Are you anti-abortion or for abortion rights? Either you are against women’s rights or unborn baby rights. The argument over abortion seems to be lacking pragmatic thinking. So, let’s take an honest look at abortion for once and see what would happen if Roe vs. Wade was overturned tomorrow.
If Roe vs. Wade was overturned tomorrow, then the legality of abortion would be thrown to the states. Many people love the idea of states’ rights, but it’s a bad idea for individual states to determine the legality of abortion. My guess is nearly every state between the two coasts and Alaska would ban abortion.
Unfortunately, that means poor women who can barely afford the operation now have to travel to a state in which abortion is legal. Low-income women who cannot afford travel expenses on top of medical costs will be forced to raise children they cannot support. Black market abortions without safety regulations may appear to replace the once legal abortion clinics. Unsafe abortion practices will put the lives of thousands of women in danger.
The Catholic Church, like many religious denominations, believes life begins at the moment of conception — a belief I agree with. Instead of trying to ban abortion for the entire country, which does not wholly share its view on the issue, why not encourage church members to abstain from getting abortions? A religion has the freedom to include or exclude people. If one religion does not condone abortion, then it should excommunicate members who have gotten abortions.
To ban abortion is to force the moral viewpoint of one doctrine on thousands of people who disagree. If you do not want an abortion, or think abortion is wrong, then don’t get one. It’s called the “right to choose” because you can choose to not get an abortion just as easily as you can choose to get one.
What about just allowing abortion in cases of rape or incest? Well, if a girl wants to get an abortion, she may falsely accuse someone of rape or incest to get the procedure done. Adding innocent men to the already exploding prison population, that costs taxpayers millions, does not seem like a good idea.
What about the women? I imagine if Roe vs. Wade was overturned, then it would also be a criminal offense for women to get the procedure done, and it would probably become a crime for doctors to perform an abortion. Doctors and women would be arrested. The court fees would further deepen the budget shortfalls of states across the country, while public defenders offices are already overflowing with cases. Abortion crimes would crowd the courts, strain public defenders offices and cost taxpayers millions.
Cutting the funding from programs that provide abortions is a bad idea. Low-income women who do not want children will be forced to have kids they cannot afford to support. What happens then? The government will be forced to step in and provide Medicaid, welfare and other government support with taxpayer money.
According to the book “Freakonomics,” legal abortion leads to lower crime rates. So, if abortion were to be banned and agencies like Planned Parenthood lost funding, the most likely effect would be higher crime rates and more people forced to depend on the government for healthcare and income.
A version of this article appeared in the Mar 24 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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"Many people love the idea of states’ rights, but it’s a bad idea for individual states to determine the legality of abortion."
Not really. Read the Kentucky-Virginia Resolutions of 1798. In them, Madison (author of the Constitution) and Jefferson (Author of the Declaration of Independence) state that the federal government can only enforce three or four specific crimes (those enumerated in the Constitution). Heck, they even said that the feds can't punish murder.
"My guess is nearly every state between the two coasts and Alaska would ban abortion."
Please. Even "conservative" red-state South Dakota turned down a ban on abortion, save for rape and incest. The question was put on the ballot in 2004 or 2006 and a large majority voted it down.
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"To ban abortion is to force the moral viewpoint of one doctrine on thousands of people who disagree."
So you think it's wrong to ban murder, burglary, stealing, starting forest fires, fraud and rape? These are all moral viewpoints. Just something for you to think about.
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"According to the book “Freakonomics,” legal abortion leads to lower crime rates."
That is because most of the abortions done are by minorities, especially blacks. The fact is that minority areas have a higher crime rate. So naturally, if you kill them off in Planned Parenthood, there will be less of them to commit crime.
It did not turn out this way by accident. Read Margret Sanger's two books (she is the founder of Planned Parenthood). In them she called for birth control so that the U.S. could stop dumb white people and all blacks from breeding. She was a racist who was into eugenics. After WWII and Hitler gave eugenics a bad name, Sanger changed the name of her organization from Birth Control of America to Planned Parenthood.
