Voting Pro-life
mousethief
Shipmate
in Dead Horses
This came up in one of the Trump threads but it really can't go any further there.
What does it mean to vote pro-life, particularly in the United States? Is merely voting for someone who mouths pro-life slogans enough? Voting for the Republicans, who want to turn your unthinking pro-life stance into gains for the rich and powerful?
Moreover, is it more important to you that abortion be rare, if legal, or illegal, however prevalent? Because making it illegal is not going to make it go away, and current Republican domestic policies are making it more and more desirable to women "in trouble."
You want to make abortion rare? You know how. It's not to make it illegal. It's to make contraceptives cheap and widely available, and discussion of them included in sex education. It's to provide pre- and post-natal care for pregnant women/new mothers. It's to allow women to take off time from work to tend to a new baby, and prevent them from being fired for doing so. It's to provide maternal health care, including paying for childbirth expenses. Each of these things will reduce the number of abortions. Each of these things has been fought tooth and nail by the right. It's almost as if they are TRYING to create more abortions. Odd that.
Abortion rates dip under Democratic presidents and go back up again under Republicans. This is historically demonstrable.
What is the best way to vote pro-life? Ulterior-motive lip service or actual reduction in the number of abortions?
It's not enough to say "I am pro-life therefore I vote Republican," unless one has totally turned off one's brain and is immune to all evidence and reasoning.
My wife once had an honest conversation with a so-called pro-lifer. He admitted flat out that he doesn't care how many abortions there are, as long as it's illegal. Thankfully he is (one hopes!) in the minority among pro-lifers.
What does it mean to vote pro-life, particularly in the United States? Is merely voting for someone who mouths pro-life slogans enough? Voting for the Republicans, who want to turn your unthinking pro-life stance into gains for the rich and powerful?
Moreover, is it more important to you that abortion be rare, if legal, or illegal, however prevalent? Because making it illegal is not going to make it go away, and current Republican domestic policies are making it more and more desirable to women "in trouble."
You want to make abortion rare? You know how. It's not to make it illegal. It's to make contraceptives cheap and widely available, and discussion of them included in sex education. It's to provide pre- and post-natal care for pregnant women/new mothers. It's to allow women to take off time from work to tend to a new baby, and prevent them from being fired for doing so. It's to provide maternal health care, including paying for childbirth expenses. Each of these things will reduce the number of abortions. Each of these things has been fought tooth and nail by the right. It's almost as if they are TRYING to create more abortions. Odd that.
Abortion rates dip under Democratic presidents and go back up again under Republicans. This is historically demonstrable.
What is the best way to vote pro-life? Ulterior-motive lip service or actual reduction in the number of abortions?
It's not enough to say "I am pro-life therefore I vote Republican," unless one has totally turned off one's brain and is immune to all evidence and reasoning.
My wife once had an honest conversation with a so-called pro-lifer. He admitted flat out that he doesn't care how many abortions there are, as long as it's illegal. Thankfully he is (one hopes!) in the minority among pro-lifers.
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Comments
We have most of that over here through the NHS, yet the UK has a higher abortion rate than the USA. I know our cultures are different, but the education, contraception and affordable heath care argument does not seem to work.
Which then shows that (a) public funding for abortion may or may not be related to the rate of abortion, (b) having a law about it may or may not relate to rate, (c) readily available other reproductive health services may or may not relate to it.
I have been more persuaded that women feeling they have control over their lives, education and opportunity for women and girls has more effect on general sexual and reproductive health, general wellbeing and the generally more positive state of societies.
So I'd suggest that voting "prolife" means electing a lot more women, and having women set public policy on at least equal terms with men, but having a lot more say about sexual and reproductive issues which affect them directly, like pregnancy and having babies etc.
Based purely on anecdata I'd also question the degree and quality of the education, certainly in some sub-sections of UK society.
Which isn't a slam on teachers, more an observation that whatever education is given potentially doesn't have the oomph to counter the broad "sex is fun and consequence free" underpinning message of general culture.
Which suggests the majority of abortions are of unwanted foetuses.
From those figures around 5,000 of the abortions carried out were on women not resident in England and Wales (subtracting the two figures given of 190,406 abortions carried out, 185,596 abortions carried out on residents of England and Wales).
This all makes sense when you realise that it's not actually about the abortions themselves. It's about sex. Specifically, sex outside of marriage.
If it was actually about reducing abortions then all the things you mention would be perfect solutions, but as it's actually about reducing the amount of extramarital sex that's going on then they're absolutely the wrong thing to do. The fundamentalists need pregnancy (and subsequent motherhood) to be a likely consequence of having sex because in their heads that means fewer people will have sex outside of a stable relationship that's ready for a child to turn up (they're completely wrong about that, of course, but since when was awareness of human nature a fundamentalist trait?).
I'm pretty sure that's why they're so against all the ideas you state that would make things easier for mothers as well. Because if unwed women have sex the fundies want them to have a really shit time of the motherhood that will follow. They want having babies (and thus having sex) to be completely undesirable outside of marriage.
