Do Right-To-Lifers Honestly Think....

[CO Liberal]

...that overturning Roe v. Wade will magically halt all abortions???

It won't.

Rich people will still have them.

The right-to-life movement is yet another way to punish poor people for being poor. And poor women at that......

Just my humble opinion.

[mreilly]

1. Yes, and they think outlawing drugs will stop drug use too.

... but naturally these are the same people screeching that if you outlaw guns, then only criminals will be armed, so there's just absolutely no point in doing such an ineffective and silly thing.

Amazing how they think the laws will work when they want them to and won't when it's inconvenient for their ridiculous dogma, isn't it?

[rfranklin]

16. It didnt stop George W. Bush...

from forcing the underaged girl he raped and impregnated to abort her baby back in his days of "youthful indiscretion."

[DieboldMustDie]

17. Hmmm... I haven't heard about this before.

What's your source?

[Capn Sunshine]

39. Here's a column that lays it out

it's a common circulating story. Larry Flynt is the holder of the key evidence. Perhaps this explains his ability to fly in small planes with impunity.

http://www.democracymeansyou.com/columns/thoreau/8-1-03-abortion.htm

[Wickerman]

2. its about control, isn't it?

[arwalden]

3. One Word: "Prohibition"

[dsc]

4. Then we should have no laws at all

No laws stop all crimes. We still have discrimination no matter how much we enforce Civil Rights laws shall we get rid of those? We still have murders shall we get rid of laws against that? Never in our history have we said, "We can't eliminate all instances of crime so we won't have laws".

[Caution]

7. the point being made is that some laws don't stop or deter

the "supposed" crime at all.

Anti-abortion laws do not stop abortions, they just makes them less safe and more expensive

anti-drug laws don't stop drug use, they just turn people who are recreational drug users into criminals and put many into prisons and turn addicts into drug dealers, incarcerate them and destroy their families even worse than their addiction does

laws are only effective if they actually deter. Drug laws do not deter, nor do anti-abortion laws. Particularly with RU-486 on the market. If they succeed in outlawing abortions, RU-486 will be one of the most consumed and sought after "illegal" drugs on the black market.

[dsc]

19. That is absurd

and it should be noted that the original poster said the opposite. That poster clearly said only the rich could get abortions if they were illegal. Making things more expensive and or harder to obtain does cut their use.

[CO Liberal]

33. They Would Still Be Performed

But the rich women would get the safe procedures, while the poor women would have to go the "back alley" route. And many more women will die.

[dsc]

43. or they may not get them

It is ridiculous to argue that making a law against something doesn't have any effect on how often that thing occurs. No matter what one thinks of prohibition it did reduce drinking.

[notadmblnd]

51. Do you honestly think..

that bringing unwanted children into the world is better than abortion? It makes me so sad when I see a frustrated young mother in a store, her babies screaming because they're tired or hungry and the woman calling them names and slapping them. When I hear horrendous stories of physically abused children, brain damaged from being shook or scars from burns or stories of mothers killing their babies because a voice told them to. Or a Susan Smith whose babies got in the way of her love life? I cry for these children and I wonder, would they have been any worse off if they had been aborted? I don't know, but I just cant see bringing an unwanted child into this world.

[DrWeird]

5. What they probably think

is that women who die in botched abortions have it coming and are going to go to hell. Just like homosexuals who die from AIDS.

[Beer Snob-50]

6. I honestly believe

that most right to lifers firmly believe that outlawing all abortions will stop all abortions. They are programed by their churches and various right to life groups for that. And they firmly believe that their is a difference in the value of the life of fetus and that of a convicted retarded person on death row.

[LeahMira]

20. I'm not so sure of that...

that most right to lifers firmly believe that outlawing all abortions will stop all abortions. They are programed by their churches and various right to life groups for that. And they firmly believe that their is a difference in the value of the life of fetus and that of a convicted retarded person on death row.

From what I've heard, they don't think it will stop all abortions, but they do feel that they have done all they could to make the society in which they live one that does not legally permit murder of innocent life. (RTL terminology, not mine!)

