Do women who have an abortion have fewer kids? Is there a significant difference in the population due to abortions? Just because a woman has an abortion doesn't mean she won't have kids later. If fact, it's also possible women who have abortions might have more children later in life. Raising an unexpected child might give a false sense of parenting and deter people from having as many children.
Either way, it's not obvious that population is significantly affected due to abortions.
The countries with the fewest unplanned pregnancies have the best educated and most law abiding populations. So the goal should be reducing children born from unplanned pregnancies because the parents will be less likely to be able to handle raising the baby. I think it is pretty obvious outside of Utah that younger women having babies will lead to more crime and less productive adults.
The only caveat is that autism is obviously linked to people delaying pregnancy and so there is a sweet spot and by 2030 wealthy Americans aren’t going to be procreating through sex because it’s fucking insane with technology that exists today.
The abortion debate has evolved into another of the all-or-nothing, uncompromising dialogues that are so prevalent across most of Western Civ these days. Most Americans support keeping access to abortions open for women of all colors. Many of us, including me, want fetal age to be considered as a limiting factor on abortion access. I can see how a woman could be in the third trimester of a pregnancy before she seeks out an abortion, but unless there is a risk to her physical health in going through the remainder of the pregnancy and birth, I don't think that she should be able to get an abortion at that point.
In the past midterms I voted for an independent candidate who lost the state governorship, solely because the Republican candidate has a record of making all-or-nothing anti-choice statements. I talked to a number of other women voters who did the same, after struggling with the decision for months leading up to the election. The Republican candidate stopped talking about her extreme position on abortion while she was campaigning, but didn't fool anybody I know. Indeed, we saw that as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned by SCOTUS, Republican politicians around the country began campaigning on "no abortions, no exceptions" platforms, and Republican legislatures started passing total abortion bans.
Until the Republican Party moderates their anti-choice positions, they will lose a large segment of women voters and their allies. They will also lose voters who truly believe in the separation of church and state. Both the so-called left and the so-called right are now wedded to anti-democratic religions, and neither party can afford to lose the support of its religious fundamentalists. The majority of Americans disagree with both of the two all-or-nothing positions on abortion rights, and for many women this is an important enough issue to reject the extreme views of both political parties.
My final comment is that I find it absurd that most of the men who identify as Republicans now claim to be morally opposed to abortion. Since when?! So many Americans will say anything to make themselves look like saints! Even Trump!! Give me a break!
>The abortion debate has evolved into another of the all-or-nothing, uncompromising dialogues that are so prevalent across most of Western Civ these days.<
This is one the few political issues that actually is all-or-nothing. Human beings are human beings, period. Destroying innocent human lives is never okay, no matter how much other people might feel that the existence of those lives inconveniences them.
You can actually have some kind of "moderate" position on a lot of other things--thinking that different amounts of immigration should be allowed, thinking the tax rates should be set at different levels, et cetera. But not everything can be a compromise and some things shouldn't be up for a vote.
>Many of us, including me, want fetal age to be considered as a limiting factor on abortion access. I can see how a woman could be in the third trimester of a pregnancy before she seeks out an abortion, but unless there is a risk to her physical health in going through the remainder of the pregnancy and birth, I don't think that she should be able to get an abortion at that point.<
Why? What makes the third-trimester child a human being and the first-trimester child not one?
>They will also lose voters who truly believe in the separation of church and state. Both the so-called left and the so-called right are now wedded to anti-democratic religions, and neither party can afford to lose the support of its religious fundamentalists.<
This is a misunderstanding derived from imbibing nothing but liberal propaganda, free from even the tiniest iota of critical thinking. The pro-life position is that murdering children is wrong. Atheists also agree that killing innocent children is bad, or at least, one would think they do. Religion has nothing to do with it. The only point at issue is who counts as a human being, and why. This can be observed scientifically and has no need for religion, even though the "religious fundamentalists" you reference do happen to have the correct viewpoint on the issue.
