<p>In my humble opinion: Abortion Clinics are here in the USA strictly because of the failure of religion. Period. If religion did the proper job of teaching moral duty to all men and women then there would be no abortion clinics. Religions failure to reach out of its ivory white towers to all americans in order to teach and preach moral behavior is what causes the business of abortion clinics to prosper. Religion can start by teaching men to be responsible for their sperm at all times. Abortion always begins with a man but society blames the woman.
the concept of moral responsibility and moral behavior is not congruent with abstinence and do not mean the same thing.</p>
<p>“Seems small, but with millions of people having sex with contraception, obviously there will nonetheless be lots of unwanted pregnancies, all precautions aside.”</p>
<p>All precautions ARE aside much of the time. That’s the problem. Failure of consistently and correctly used contraception is not the cause of most of these pregnancies. Note that most of western Europe has considerably lower rates of unplanned pregnancy than we do, even though they have sex, too, and their birth control technology is no better than ours. Some number of unplanned pregnancies is inevitable, but we’re way above that number right now; we’ve got a lot of room for improvement.</p>
<p>I’m not responding to any particular posts, just adding fuel to the fire. You’ve got a very good discussion going on. Many stats were provided by different people on things like who gets abortions and such. I’m sure there’s too much info out there to cut and paste; and that’s why it wasn’t INCLUDED with the other paragraphs, such as : </p>
<p>“Why women have abortions? 1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and 93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).” </p>
<p>So, even if you added another 3% for “Birth Control” issues, (Very Generous Estimate), there’s still 90% of abortions due to unwanted and/or inconvenience reasons.</p>
<p>[Abortion</a> Statistics](<a href=“http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html]Abortion”>http://www.abortionno.org/Resources/fastfacts.html)</p>
<p>A figure noted by PA Right to Life states that in the African-American community, fully 33% of the entire population has been aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973. ONE THIRD! Imagine, the scientists, religious leaders, scholars, mothers, fathers, imagine the wonderful people who never were here, because someone told a young woman it’s no big deal - just a piece of tissue. My heart aches…</p>
<p>March for Life, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Washington, DC</p>
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Oh, Pleaz! Spare me the false sensitivity. The easiest way to transmit AIDs is anal sex which is the more likely to occure among gay men than hetrosexual. I just gave an example, I could have given an example of hetrosexual couples, but the incidence of AIDS transfer is not as great. You should stop reading into other people’s posts what is not there.</p>
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You are wrong. I made no assumptions, I expressed an opinion in the form of a question.</p>
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<p>While the reasons of rape, incest, etc. are often cited as justification for abortion on demand, this statistic shows that the vast majority are…for social reasons. </p>
<p>TheresaCPA: That’s an interesting perspective. I would add that one does not have to be religious to believe in moral responsibility. Example: a religious parent would probably tell her teen to abstain from sex, to avoid ‘sin.’ A non-religious person might tell her teen to abstain from sex until s/he is mature enough to deal with the possible consequence of a pregnancy.</p>
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<p>Anal sex is indeed more likely to transmit HIV, but the statistical increase is not particularly large, and the reasons for it (which I won’t go into a large amount of detail about here) are avoidable, just like properly using contraception is.</p>
<p>You may be correct that I’m reading too much into your post, but you should also be very much aware that your post as it stood looked like a great example of “but AIDS is the gays’ disease!” - an opinion which, with all due respect, is something I would tend to see coming from the more conservative members of the forum, of which you are one. My apologies for reading something into your post that you didn’t mean, but try to be less ambiguous next time.</p>
<p>Source for post 7</p>
<p>[Facts</a> on Induced Abortion in the United States](<a href=“http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html]Facts”>http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html)</p>
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If I was ambiguous, it wouldn’t be the first time on this forum. Here are some CDC stats on AIDs by category for 2005. </p>