The difference in value that they see is that whether or not the retarded person really understands, s/he has done wrong and deserves punishment. The fetus is totally innocent of all wrongdoing. Innocent life has value while "guilty" life does not.

I totally disagree with that, BTW.

In both situations, if you do wrong you WILL be punished. That's the thing... they believe that wrong must be punished and conversely good must be rewarded.

Well, good luck on collecting your reward for doing good.

[BurtWorm]

8. No

[DinahMoeHum]

9. They honestly think so, but they are wrong. . .

and it will come back and bite them on the ass, big time.

:evilfrown:

[calm_blue_ocean]

10. Statistics show that outlawing abortions . . .

does drastically decrease abortion. One merely has to compare pre- and post- Roe v Wade US abortion estimates to see that a drastic change occurred. This change is so large we can be confident that the change occurred even though we don't exactly know the pre-Roe v Wade numbers.

Some criminal laws are so ignored that they should be repealed. It would be interesting to see your numbers that show why abortion laws were less observed than say manslaughter or or drunk driving laws are disobeyed.

Prohibition is probably an inapt example in the abortion context because there was no real disagreement in the Prohibition debate about whether a bottle of beer deserves human rights.

[StopTheMorans]

13. how many lives were ruined pre Rove vs. Wade?

how many kids were brought up in homes where they weren't wanted, and abused because of this? How many people remained in wretched poverty when they could have avoided this had they had the option of abortion? Outlawing abortion is an elitist tool used by the rich to condemnn those who cannot afford to have children to poverty for the rest of their lives because of one mistake IMHO.

[calm_blue_ocean]

23. That is an interesting opinion I'll have to consider . . .

Much more interesting than saying, as the original post did, that abortion can't be outlawed because there will not be perfect obedience.

A good follow up question to yours is: how many lives that would have turned out fine were terminated too soon becuase of abortion (legal or not)? How many of the people now living in poverty would say yes if you asked them whether they wish they had been aborted?

[Yupster]

22. Prohibition drastically reduced drinking too

It didn't stop it though.

[calm_blue_ocean]

32. Right, the answers to out issues probably lie somewhere beyond . . .

inquiries about which laws have good obedience rates and which laws have poor obedience rates. Obedience rate may be a factor in deciding what laws are just, but it is not really the primary factor.

Certainly, the perfect or near-perfect obedience rate sought by the original poster is not an intelligible criterion for any law.

A poster below was confused about why a change in abortion rates upon the change of Roe v. Wade would reflect the obedience rate pre - Roe v. Wade. By studying the increase in abortions we can get a handle on the proportion of women who would have gotten abortions before, but were discouraged by the law. As the poster points out, it is proportions, not absolute numbers that matter. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the population and fertility rate changed only a small amount between 1968 and 1974.

The poster below also suggests that fertility rates might have changed because abortion became legal. If I understand correctly, more pregnancies would occur because women knew that abortion would be safe and legal. I'll just say that I have never been really enthused about abortion-as-birth-control.

[in_cog_ni_to]

41. I don't think "back alley coat hanger" abortions

were reported to the governmenet for your little statistical report on pre r v. w :eyes:

[calm_blue_ocean]

47. That is right . . .

the rates of criminal activity are somewhat difficult to estimate and one must always have some idea of the degree of precision in one's estimates before inferences are drawn. That still doesn't mean that we can't be confident that abortion went up a couple of orders of magnitude after Roe v. Wade.

[in_cog_ni_to]

48. And I don't suppose the

increase in our population had anything to do with that? <sigh> What's that ratio? Population increase/rise in abortion?

[LeahMira]

26. Post hoc, ergo...

One merely has to compare pre- and post- Roe v Wade US abortion estimates to see that a drastic change occurred. This change is so large we can be confident that the change occurred even though we don't exactly know the pre-Roe v Wade numbers.

What about the population of child-bearing women in those two time frames?

What about the numbers of abortions that would have happened over the years even if it was still illegal? No way of really knowing that one.

