According to this new Gallup poll:
In the mid-1970s, when Gallup started polling on the issue, adults aged 18 to 29 and 30 to 49 were the most supportive of legal abortion under any circumstances, and those 65 and older the least, with 50- to 64-year-olds falling in between. That pattern continued through the late 1990s. Since 2000, however, all age groups with the exception of seniors have shown similar levels of support for broadly legal abortion....
In the most recent period, from 2005 to 2009, the majority of all age groups favored the middle "legal only under certain circumstances" position. However, there was some differentiation in support for the more liberal abortion view, as roughly a quarter of adults aged 18 to 29, 30 to 49, and 50 to 64 -- versus 16% of seniors -- believed abortion should be legal under any circumstances.
At the same time, young adults were slightly more likely than all other age groups, including seniors, to say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances.
Why this new trend? It could be that young people are influenced by their parents, and parents who oppose abortion have been having more children, especially in the post-
Roe period — when the 18 to 29 year olds were born.
Posts
89 comments:
It could be that young people are influenced by their parents, and parents who oppose abortion have been having more children, especially in the post-Roe period — when the 18 to 29 year olds were born.
Wouldn't that be ironic-the law of unintended consequences...
Maybe the novelty of killing babies is finally wearing off.
Perhaps they aren't the brain impaired folks they've been painted to be and actually understand the hypocrisy of having easily available contraceptives and then using abortion as birth control.
Parents have a strong influence on a child's attitudes about abortion. Women (and men) who are pro-abortion have fewer children. Ergo, over time the level of support for abortion among young people will decrease.
James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal has postulated the Roe-effect numerous times.
Just as pictures of cute polar bears influence people on the global warming debate, the fantastic new technology that can show pictures of babies in the womb erode the meme of abortion is simply a reproductive health procedure.
Perhaps growing up in an age when abortion is freely available makes young people a little uncomfortable, knowing that they could have easily been aborted if their parents exercised that "choice."
It could be all those talking baby commercials, part of the vegan/animal rights trend, or maybe an outgrowth of our idealization of childhood.
It could also be an unintended consequence of liberal indoctrination. Now that people expect government to be more involved in their lives, with rules for everything, why shouldn't it control what happens in your womb?
these abortion haters should have been aborted. clorox douches and wire hangers all around would be my remedy.
If the Obama Administration is so concerned for the poor and that they have access to health care and abortions-at least if you read the Democrat blogs they are really fuming about that-
How about funding homes for unwed mothers, and adoption centers...
A redistribution of the babies if you will....ok that's probably not the way to sell it. (I was trying to appeal to the Marxist..)
Why not?
Well abortion is probably "cheaper" for the Democrat government-right?
I mean why don't they send that to CBO to score?
Look at all the poor new kids we could off?
Those anti-abortion-rights young-uns will change their minds as soon as they get mugged by the reality of unwanted pregnancy.
I would say this is a consistent extension of an interest in life-oriented causes. It is cognitively dissonant to be pacifist, environmentalist, anti-capital punishment, etc. and support abortion. This isn't to say cognitive dissonance isn't possible or even popular, but such dissonance does tend to shift positions over time.
There's also, I think, the rather widespread understanding of so, so many options to choose from to prevent pregnancy. The idea of abortion as birth control is abhorrent to an increasing many.
I would also suggest this is a result of the changing tone of much of the anti-abortion opposition over the last decade or so. It really has become more 'pro-life' than anti-abortion, -ists, -ers.
When I'm asked what my position on abortion is I just say: "I'm glad my Mom didnt have one." and leave it at that.
All my children (3) who are teenagers know that if abortion had been legal when our parents had "married" neither their mom or dad would be around.
It could be they don't know someone who has died from an illegal abortion.
This also lends support to the idea that Baby Boomers are the Selfish Generation. So many didn't like the idea of parents or children. "Mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine."
It's possible that kids with anti-abortion parents outnumber kids with pro-abortion parents.