<p>Male-to-male sexual contact - 17,230
Injection Drug Use 8,381
Male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use - 2,018
High-risk heterosexual contact 12,388
Other 523 </p>
<p>High risk hetrosexual contact is “Heterosexual contact with a person known to have, or to be at high risk for, HIV infection”</p>
<p>[Basic</a> Statistics | Statistics and Surveillance | Topics | CDC HIV/AIDS](<a href=“Redirect Page”>Redirect Page)</p>
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<p>This false. The vast majority of abortions can be sourced from the middle class. It’s the less financially fortunate who are HAVING kids <em>cough</em>illegals<em>cough</em>. Painting abortion with humanity is quite amusing though…</p>
<p>Abortion:</p>
<p>1) One of the many properties that promotes self-indulgence. I wouldn’t care so much if it were not so obvious. This generation refuses to enter the work force, have kids, or pursue outlets that are not self-gratifying. Yes, I’m being general, but it’s a blatantly obvious that this generation is far more irresponsible than it’s 1950s counterpart. </p>
<p>This is an undisputed fact.</p>
<p>2) Abortion is killing off the population. Look at Europe, they can’t even replenish their own population. They’re resorting to brain draining the poor African nations, and importing conflicted citizens of less-developed nations for hard labor. </p>
<p>3) I know in this day and age someone with half a brain can rationalize basically anything, but I still can’t understand how people can justify sucking the brains of an unborn child. </p>
<p>The argument boils down to woman’s right to her own body (though a baby is clearly a separate entity) versus the babies…err…fetuses right to life. </p>
<p>Want to cut down crime?</p>
<p>Stop funding worthless social programs and advocating illegal immigration. </p>
<p>Freakonomics has been debunked to death btw. Dependency on a single source = zealotry!</p>
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<p>Wow… we’ve got a boomer generation oracle of the degeneracy of the new generation here… and he’s not even a boomer!</p>
<p>I would engage, but it’s pretty pointless. “We’re so irresponsible”, “blatantly obvious”… chuckle material, not the starting point for a real debate.</p>
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<p>Europe, and the rest of the developed world, are losing population because of contraceptives, far more than abortions.</p>
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<p>Yeah, exactly. It’s like this: should you be required to risk your life to save another person’s, if the risk to yours is low, but the other person is sure to die otherwise?</p>
<p>I would say there is a moral duty to do so, but that the law does not have the moral authority to direct people in such a fashion. That’s the first reason why laws banning all abortion are bunk, in my opinion. The other is the question of when life begins. Saying at conception is clearly false; when is the dividing line? I’m not clear on that, but it certainly should not be a blanket ban of all abortions.</p>
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<p>Unnecessary scoff = -1 in credibility </p>
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<p>It’s half and half. You also must consider demographics and population % and male/female ratio. </p>
<p>China = mass infanticide</p>
<p>India = mass infanticide </p>
<p>For every 1 non-Hispanics born in the U.S, 4 Hispanics are born. Considering how crime, lack of desire to pursue education, higher dependency on social services, abortion clearly isn’t doing it’s job in terms of economic benefits.</p>
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<p>Are you seriously advocating abortion in America with a very rare scenario? </p>
<p>Classic. </p>
<p>You are more likely to get hit by car o</p>
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<p>Please define morals. How can you support unregulated social services and charity to the world except for the evil doers yet have no issue in killing off the innocent?</p>
<p>Everyone deserves a chance, morals or not. </p>
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<p>Right. Abortion is legal because that’s what the people want. Just like what the Roman’s wanted before they were conquered by the less-developed and progressed Vandals.</p>
<p>History repeats itself…</p>
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<p>The dividing line is when a woman becomes impregnated. Contraception is perfectly justified. </p>
<p>I DO NOT support abortion, and I would definitely praise any politician who would like to cut government-sanctioned emphasis of it. However, since the likelihood of this every happening is 0 to a thousand, I’ll be content with a policy of alternative measures. Meaning, more emphasis put on adoption or abstinence. We all know the public school programs are crap, but there are some good ones that do exist. </p>