What about expectations of and for women in the two time frames? When I started college there was one woman in the school of engineering. Furthermore, when I started college there were not a few hasty marriages.

I'm sure a sociologist could give you any number of other variables that would factor in. In the end, though, there's really no going back to what was to make comparisons because those days will never be repeated.

[Carolina]

44. what statistics?

how do you, how do we know? Who could/did tabulate statistics when abortions were illegal; who kept such records. Yes, there may have been records regarding women who suffered perforations, sepsis, hemorrhage or other such complications, and subsequently sought treatment at hospitals. But who knows how many managed to escape that fate and get through an illegal procedure with their lives and even their fertility intact. There is no such hard data, only extrapolations based on what we know, what information has been collected post Roe v. Wade.

As a doctor, I'd love to know your source. When I teach medical students environmental and forensic pathology, I cannot even get good, consistent data on the number of gunshot wound injuries and fatalities nationally because the GOP has consistently blocked efforts by the CDC and assorted other groups to have a national repository of such info. The Journal of Trauma has tried to piece the data together and some states keep their own tabs. But national, annual statistics are not easily or readily available and different sources give vastly differing estimates.

So I say all this to say: we really don't know. Making abortions illegal clearly will not make them unavailable. Those who can afford such will get MDs to perform D&Cs for alleged dysfunctional uterine bleeding (that's what happened before 1972) and those who can't will be forced to seek the assistance of a new generation of abortion entrepreneurs (aka butchers). We never seem to learn and what galls me is that those who pontificate about the value of human life on the one hand have no qualms about dropping bombs or decimating social programs that help children and other living things.

[calm_blue_ocean]

52. As I said, the estimates vary . . .

For pre Roe v. Wade abortion rates (illegal) in the US:

from 200,000 to 1.2 million (avg approx 750,000) estimated by Tietze and Henshaw (1986) (This study tends to be cited by prochoicers)

T. Hillgers of Creighton estimated at a lower 100,000 per year (this study tends to be cited by antichoicers).

Afetr Roe v. wade, abortion became legal and we know abortion went up, to 1.5 million per year. See:

http://www.abortiontv.com/AbortionStatistics.htm#United%20States       

This 1.5 million is above the max 1.2 million estimate in the Tietze & Henshaw study and about double the average of the Tietze and Henshaw study. It is 15 times the number of the Hillgers study. It is safe to say that the number of abortions went up after Roe v. Wade and that the increase in abortions outpaced population growth.

[Clovis Sangrail]

11. come on people

that's a mischaracterization.

I loath the fundies more than most people, but none of the ones I've spoken with think overturning R. v. W. is going to completely STOP abortion.

The only ones who think it would be a magic bullet are the idiots... and they seem to make up about the same percentage on either side.

[el_gato]

12. I know some repub women who have had abortions

and as soon as you bring up the abortion issue
thay clam up or change the subject

[pllib]

14. As a "pro-life" liberal

I agree with you, in part. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not halt abortions. The reasons women choose abortions - lack of emotional/personal/financial support will not go away, and some women will then, out of desparation, choose illegal abortions. Poor women will suffer more, as they will undoubtedly have abortions that are less safe than those their wealthy counterparts can afford (although this may be true now - not all legal abortions are safe abortions).

I am not sure what group you are referring to as the "right-to-life" movement. People who believe abortion is wrong, that nascent human life deserves protection from conception, come from both sides of the political spectrum. I personally believe that pro-life liberals tend to have a more consistent position on this issue than conservatives - we generally oppose the death penalty, support appropriate sex education, and support social programs and structures that would enable women to choose to keep their children. In this, we stand with the early American feminists like Susan B. Anthony, who lobbied for America's first anti-abortion laws, and saw abortion as a form of violence against women.

It is too bad that this whole debate has been taken over by extremists on each side of the issue. Being a liberal pro-lifer allows me to make some forceful arguments to conservative pro-lifers that limiting abortions means supporting social programs that would allow women to keep their children - better health coverage, a "living" wage, paid maternity leave, child care subsidies, etc. They have to put their money where their values lie, or they don't hold their pro-life beliefs that strongly.