But the fact that people who go to church believe something does not mean that it is necessarily true, or necessarily untrue. People who go to church also believe that rape is wrong. They happen to be right about this. You don't sit around trying to debate them about it because "well, your God might say rape is wrong, but I don't believe in your God, so to me rape is fine!" That would be insane. Yet cultural elites have successfully taught people to think this way about abortion.
I didn't argue that abortion was "okay." That's a shallow and casual word for something that's not morally blameless and that generally is emotionally miserable. I do think abortion should be legal. The reason it was legalized in the first place was the high incidence of illegal abortions even at great medical risk. Sinful it may well be, but nobody in the legislative realm is in a position to cast the first stone.
Your argument about infanticide isn't comparable. Your hypothetical overtired mother is acting on impulse. Nobody has an abortion on impulse.
I assume this is responding to me. You should try and find the reply button lol. You should also try and do better at applying the barest minimum of logical consistency and language comprehension.
>I didn't argue that abortion was "okay." That's a shallow and casual word for something that's not morally blameless and that generally is emotionally miserable. I do think abortion should be legal.<
>I didn't argue that abortion was okay
>I do think abortion should be legal
If it's not okay, why wouldn't it be? Because it's the murder of a child? Or is it somehow something else? If we acknowledge that it is not okay because it is the murder of a child, how in the world can it be legal? And if it must for some unfathomable reason be legal anyways, why is only this particular form of child murder allowed, and not infanticide?
Try to think about what you are saying from a rational viewpoint here.
>The reason it was legalized in the first place was the high incidence of illegal abortions even at great medical risk. Sinful it may well be, but nobody in the legislative realm is in a position to cast the first stone.<
No, it was legalized to satisfy the feminist principle that women must be made equal to men in all possible aspects. Part of this means removing the burden of pregnancy. That is why it was legalized. Everything else is a cope. This is made apparent by, among other things, feminist worship of "RBG" as a pseudo-saint. "It's going to happen anyways even if you make it illegal" is such an insane excuse it's not even funny. Again: Imagine trying to justify any other crime this way. "Well, people are going to commit murders anyways, so no point in making it illegal!" Such a ridiculous thing to say.
You're making up your own definition of murder. Murder is a specific term in law. Until the US or a state defines abortion as murder, it isn't murder. It's an abortion. Since you're being pedantic about Catherine's comment.
People can have their own moral opinion and still support a law that allows others, with different morals, to make different choices.
The question is when should a ferus have rights? I like the states deciding for themselves until a federal law is.passed.
>You're making up your own definition of murder. Murder is a specific term in law. Until the US or a state defines abortion as murder, it isn't murder. It's an abortion. Since you're being pedantic about Catherine's comment.<
Yes, the law does not currently convey the moral reality that abortion is more or less synonymous with murder. I am arguing that the law is wrong and should be changed, and indeed many states are moving in that direction now that Roe v Wade is finally out of the way. This is quite similar to the way in which, before the Civil War, abolitionists argued that laws regarding the personhood of black people should be changed, and though it took much strife to get there, everyone eventually had to admit that they were right.
I know that all of this is super duper extremely complex and difficult to understand, so take the time to read it over a few or ten times if you need to.
>People can have their own moral opinion and still support a law that allows others, with different morals, to make different choices.<
Can we "support a law that allows other, with different morals, to make different choices" when it comes to who counts as a human being and thus which acts count (or do not count) as murder?
We can have different laws reflecting different opinions on many issues, but some things cannot be compromised on. It is fine for one state to have a lower tax rate and one state to have a higher tax rate. It is not fine for one state to define a certain class of people as not human beings and to legally endorse their murder.
>The question is when should a ferus have rights? I like the states deciding for themselves until a federal law is.passed.<
"The question is when should a negro have rights? I like the states deciding the issue of slavery for themselves until a federal law is passed."
No. Human beings have some basic rights that are not, or rather should not, be up for a majority vote. This includes the right to not be enslaved. It also includes the right to life, arguably the most basic right of all.
