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We established earlier in the thread that only 1% of abortions is publicly funded.

It hardly seems a white racial domination strategy that must be erased for Justice's sake.

Amaya wrote:
Those numbers reak of population control. If I remember correctly, the number of African-Americans is decreasing and not simply in proportion to other racial/ethnic groups.

Or the poorer parts of society can't afford to have more children so have more abortions?

Nah that makes too much sense its clearly a white conspiracy.

Systems of discrimination remain pervasive because they are subtle. Meanwhile, I'm well aware of double effect analysis. Responsibility can adhere regardless of intentionality. Also, we're not only talking about the current state of the but what should be. As to EF's points, abortion is not just an individual choice. pressures created by people you will never meet and may have been dead for a century have a bearing on what choices you have and how freely you can make them.


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@corpses: have you ever wondered why black people are overwhelmingly more poor than whites?

Manchu wrote:Systems of discrimination remain pervasive because they are subtle. Meanwhile, I'm well aware of double effect analysis. Responsibility can adhere regardless of intentionality. Also, we're not only talking about the current state of the but what should be. As to EF's points, abortion is not just an individual choice. pressures created by people you will never meet and may have been dead for a century have a bearing on what choices you have and how freely you can make them.


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@corpses: have you ever wondered why black people are overwhelmingly more poor than whites?

Because of a legacy of racial discrimination and abuse over the last 200 odd years.

That isn't a conspiracy, it is just historical fact.

A conspiracy would be the big scary government somehow manipulating the black population to remain below the poverty line.

Good, then you can see that I am talking about historical facts rather than conpiracies.

Manchu wrote:Good, then you can see that I am talking about historical facts rather than conpiracies.

Oh I had no problem with what you said (other than the "What if..." thing), it was amaya's bizare population control theory I was poking holes in.

Well, I thhink Amaya has a point. We can agree that the US has a legacy of racism that persists to this day. I'm sure people have noticed these correlations before me. But no one ever seems to talk about it. Everyone seems to agree that abortion is a fine solution to handling population growth among a historically oppressed minority that remains oppressed. It's not to say that there can be no government funded abortions. But dealing with legalized abortion generally is not as simple as advancing individual liberty and justice. It is a socially destructive practice first and foremost and, although I am not at all debating whether it should remain legal, we cant lose sight of that.

Manchu wrote:Systems of discrimination remain pervasive because they are subtle. Meanwhile, I'm well aware of double effect analysis. Responsibility can adhere regardless of intentionality. Also, we're not only talking about the current state of the but what should be. As to EF's points, abortion is not just an individual choice. pressures created by people you will never meet and may have been dead for a century have a bearing on what choices you have and how freely you can make them.


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@corpses: have you ever wondered why black people are overwhelmingly more poor than whites?

Endemic social failure due to low rates of education and wealth spurred by black pop culture teaching values of lax education, urban warfare, tribalism, and economic self destruction. Blacks are overwhelmingly more poor then whites because of the minority culture they've developed coming off of decades of impoverishment and political disenfranchisement following slavery. Black rates of education were better in the 80's, employment was better in the 80's, crime rates were better in the 80's. There hasn't been a large scale political effort to suppress black americans, it's self inflicted social paradigms that have been doing the majority of damage over the last 30 years.

sebster wrote:THing is, if force is required then statutory rape no longer qualifies. Guess those 12 year old girls need to learn some restraint.

The obvious work around is to argue that rape is intrinsically violent*, and therefore forcible by necessity. I mean, it is a violent crime, after all.



*In other words, the simple act of unwanted penetration is a violent act.


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Manchu wrote: It is a socially destructive practice first and foremost and, although I am not at all debating whether it should remain legal, we cant lose sight of that.

I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'm also not sure what you mean by "socially destructive".

If you mean that, in a society where human life is meant to be of paramount importance abortion tends to move the society away from such a value, then I agree.

Yes, you understand what I mean by socially destructive -- at least the tip of the iceberg.

Ahtman wrote:There were a lot of studies done over time that showed that abortion isn't this all encompassing, life destroying event that it is often made out to be. I'm not saying people are blase' about it, but they tend to just go on with their lives without it being this shadow of doom and gloom hanging over them.

Yeah, absolutely. In my experience there's certainly a range of experience to be spoken too. For example, my former girlfriend nearly died following her abortion, and so suffered an understandably large amount of trauma, but that's the exception; every other abortion I've been a party to has been a sort of 'meh' event once the initial shock of necessity is overcome.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Manchu wrote:Systems of discrimination remain pervasive because they are subtle. Meanwhile, I'm well aware of double effect analysis. Responsibility can adhere regardless of intentionality. Also, we're not only talking about the current state of the but what should be. As to EF's points, abortion is not just an individual choice. pressures created by people you will never meet and may have been dead for a century have a bearing on what choices you have and how freely you can make them.