Basically, they're not seeing the babies as people, they're seeing them as punishment. And abortion is to be condemned because it enables people to escape their rightful punishment for daring to get their freak on in an unsanctioned manner.
Yup. That's why I also mentioned that there is a culture difference, something that also has to be born in mind.
As for the figures for the USA showing the rate of abortion to be lower per 1000 women than in the UK, such figures are meaningless since in an atmosphere where the very word "abortion" is so emotive there will still be women and girls who have a therapeutic D&C - just like the UK before abortion was legalised - and similarly women who travel to, say, Canada, for a termination won't appear either.
Some while back, I was having a private conversation with a small group of devout Christian women. One woman in the group acknowledged having had an abortion in the past. Others had had medical miscarriages. Which, they insisted, were not abortions.
I found that both fascinating and horrifying.
I have no idea how the abortion statistics are gathered. But if self-report by women is part of gathering the statistics, you'll miss the medical miscarriages. You'll also miss the women who drink herbal teas when their period is late. Doctors could report the medical miscarriages, but I don't think there's any way to count the women who induce their period with herbal remedies.
I think I've figured out the whole thing about being extremely pro-life/anti-abortion, and also being extremely pro gun.
Guns kill people. They need more people to kill. So fetuses need to grow into babies and be born. So there are more people to kill. Ad infinitum (endlessly).
Explains so much.
:vomit:
{/Sarcasm.}
I find it hard to believe that women in the 39-44 age bracket have enough abortions to push up the rate from 16 to 20.1. Similarly, I doubt that there are enough abortions in Scotland to raise the UK rate that much above the England and Wales rate.
Therefore, only one of those statistics can be correct. Personally, I find CK's statistics more plausible, as they are the statistics gathered by the UK government.
And the figures linked to by Balaam are produced by a "pro-life" outfit.
You have your numbers upside down.
In England and Wales from the 2011 census, there were 9,259,463 women 15-39 and 11,330,620 women 15-44.
Both the numbers you quote (2.01% of 15-39 women and 1.6% of 15-44 women) equate to about 180,000 abortions per year. Which means, in round numbers, approximately no abortions to women aged 40-44. Which is about what you expect.
Are we amazed?
The other factor is that women aged 35 and over are more likely to be in a range of sexual relationships than in the past and for women aged 35 and over the contraceptive pill may no longer be an appropriate choice, which can leave them more vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies due to contraceptive failure. (I did find articles about this on the old Ship - it became a recognised factor in the abortion statistics a few years ago.)
One thing the book has confirmed for me is that Trump's pro-life stance, indeed his conversion to a pro-life stance, appears to be essentially the single deciding issue in his winning the evangelical vote.
In that respect I have some questions.
It is alleged that Clinton supported late-term abortion, in Trump's words she would be in support of the position whereby "in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby".
What is a) the law b) practice about late-term abortion in the US, and why? Are any "pro-choice" groups advocating lowering the maximum term for abortion?
A second unsupported claim is that "recent polling shows a majority of millenials believe abortion should be illegal or only legal in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother".
Does anyone know the source of this claim or have a convincing counter-claim?
Roe v. Wade set out a trimester standard, under which first trimester abortions are a matter between a woman and her physician, a second trimester abortion may be "regulate[d] the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health", while in the case of third trimester abortions individual states "may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother". This was semi-overturned in Casey v. Planned Parenthood which held that states could regulate or restrict abortions as early as the first trimester provided the regulations did not pose an "undue burden" on women. What kind of "burden" is "undue" is left kind of vague, but subsequent rulings by the court have left me with the conclusion that a burden is undue if it would be a barrier to a woman with the rough socio-economic status of Sandra Day O'Connor getting an abortion.
In practical terms, very few late term (third trimester) abortions are actually performed in the United States. Most of them are cases where there are severe (likely fatal) fetal abnormalities, a major risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman, or both. The remainder are typically minors who have been impregnated by an older man with enough control over their life and movements (father, step-father, other guardian, etc.) to prevent them from obtaining an earlier-term abortion. Focusing on preventing late term abortions gives the lie to the pro-life* claim that they want exceptions to protect the lives of women in their proposed abortion bans. Late term abortions are exactly the kind of abortions they claim they would want to go forward, yet they're the abortions they're fighting the hardest to prevent.
In other words Trump was arguing about something that never really happens, is already illegal in many states, and is outside the direct control of the president.
I have not heard this. I am disappointed but not surprised that The Faith of Donald J Trump does not include footnotes or a bibliography. Gallup's polling on abortion, though not limited to Millennials, seems pretty flat over time.
*Offer expires at birth.
According to the Pew Research people, a majority of millenials (high 50s, percentage-wise) believe that abortion should be legal. See here ( scroll down to to the "by age" section:
http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/
(One of these days I really have to learn how to link on this new Ship.)
For the sake of accuracy Pew considers Millennials to be anyone born between 1981 and 1996. For Ohher's data collected in 2017 that means anyone from 21 to 36 years old. Other demographers have other definitions, but most of them are pretty close to the range bracketed by Pew.