>Human beings have some basic rights that are not, or rather should not, be up for a majority vote.<
Isn't that how democracy should work? Otherwise, what is your authority for deciding? I think the founding fathers did a pretty good job, especially considering their location in time and space.
My personal opinion. I don't think it is evident that a 6 week human fetus, who is indistinguishable from a pig or rat fetus, should have the same rights as a viable human fetus and or an adult human being.
>Isn't that how democracy should work? Otherwise, what is your authority for deciding? I think the founding fathers did a pretty good job, especially considering their location in time and space.<
Are you implying that it would be okay for 51% of the population to vote to murder or enslave the other 49%? Or even 99% to vote to kill the 1%? On the basis that that would technically be democratic?
>My personal opinion. I don't think it is evident that a 6 week human fetus, who is indistinguishable from a pig or rat fetus<
A 6 week human fetus is easily distinguished from a pig or rat fetus. The first hint is that they are growing inside of a human female. I feel confident that a woman has never given birth to a rat or a pig. If there were a chance of that happening, this may be more of a relevant comparison.
>should have the same rights as a viable human fetus<
How do you distinguish "6 week fetus" from "viable fetus?"
>Are you implying that it would be okay for 51% of the population to vote to murder or enslave the other 49%? Or even 99% to vote to kill the 1%? On the basis that that would technically be democratic?<
Our country isn't set up that way. We have elected officials who are supposed to represent their people.
I'm suggesting that the people decide which law should be kept and changed by voting. And if another process was preferred, the people would have to elected officials to implement that process.
So if someone wants to make all abortions illegal, they need to get congress to pass that law. Otherwise, states decide and if people have a problem, they send it to the courts. I like the checks and balances. I also have a growing admiration for how difficult the constitution and government is to permanently change.
<How do you distinguish "6 week fetus" from "viable fetus?">
Literally a 6 week fetus cannot survive outside the mother. A viable fetus is developed enough to survive outside the mother. I would distinguish with medical technology.
We as a society have to decide. I mean these next questions rhetorically. How should we value a women's egg? Those eggs could easily become a viable human. Should we give those potential lives rights?
Dr. Loury I'm interested in the following questions, which I think are really uncomfortable: what is the appropriate relationship between freedom and responsibility?
Slaves are not free, and are not responsible for feeding and housing themselves. I'm guessing that in Exodus there were probably some guys wandering in the desert thinking that they had it better back in Egypt.
We live in a society in which women are free. To what extent should they be responsible for their choice in sexual partners and activities?
If you get a dog, should the government feed it? If you buy a house, should the government mow your lawn? If you choose to have sex with someone who turns out to be undependable when pregnancy occurs...
There is some element of moral hazard here. When banks lend out money irresponsibly, government bailouts set a clear incentive to continue behaving irresponsibly; the gains are privatized and the losses are socialized.
There are other cultures that have existed, maybe do exist now, in which women are NOT free to choose their partners, and NOT free to engage in the amount or variety of sex that they might choose. To what extent should women be expected to be responsible for the decisions that they make? Are women agents or not?
The above paragraph sounds like the start of the "she shouldn't have dressed that way" or "she shouldn't have been in that neighborhood" type of arguments we've heard for years.
These are tough questions that involve a lot of sacred cows. I love that you always play devil's advocate; if there's an argument for taking away the sexual freedom of women, grounded in their inability to be responsible with it, I want to hear it.
I also want to be very clear that that is NOT my opinion! But a full discussion requires listening to even the most repugnant of viewpoints, if for no other purpose than to allow reason to defeat them in plain view.
>Dr. Loury I'm interested in the following questions, which I think are really uncomfortable: what is the appropriate relationship between freedom and responsibility?<
I think the appropriate relationship between them is that the more freedom you have, the more responsibility you have as well. People who behave in irresponsible ways should lose corresponding amounts of freedom, and vice versa. Our society at the moment has nosedived off the deep end on freedom while completely dismissing responsibility, with some ugly and obvious consequences.
