No more Roe v. Wade

[Luke T.]

Actually, if you go to Luke's link, you'll see he demolishes the argument that there were 1.2 million illegal abortions and 5,000 deaths per year before Roe v. Wade. Those are Planned Parenthood's and NARAL's figures, or at least figures they were still quoting as recently as 2003. I'm just saying, if you accept their own figures as true, then the death rate from illegal abortions was tiny.

If those figures aren't true, then why do they persist in using them?

I do a lot of math in that topic. And the death rate is even tinier than that. But check this out:

In Aborting America (1979) Nathanson writes: "In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the 'morality' of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040528.html

 

[Luke T.]

From the same link:

For 1972, the last full year before Roe, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died due to illegal abortion. (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.)

 

[BPSCG]

I do a lot of math in that topic. And the death rate is even tinier than that. But check this out:

In Aborting America (1979) Nathanson writes: "In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always '5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.' I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the 'morality' of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040528.html

Not unlike the "phony but accurate" Texas Air National Guard documents we were all yelling about a year ago.

If Roe v. Wade is overturned, this quote is going to come back to bite the pro-choice people on the leg. Which is unfortunate, because there are serious arguments for keeping abortion more-or-less legal. But when its proponents get caught up in a lie, well, remember Dan Rather and Jayson Blair

 

[BPSCG]

The question isn't really how risky any procedure would be if it were illegal - what matters is how great the difference is between the procedure when illegal and when legal. If the legal procedure is even safer, then some number of women would die pointlessly every year if it were made illegal.

Fair enough, but when the proponents get caught in a clearly demonstrable lie, it undermines their entire position. They're forced to acknowledge either that the health risk of illegal abortions is vanishingly small, or that they've lied for years on end. If it comes to the latter, the public would be perfectly justified in asking, "Why should we believe anything you have to say on the topic?" Which is just one fatal step away from, "Why should we listen to anything you have to say at all?"

There's also the matter of how great the government's power is to step in to protect human life (which we still haven't properly defined)

We haven't? I submit that we have. For starts, there isn't a single biologist who would argue that the fertilized egg isn't alive from the moment of conception.

And if it's not human life, then what kind of life is it? Reptilian?

If you want to argue that it's not a person yet, then I agree, that hasn't been settled.

and how great the individual's right to make medical decisions without governmental interference is. Don't underestimate the importance of the philosophical arguments on both sides.

Agreed; there are powerful arguments on both sides. But attempting to foist off a preposterous lie on the public is a terrible way to try to win an argument.

 

[Melendwyr]

We haven't? I submit that we have. For starts, there isn't a single biologist who would argue that the fertilized egg isn't alive from the moment of conception.

I don't know a single competent biologist who would argue that it wasn't alive before conception.

And if it's not human life, then what kind of life is it? Reptilian?

You're using two different meanings of the word "life".

A white blood cell is alive. It also contains all of an individual's DNA. But we wouldn't call it a human life. It's human tissue. Similarly, a cancerous cell might not have the same DNA as its host, but it's alive - it's just not a "human life".

A fertilized cell is alive, and it is human in the sense that it is human tissue. We have yet to determine if it is an "alive" "human".

If you want to argue that it's not a person yet, then I agree, that hasn't been settled.

That's what people mean by "human life". A brainless body is alive, but it's not alive. Different meanings, same word. That's the sort of problems we're trying very hard not to confront.

 

[BPSCG]

You're using two different meanings of the word "life".

(...snip...)

A brainless body is alive, but it's not alive. Different meanings, same word. That's the sort of problems we're trying very hard not to confront.

Um, actually, I think you're the one making the one word carry two meanings.
It's human life from the moment of conception - or even before - but it doesn't become a person until some undefined and perhaps undefinable later time.

I think we actually pretty much agree here, in that we agree it's alive and we agree it's not a person at conception. I just want to make sure that when we say the same thing, we mean the same thing.

 

[Melendwyr]

It's human life from the moment of conception - or even before

No. Human tissue is not necessarily "human life". It's human, and it's alive. But put the two together, and you get a phrase that stands for a single concept.