It's also probable that young people, who tend to be unforgiving of human failings and hypersensitive to hypocrisy do notice when pro-abortion arguments center on them as helpless victims of their own stupidity, and don't particularly see the need for abortion as birth control when contraceptives are so available.
But my primary working theory is that young people are rejecting the argument of babies as horrid, destructive, life limiting punishments that have to be gotten rid of on account that they started hearing this when they were absolutely dependent children and thus in the same category of horrid, destructive, life limiting punishments on adults. And they are hearing this no matter what the attitude of their parents.
They can either accept this about themselves, or reject it.
Althouse has described James Taranto's Roe Effect.
I think it's deeper than that. A lot of you boomers are politically wedded to abortion, the way East German political functionaries were wedded to their version of communism. It's religious, really, and you just can't let it go.
Younger people are able to look at abortion without the politics attached. After all, what politics is there? In their view, women are equal in every way if not the chosen gender. Without the strange gender politics attached, abortion is just the destruction of a fetus which is in the process of becoming or already is a human life.
Furthermore, as technology increases (and it always does), it will become harder and harder for anyone to support abortion.
The reason is simple and similar to the death penalty.
Technology has made opposition to the death penalty, based on the risk of executing the wrong person, almost moot. Absent outright fraud, we can be almost 100% assured of many people's guilt because of DNA and other technological evidence.
A similar explanation exists for this poll result.
In the past, women had limited access to birth control. Pregnancies could easily occur to the most careful of women if they engaged in any kind of sexual activity. The problem was that there was an incredible social stigma attached to a premarital pregnancy that it drove so many women to extreme lengths to avoid that stigma.
Now the stigma is almost evaporated and with it the strongest reason for the legalization of abortion.
Birth control is widely available and inexpensive. Failure to use birth control is clearly the fault of only two people (absent rape) and not the child's fault.
The Supreme Court in its two abortion decisions, Roe and Casey, avoided the question of balance of the rights of the child against the rights of the mother, lamely saying it was above their pay grade to delve into that matter.
The absence of the social stigma and the ease of the prevention of pregnancy makes it high time for the court to start examining the balance of rights.
Who has the greater blame in a woman getting pregnant, the parents or the child? It is getting harder for Americans to justify the failure to even consider this rights/responsibility balance.
Also, the stories of back alley abortions are no longer personal experiences.
Popular entertainment seems to also be a leading indicator.
When was the last time a woman in the movies or on television had an abortion.
On the other side, there's a lot of single mothers on both, who acknowledge the difficulties but find support in community and celebration about their baby.
There's just a lot of positive press for having children. Baby boomers saw their mothers as being limited by children, younger generations see their lives enriched by such. Society is also a lot more conducive and helpful to mothers, single or otherwise.
Skyler -- A friend sent me a really interesting death penalty piece from awhile ago. It was very compelling. The gist of it was that there was this guy who was found guilty of an arson that killed his young daughters. He was executed. In retrospect, the evidence that he didn't do it and didn't get a fair trial was overwhelming.
Anyway, not to turn this into a death penalty thread, but the takeaway is that state courts pretty much suck in a lot of places and allowing the death penalty is procedurally unfair to a defendant under current law.
Advances in ultrasound technology and science's understanding of fetal development. The whole "blob of cells" argument is harder to make when you've got scientific proof to the contrary within an astonishingly short time post-conception.
Hooray science and Christianity in harmony!
...From The Atlantic...
"parents who oppose abortion have been having more children"--
Wha? How did that happen?
As someone else said, the future belongs to those who show up.
Abortion rights is just another of the many things engaged in by the monumentally selfish boomer cohort, to be rejected on that basis by subsequent generations.
It could be they don't know someone who has died from an illegal abortion.
But maybe they know/heard someone who died from having unprotected sex.
We can have a PSA warning against the dangers of unprotected sex ie AIDS.. but the dangers of a pregnancy? why? just have an abortion say the grownups.