"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.
The black community has an obesity epidemic. Something like half of black women and girls in the US are obese. Obesity causes premature puberty onset which in turn increases unplanned pregnancies. We need to stop circulating the horrible idea that fat is beautiful. It's unhealthy and stress-producing. As Shelby Steele notes, white people feel so guilty they have lost their moral confidence. It takes confidence to maintain a belief against obesity, and it's necessary.
The skeletons they so proudly stack are 1M/year high, of which 400,000 (per year) are Black souls condemned by their Relativist rationalizations. The abortion totals are 50 times greater than the entirety of infant moralities in the US (20K/yr).
If rationalization of wholesale genocide doesn't qualify as evil, it's hard to fathom if anything would ever be considered evil.
Human lives do matter. The question of the humanity of unborn children is not a religious question, it is a matter of science. Genetically what else could he/she be ? The current abortion situation is so obviously racial that a willing ignorance of reality is needed to deny the truth of genocide. I guess killing 50% of the Black births in NYC is solving the "Negro problem", but why are progressives doing it? Is the spirit of the founder of Planned Parenthood still guiding its path?
I know a little about the delays, having once volunteered with a group that made loans to women who couldn't afford abortions. Often the women hadn't even been able to afford an early abortion, and by the time they found out about the loans the pregnancy had progressed. Also, food insecurity can disrupt the menstrual cycle, lives full of crisis can make it hard to focus on anything, and denial/hoping it's not true can be a powerful force, particularly in teenage girls. When I was teaching in a community college I heard of one case where a very overweight woman with irregular periods didn't know she was pregnant until she went into labor; no telling what she would have decided had she found out about the pregnancy earlier.
I also had quite a few students who had gone through with pregnancies because they didn't believe in abortion, and were in school to become able to support the children; one got pregnant a second time while she was a student, and with great anguish had an abortion. One male student wrote a paper in praise of his girlfriend, who had decided to have the baby and thus inspired him to stop doing drugs and get a job and make himself into a responsible father. Would that there were more like him.
The Blacks are essential to the Democratic Party as their most dedicated voters, but even the Democrats don't want them reproducing without limits. Too much of anything, even something essential, is not necessarily a good thing. Abortion is necessary to keep the percentage of Blacks stable over time.
I believe it’s relevant that crime in the United States peaked in the early 1990’s and has decreased steadily (excepting the COVID blip in ‘20-‘21) since. The relation to the abortion debate? The peak years for criminal behavior is ages 20-25. What happened 20 years before the early ‘90’s? Roe v. Wade. By 1973 abortion was available almost everywhere. Because of that all women were making an implicit choice to HAVE the baby if they did not get an abortion. Even among poor women, their children were desired, even if that choice condemned them to being poor the rest of their lives. I believe that deep resentment of many children born before Roe v. Wade contributed to crime as a byproduct of “You ruined my whole life!” perhaps the most damaging statement any child can hear. I have friends, born to poor single mothers before abortion was available, who heard exactly those bitter words, and the harm never entirely lifted. Yes, there are still bitter, damaged mothers, but far fewer because of the free choice after Roe v. Wade to have that inconvenient child.
Yes they matter. Preserving life is important. Adoption should be considered as the primary solution for Women who prefer to not raise a child. Pause for a moment, consider the damage upon our whole species due to the fact that Aborting a human is accepted, viciously supported, advertised on bill boards, etc.
Aborting a fellow human being, knowing that at some level they “feel” the sensation of being aborted in a situation where previously they were all warm and snuggled in for the journey. Where is our Empathy, our compassion, our love for life ?
Absolutely. Like the ‘Pride’ rally which was called off because the overwhelming majority were ‘cis-gender especially female-ists and were weren’t enough Rainbow Community or other intersectionality victims
Do women who have an abortion have fewer kids? Is there a significant difference in the population due to abortions? Just because a woman has an abortion doesn't mean she won't have kids later. If fact, it's also possible women who have abortions might have more children later in life. Raising an unexpected child might give a false sense of parenting and deter people from having as many children.