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@corpses: have you ever wondered why black people are overwhelmingly more poor than whites?

Endemic social failure due to low rates of education and wealth spurred by black pop culture teaching values of lax education, urban warfare, tribalism, and economic self destruction. Blacks are overwhelmingly more poor then whites because of the minority culture they've developed coming off of decades of impoverishment and political disenfranchisement following slavery. Black rates of education were better in the 80's, employment was better in the 80's, crime rates were better in the 80's. There hasn't been a large scale political effort to suppress black americans, it's self inflicted social paradigms that have been doing the majority of damage over the last 30 years.

http://www.businessinsider.com/blacks-smoke-marijuana-less-get-arrested-less-2010-10

I wonder how many African-Americans are in prison for smoking pot (which should be legal).

It doesn't help that white controlled media encourages and supports the gangster culture and that a significant portion of African-American role models are athletes or gangster rappers. I can't think of a positive rap album that's been wildly successful since The Score and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Ironically, African immigrants to the US are among tend to achieve a high level of education and hold higher paying jobs than their American born African-Americans.

Actually after reading, I think I'd rather the Feds pay for the abortions, rather than the feds pay for support/birth/schooling of the child that was not wanted.

Abortion is cheaper.

Chrysaor686 wrote:Wouldn't that kill your chances with every other potential voter, though? How big of a block of citizens can that really be? How many religious nuts are really that blind?

Even the people who I know that are adamantly against abortion are still willing to let it slide if the pregnancy is the result of rape.

That would be a big problem if this bill had a snowball in hell's chance of getting passed. It doesn't. It's just there to claim that the people who wrote it tried to do something, but were shot down by the Democrats. Vote Republican.


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Frazzled wrote:Its designed to avoid limit govenrment payment for abortions. Abortions can still be had. Why the hell I am paying for it in the first place? This is not a federal issue.

There's already a law in place banning Federal funding for abortion unless the women's life is in danger, or the pregnancy was the result of incest or rape. The bill, as worded, would remove Medicaid support for abortion in the case of incest or non-violent rape, and is designed as nothing more than a way to score easy votes from the crowd that doesn't bother to know what the law is at present, but is instead determined to be outraged at the fiction in their head.


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Frazzled wrote:Its a federal law. It shouldn't be spent in the first place. It should be a state expenditure.

Medicaid is a federal program. This is not going to change. Deal with this.


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Frazzled wrote:Never mind. This is why anyone claiming to have a serious reasioned debate in the OT are fools and idiots. Forget it. Frankly forget the OT. Forget Dakka.

You frequently complain about the tone on Dakka, but nine times out of ten you're the one bringing it down. What should that tell you?


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Manchu wrote:Also, KingC, about the word "forcible" look at the example from the article:

This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion.

Why the hell should any taxpayer need to fund the abortion of a preganancy that resulted from a consensual-in-fact (if not law) sexual act?

Because society considers a person at the age of 13 to be incapable of giving informed consent.

As MGS noted earlier, it seems to be about how you phrase the question: "Would you deny Suzy, a thirteen-year-old penniless runaway who is pregnant because her father repeatedly raped her, the money she needs to avoid paying for her father's crimes?" Contrast this to, "Seventeen-year-old Suzy's eighteen-year-old, unemployed boyfriend, who she has dated and with whom she has been sexually active for several years, got her pregnant and she just doesn't feel like having a child right now."

They're two entirely different questions. For the record, the first would be capable of getting Medicaid support for an abortion, the latter would not.


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Manchu wrote:@Mannahnin: The term "state" does not refer to some group of oligarchs exepmt from the democratic process -- at least, no moreso than the term "federal" does. If the majority of the people in a given state do not want to fund any abortions than they should not have to do so.

Unless people believe that people have a right to a minimum level of healthcare even if they can't afford to pay for it themselves, and that that includes the right to abort a child that was the result of rape, or that might kill the mother. In which case they would likely believe that right exists regardless of what state of the union the women is in.


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Manchu wrote:Everyone seems to agree that abortion is a fine solution to handling population growth among a historically oppressed minority that remains oppressed.

Giving the individual the choice to have their child, or abort is handing the choice over to the women. That's the exact opposite of oppression.