Is it possible kids see an inconsistency there?
No.. we cant have that!
I'd say that this trend is the result of some combination of all of the reasons suggested here.
A more interesting question (to me, at least): Does this continue, or does it level off? Will we find that, perhaps, the grandchildren of those who are children now staring legalized abortion with the same incomprehension that my generation (80's kids) look at Jim Crow?
- Lyssa
survivor's guilt
Even an all court press from the establishment for "choice" cannot overcome the natural repugnance of normal human beings at the murder of helpless innocents.
survivor's guilt.
@madisonman "It could be they don't know someone who has died from an illegal abortion."
very doubtful, since very few before Roe would have known someone who died from an illegal abortion in the first place
"For 1972, the last full year before Roe, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died due to illegal abortion. (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.) "
"Also, the stories of back alley abortions are no longer personal experiences."
You know, I never really saw that as in any way a compelling argument. If I accept the idea that abortion is taking a life (which I personally do), and therefore, morally reprehensible, yes, I don't want someone who tries to do it to come to a bad end, but I'm not going to lose sleep over it, either. I'm gonna be more sorry about the baby she and the "doc" took with her.
- Lyssa
(Does that make me sound like an awful person?)
Why this new trend?
Because they no longer buy into the absurdity of the lie that we are speaking only about a "blob of tissue."
They know, both intellectually, as a matter of science and reason, and in their heart, that the entity in the womb is (a) alive, (b) human, (c) a being who is separate from the mother, in short, a living human being. They know that abortion is the killing of innocent human life, notwithstanding the intellectually corrupt and grossly dishonest dictate of Roe to the contrary.
Treacle, that was funny. I am indeed an abortion hater as I hate murder in all its forms. Especially of the defenseless.
Sounds like you are a hater as well, cept you hate people.
Trey
"Those anti-abortion-rights young-uns will change their minds as soon as they get mugged by the reality of unwanted pregnancy."
Yep, their incompetence or selfishness will turn them into murderers, every one of them.
Trey
Probably another Rasmussen wingnut poll. Everyone knows young people support abortion-on-demand by 90%.
Everyone knows young people support abortion-on-demand by 90%.
""I don't know a single person who voted for Nixon." -- Pauline Kael.
If you go to Harvard or some Ivy league school, abortion support is 95%.
If you go to Harvard or some Ivy league school, abortion support is 95%.
1. Not true.
2. So what?
Maybe it occurred to them that KILLING babies is not that cool...who knows
Alex's stupid support stats bring up another issue, though.
I'm 30, educated, so I'm familiar with a lot of women who would be prime abortion-getters, I would say.
I've known several women who've had less than ideal pregnancies. I know dozens of women on birth control (including myself). I've known one women who's had an abortion. One.
(Obviously, I probably know more women than that who have, but my point is, they keep it silent. It's definitely an item of shame. That one person told me specifically, in some measure of confidence. I don't know anyone who would just talk about it in conversation like we do our pills/shots/patches.)
Abortion is the signature issue of the Democrats. They are in love with abortion so much, they are willing to scuttle their health care nationalization bill if it doesn't fund "a woman's right to choose".
Therefore, it makes sense that only Democrats should have abortions. And I think they should have abortions as frequently as possible. In fact, why not have federal subsidies for Democrat abortions? The world would be a better place.
Abortion is a thorny issue. What if you have a baby that your doctor is pretty sure will be dead on arrival, or will be very unlikely to live for more than a few days, or will result in the death of the mother during pregnancy?
On the other hand, you shouldn't be able to kill a healthy baby just to make your life easier.
As the old line goes, "100% of those in favor of abortion have already been born."
Is Obama the most gung-ho pro-abortion president, and wasn't he the most gung-ho pro-abortion senator, ever?
What Seven Machos said.
wv: chant
How original!
Ouch. That has to hurt.