If we could move this debate to focus on why women have abortions, (the extreme left would have to accept that abortions are bad, the extreme right would have to accept that Roe v. Wade is not the problem), we could expend our energy working towards real justice, both for women and their unborn children, instead of tossing invectives at each other across this great divide.

[Beer Snob-50]

15. THANK YOU

This is the best post on this subject I have seen in a long while. It goes beyond the normal.."BABY KILLER!!" no your a "RW NUMNUT!!"

[MissMarple]

18. Welcome to DU! Excellent points.

I believe abortion should not be a form of birth control, but I have trouble with most abortion legislation. Until conservatives work to improve the unfortunate situations many families with children face, they are hypocritical in their insistence in interfering in the other aspects of people's lives they would so like to control.

[Carolina]

45. abortion is often a surgical

procedure, although increasingly medical (non-invasive) modalities are available. Either way, it is not without side effects, including pain. So there is something tragically wrong with a woman who uses it as birth control, an argument I find highly suspect to begin with. That said, if such a woman truly exists, who are we punishing by forcing her to have the child: her or the child?

Having done autopsies on fatally abused (beaten) and neglected (starved) children, I am unequivocally pro-choice even in the rare, non-fictional case(s) of abortion as birth control.

Carolina, M.D.

[Padraig18]

25. WELL said!

:hi:

[NicoleM]

28. I really like rational posts like yours

especially when they go against the majority. :)

I might have agreed with you before I got pregnant. I went from being solidly pro-choice to on the fence. I thought pregnancy might make me pro-life. On the contrary, I'm solidly pro-choice again.

This pregnancy thing is HARD. Physically, emotionally, financially. I lost my job because I was too sick to work. And that was the least of my problems.

Having been through this, I don't feel that I can tell somebody else that they have to finish it once they've started it. Especially regarding the physical changes, sickness, and pain. I had no idea when I started this that it could be this difficult. I read the books but they tend to gloss over the not-pretty parts.

I don't agree with using abortion as contraception. I had a friend who did that twice in a matter of months, and we are no longer friends because of it. However, ultimately, it is not my business who gets pregnant and who stays that way and why or why not.

[LeahMira]

29. Good point, but...

Being a liberal pro-lifer allows me to make some forceful arguments to conservative pro-lifers that limiting abortions means supporting social programs that would allow women to keep their children - better health coverage, a "living" wage, paid maternity leave, child care subsidies, etc.

Good for you. That makes sense and gives women a REAL choice. So many do choose abortion simply because they haven't a clue how they can possibly make it with a child to care for. They abhor the idea of adoption, and as an adult who was adopted I agree with them. I also agree that if there are supports out there so women could raise their own children, many women might choose not to have abortions.

But what do you say to people who insist that the woman's choice came when she chose to have sex and now it's her responsibility to deal with the result? (Usually these folks go on to describe their own "responsible" behavior.)

[LanternWaste]

35. Very, very nice

Very, very nice. And after just having made a reply to another thread re: abortion, I sit quiet and still contemplating your words. Thanks.

[CO Liberal]

38. Welcome to DU!!!!

As I've said time and time again during the gun control debates, if you want to solve a problem you have to wotk on the root causes. WHY does someone feel the need to use a gun on another human being? WHY does a woman feel the need to have an abortion?

We all need to think outside the box.

[LeahMira]

63. Many reasons...

WHY does a woman feel the need to have an abortion?

I don't think there is any one reason, but I do think that there are lots of things we can do to make things more of a real choice for women. I'm speaking about some of the social supports that were mentioned earlier in the thread... affordable day care, etc. ... and also attitudes. If, for instance, an unmarried teacher were pregnant, how long do you think she would be able to teach before her reputation as a teacher and as a person would be dragged through the mud? These things do happen in life, y'know, but that unmarried teacher would need to have an abortion or give up her job. What choice is that?