If we accept your claim that a single egg cell is a human life, what happens when it divides? Each new cell is capable of forming its own individual human, given the right conditions. Are there now two human lives, or just one? How does separating the two cells create a new life? How does putting them back together eliminate one?

 

[corplinx]

In the end, it seems to me, that while Roe has some decidedly uneven reasoning behind it, so much of the law is now based on Roe that overturning it will mean a huge battle over laws beyond just abortion laws, indeed, it will call into question the whole basis of decisions made about "privacy" for the last thirty years.

I remember we mentioned this in the "extreme views" thread. Pro-choice but anti-roe. American politics tend to try to distort this view as mutually exclusive but it isnt.

 

[Kopji]

I lived before Roe vs Wade. I went to school in what is essentially a barrio.

Before abortion was legal a major source of gang income was performing abortions. I personally knew girls who had self-coat hanger abortions, used clorox bleach, and went to street gang doctors.

Not urban legends. Real life in 12th grade.

Life was ugly for poor women who had abortions then. Does anyone really think that overturning RvW will suddenly make all children wanted and loved?

The death statistic is simply a strawman, plenty of lives were ruined without dying during an abortion.

 

[RandFan]

I lived before Roe vs Wade. I went to school in what is essentially a barrio.

Before abortion was legal a major source of gang income was performing abortions. I personally knew girls who had self-coat hanger abortions, used clorox bleach, and went to street gang doctors.

Not urban legends. Real life in 12th grade.

Life was ugly for poor women who had abortions then. Does anyone really think that overturning RvW will suddenly make all children wanted and loved?

The death statistic is simply a strawman, plenty of lives were ruined without dying during an abortion.

Do you expect everyone to just accept your anecdotes? Don't get me wrong. I'm for leaving things as they are. But as much as I want to believe you and as tempting it might be to accept these stories they are not even first hand. You are not testifying that you used bleach or a wire hanger for an abortion. You are saying you know people who did. Hey, I know people who know people who saw aliens. That is equivalent to knowing you who knows people who used hangers. Both examples are third party. I have no way to verify their claims. And even if I did they would still be anecdotal. I think skepticism should hold us to a higher standard. Sorry.

 

[gnome]

Though I think most people who would want to disarm that woman wouldn't want to see her right to an abortion taken away. They'd rather have her kill her unborn child than the rapist who put it inside her. Go figure.

I have a problem with this comment. Specifically, I don't believe you really think so. Not in the terms you suggest. That puts it firmly in the BS category. It's reckless with the truth and it's designed to inflame rather than inform.

I am not an advocate of banning guns--but this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the motives of those who are. It's clear their interest is not in saving the lives of criminals, but that the risks to innocents outweighs the benefit of protection. It's reasonable to disagree. It's unconscionable to insinuate they are pro-rapist.

 

[Kopji]

Do you expect everyone to just accept your anecdotes? Don't get me wrong. I'm for leaving things as they are. But as much as I want to believe you and as tempting it might be to accept these stories they are not even first hand. You are not testifying that you used bleach or a wire hanger for an abortion. You are saying you know people who did. Hey, I know people who know people who saw aliens. That is equivalent to knowing you who knows people who used hangers. Both examples are third party. I have no way to verify their claims. And even if I did they would still be anecdotal. I think skepticism should hold us to a higher standard. Sorry.

Humm, ok difficult question. Personal experience has an element of an appeal to authority, even if it is our own self. We assert that what we experienced has validity and is real.

Well, first, my life is not the same thing as stories of aliens simply because the presence of aliens has not been established by physical, measurable, or repeatable evidence.

The existence of illegal abortions as a source of gang income has been established, it is not a very new idea. It goes on many places today in other countries. So rather than a tale of aliens, my story is more similar to someone giving supplemental testimony in court, supporting physical evidence: "Yes I knew this person and they were maimed". True, I might be telling the truth or lying.

I could post a link from someone else who wrote a book about it, but how would that be more valid than personal experience? That would rely on authority or quotations of someone I don't even know, hardly a skeptical stance either. Even if I said I'd had an abortion myself, that would fail the so-called higher skeptical challenge. That seems no different than a second hand story since there is no way to verify. A completely Pyhrric form of skepticism maybe useful, but does not seem to serve discussion in any way I can discern.