A more interesting question (to me, at least): Does this continue, or does it level off? Will we find that, perhaps, the grandchildren of those who are children now staring legalized abortion with the same incomprehension that my generation (80's kids) look at Jim Crow?
Similarly:
I sometimes wonder if in the distant future abortion will be regarded the way we presently regard ritual human sacrifice- as a barbaric practice performed by ignorant, primitive people. What would such people, and their society be like?
Or perhaps we go another route- to where the value of an individual life has been reduced to the point where people have become interchangeable cogs in the machinery of a perfectly functioning society; and routine abortion has become an acceptable part of natural selection towards that end.
There are other alternatives to be sure, but these two intrigue me the most.
Hate to tell everybody, but the parents, who set an example for them, of all these kids who don't support abortion are Baby Boomers. Most of them are not left wing idiots like Pelosi Galore and The Zero, but have a lot more in common with Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin. Boomers, for those who weren't paying attention, were the true believers of the Reagan Revolution and are the core of the Tea Party movement.
Those who raise James Taranto's name are on the money. His thesis, that kids inherit their parents' values and, since most lefty parents either aborted their kids or limited themselves to one or two (they all read "The Population Bomb" before "Earth in the Balance") while the more Conservative families had three or four (or five or six), demographics is on the side of the anti-abortion crowd.
The absolute heartlessness of the feminists is a real turn off, also.
Another point here is that a lot of women have died from legal abortions, thanks to the feminists and doctors looking to make a quick buck. Most abortion mills are allowed to run under extremely lax medical standards to the point where some of them, particularly in NYC, had to be shut down after enough women died from infections.
The fact which has come out recently that Planned Parenthood "clinics" are only interested in performing abortions and slant all their "counseling" in that direction without ever mentioning a chance to see ultrasounds or the possibilities of adoption is also tilting things.
Young people are more internet savvy and are less likely to get their opinions from mainstream media. The sharp drop in support for abortion "under any circumstances" (from 36% to 24%) coincides with the rise of the internet. The media has censored images of aborted babies for decades. Now people just have to photo-google "late term abortion" and see the evidence. And I have to think reading the Carhart opinions will create future generations of pro-life attorneys who are appalled, too.
I think younger people are far less anti-natal than the Boomers were.
An oopsie pregnancy is a shame and a tragedy only for upper middle class and rich kids. There's a lot of pressure and coercion in those situations.
Poorer people don't have much stuff in this world and their most precious resource is people.
(If you don't understand this, please read Understanding the Framework of Poverty by Ruby Payne.)
Boomer women thought they'd achieve some sort of nirvana with their careers and wealth and self fulfillment outside the home. Their latchkey kids might think differently about this. They value family more and more younger women want to stay home with their children.
The anti-capital punishment activities are exposed to the Catholic Seamless Garment argument. If we object to the execution of guilty life that "deserves it," we are also pro-life to our smallest and most vulnerable brothers and sisters. If even a murderer's life is inviolably sacred, so is an innocent zygote's....cont'd
...Any thoughtful person born after 1973 knows a huge part of their peer group is missing.
I was an accident, born four years before abortion became legal in the country of my birth (not the USA). But I was a happy accident, welcomed and loved by my parents--people of faith who accepted that God had something different in mind than they did when it came to family size. If they wanted to off me, they could have (even though it wasn't legal yet). I am grateful they decided otherwise.
So I guess I feel the tenuousness of my existence. This feeling is true for every American child born after Roe whether they perceive it or not.
I have religious reasons to believe that no child is an accident or a tragedy.
However, I can think about this even apart from any religious belief or thought. I guess I'm simpatico with Feminists for Life.
Anytime someone tells me she is pregnant, I say congratulations. She might be catching hell from every quarter and doesn't need anyone else piling on. Being resourceful in helping her get what she needs to choose life, might in fact save a life.
I don't think procedures that can be called abortions should be criminalized. I've had an abortion (on Halloween, no less) and I've never been pregnant. LOL I had the hospital staff cracking up at that.
