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Manchu wrote: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.

Yeah, but the white girl is ending up pregnant in her teens far less often. Nor is the white girl necessarily trapped in poverty as a result, if she comes from a financially stable background she has a great deal more opportunity to return to complete her education at a later stage. I think it's pretty hard to argue that teen pregnancy is far more common

And yes, offering abortion doesn't guarantee the same girl won't get pregnant down the track, and either abort or not. Nor does it mean she'll go to college, that's a pretty hard thing to achieve when you come from a disadvantaged background, so there's no guarantee she'll make anything of her life and be in a better position economically to have a child later on. But it remains a possibility for a poor and pregnant girl, that would be near impossible if she weren't able to abort, if she wanted to.

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.

I really don't know what you mean by destruction. I mean, yeah, if you believe abortion is murder there's been lots of deaths, but for those of us who don't believe such, what destruction are you referring to?

@dogma:

The first disconnect is that I believe in a natural morality. What a majority of the electorate thinks about anything is no kind of moral measuring stick for me. That said, I am resigned to living in a fallen world characterized not only by a diversity of interests but also by legitimate moral equivocation. I am in no way committed to establishing any kind of utopia, much less dragging the New Jerusalem right down to earth.

With that out of the way, I can address your second point. Another basic tenant of my worldview is that free, individual choice is much more an abstract concept than a lived reality. The ability to self-determine tends to be achieved at the level of associations, whether families or parishes or even races and nations, rather than at the level of the individual. I don't know of anyone who has chosen to be born into certain circumstances. On the other hand, a central tenant of our cultural propaganda is that those certain circumstances are not necessarily determinative. Closely examining our society -- even in terms of our own lives -- reveals otherwise, of course. This conclusion is admittedly distressing and so there is a strong motivation to dismiss it (usually on moral grounds).

So, for example, Americans of all ideological stripes can agree that no one chooses to be born disenfranchised but Americans are split as to whether people choose to remain disenfranchised. As far as I see it, the answer is "yes" and "no." The rags-to-riches myth, even insofar as it is true, requires that some people stay in their rags if anyone is to get to the riches. The fact that some do get to the riches, however, tells us that the rags are not necessarily permanent. What is obscured by the way we tell these stories, I think, is how the individual protagonist is not the only agent involved.

The things between which we can choose are only available to us because other people have made other choices, and so on and so on, chasing the causal chain off into the past. All these decisions exert a kind of pressure on the individual ability to choose, not just in terms of what there is to choose between but also in terms of how choices are made. In this sense, I do not think the disenfranchised really make a decision to remain so. And I think that most of the choices available to the disenfranchised individual are ones that have no bearing on whether that person individually remains disenfranchised.

Rather than approaching their severely limited choices as individuals, the disenfranchised should approach their slightly less limited choices as communities. This is the only real chance for escape from oppression that I see for such populations. Put it another way, this is their only real hope for greater freedom.


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sebster wrote:I really don't know what you mean by destruction. I mean, yeah, if you believe abortion is murder there's been lots of deaths, but for those of us who don't believe such, what destruction are you referring to?

I mean that significant portions of the population are just missing. It's hard for me to capture this concisely. I assume you're familiar with the current missing demographic of women in China. That's the sort of thing that I am referring to. I'm not just talking about murder or even genocide. I want to avoid those terms because they tend to distract from the sobering absence of all of these people who are simply missing from our society.

Manchu wrote:I mean that significant portions of the population are just missing. It's hard for me to capture this concisely. I assume you're familiar with the current missing demographic of women in China. That's the sort of thing that I am referring to. I'm not just talking about murder or even genocide. I want to avoid those terms because they tend to distract from the sobering absence of all of these people who are simply missing from our society.

Yeah, but for those of us who don't believe that the foetus is a life, how is it different to all the people that would have been, if only the dude hadn't worn a condom?

Sebster, you're on exactly the right track there.

Manchu wrote:Sebster, you're on exactly the right track there.

So all the people who've been not born due to contraception are part of this social destruction you're describing?

Manchu wrote:
The first disconnect is that I believe in a natural morality. What a majority of the electorate thinks about anything is no kind of moral measuring stick for me. That said, I am resigned to living in a fallen world characterized not only by a diversity of interests but also by legitimate moral equivocation. I am in no way committed to establishing any kind of utopia, much less dragging the New Jerusalem right down to earth.

Ah, I understand. I agree, majority rule is by no means a reasonable method of determining rightness. However, I also do not believe that my moral judgments are somehow indicative of a natural morality. In essence, I see it as a great game, we all have our beliefs, and we will all seek to write them onto the world; some of us will succeed, and others won't, but in the end we all die anyway.

