else, and some other woman can raise his kid by herself.
That's nice, but reality shows us that some people simply will not do this, for instance the woman in your story who had eight children and didn't want the ninth. Wouldn't pre-emptive sterilization be a better solution for such people?
Is that your solution, pre-emptive sterilization? I wouldn't want to force it on anyone, but I encourage it for anyone who thinks they don't want children. I had it done and never regretted it. But no one forced me. In fact I had to sign a document saying I couldn't sue the doctor if I changed my mind. Which I understand.
Of course not. It's the solution implied by your viewpoint that the children of poor people should be disposed of because their lives will be nothing but suffering. If this were really true, poor people would have a moral duty to sterilize themselves so as to avoid any risk of bringing such a suffering life into existence, and as a means of creating within one or maybe two generations a society where children are only born to non-poor people.
The fact that you don't even understand this, much less actually advocate for it, shows that you don't believe your own copes about this topic and are driven instead by emotional attachment to an ideology, almost certainly some flavor of leftism/feminism.
P.O., don't misrepresent what I say. I never said children of poor people should be 'disposed of', those are YOUR words, nor have I suggested *only* their lives will be nothing but suffering, Abused children suffer no matter who their parents are, no matter how much money their parents make. *You* are the one with sterilizing poor people on the brain. If you can't have a civil conversation without trying to twist my words into whatever weird ideology about poor people you have, then I am not interested in talking to you anymore. You are unable to read plain English without reading your own narratives into it. Now get over your obsession with sterilizing poor people and stop projecting your own neuroses onto others.
"Now all of a sudden, every black politician and every politician on the left is saying, “If Roe is struck down, this will have a disproportionate impact on poor black women,” which means they think it is a more fitting fate for a child to be killed in utero than to be born to a poor black woman."
Yeah, maybe it is. And take out the 'black', because that applies to all poor women. They want an abortion because they may already have children and whether they do or they don't, they probably can't afford another mouth to feed. And yeah, when you look at how unwanted children are often horribly abused, yeah, suddenly birth looks like a fate worse than death.
I remember reading a story many years ago about a woman (can't remember her colour) who got arrested because she let one of her children starve to death. She had eight, I can't remember if this was the eighth or the ninth. She just left her in her crib and let her starve to death. I can't remember if the father was around. She told the cops she "didn't want her, didn't love her." And I wondered, What's worse? Slowly starving to death, unloved and unattended in your crib, or being taken from the womb when you have no consciousness to know what they're doing?
Where's the father in all this? Will he be around to take care of and raise his sperm donation? Will he be abusive? I don't care WHAT colour the parties are. Did Daddy know how to use a condom? Did she tell him "No condom, no whoopie"? If you want to keep it black, six million mothers last year may want to know where the sperm donor is (or perhaps not). I'm sure at least some of those are single fathers, and maybe two dozen of those fatherless kids are the work of Elon Musk, Nick Cannon and Herschel Walker. But you get my point. Every child a WANTED child. Yeah, there are worse fates than getting aborted. Just ask all the kids who were horribly abused and neglected by fucked-up parents who died in agony because no one loved them, no one wanted them.
Only some people abuse children. It is definitely not true that many people are ready to perpetrate the type of abuse you mention if a child comes from an unplanned pregnancy.
It is not true that the choice is between being aborted and being horribly abused. If poor women could count on adequate support if they become mothers or have another child, less women would choose abortion.
Not every unwanted child is abused (my father wasn't, an 'oops' baby that caused my grandmother to cut off my grandfather entirely, although she did love my dad and felt bad later about not wanting him initially) but plenty are, and ideally every child is wanted. Poor women suffer the most since they're the ones left to take care of the children if daddy-o(s) don't stick around to help. It would help immensely if we subsidized birth control for *everyone* (not just the poor) and also, if we could get serious about reducing poverty.
But I've heard and read some people say they wished their mother had gotten an abortion. And given how tough life is overall for everyone, I think 'right to life' should be altered to 'right to a GOOD life'.
>Poor women suffer the most since they're the ones left to take care of the children if daddy-o(s) don't stick around to help.<
Everything in life is harder for poor people. This is not exclusive to child-rearing. I don't get why being poor suddenly gives one an excuse to ignore moral norms and responsibilities. Well, I sort of get the leftist ideology behind it, but still. It's simply wrong and bad. If you are poor, *too bad*. You still have a duty not to literally murder your own offspring. Of all the things, that one is certainly not too much to ask.
The idea that poor people somehow "can't afford" children is also completely silly in a nation where the poor are more likely to be obese than the wealthy. Yes, children do bring financial hardship, and we do need to take more steps to alleviate that in my opinion, but the idea that a child is somehow going to starve in the United States is completely silly and does not happen outside of willful neglect.
>And given how tough life is overall for everyone, I think 'right to life' should be altered to 'right to a GOOD life'.<
But with the caveat that if we think you're not likely to live a "good" life, we will murder you as a child in order to spare you the theoretical suffering?
Interesting. You show a lot more feeling for a fetus than you do for the mother who has to raise it.
Look, I'm not poor and I can tell you aren't either...but can't you see how this is about more than a child's 'right' to life? How it's also about having a tolerable life? Which you can have growing up poor, and you can have a rotten life growing up with much more, but boy oh boy, can I see the right-wing 'f-u' ideology on display here. You really don't know why the poor are obese? It's not because they have too much money, it's because they have so little. The crap food is the cheapest. McDonald's gives you a LOT of food for very little money, but it lacks nutrition. To eat well, you have to spend more. Go check out a Whole Foods if you don't believe me.