The same procedure that can be called abortion is also used to treat incomplete miscarriage. One of my besties is a pro-life activist and was horrified to see her hospital bill/insurance EOB that made it look like she had an abortion.
My sis had an ectopic pregnancy. Even Catholics have no qualms with an abortion in this case. Principle of double effect. The primary intention is the treatment of a condition threatening the life of the mother; the abortion of the baby is not intended but an avoidable secondary consequence.
Whatever bill passes, I hope it covers non-elective procedures that are required for diagnosis or treatment of a medical condition. Nothing is more hateful to me than a woman losing a child she wants through miscarriage and needing a D&C to finish the process--what grief--then being presented with a bill of a few thousand dollars that ObamaCare won't cover that she'll have to pay. How horrifying.
Anyone who goes on about abortion as birth control cannot ignore the fact that the methods of birth control they favor frequently fail. One of my besties has three children conceived on the Pill. My other bestie--four of her five children were conceived while she layered multiple methods of birth control--everything but hermetically sealing herself in inch-thick latex. She's just a fertile Myrtle.
You would be horrified to find out that I sense where I am in my cycle and have never been pregnant--through avoiding sex during my fertile time. Moot point now, all my bits and pieces are gone.
OK TMI but you can't open this can of worms without dealing with the worms.
I'd be curious to see if this is true in other countries also
Why are they trending away? Three reasons that I'm aware of being both an Xer and a father of a Millennial. First, the argument against abortion can be made completely separate from theology. Second, even my most educated, stridently pro-choice friends cede that the pro-life side has a better argument and that the choice side mostly relies on defining person hood in a counter-intuitive way. Third, the younger people in the country, especially on the right, are getting sick and tired of the same social battles being waged over and over again, freezing political progress of almost any kind because of this issue.
Not that the issue isn't important, mind you, but I think the polarizing effect it's had on the political climate is a huge turnoff to younger-than-boomers, who would like to see other things addressed without drawing battle lines around abortion constantly.
For the record, I'm pro-life as attempts to rationalize personhood by pro-choice philosophers seems to fall short of the mark for me. Reality intrudes, though, and it strikes me that the djinni is out of the bottle on this one. Advancing technology will mostly make it a non-issue for the most part, but I believe that the best the pro-lifers can hope for is a ban on abortions after the first trimester excepting very well defined circumstances.
Making almost all abortion illegal seems to me a move to the left in any case, as I view things on a tyranny to anarchy spectrum, left to right.
Just my two cents.
Please ignore the horribly written post above :) I was taught how to write by the superintendent of the Detroit public school system.
Also, young people today have seen that delaying childbearing can mean more difficulty conceiving. In the news, they see desperate barren women, problems with surrogates, women who abort for convenience, women who carry "defective" fetuses to term and find they're perfect, etc.
So, the subtext is that reproductive "freedom" is not a panacea.
Madison Man wrote:
"It could be they don't know someone who has died from an illegal abortion."
Most people don't. Between the introduction of penicillin and roe v wade, deaths from illegal abortions ranged from 400 in a year (when penicillin use was introduced) to 39. Deaths from illegal abortions in the last 30-some years have presumably continued to drop.
source
I'm 30 but close enough.
It's the ultrasound. "Clump of tissue?" We know better.
Have any of you seen the Brizilian use of a 3D printers to produce a completely accurate model, in plastic, of the fetus at any stage of development? Quite striking.
When I saw the report on it a while back, my first thought was, "the pro-choice people are going to go apeshit if this makes it to the US in any large way"
Part of this is probably demographic. Almost half of US babies are born to Hispanics, who, while they vote Democrat, tend to be Catholic and quite a bit more socially conservative than mainstream Democrats.
I think it's people just tired of pro-abortion advocates who listen to no reason. For example, defenders of late term abortion ended up sounding somewhere between insane and pure evil.
(Couple this with a growing disgust amongst young women for feminists who are far more oppressive than the straw men they attack.)