IMO, the attitudes get in the way of implementing real supports that could reduce the numbers of abortions. Once the abortion really becomes a matter of choice, we could say a lot more about why women feel the need to have one.

[Yupster]

53. Overturning Roe vs Wade will not make abortion illegal anyway

It will just throw the issue t the state legislatures where it belongs anyway.

You think the California state legislature will outlaw abortion. The New York legislature? I don't even think my Texas would. If they did, the legislature would turn very Democratic the next election.

[newyawker99]

55. Hi pllib!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Nobody]

57. You've got some good points (and also, welcome to DU)

"...better health coverage, a "living" wage, paid maternity leave, child care subsidies, etc. They have to put their money where their values lie, or they don't hold their pro-life beliefs that strongly."

All of the things you list here are great goals. I would also include education on birth control and detailed information on how to use it, failure rates, and how to make birth control more effective. I'd also require insurance companies to cover it. Most don't and that doesn't even begin to include the numerous working people without any health coverage at all.

Too many of the conservatives demand that birth control be made unavailable and won't support anyone even knowing about it. These are also the people who stand outside clinics and harass anyone who looks like she might be capable of becoming pregnant. Doesn't matter if she's just there to get a routine physical or pehaps get a flu shot. She's a young woman, therefore she's pregnant, therefore she's coming here to abort.

I agree that we do have to focus on why women abort. I also think that as a society, we have far too little trust in women as compared with men.

[DemExpat]

59. Great first post, pllib!

Your ideas about pro-life liberals mirror mine, about being anti-death penalty, pro-birth control and education, pro-support for Moms etc.

Welcome to DU!

:kick:

DemEx

[Yupster]

21. No, and they probably don't think having laws

against murder stops all murders either. Still the laws against murder are considered good things.

[Clete]

24. Poor people will too and many will die from

what could have been a safe, routine procedure. In my day you wouldn't believe the poisons many women put in their bodies to induce miscarriages, mostly married women who couldn't afford one more child. Then there was the work of the back alley abortionists.

[Jen72]

27. It is still illegal in Ireland, the women just get on a ferry to Britain

for an abortion.

[Exsquid]

30. Do see it happening

I don't think the ban will overturn anything...

[meow2u3]

31. Real right-to-lifers? or the right-wing fascist counterfeits?

...You know, those who make all pro-lifers, including neoprogressives, look like religious fanatics?......:shrug:

[pandatimothy]

34. What about banning all guns

CO liberal??

Magically halt all murders?

[CO Liberal]

36. Let's Not Go There

I'm on self-imposed hiatus from the J/PS board.....

[Padraig18]

37. The Democrats have surrendered the terms of debate on this issue

There are MANY good potential Democrats who oppose abortion on the grounds of morality, including many Catholics whose position is one of 'seamless respect for life'--- opposing not JUST abortion, but capital punishment, agressive war, etc. . These people CAN be and are reasonable people, and do not simply oppose abortion and walk away, but oppose it AND want to fund viable alternatives to it--- paid leave, child care, a living wage for women, etc. . We needlessly alienate them, IMO, and make a HUGE mistake in failing to reach out to these people.

[alcuno]

49. I'm with you, Padraig18.

The debate has become so polarizing, and on the Democratic side, discussed in purely legal terms. As a Catholic, I look upon it as a moral issue and when I was younger, I attended the yearly pro-life rallies on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. I wasn't there to protest Roe v. Wade, but with the need to recognize the overwhelming number of abortions performed in this country every year. It makes me sick.

However, I can no longer stand the debate, so I've simply put it aside as a potential voting issue. There are many Catholics like me who just want to see abortions done rarely; Catholics who are willing to look for and fund alternatives.

[Padraig18]

58. Yes.

The insistence on framing the debate in B&W terms alienates a significant voter bloc who have much more in common with our party than they do with the Repuke RW, in 'big picture' terms; it is surprising how few leaders in our party appreciate or realize that few RC pro-lifers are 'single-issue' voters, unlike the vast majority fundy Protestant pro-lifers.