Either way, it's not obvious that population is significantly affected due to abortions.
The countries with the fewest unplanned pregnancies have the best educated and most law abiding populations. So the goal should be reducing children born from unplanned pregnancies because the parents will be less likely to be able to handle raising the baby. I think it is pretty obvious outside of Utah that younger women having babies will lead to more crime and less productive adults.
The only caveat is that autism is obviously linked to people delaying pregnancy and so there is a sweet spot and by 2030 wealthy Americans aren’t going to be procreating through sex because it’s fucking insane with technology that exists today.
The abortion debate has evolved into another of the all-or-nothing, uncompromising dialogues that are so prevalent across most of Western Civ these days. Most Americans support keeping access to abortions open for women of all colors. Many of us, including me, want fetal age to be considered as a limiting factor on abortion access. I can see how a woman could be in the third trimester of a pregnancy before she seeks out an abortion, but unless there is a risk to her physical health in going through the remainder of the pregnancy and birth, I don't think that she should be able to get an abortion at that point.
In the past midterms I voted for an independent candidate who lost the state governorship, solely because the Republican candidate has a record of making all-or-nothing anti-choice statements. I talked to a number of other women voters who did the same, after struggling with the decision for months leading up to the election. The Republican candidate stopped talking about her extreme position on abortion while she was campaigning, but didn't fool anybody I know. Indeed, we saw that as soon as Roe v. Wade was overturned by SCOTUS, Republican politicians around the country began campaigning on "no abortions, no exceptions" platforms, and Republican legislatures started passing total abortion bans.
Until the Republican Party moderates their anti-choice positions, they will lose a large segment of women voters and their allies. They will also lose voters who truly believe in the separation of church and state. Both the so-called left and the so-called right are now wedded to anti-democratic religions, and neither party can afford to lose the support of its religious fundamentalists. The majority of Americans disagree with both of the two all-or-nothing positions on abortion rights, and for many women this is an important enough issue to reject the extreme views of both political parties.
My final comment is that I find it absurd that most of the men who identify as Republicans now claim to be morally opposed to abortion. Since when?! So many Americans will say anything to make themselves look like saints! Even Trump!! Give me a break!
>The abortion debate has evolved into another of the all-or-nothing, uncompromising dialogues that are so prevalent across most of Western Civ these days.<
This is one the few political issues that actually is all-or-nothing. Human beings are human beings, period. Destroying innocent human lives is never okay, no matter how much other people might feel that the existence of those lives inconveniences them.
You can actually have some kind of "moderate" position on a lot of other things--thinking that different amounts of immigration should be allowed, thinking the tax rates should be set at different levels, et cetera. But not everything can be a compromise and some things shouldn't be up for a vote.
>Many of us, including me, want fetal age to be considered as a limiting factor on abortion access. I can see how a woman could be in the third trimester of a pregnancy before she seeks out an abortion, but unless there is a risk to her physical health in going through the remainder of the pregnancy and birth, I don't think that she should be able to get an abortion at that point.<
Why? What makes the third-trimester child a human being and the first-trimester child not one?
>They will also lose voters who truly believe in the separation of church and state. Both the so-called left and the so-called right are now wedded to anti-democratic religions, and neither party can afford to lose the support of its religious fundamentalists.<
This is a misunderstanding derived from imbibing nothing but liberal propaganda, free from even the tiniest iota of critical thinking. The pro-life position is that murdering children is wrong. Atheists also agree that killing innocent children is bad, or at least, one would think they do. Religion has nothing to do with it. The only point at issue is who counts as a human being, and why. This can be observed scientifically and has no need for religion, even though the "religious fundamentalists" you reference do happen to have the correct viewpoint on the issue.
But the fact that people who go to church believe something does not mean that it is necessarily true, or necessarily untrue. People who go to church also believe that rape is wrong. They happen to be right about this. You don't sit around trying to debate them about it because "well, your God might say rape is wrong, but I don't believe in your God, so to me rape is fine!" That would be insane. Yet cultural elites have successfully taught people to think this way about abortion.