"For 1972, the last full year before Roe, the federal Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died due to illegal abortion. (The death total for all abortions, including legal ones, was 88.) "
Woah! It's like a holocaust or something.
Holy hell-
I thought I was being slightly sarcastic when I wrote my second comment on this thread-
Stupak in an interview with Costa of The National Review:
“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”
I think this link might take anyone interested directly to Costa's interview with Stupak it's at The Corner, National Review.
Link
What's influencing these younger people? Technology. We now enjoy remarkable photos, video of life in the womb. It is getting harder and harder to deny the obvious.
Popular entertainment seems to also be a leading indicator.
When was the last time a woman in the movies or on television had an abortion.
Last year on “Nip/Tuck” and “Friday Night Lights.”
Abortion rights were intended to cull the black population.
Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned parenthood) wrote: "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members"
and
“The future program [of Planned Parenthood] should center around more education in the field through the work of a professional Negro worker, because those of us who believe that the benefits of Planned Parenthood as a vital key to the elimination of human waste must reach the entire population."
And it was successful. According to the CDC:
"55% of women who obtained legal induced abortions were known to be white, 35% were black [of a 12% population], and 7% were of other races.... The abortion ratio for black women (503 per 1,000 live births) was 3.0 times the ratio for white women (167 per 1,000 live births). ...The abortion rate for black women (30 per 1,000 women) was 3.1 times the rate for white women (10 per 1,000 women)...."
Thanks, Democrat eugenicists!
I mean, it wasn't really meant for crackers in the first place.
Last year on “Nip/Tuck” and “Friday Night Lights.”
oh. Well, there's that.
When was the last time a woman in a popular movie or on television shows that a lot of people watch had an abortion?
Plus we all know that plastic surgery and Texas high school football are deviant activities.
Pogo
Why do fascists like Nancy always have to get ugly and play footsy with eugenics?
Damn Democrats a disgusting new low.
Always a surprise though.
Has any damn reporter asked Nancy to respond to Stupak's comment?
The Democrats should just have an assembly line with machine-guns, and load those babies up!
I'm sure that Soros guy would spring for the bullets!
I think its just that scientific advances have shown things like beating hearts and facial formation and identified organs at earlier and earlier points in the development of a fetus, and so people see the fetus as a little person as opposed to some kind of growth that is only human-like after 3+ months...
Victoria, you do realize that no matter what you think of abortion as birth control, most abortions take place as a form of birth control, yes?
The thing is... choice isn't taken away and that's what young people understand. There is no taking away *choice* unless and until we start talking about rape.
Advances in ultrasound technology and science's understanding of fetal development. The whole "blob of cells" argument is harder to make when you've got scientific proof to the contrary within an astonishingly short time post-conception.
Seriously. Have you ever seen one of those special ultrasounds that are 2d or whatever? At this point, we just know too much about what develops when. (I just saw my cousins' ultrasounds from one of those babyviews places a few weeks ago. It was amazing!)
The thing is... choice isn't taken away and that's what young people understand.
Good point. That "choice" rhetoric rings so hollow. I don't quite understand how that went over so well before.
I think "choice" went over well before because it was essentially true. And abortion was coupled with birth control and marital rape and a whole lot of bad.
But what is going on is... people can't accept victory. No one can say success.
If the goal is for women to control their reproduction, then we're there.
But without accepting that, we end up with this enormous logical disconnect where the rhetoric embeds the notion that someone, somewhere, is being forced to be a brood mare and that we need to pretend that women don't have the capability to be responsible for what they have control over unless they have a magic do-over button.
If it really was about "choice" then again, why don't Democrats fund for the poor homes for unwed mothers and adoption centers?
wv:unwommen
I hate irony sometimes.
Folks, when will the pesky left and civil libertarians get with the program? It's not about quality of life, it's about the fetishization of life.