>Interesting. You show a lot more feeling for a fetus than you do for the mother who has to raise it.<
Feeling bad for someone doesn't give them an excuse to murder their own offspring.
>Look, I'm not poor and I can tell you aren't either...but can't you see how this is about more than a child's 'right' to life? How it's also about having a tolerable life?<
Why don't you go and ask all those poor souls subsisting on McDonald's if they'd rather that they were never born, and instead cut apart in the womb by surgical instruments? If any of them answer yes, you should inform them that since we have a Second Amendment in this country, if their life is truly nothing but intolerable suffering, there is a guaranteed pain-free way out that they can access quite easily. See how many of them end up deciding to take that option.
Then understand that is the choice you are saying that we should make for them, ahead of time, before they ever have any agency of their own.
Enough with your faux concern for the poor, P.O. You're not here for an honest conversation, you're hoping to start an ideological food fight. You're not going to get it. Not here.
Life is hell as an abused kid no matter *who* your parents are. I'm killfiling any future comments from you in my email because I'm done with you.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/billionaire-twins-abused-slaves-doris-duke-heir-father/story?id=19853671
The idea that a woman would choose abortion so that she will not abuse the child post-birth is some truly bizarre logic. Do women really sit there thinking to themselves, well I know that if I have this child I'm going to abuse them? Even if they did, what about the option of just like, y'know..... not abusing the child? We tend to condemn child abuse rather than make excuses for it and act as if it's some kind of unavoidable force of nature.
Truly strange thinking, but people do often have to twist themselves into knots in order to confirm their priors on this issue.
The problem with the Black community is the women aren’t aborting their first babies…and they aren’t marrying the baby daddy. It’s pretty obviously the worst of both worlds which is actually the best argument to outlaw abortion because it isn’t being used like it is in the white middle class community which uses it to delay pregnancy and make one a better marriage match.
Why would it be okay to abort your first child but not your third? In what universe of reasoning could that possibly make sense? Props for managing to come up with some of the weirdest abortion non-logic I've yet seen.
I don't think that aborting the first pregnancy can be seen as a good way of delaying motherhood. Women do have access to contraception.
The idea that a woman should abort her first pregnancy - or any other pregnancy she has not planned - also strikes me as deeply inhuman. One of my cousins was an unplanned child, the first child of his mother. He is now a brilliant writer and translator with a PhD. I am very happy that my grandparents were firmly against abortion and did not pressure my aunt to abort her pregnancy.
And even if one sees abortion as an acceptable way of delaying motherhood, aborting the first pregnancy would not be enough for plenty of women - lots of women now go through many relationships and sexual encounters before "settling down" (if they "settle down"). We live in the times of Tinder, many women are having sex with men they had just met, men who often see them only as sex objects.
A rape baby could turn out to be brilliant…all of the babies we slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan could have turned out to be brilliant. Women should do what is best with the caveat that younger eggs will produce healthier babies generally speaking. Older mothers that plan everything and have a partner are on average better parents than younger mothers that don’t plan things.
Yes, the idea that poor women horrifically abuse unwanted children is a very strange way of justifying access to abortion. Of course there are many cases of terrifying abuse, but one has no right to jump to the assumption: "This is what poor women do to unplanned children, they starve them to death etc." This idea reflects the way the poor are often perceived by affluent people.
People who abuse children don't do it because of lack of access to abortion. In fact, there are horrific cases of parental child abuse even in countries where women have had access to free abortion for many years.
I'm not sure where you got that, did you hear that somewhere else? Because I didn't say that.
Do you think the poor should sterilize themselves pre-emptively?
No. I think birth control should be subsidized for *everyone* and I'd *also* like to see women force men to wear condoms more. There's no such thing as a man who will turn down sex if you require a condom. Apart from creating unwanted children one or both parents may be ill-prepared to raise (regardless of financial status) it also protects one from sexually transmitted diseases. Just read this morning that congenital syphilis is skyrocketing in the US. Condoms, ladies. *Make him* wear them. If he refuses he can go somewhere else, and some other woman can raise his kid by herself.
That's nice, but reality shows us that some people simply will not do this, for instance the woman in your story who had eight children and didn't want the ninth. Wouldn't pre-emptive sterilization be a better solution for such people?
Is that your solution, pre-emptive sterilization? I wouldn't want to force it on anyone, but I encourage it for anyone who thinks they don't want children. I had it done and never regretted it. But no one forced me. In fact I had to sign a document saying I couldn't sue the doctor if I changed my mind. Which I understand.
Of course not. It's the solution implied by your viewpoint that the children of poor people should be disposed of because their lives will be nothing but suffering. If this were really true, poor people would have a moral duty to sterilize themselves so as to avoid any risk of bringing such a suffering life into existence, and as a means of creating within one or maybe two generations a society where children are only born to non-poor people.
The fact that you don't even understand this, much less actually advocate for it, shows that you don't believe your own copes about this topic and are driven instead by emotional attachment to an ideology, almost certainly some flavor of leftism/feminism.
P.O., don't misrepresent what I say. I never said children of poor people should be 'disposed of', those are YOUR words, nor have I suggested *only* their lives will be nothing but suffering, Abused children suffer no matter who their parents are, no matter how much money their parents make. *You* are the one with sterilizing poor people on the brain. If you can't have a civil conversation without trying to twist my words into whatever weird ideology about poor people you have, then I am not interested in talking to you anymore. You are unable to read plain English without reading your own narratives into it. Now get over your obsession with sterilizing poor people and stop projecting your own neuroses onto others.