Aliens have not been established by evidence, so if I spoke of seeing them you would be right to question that.

But meet the 18th st gang:
http://www.nagia.org/18th_street.htm

They would certainly welcome a new business opportunity in a community near you. Sort of an appeal to emotion? Maybe. Politics seems that way though, always part emotion.

Even such a loaded topic like abortion - murder is exactly what the law says it is, no more or less. We put people to death for crimes, and send people off to war, neither is called murder. So murder is a legal definition. Some kinds of abortion are not defined by law as murder, so where is the consistency of people who are against abortion but for war or capital punishment?

Politics is simply not purely discovered by being skeptical, it is also a product of emotions and feelings. Part of those feelings are bound up in our personal experiences of life. I might disagree with Luke for instance, but I respect his personal experiences and their contribution to his values.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

A very thought-provoking thread. Kudos to all.

 

[BPSCG]

I have a problem with this comment. Specifically, I don't believe you really think so. Not in the terms you suggest. That puts it firmly in the BS category. It's reckless with the truth and it's designed to inflame rather than inform.

How is it reckless with the truth? There are a great many people who see no moral problem with with abortion, even in the ninth month, and who, at the same time, believe a woman should not be allowed to carry a gun, even in self-defense. That's a simple fact, and I could name names if I cared to drag personal friends into this discussion and if you yourself could not just as easily name names of your friends.


Yes, it's inflammatory. That happens sometimes when you strip the fine clothing and glittering jewelry off a proposition and reveal it in its stark ugliness. Orwell (the real one, not Ex Lion Tamer's sock puppet):

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.​

I am not an advocate of banning guns--but this is a deliberate misrepresentation of the motives of those who are.

Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying they want to ban gun ownership so more women can be raped. I'm saying they have obviously not thought through the moral logic of their position - a position that forces the conclusion that they value the life of a rapist more than that of an unborn child.

 

[gnome]

How is it reckless with the truth? There are a great many people who see no moral problem with with abortion, even in the ninth month, and who, at the same time, believe a woman should not be allowed to carry a gun, even in self-defense. That's a simple fact, and I could name names if I cared to drag personal friends into this discussion and if you yourself could not just as easily name names of your friends.

That is a fact, but that does not give you the value conclusion below.

Yes, it's inflammatory. That happens sometimes when you strip the fine clothing and glittering jewelry off a proposition and reveal it in its stark ugliness. Orwell (the real one, not Ex Lion Tamer's sock puppet):
Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying they want to ban gun ownership so more women can be raped. I'm saying they have obviously not thought through the moral logic of their position - a position that forces the conclusion that they value the life of a rapist more than that of an unborn child.

It only forces that conclusion if you plan on being deliberately obtuse. What they value in this case is not the life of the rapist, but the life of others that might be shot by that gun innocently.

 

[Kerberos]

That is a fact, but that does not give you the value conclusion below.



It only forces that conclusion if you plan on being deliberately obtuse. What they value in this case is not the life of the rapist, but the life of others that might be shot by that gun innocently.

Really Gnome, must you absolutly bring logic into a perfectly good rant?

 

[BPSCG]

It only forces that conclusion if you plan on being deliberately obtuse. What they value in this case is not the life of the rapist, but the life of others that might be shot by that gun innocently.

I know you're playing devil's advocate here, so this isn't directed at you. But what you're saying is that the possibility of injury or death to an innocent bystander outweighs the certainty of injury or death to a woman trying to defend herself.

Again - not thinking through the logicial moral ramifications of their position.

 

[Cleon]

What about me? Am I still allowed to be pro-choice if I support gun ownership?

 

[Kerberos]

What about me? Am I still allowed to be pro-choice if I support gun ownership?

NO! Take him away guards!

 

[Beerina]

The result would mean, I suspect, that the red states would pass laws in favor and the blue the reverse (or vice versa, I tend to be colorblind to media created buzz things).

The colors seem to flop every few elections. When Reagan won his landslide over Mondale, Democrats were the red states. I recall them zooming in on this tiny point of red, which was Washington, D.C., which was the only place Mondale had "won" through the first part of the night. (Later on, he also won his home state of Minnesota, but that was all she wrote.)