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Well done Matty that's a great case for abortion.
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Except each of those acts harms (or has the potential to harm) another sentient, sensate, conscious, emoting, individual PERSON.
Abortion does NOT.
There are also valid objective, practical reasons for outlawing such actions. There is not a single objective reason to outlaw abortion, only subjective reasons.
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The author sites many reasons why it's good for abortion to remain legal. All of these reasons cannot justify the death even ONE unborn child. 1 out of every 3 babies are aborted in America. Our country runs in shed blood.
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One of the shallowest articles I've ever read. If you are going to write on a serious subject, bury yourself in it first.
Start by answering the question: WHAT is being aborted? I suggest going to www.ehd.org and look at their Prenatal Timeline. Then research to find out during which weeks of gestation abortions are being performed. And compare the two.
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61.8% of abortions occur before 9 weeks from the last menstrual period. 78.9% of abortions occur by the 10th week. 88% occur by the 12th week. 94.6% occur by the 15th week. And 98.5% of abortions occur before the 20th week.
MORE THAN 98.5% of abortions occur before viability is even a possibility.
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Which is why my argument against abortion is not based on the idea of viability.
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Jeff is trying to examine the practical results of making abortion illegal, and most of the discussion here is concentrating on the moral implications rather than responding to the actual points in the article.
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Because anti-choicers know that there is no objective reason why abortion should be made illegal - only subjective reasons based on personal ideology.
Which then begs the question: Why should any one person have to live according to another's personal beliefs?
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I am free choice. Freedom to choose to own any kind of gun I want, freedom to choose where I send my kid to school, freedom to choose to opt out of Obamacare, etc. You are only freedom of choice on one issue, which does not make a freedom of choicer-- it makes you pro abortion.
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That really depends on which philosopher is your favorite. I tend to buy into the ones who claim that objective moral truth exists - and if we suppose that something such as murder can be considered "morally repugnant" from an objective point of view, it presents a very clear case against the legalization of abortion.
And for the record, you already live according to another's personal beliefs. It's one of the rights you forfeit by virtue of living in a Republic - in exchange for some of your autonomy, you give someone else the power to speak and make decisions on your behalf.
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But in order to make his assessment, he first has to note the obvious - to wit, that overturning Roe v. Wade would have no effect whatsoever on the legality of the practice of abortion in the several states. Thus, he has to make the patently ridiculous assumption that "nearly every state between the two coasts and Alaska would ban abortion." If such a national consensus on the issue were truly apparent, we could make short work of this argument by passing a Constitutional amendment (via Constitutional convention by the states and subsequent ratification) simply prohibiting abortion outright. But I digress. The column addresses a very topic which is very complex for many reasons (moral, legal, societal, etc.) and reduces it to a simple slippery slope - "...Abortion crimes would crowd the courts, strain public defenders offices and cost taxpayers millions." This sort of "can't we all just get along" thinking doesn't really do anything to move the discussion forward; framing the discussion in a disingenuous light doesn't help either.
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Maybe you should consider things like the right to life of the child? Isn't life an inalienable right? I don't understand why abortionists constantly try to argue their position when abortion is legal. Oh, I know why, because they know it isn't a morally or ethically right decision and they're insecure about it, regardless if it's legal or not.
Quit fooling yourself: it's legal and I respect that, but please stop trying to make it out as anything other than murder.
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First of all, the disproportionate rate in which poor and minority women abort their fetuses is staggering at nearly 3 to 1 compared to white middle and upper income women. These statistics coincide with drug use and poverty. We should be ENCOURAGING these groups to get multiple abortions. We should not only give them free abortions, but actually pay them to get abortions. Of course the incentive to have children MUST be taken away or diminished in such a way that having poor children by poor people is not financially viable. You simply increase the social welfare payments to single people with no children, decrease or eliminate the payments for children, and pay women to abort their fetuses. Eventually that woman will inevitably become infertile. In 20 years, multiple problems would be solved.
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