It's not to say that there can be no government funded abortions. But dealing with legalized abortion generally is not as simple as advancing individual liberty and justice. It is a socially destructive practice first and foremost and, although I am not at all debating whether it should remain legal, we cant lose sight of that.

Only if the majority of society considerd a foetus a human life exactly equal to any other. Which is a highly dubious claim, at best.

sebster wrote:

As MGS noted earlier, it seems to be about how you phrase the question: "Would you deny Suzy, a thirteen-year-old penniless runaway who is pregnant because her father repeatedly raped her, the money she needs to avoid paying for her father's crimes?" Contrast this to, "Seventeen-year-old Suzy's eighteen-year-old, unemployed boyfriend, who she has dated and with whom she has been sexually active for several years, got her pregnant and she just doesn't feel like having a child right now."

They're two entirely different questions. For the record, the first would be capable of getting Medicaid support for an abortion, the latter would not.

Is that really the case? It seems from the article that pregnancy resulting from statutory rape is currently within the gamut of publicly funded abortions. I thought making it otherwise was one aspect of what the people quoted didn't like about the Smith Bill . . .


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sebster wrote:Unless people believe that people have a right to a minimum level of healthcare even if they can't afford to pay for it themselves, and that that includes the right to abort a child that was the result of rape, or that might kill the mother. In which case they would likely believe that right exists regardless of what state of the union the women is in.

A minimum level of healthcare that includes abortions is not anymore a given than the majority of the population believing that a foetus is human life exactly equal to any other -- which you note is a highly dubious claim.

sebster wrote:Giving the individual the choice to have their child, or abort is handing the choice over to the women. That's the exact opposite of oppression.

Collaborating with social forces in which it is basically impossible for poor women (a disproportionate number of whom are Black) to raise the children they conceive is oppression. In this context, there is no meaningfully free choice. Willful blindness to that very simple insight is astounding. The practice of abortion does not actually foster justice in society. At the very best, it replaces one injustice with another.

Frazzled wrote:I am saying for purposes of this line of argument that, the reason government historically is steered away from making payments for abortions is that there is a fundamentally large portion of the population that views abortion = murder, and that they shouldn't have to pay for what they view as ethically and morally a capital crime.

Does this mean that someone that believes the armed services to be immoral shouldn't have to pay for them?

How about we reframe that statement into a question of what the majority in a given polity disapproves of rather than on the individual basis?

Manchu wrote:Collaborating with social forces in which it is basically impossible for poor women (a disproportionate number of whom are Black) to raise the children they conceive is oppression. In this context, there is no meaningfully free choice. Willful blindness to that very simple insight is astounding. The practice of abortion does not actually foster justice in society. At the very best, it replaces one injustice with another.

Then the initial issue is poverty, or the absence of assistance to those that are impoverished (or presence of it), not the provision for abortion.

Manchu wrote:How about we reframe that statement into a question of what the majority in a given polity disapproves of rather than on the individual basis?

Fair enough, as that is more interesting.

If 60% of polity X believes that the military is immoral, should they have to pay for the military?

In parallel:

If 40% of polity X believes that the military is immoral, should they have to pay for the military?

Following on:

Is "I don't like X." sufficient grounds to oppose a thing?

While you may disagree with invading foreign lands and conducting covert operations, how can anyone sensibly argue against a military for national defense?

@dogma: Yep. As I said before, political and economic marginalization is the pre-existent condition of most of the women who are getting abortions. Allowing them to get abortions is not alleviating those conditions. It's my belief, although I don't have the education in sociology to back it up with a PhD thesis, that the "choice" to have an abortion is really not a choice at all but rather yet another misery that contributes to that same political and economic marginalization. Note, I am not saying that I support the illegalization of abortion. Thinking about abortion as a legal right is where we are and I know we have to deal with that. In the zero-sum game of drawing up budgets, every precious government dollar needs to go to alleviating poverty and encouraging participation in society -- not funding the decimation (actually more than decimation) of marginalized populations.


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dogma wrote:Fair enough, as that is more interesting.

If 60% of polity X believes that the military is immoral, should they have to pay for the military?

In parallel:

If 40% of polity X believes that the military is immoral, should they have to pay for the military?

Following on:

Is "I don't like X." sufficient grounds to oppose a thing?

I'm not really too concerned with percentages alone. If enough of the population can be mobilized to elect representatives that believe there should be no military then there will not be one. No, I don't think simple distaste for a thing is grounds enough to oppose it.

Manchu wrote:Is that really the case? It seems from the article that pregnancy resulting from statutory rape is currently within the gamut of publicly funded abortions. I thought making it otherwise was one aspect of what the people quoted didn't like about the Smith Bill . . .