<p>It would take the full cooperation of society to accomplish this, and I think we have passed the critical zone. </p>
<p>It’s too late.</p>
<p>Abort away.</p>
<p>The cited article states: “The actual number of abortions dropped to a new low, with 1.2 million abortions in 2005, compared to a high of 1.6 million abortions in 1990.”</p>
<p>I don’t think that 1.2 million abortions is that low, when one considers the availability of birth control in the US.</p>
<p>While I too was glad to read that the number of abortions has declined (the year cited was 2005), it is still the case that 20% of all pregnancies in the US were terminated by abortion. That’s a startling statistic, at least to me.</p>
<p>I don’t have stats to prove it, but I think one reason the # has declined is that being a single mom is more socially acceptable than it once was. More woman with unwanted pregnancies are choosing to have the child and raise him/her.</p>
<p>I agree, jonri. Another factor might be the efforts of organizations like Feminists for Life who seek to educate women on the risks of abortion (something that is covered up quite a bit).</p>
<p>*Unmarried childbearing reached a record high in 2006, according to the disease control centers, with unmarried mothers now accounting for **38.5 *percent of all births. Births among teenagers and unmarried women tend to lead to poor outcomes for their children…
For the first time since 1971, the nations overall fertility rate rose past the replacement rate, increasing 2 percent in 2006 to 2,101 births per 1,000 women. Women of almost every age had more children last year than the year before, except girls under 15 and women over 45.
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/health/06birth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/health/06birth.html?_r=1&oref=slogin</a></p>
<p>Good link, Kitty. Just need to read first paragraph,
which Kitty hasn’t quoted.</p>
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<p>Rare? I just stated the exact conditions which abortion has to satisfy, as a matter of abstraction. The argument against abortion is that the fetus’s right to life (such as it is) trumps the woman’s liberty. I’m pointing out that while morally it may be clear that the woman should not abort the fetus, something being a moral requirement is not the only test for whether something should be prohibited or required by law.</p>
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<p>I’m confused about what you’re getting at here. My point is that the fact that something is the right thing to do is not a sufficient condition for it being required by law. So while morally everyone in the developed world should be supporting charity significantly more than they are, and while morally it might be that abortion should not be done, that does not mean that laws should be put into place requiring those things.</p>
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<p>Thus the “in my opinion”. I didn’t say that anyone other than me thought that. It’s inane to say “they’re legal because people want them to be” without examining why people want them that way. It might be that people are just selfish and want the convenience of easy abortion, whatever the moral consequences (this is probably true for many), but it is also true that there are many people who support the availability of choice on grounds of liberty, and other arguments.</p>
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<p>Agreed about contraception. But why should the dividing line be pregnancy? What special event occurs then that creates a life? Sorry, but to me the implantation of the fertilized egg into the uterine wall is not a particularly significant dividing line. What is different about the fetus before and after that?</p>
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<p>Problem is, sex feels good. That is the single biggest reason why abstinence doesn’t work. Yeah, yeah, we should all abstain, but sex is the result of millennia of evolutionary pressure creating the most pleasurable physical feeling a human can experience. We’re built to have sex, and have it a lot. Is it any surprise that people do?</p>
<p>As for adoption, I’ve said it before and will say it again: it’s not the silver bullet everyone seems to think it is. For many mothers, adoption is even more traumatizing than abortion, and it’s not exactly easy on the adopting families either (I know, my family has adopted twice) - lots of uncertainty, painful waiting in case someone changes their mind, all kinds of other stuff.</p>
<p>I wish adoption were a better option, but it can sometimes end up causing more pain and solving fewer problems than abortion.</p>
<p>Abortion cause the ultimate pain–death. Can’t really get much worse than that. Even 99.999999% of the poorest people would choose life over death.</p>