Well, we can always turn sex into an unspeakable vice. Abstinence education, yeah! That's it... Mebbe forced ignorance will do the trick. That's the way we will win the war against abortion! Come on! Let's stick together on this! Are you with the program?!?!?!
vicki said:
I am totally pro-choice, not anti-choice. I think that as soon as the choice is taken away the young women of America will be singing a different tune.
Seriously, funding homes for unwed mothers, orphanages, lets go back to the dark ages. -
Do try to be a better troll would ya?
First you are doing the purposefully obtuse, then the flippant, then borrowing the same tired talking points that Jeremy spews.
Plus "the not me, man" crapola is how some guy who watches too many Cheech and Chong movies talks not the supposed mother of a twenty four year old.
Montana-
If you read any other person's comments -
first, I'd be shocked and secondly you'd realize not a single other commenter has brought up abstinence education but YOU.
"It's not about quality of life, it's about the fetishization of life."
Better to have a life fetish than a death fetish.
And what is with this "quality of life" thing? Huh? Please do tell me we're not going down the "better off dead" road yet again. Maybe it makes people feel better to frame abortion as a favor they're doing for the unborn. Doesn't make it true.
Victoria, you do realize that no matter what you think of abortion as birth control, most abortions take place as a form of birth control, yes?
Actually, if we must get technical (yes, we must), every abortion "controls" birth, that is, it prevents birth from happening.
It may not be contraception (preventing conception), but it is definitely always a form of birth control. Indeed, some forms of so-called contraception are not contraceptives at all, in that they do not prevent conception, but instead act after conception has taken place, i.e. they are an abortifacient, which are, of course, "birth control" as well.
Better to have a life fetish than a death fetish.
Wrong comparison and a non-sequitur. The real contrast is between appreciation and fetishization. Not between life and death. Or more accurately, between life and the absence of it.
And what is with this "quality of life" thing? Huh? Please do tell me we're not going down the "better off dead" road yet again. Maybe it makes people feel better to frame abortion as a favor they're doing for the unborn. Doesn't make it true.
The unconceived do not have a right to decide whether being born would be a favor to them or not; They do not even have the requisite consciousness for determining such things. And neither do the just-barely-conceived-but-still-mentally-nonexistent.
You were agreeing with this as of not even a year ago.
If you read any other person's comments -
first, I'd be shocked and secondly you'd realize not a single other commenter has brought up abstinence education but YOU.
This may come as a shock to you, madawaskan, but I can actually bring up things that others have not.
And if you actually read this thread - let alone read this blog more regularly - you'd find that it is almost entirely a set of aspersions and stereotypes cast of the left.
Given that, I see no reason why I can't take the aspersion offered by your friends here, the one that casts abortion as a form of birth control (cf Freeman and Synova), and build on their own false equivalence.
How far do they want to take this? Are they opposed to the morning-after pill? Is that "killing babies" and the fetishization of "death", or simply a way to prevent implantation?
I mean, if your buddies want to stereotype the cold, heartless lack of feeling of the left toward the warm, fuzzy, two-day old blastocyst, then can I not stereotype the ill-regard that all of you seem to show toward basic biology - let alone its inclusion in your "arguments"?
And finally, saying that the choice to not have children is made and forever sealed once one has decided to have sexual intercourse, is so laughable as to beg the self-ridicule that the abstinence-education promoters, with whom you've allied yourselves, provide.
I mean, the conservative assertion peddled here, of sex being risky enough to be primarily procreative in intention (rather than recreational), leads me to believe that conservatives are so bad in bed that the joke just writes itself.
Either that, or you need to redirect whatever sense of "danger"/excitement that you must feel your lovemaking needs but is somehow missing.
Hardee-har-har.
The WSJ Op ed portion calls this the Roe-V-Wade effect.
People who oppose abortion tend to not have them. People who do not oppose abortions tend to have them.
Children tend to take of the views of their parents
Maybe making public schools into a condom-palooza makes getting pregnant look really, really irresponsible, so the sympathy just isn't there anymore.
Post a Comment