In the first example, you have a girl who became pregnant as a result of rape (statutory and the regular kind) and incest - she would be eligible for a Medicaid funded abortion. In the second example you have a girl who became pregnant as a result of consensual sex at a legal sexual age, she would not be eligible for a Medicaid funded abortion.

She would certainly be able to get an abortion, like anyone else, provided she was willing to pay for it herself. But federal funding for abortion is only possible in instances of rape, incest, or if the mother's life is in danger.

]A minimum level of healthcare that includes abortions is not anymore a given than the majority of the population believing that a foetus is human life exactly equal to any other -- which you note is a highly dubious claim.

Absolutely, I didn't say that such a majority does exist or that it should. I was merely saying that if a person were to believe such things, then it would be perfectly valid to believe that society as a whole might be responsible for paying for it.

Collaborating with social forces in which it is basically impossible for poor women (a disproportionate number of whom are Black) to raise the children they conceive is oppression. In this context, there is no meaningfully free choice. Willful blindness to that very simple insight is astounding. The practice of abortion does not actually foster justice in society. At the very best, it replaces one injustice with another.

No, instead it's that your insight is couched in the assumption that a woman who has an abortion at 18 is then going to choose to not have children at 28 or 30 or whenever she's more economically capable of raising them.

The insight you're missing is that teen pregnancy reinforces the poverty trap, that many girls in poverty drop out of highschool or college to have children, when they might otherwise have pulled themselves out of the trap. By denying abortion you're denying economically disadvantaged people the choice to delay motherhood until they are economically capable, you're denying them a chance to pull themselves out of the poverty trap.

Manchu wrote:@dogma: Yep. As I said before, political and economic marginalization is the pre-existent condition of most of the women who are getting abortions. Allowing them to get abortions is not alleviating those conditions. It's my belief, although I don't have the education in sociology to back it up with a PhD thesis, that the "choice" to have an abortion is really not a choice at all but rather yet another misery that contributes to that same political and economic marginalization. Note, I am not saying that I support the illegalization of abortion. Thinking about abortion as a legal right is where we are and I know we have to deal with that. In the zero-sum game of drawing up budgets, every precious government dollar needs to go to alleviating poverty and encouraging participation in society -- not funding the decimation (actually more than decimation) of marginalized populations.

Its certainly not alleviating their marginalization, but it isn't helping to enforce it either. Notably, I don't think that you would consider abortion to be an oppressive force on our more enfranchised brethren.

Perhaps we're simply of separate minds here, but I don't see this as a matter of "help or hurt".

Manchu wrote:
I'm not really too concerned with percentages alone. If enough of the population can be mobilized to elect representatives that believe there should be no military then there will not be one. No, I don't think simple distaste for a thing is grounds enough to oppose it.

The percentages were arbitrary expressions of majority.

In any case, I'm more interested in the should than the will. Obviously if no one wants X, then X won't occur, but should we allow that if, for example, we know that a military is necessary? Is there a point at which the ignorant masses must be sheltered?

sebster wrote:In the second example you have a girl who became pregnant as a result of consensual sex at a legal sexual age, she would not be eligible for a Medicaid funded abortion.

I'm sorry, I should have made it clear that there are some jurisdictions in the United States (including Virginia) where age of consent is 18 and this is the extreme example that I was trying to set up.

By denying abortion you're denying economically disadvantaged people the choice to delay motherhood until they are economically capable, you're denying them a chance to pull themselves out of the poverty trap.

Weak stuff. The choice to delay motherhood is not contingent on the availability of abortion. In any case, I'm not talking about denying any woman the choice to have a legal abortion. Whether or not she can afford the abortion is another matter altogether. FWIW, there seem to be two ways of approaching this: evaluating the hardships of the individual or evaluating the destruction of populations. I tend to see abortion as an issue that affects more than one pregnant woman at a time.


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Manchu wrote:Is there a point at which the ignorant masses must be sheltered?

No, the people must be sovereign even to their own detriment.


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dogma wrote:Perhaps we're simply of separate minds here, but I don't see this as a matter of "help or hurt."

I think that abortion is a kind of trade. You exchange one misery for another. Again, no justice enters society through abortions. Certain problems for certain people are alleviated at the expense of other issues. Life remains uncomplicated for a college-aged woman and more people on the internet are willing to post that having the government kill people before they're born is at least cheaper than having welfare programs. To use less trivial examples, a poor Black woman has one less mouth to feed on the one hand and on the other another third of the potential population of Black Americans disappear this year.