If our party would simply tone down the 'directed volume' and 'hostility level' of its pro-choice stance, it would be pleasantly surpised at how many RC Dems (who currently feel unwelcome or alienated by this 'one-note Johnny' tune our party throws in the face of everyone who doesn't swallow Roe hook, line and sinker) would once again become reliable 'D' votes.

Can we say 'open the tent flap'?

[leftofthedial]

40. "Do Right-To-Lifers Honestly Think...." No.

they don't think much at all and when they do, honesty gets in the way of their agenda.

[RetroLounge]

42. Do Right-To-Lifers Honestly Think....

no.

[Hammie]

46. The stupid ones probably do

Overturning Roe v. Wade only removes the federal constitutional shield of abortion from govt. interference. Even the most die hard right to lifer had to know that even if it were to disappear tomorrow, nothing whatsoever would change in most of the country. It would still be up to individual states to outlaw abortion, and the likelihood that occuring in very many states is pretty low.

[newyawker99]

56. Hi Hammie!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[quaker bill]

50. Who knows what they think, but prohibition will not work

Women were having abortions before Roe v Wade. Many young women were dying from the ministrations of back-alley butchers. Some were committing suicide.

My mother was personally opposed to abortions and would never have had one personally. But, she saw the sense in the law and worked in a abortion clinic as a nurse. Too many young women were dying and she knew legal abortion was the more moral course.

Knowing Mom though, I will also assure you none of the women under her care left the place without a damn firm lecture on the proper use of birth control.

[kodi]

54. no, they think it will prevent murders. not all, but some.

whether you like it or not, the opponents of abortion consider a fetus deserving of equal protection under the law. they feel this way based upon their belief that human life, at any stage of development is sacred.

that is their stance.

let me put it this way, they consider that the most important thing is to save the life of the fetus, what happens after that is a shade of grey compared to their opinion of the absolute black or white moral decision of abortion.

one should understand this because outcrys of "yeah, you love babies until they're born," or "you just want to force women to carry to term so you can subjugate them" is meaningless to them. only the opportunity for life, not the quality of life is the paramount factor.

the stance of many anti abortion, pro death penalty advocates arises from the belief that a life can be forfeit by free willed actions that hurt society. to them, abortion is not acceptable as some sort of warrented retribution for actions of the fetus made by free will. that is the distinction for them.

there are some people and organizations, like the roman catholic church that are at least consistent in the belief that life, regardless of condition and the free willed actions of the person is sacred, so it is anti-abortion and anti-death penalty.

as a man i am thankful for not having to make the extremely difficult decision on an abortion and i am thakful as well that my own mother decided not to have one.

[HFishbine]

60. Devils Advocate

If you really want to try to understand their position, you cannot frame the question that way. It's as if one would argue against laws prohibiting murder because "does anybody honestly think that laws against murder will magically halt all murders?"

Their view has more to do with what is sanctioned by the state. It is unquestionably a matter of morality for those who oppose abortion. One can argue the matter from a number of angles, but the simple answer to the question you pose is no.

[mmonk]

61. They think impractically and with clouds of emotion,

they aren't thinking about a return to back alley "butcher shops". I still think they will be defeated by the courts.

[spanone]

62. When I was a kid in the 50's & 60's abortion was illegal.

people resorted to sticking coathangers and such to abort pregnancies. In this compassionate conservative times people will resort to the same tactics. Thanks Shrub.

[slackmaster]

64. My mom tells a different version of abortion before Roe v. Wade

Most women could get to an illegal abortion provider if they wanted to. Phone numbers were quietly passed around among women.

Illegal providers were mostly doctors, nurse practitioners, or medical students. Their facilities were typically hidden in industrial areas, or sometimes in residential apartment buildings.

A woman who wanted an abortion would call the phone number for instructions. Payment was strictly cash and in advance. After the procedure (a D&C) the provider would instruct the woman to go home and rest, and that if she had significant pain or any bleeding to go to a regular hospital emergency room.

Some women in the Southwest went to Mexico for abortions. Though not legal even there, it was not difficult to find a real doctor to perform one.