The so-called pro-life lobby has been causing huge disruption and upset not only to staff but also to women and girls attending the clinic, including accusations of murder being flung at people.
There is a petition online for Amber Rudd to bring into law something so that such a zone can be applied for at any clinic without them having to go through the local council or to court.
*Not something I am sure about being good law, which is why I never invoked it against my neighbours at the old place, though I was told by a policeman that what they were doing definitely ticked the boxes for the crime. But in this case, the people must know the effect of what they are doing is not to make the targets feel they are being offered an alternative solution.
Why is abortion stressful? Isn’t it just another operation to remove an unwanted part of your body?
Surely it is only stressful if you know or suspect that it is wrong.
I had a tooth removed recently and found that stressful, from the moment I smelled that "dentisty" smell in the waiting room. Was that really my conscience telling me that it was wrong?
I am intrigued by the idea that that commenter could have an unwanted piece of his body removed and not find it stressful.
Actually, I see mileage in this. I'm happy to do the reading in church, but find writing the prayers of intercession stressful. Perhaps this is my conscience speaking and I can get my name taken off the rota.....
This case is proof of that if it was ever needed. I am so mad and I'm a man. I can't even begin to understand what it must feel like being a woman and faced with this attitude, and I am so ashamed of the fellow-evangelicals that perpetuate the idea, however implemented, that at the end of the day women are simply objects to be controlled, and if that calls for a pay-off and an abortion rather than the usual sanctimoniousness about life, people can do that without missing a beat.
The fact that no major anti-abortion group is pro-contraception has been the "tell" about this fact for a while.
If you're interested one of the other ways the anti-abortion crowd tries to manipulate women, in this case through deception, and have twenty minutes to spare I recommend this video segment by John Oliver about crisis pregnancy centers. For those who are unfamiliar with Oliver he got his start on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart before eventually getting his own, very similar show on HBO. Since HBO is a subscription cable channel it does not have to abide by the usual FCC rules for broadcast networks regarding profanity, so be warned.
That place is full of utter loons. I never go there for fear of nightmares; my strident insistence that God cannot be how the fundamentalists (of any stripe) paint him is in the main borne out of my utter terror that they could be right.
The author is way out there but has published some very good stuff about the abuse scandals. Just don't read the comments [SPOILER: it's all the fault of gays, liberals and gay liberals].
I know. The problem with comments pages is they're like when the cat brings in a partially disemboweled mouse, you know closer examination will be truly disgusting but somehow your curiosity gets the better of you. Then you realise you can't unsee it and you knew what was there all along.
There is giving it and the parents adequate support to raise the child.
There is giving it adequate health care.
There is giving it a good education so the child can be a productive citizen
There is avoiding war so that the child does not have to risk its life in service to its country (there are also other ways to serve one's country than just the military).
There is developing jobs so that a young adult can make a decent living.
And there is giving the older adult adequate retirement security.
I think there are other intermediate steps I have forgotten with this list.
This is one reason why I do like the Roman Catholic support for the total life.
But I am pro choice, not that I would want my granddaughters to have an abortion, but so that if they have no other choice, they can have it safely
Bolding added by me. The whole thing is worth a read, but it highlights fairly clearly the way the vague medical necessity opt outs written into various abortion bans are more about providing political ass-covering for elected officials than providing clear guidance to medical professionals.
I might be dead if I had lived in Ireland in 2002, my children motherless at the ages of 7 and 5. It was my fifth pregnancy; I had had two live births, one planned stillbirth and one miscarriage and I was longing for another baby. After two losses, to say that my baby was "wanted" doesn't even come close. But at 11 weeks I was bleeding in hospital, my blood pressure was dropping, and the doctor's priority was to stop the bleeding. He didn't check for a heartbeat, explaining that a heartbeat would just indicate that my baby was "dying" as opposed to "dead."
In Ireland, everything would have hinged on that heartbeat. If there was one, I would have hovered on a knife-edge, waiting until my baby had died before the doctors could proceed.
I neither know nor care whether my baby was alive when the doctors acted; if God had wanted my baby to live, He would have answered my prayers, and I wouldn't have been miscarrying in the first place.
I am convinced that ... nothing can separate us from the love of God.
One of my childhood friends grew up in the knowledge that his father, and English RC doctor, took the decision (in an Irish hospital) to "save the baby" rather than the mother. So my friend not only grew up without a mother, and with the knowledge that his father, as a doctor, knew pretty much with certainty what the outcome of his decision would be, but also ostracised by his late mother's relatives who couldn't bear to see the child who had cost her her life. A terrible burden for any child.
Hard though it is (and I do know, we "miscarried" at 22 weeks) sometimes the almighty/ nature decides it isn't to be.
Iowa, meanwhile, has passd a law saying that once a heartbeat has been detected there can be no abortion, and the man responsible says that this trumps incest, rape and foetal abnormality, there are to be no exceptions. There are to be challenges in court, though.