I didn't argue that abortion was "okay." That's a shallow and casual word for something that's not morally blameless and that generally is emotionally miserable. I do think abortion should be legal. The reason it was legalized in the first place was the high incidence of illegal abortions even at great medical risk. Sinful it may well be, but nobody in the legislative realm is in a position to cast the first stone.
Your argument about infanticide isn't comparable. Your hypothetical overtired mother is acting on impulse. Nobody has an abortion on impulse.
I assume this is responding to me. You should try and find the reply button lol. You should also try and do better at applying the barest minimum of logical consistency and language comprehension.
>I didn't argue that abortion was "okay." That's a shallow and casual word for something that's not morally blameless and that generally is emotionally miserable. I do think abortion should be legal.<
>I didn't argue that abortion was okay
>I do think abortion should be legal
If it's not okay, why wouldn't it be? Because it's the murder of a child? Or is it somehow something else? If we acknowledge that it is not okay because it is the murder of a child, how in the world can it be legal? And if it must for some unfathomable reason be legal anyways, why is only this particular form of child murder allowed, and not infanticide?
Try to think about what you are saying from a rational viewpoint here.
>The reason it was legalized in the first place was the high incidence of illegal abortions even at great medical risk. Sinful it may well be, but nobody in the legislative realm is in a position to cast the first stone.<
No, it was legalized to satisfy the feminist principle that women must be made equal to men in all possible aspects. Part of this means removing the burden of pregnancy. That is why it was legalized. Everything else is a cope. This is made apparent by, among other things, feminist worship of "RBG" as a pseudo-saint. "It's going to happen anyways even if you make it illegal" is such an insane excuse it's not even funny. Again: Imagine trying to justify any other crime this way. "Well, people are going to commit murders anyways, so no point in making it illegal!" Such a ridiculous thing to say.
Person Online,
You're making up your own definition of murder. Murder is a specific term in law. Until the US or a state defines abortion as murder, it isn't murder. It's an abortion. Since you're being pedantic about Catherine's comment.
People can have their own moral opinion and still support a law that allows others, with different morals, to make different choices.
The question is when should a ferus have rights? I like the states deciding for themselves until a federal law is.passed.
>You're making up your own definition of murder. Murder is a specific term in law. Until the US or a state defines abortion as murder, it isn't murder. It's an abortion. Since you're being pedantic about Catherine's comment.<
Yes, the law does not currently convey the moral reality that abortion is more or less synonymous with murder. I am arguing that the law is wrong and should be changed, and indeed many states are moving in that direction now that Roe v Wade is finally out of the way. This is quite similar to the way in which, before the Civil War, abolitionists argued that laws regarding the personhood of black people should be changed, and though it took much strife to get there, everyone eventually had to admit that they were right.
I know that all of this is super duper extremely complex and difficult to understand, so take the time to read it over a few or ten times if you need to.
>People can have their own moral opinion and still support a law that allows others, with different morals, to make different choices.<
Can we "support a law that allows other, with different morals, to make different choices" when it comes to who counts as a human being and thus which acts count (or do not count) as murder?
We can have different laws reflecting different opinions on many issues, but some things cannot be compromised on. It is fine for one state to have a lower tax rate and one state to have a higher tax rate. It is not fine for one state to define a certain class of people as not human beings and to legally endorse their murder.
>The question is when should a ferus have rights? I like the states deciding for themselves until a federal law is.passed.<
"The question is when should a negro have rights? I like the states deciding the issue of slavery for themselves until a federal law is passed."
No. Human beings have some basic rights that are not, or rather should not, be up for a majority vote. This includes the right to not be enslaved. It also includes the right to life, arguably the most basic right of all.
>Human beings have some basic rights that are not, or rather should not, be up for a majority vote.<
Isn't that how democracy should work? Otherwise, what is your authority for deciding? I think the founding fathers did a pretty good job, especially considering their location in time and space.