Manchu wrote:
With that out of the way, I can address your second point. Another basic tenant of my worldview is that free, individual choice is much more an abstract concept than a lived reality. The ability to self-determine tends to be achieved at the level of associations, whether families or parishes or even races and nations, rather than at the level of the individual. I don't know of anyone who has chosen to be born into certain circumstances. On the other hand, a central tenant of our cultural propaganda is that those certain circumstances are not necessarily determinative. Closely examining our society -- even in terms of our own lives -- reveals otherwise, of course. This conclusion is admittedly distressing and so there is a strong motivation to dismiss it (usually on moral grounds).

This is ,again, an illustrative indicator of our differences. I see choices as something akin to possessions. In other words, what we do is what we choose because it is ours, and our action (unless identity is not a sensible concept, which radically changes everything). Our choices can be constrained (indeed, they are constrained by necessity), but choice itself can never be eliminated; of course, that does not mean that freedom is not sensible, as one can still differentiate between internal and external forces. Admittedly, this is a highly egocentric approach to life, but that's what white privilege will get you.

More simply, I'm not distressed that the world made me who I am, because if nothing made me, the notion of "I" becomes very difficult to process sensibly. What defines us if not others?

Manchu wrote:
So, for example, Americans of all ideological stripes can agree that no one chooses to be born disenfranchised but Americans are split as to whether people choose to remain disenfranchised. As far as I see it, the answer is "yes" and "no." The rags-to-riches myth, even insofar as it is true, requires that some people stay in their rags if anyone is to get to the riches. The fact that some do get to the riches, however, tells us that the rags are not necessarily permanent. What is obscured by the way we tell these stories, I think, is how the individual protagonist is not the only agent involved.

Yes, absolutely.

Manchu wrote:
In this sense, I do not think the disenfranchised really make a decision to remain so. And I think that most of the choices available to the disenfranchised individual are ones that have no bearing on whether that person individually remains disenfranchised.

Ah, yes, I agree. No one makes choices that are so grandiose in the sense that they choose Pepsi over Coke. However I do think there is a sense in which the disfranchised (or anyone, really) might choose to strive for grand goals. The question is what "grand" might mean given the sensible limits of all the various means of control we impose upon ourselves and each other.

For example, its always been sensible for me to pursue a college degree, but its never been sensible for me to pursue my own emirate. Someone else might, conversely, have no sense in pursuing a degree, but a lot of sense in pursuing a successful career in drug trafficking.

@Manchu:

'Tenet'.

Sorry, pet peeve.

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

That's not really the point. If you have views on a topic, they are the views you have. If you have a vote, those views need to be taken into account by the government.


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@Manchu, I am finding it hard to agree with what I take to be the basis of your argument.

If my understanding is correct, you feel that if abortion had not been available, there would be a lot more black people in the USA now, leading to greater political and economic power, which would improve their lot. Thus, abortion is a social ill in several terms and should be restricted.

I have several issues with that conclusion.

Firstly, there is no reason to equate population size with power. During the Confederation, black slaves made up more than 1/3rd of the population, and it did nothing to help them get free.

A large increase in the modern black population might just lead to greater poverty, worse social exclusion, and higher crime and incarceration rates (which are already very high among black people today).

Second, free abortion is only 1% of the total, so the black women are paying for their abortions, which means they are volunteering.

You could not make any significant impact on the number of black abortions without banning it either for black women, or for all women; this would be impossible for a number of reasons.

Third, despite their high abortion rate, the live birth rate of black women is about the same as the live birth rate of white women. It would seem that black women are having as many babies as they want given the restrictions of their economic conditions.

In other words, black women use abortion as retroactive birth control. Probably due to poor quality education in family planning as in other areas of knowledge.

Altogether, I do not accept that restrictions on abortion would be possible, or an effective way of dealing with the problems facing black people. It would be better to give better contraception education, which would reduce the need for abortions.

Better education overall, leading to better jobs and greater wealth, would encourage black women to have fewer abortions if they wanted to have lots of babies. Reducing the extraordinary incarceration rate of black men would improve black political power, and provide better support for black women.

@sebster: No, I'm merely referencing the related Catholic distastes (and I don't know that it's really more complicated than that) for contraception and abortion. Sorry, I was getting tired and was amused that you'd connected the two, perhaps unintentionally.

@dogma: I will reflect deeply more on what you've posted, especially regarding choice as possession.

@Albatross: Thanks, I will try to correct that in the future.