Manchu wrote:I'm sorry, I should have made it clear that there are some jurisdictions in the United States (including Virginia) where age of consent is 18 and this is the extreme example that I was trying to set up.

Ah, fair enough.

Weak stuff. The choice to delay motherhood is not contingent on the availability of abortion. In any case, I'm not talking about denying any woman the choice to have a legal abortion. Whether or not she can afford the abortion is another matter altogether. FWIW, there seem to be two ways of approaching this: evaluating the hardships of the individual or evaluating the destruction of populations. I tend to see abortion as an issue that affects more than one pregnant woman at a time.

We're talking about abortion, which would involve a girl who is pregnant, her only option to delay motherhood until later in life is to abort her current pregnancy. So the choice to delay motherhood is entirely dependant on her ability to gain an abortion.

And yes, this can be looked at in terms of the population or in terms of the individual. But in the frame of the economic argument you've attempted, both the individual and the mother benefit from abortion for the simple reason that one of the major causes of the poverty trap is teenage pregnancy, and given women who have become pregnant a chance to delay motherhood until they're more economically capable helps break that poverty trap, a direct benefit to the individual and the greater community.


Not that any of the above, either your argument or mine, could ever mount a case for or against abortion. Thing is, if you believe that the unborn is a human being then no economic argument could ever, nor should ever, be capable of justifying taking a human life. Nor, if you don't believe it to be a human life, could any economic argument ever be enough to justify telling a woman what she can do with her own body.

I think you logic is flawless, seb. But what you're describing is what's actually going on. And the same folks -- both in terms of individuals and populations -- are the same ones having abortions year after year with no escape from the poverty. The problem is that they're already caught in that trap, long before they can even have babies. Your example works far, far better for a White girl in college than for a Black girl who will never even see a college.


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sebster wrote:Not that any of the above, either your argument or mine, could ever mount a case for or against abortion. Thing is, if you believe that the unborn is a human being then no economic argument could ever, nor should ever, be capable of justifying taking a human life. Nor, if you don't believe it to be a human life, could any economic argument ever be enough to justify telling a woman what she can do with her own body.

True. But people who refuse to move an inch this way or that are excluding themselves from public life. Governance requires compromise. As a matter of the law: We've already accepted that abortions, whether or not they are tantamount to murder, will legally take place. We've also already accepted that we will tell both women and men what they can and can't do with their own bodies in certain circumstances. Now given all that, we need to work out a better course -- one that acknowledges the destruction we've wrought getting this far.

Manchu wrote:No, the people must be sovereign even to their own detriment.

That explains quite a bit, because I'm of the opposite mind; ie. people often need to be reminded when they are doing something stupid, and subsequently forced to do something else.

Manchu wrote:
I think that abortion is a kind of trade. You exchange one misery for another. Again, no justice enters society through abortions. Certain problems for certain people are alleviated at the expense of other issues. Life remains uncomplicated for a college-aged woman and more people on the internet are willing to post that having the government kill people before they're born is at least cheaper than having welfare programs. To use less trivial examples, a poor Black woman has one less mouth to feed on the one hand and on the other another third of the potential population of Black Americans disappear this year.

I'm not seeing the necessity of misery there. No one needs to care, by necessity about the population of "similar" people that might exist.

To speak more broadly, you cannot trade one misery for another without first being miserable, and so the choice to abort a child, because it is a choice in the sense that choice can be meaningful, is not relevant to matters of justice. Its an irrelevant sort of externality, not helping, but also not hurting.

Again it seems to me that you're approaching this as though it is zero-sum.

To be honest, dogma, I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying. Maybe it's because our viewpoints are so different or maybe I'm just not quite up to your level of discourse.

Manchu wrote:To be honest, dogma, I'm having trouble understanding what you're saying. Maybe it's because our viewpoints are so different or maybe I'm just not quite up to your level of discourse.

I suppose I can break it down to two different points.

1: I don't see abortion as an intrinsically "miserable" act, because I don't see our society as one that considers human life a paramount value.

2: I don't see how abortion can be targeted as a central component of the oppression of the disenfranchised when those people that continually have them choose to place themselves in the situations that require such responses.

Perhaps we're disagreeing on what constitutes a choice?

Oh my god. This is too stupid... And just horrible to be real. I can't believe some of the ridiculous things the republicans are putting up. This takes the cake, I think.

While this is a ridiculous pro-life measure, it's not redefining the laws on rape, only the laws on getting government assistance for abortions. Stupid, yes. Getting criminals off the hook, no.