My personal opinion. I don't think it is evident that a 6 week human fetus, who is indistinguishable from a pig or rat fetus, should have the same rights as a viable human fetus and or an adult human being.
>Isn't that how democracy should work? Otherwise, what is your authority for deciding? I think the founding fathers did a pretty good job, especially considering their location in time and space.<
Are you implying that it would be okay for 51% of the population to vote to murder or enslave the other 49%? Or even 99% to vote to kill the 1%? On the basis that that would technically be democratic?
>My personal opinion. I don't think it is evident that a 6 week human fetus, who is indistinguishable from a pig or rat fetus<
A 6 week human fetus is easily distinguished from a pig or rat fetus. The first hint is that they are growing inside of a human female. I feel confident that a woman has never given birth to a rat or a pig. If there were a chance of that happening, this may be more of a relevant comparison.
>should have the same rights as a viable human fetus<
How do you distinguish "6 week fetus" from "viable fetus?"
>Are you implying that it would be okay for 51% of the population to vote to murder or enslave the other 49%? Or even 99% to vote to kill the 1%? On the basis that that would technically be democratic?<
Our country isn't set up that way. We have elected officials who are supposed to represent their people.
I'm suggesting that the people decide which law should be kept and changed by voting. And if another process was preferred, the people would have to elected officials to implement that process.
So if someone wants to make all abortions illegal, they need to get congress to pass that law. Otherwise, states decide and if people have a problem, they send it to the courts. I like the checks and balances. I also have a growing admiration for how difficult the constitution and government is to permanently change.
<How do you distinguish "6 week fetus" from "viable fetus?">
Literally a 6 week fetus cannot survive outside the mother. A viable fetus is developed enough to survive outside the mother. I would distinguish with medical technology.
We as a society have to decide. I mean these next questions rhetorically. How should we value a women's egg? Those eggs could easily become a viable human. Should we give those potential lives rights?
I would happily debate Delano Squires any time, any place.
Dr. Loury I'm interested in the following questions, which I think are really uncomfortable: what is the appropriate relationship between freedom and responsibility?
Slaves are not free, and are not responsible for feeding and housing themselves. I'm guessing that in Exodus there were probably some guys wandering in the desert thinking that they had it better back in Egypt.
We live in a society in which women are free. To what extent should they be responsible for their choice in sexual partners and activities?
If you get a dog, should the government feed it? If you buy a house, should the government mow your lawn? If you choose to have sex with someone who turns out to be undependable when pregnancy occurs...
There is some element of moral hazard here. When banks lend out money irresponsibly, government bailouts set a clear incentive to continue behaving irresponsibly; the gains are privatized and the losses are socialized.
There are other cultures that have existed, maybe do exist now, in which women are NOT free to choose their partners, and NOT free to engage in the amount or variety of sex that they might choose. To what extent should women be expected to be responsible for the decisions that they make? Are women agents or not?
The above paragraph sounds like the start of the "she shouldn't have dressed that way" or "she shouldn't have been in that neighborhood" type of arguments we've heard for years.
These are tough questions that involve a lot of sacred cows. I love that you always play devil's advocate; if there's an argument for taking away the sexual freedom of women, grounded in their inability to be responsible with it, I want to hear it.
I also want to be very clear that that is NOT my opinion! But a full discussion requires listening to even the most repugnant of viewpoints, if for no other purpose than to allow reason to defeat them in plain view.
Loved the discussion as always.
>Dr. Loury I'm interested in the following questions, which I think are really uncomfortable: what is the appropriate relationship between freedom and responsibility?<
I think the appropriate relationship between them is that the more freedom you have, the more responsibility you have as well. People who behave in irresponsible ways should lose corresponding amounts of freedom, and vice versa. Our society at the moment has nosedived off the deep end on freedom while completely dismissing responsibility, with some ugly and obvious consequences.
"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.