@Kilkrazy: Restriction (beyond those currently in place) on abortions -- something I acknoweldge is a legal right in the United States -- is not something I'd advocate. I do not think withholding public funding for abortions is a meaningful restriction on that legal right, however.

I have already agreed that it is impossible to say whether a significantly larger Black population relative to the White population woud necessarily result in better living conditions and greater access to political and economic resources for Black Americans. I think the idea that abortion has improved life for Black Americans, however, to be utterly ludicrous. In my opinion, how vulnerable the Black population is to abortion relative to the White population indicates that Black Americans remain the target -- NOT incidentally -- of subtle but systematic racism that results in real poverty, real marginalization from civic life, real oppression. Is it really so unthinkable that abortion plays a role in this persistant oppression? To say that it does is not a counterfactual argument. Furthermore, to my mind, it is far more clear that abortion plays no meaningful role in alleviating such oppression.

As I said before, writing budgets is a zero-sum game. Tax dollars are scarce and precious. They should be devoted to addressing the deeper problems that afflict communities over generations (like those you mentioned) rather than pruning the generations themselves. My problem is with expanding public funding of abortion. I also have a problem with a rhetoric of abortion rights that does not look beyond the individual and the particular circumstance.

If the number of abortions funded by every level of government is only 1% that is still too many if that 1% includes any abortion that is not the result of rape or incest. Again: I am interested in how we can determine that such is the case. I am interested in what kind of circumstances can be called rape. I do not think the Smith Bill is ONLY political posturing. People with whom you or I disagree cannot simply be dismissed when the task at hand is governing. The diversity of interests should be addressed sincerely.

Uncritically assuming, as some folks seem to, that the legal right to abortion is some kind of civil rights issue whereby deep social problems will be solved and justice achieved is not only foolish but also dangerous. If I've shown nothing else, I hope that I have at least shown that this kind of assumption is actually dangerous to already dispossessed, disenfranchised, and so vulnerable populations. At the very heart of the matter for me is a strong rejection that the untempered pursuit of individual rights and liberties is truly progressive or even socially responsible.

Manchu wrote:Tax dollars are scarce and precious.

That's just hilarious and cute.


The idea that having the option of abortion has had a positive effect on the black community via allowing choice is just as possible as saying the opposite becuase neither is what happened; neither reflect reality but a dream or hope for reality. Either could be argued with equal vigor and support. Of course by focusing on ethnicity we are just holding the tail of an elephant and calling it a snake. Could just as easily turn this into a diatribe about the loss of urban power (political) blocks. Focusing one one single aspect is disingenuous and myopic. The following factors are all important, and is not a comprehensive list:

ethnicity
ethnic distribution
urban/rural/suburban
geographic location (both broad North/South) and specific (Cabrini Green, Beverly Hills)
Education
Religious makeup

Manchu wrote:No, I'm merely referencing the related Catholic distastes (and I don't know that it's really more complicated than that) for contraception and abortion

Not all Catholics think the ban on contraception is a very smart thing, a few disagree on the right to choose as well. When you get away from Catholics at all it becomes even more problematic. Why would a non-Catholic, or especially a Non-Christian, care about what Catholics want legislated?

Ahtman wrote:Not all Catholics think the ban on contraception is a very smart thing, a few disagree on the right to choose as well. When you get away from Catholics at all it becomes even more problematic. Why would a non-Catholic, or especially a Non-Christian, care about what Catholics want legislated?

This wasn't the line of thought I was pursuing at all. As I said in the sentence after the one you quoted, I just found the seeming coincidence amusing.

I love the bible thumping republicans, once a year like clockwork, me and my missus have a discussion whereby she tries to drag me over to California, and we discuss the pros and cons of leaving Yorkshire.

These idiots just make it too easy. 40% of Americans are as ignorant as the Taliban.

I don't want to move.. I hope Palin gets the presidency!

Buddy, if she does, then she's gonna appease the Tea Party radicals by nuking your "donkey". Poor old England, how we knew thee...

Manchu wrote:@sebster: No, I'm merely referencing the related Catholic distastes (and I don't know that it's really more complicated than that) for contraception and abortion. Sorry, I was getting tired and was amused that you'd connected the two, perhaps unintentionally.

I was connecting the two quite intentionally, basically wondering if you were coming at this from a Catholic point of view.

So you don't agree that every person lost to successful use of contraception is a lost member of our society, but believe every abortion is. Which is your belief (assuming I've summarised it correctly) and that's fine, but you have to understand that enough people don't see that connection, to the point where the claim of 'social devastation', and hinting at other greater impacts because of this social devastation just seems odd.