The black community has an obesity epidemic. Something like half of black women and girls in the US are obese. Obesity causes premature puberty onset which in turn increases unplanned pregnancies. We need to stop circulating the horrible idea that fat is beautiful. It's unhealthy and stress-producing. As Shelby Steele notes, white people feel so guilty they have lost their moral confidence. It takes confidence to maintain a belief against obesity, and it's necessary.
And as Dr. Carol Swain points out, abortion is where the black community loses its voting power...voter suppression.
The skeletons they so proudly stack are 1M/year high, of which 400,000 (per year) are Black souls condemned by their Relativist rationalizations. The abortion totals are 50 times greater than the entirety of infant moralities in the US (20K/yr).
If rationalization of wholesale genocide doesn't qualify as evil, it's hard to fathom if anything would ever be considered evil.
Human lives do matter. The question of the humanity of unborn children is not a religious question, it is a matter of science. Genetically what else could he/she be ? The current abortion situation is so obviously racial that a willing ignorance of reality is needed to deny the truth of genocide. I guess killing 50% of the Black births in NYC is solving the "Negro problem", but why are progressives doing it? Is the spirit of the founder of Planned Parenthood still guiding its path?
Even-handed mature discussion. Good points from Mr. Squires. Thank you.
I know a little about the delays, having once volunteered with a group that made loans to women who couldn't afford abortions. Often the women hadn't even been able to afford an early abortion, and by the time they found out about the loans the pregnancy had progressed. Also, food insecurity can disrupt the menstrual cycle, lives full of crisis can make it hard to focus on anything, and denial/hoping it's not true can be a powerful force, particularly in teenage girls. When I was teaching in a community college I heard of one case where a very overweight woman with irregular periods didn't know she was pregnant until she went into labor; no telling what she would have decided had she found out about the pregnancy earlier.
I also had quite a few students who had gone through with pregnancies because they didn't believe in abortion, and were in school to become able to support the children; one got pregnant a second time while she was a student, and with great anguish had an abortion. One male student wrote a paper in praise of his girlfriend, who had decided to have the baby and thus inspired him to stop doing drugs and get a job and make himself into a responsible father. Would that there were more like him.
The Blacks are essential to the Democratic Party as their most dedicated voters, but even the Democrats don't want them reproducing without limits. Too much of anything, even something essential, is not necessarily a good thing. Abortion is necessary to keep the percentage of Blacks stable over time.
I believe it’s relevant that crime in the United States peaked in the early 1990’s and has decreased steadily (excepting the COVID blip in ‘20-‘21) since. The relation to the abortion debate? The peak years for criminal behavior is ages 20-25. What happened 20 years before the early ‘90’s? Roe v. Wade. By 1973 abortion was available almost everywhere. Because of that all women were making an implicit choice to HAVE the baby if they did not get an abortion. Even among poor women, their children were desired, even if that choice condemned them to being poor the rest of their lives. I believe that deep resentment of many children born before Roe v. Wade contributed to crime as a byproduct of “You ruined my whole life!” perhaps the most damaging statement any child can hear. I have friends, born to poor single mothers before abortion was available, who heard exactly those bitter words, and the harm never entirely lifted. Yes, there are still bitter, damaged mothers, but far fewer because of the free choice after Roe v. Wade to have that inconvenient child.
If we rounded up and murdered every poor person in the nation, the murder rate would almost certainly be lower the following year. Should we do that?
Yes they matter. Preserving life is important. Adoption should be considered as the primary solution for Women who prefer to not raise a child. Pause for a moment, consider the damage upon our whole species due to the fact that Aborting a human is accepted, viciously supported, advertised on bill boards, etc.
Aborting a fellow human being, knowing that at some level they “feel” the sensation of being aborted in a situation where previously they were all warm and snuggled in for the journey. Where is our Empathy, our compassion, our love for life ?
Yes, it matters if we choose to abort babies.
Absolutely. Like the ‘Pride’ rally which was called off because the overwhelming majority were ‘cis-gender especially female-ists and were weren’t enough Rainbow Community or other intersectionality victims