"... and child rearing associated with abortion can’t be considered as part of the debate.... [Consider a] world clearly shadowed by the effects of family breakdown and social atomization, with loneliness and despair stalking young and old alike... population aging, population decline, childless cities and empty hinterlands and a vast inverted demographic pyramid on the shoulders of the young.... [And look at] the most influential voices in our aging, unhappy, stagnation-shadowed society — the most educated and impassioned and articulate, the most self-consciously devoted to the idea of progress — committing and recommitting themselves to the view that nothing is so important as to continue ensuring that hundreds of thousands of unborn lives can be ended in utero every year.... ... I beseech you to consider that you are making a mistake."
Writes Ross Douthat in "Does American Society Need Abortion?" (NYT).
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61 comments:
I think a more appropriate question would be "Does American Society Need a Lobotomy?"
Needing or not needing abortion never had anything to do with this. It was never about family planning. Or logic. Or "rights". Or progress. Ever.
Douthat will be dieting on fire and brimstone for the next week or so.
"There is no such thing as Society."
Douthat links to Donohue and Levitt, but he glosses over their research conclusion. Crime age populations declined after Roe and with it came a significant drop in crime. Fewer unwanted children raises in poverty.
He also ignores an alternative solution to his dystopian population decline future. Improved legal immigration.
Big families are the best says this eldest of 6. But all children should be wanted. And I have never mourned my mother's too many miscarriages as dead brother/sister(s), with names or such. Neither did she, grief-stricken as she was each time. (Can't recall her views on Limbo.) Legislating that a pregnant women gets the car pool lane--the wrong approach.
It is very difficult to convince your average NYT reader that private choices made hundreds of thousands of times add up to a major social aggregate. Especially when it is a topic so profoundly important to the societal identity of so many modern women.
I had a discussion with a very liberal, NYT reading female friend, the wife of my best friend. We were talking about mandated vaccines, which she supported and I opposed (I personally am vaxxed, which she knew). I asked her "K., what about 'My Body, My Choice'?".
She saw no relation between the two, saying that pregnancy wasn't contagious. But, I pointed out what Douthat has, that private choices add up to social movements. Did she disagree? Yes, but I'm afraid she didn't even understand.
And this from the people who told us for decades now that "The personal is political"! Well, the personal is also demographic.
""You can’t insist that the immediate economic benefits of ending a pregnancy should be counted in Roe v. Wade’s favor, but any of the larger negative shifts in mating and marriage..."
Sure you can. These are progs he's talking to. Immediate benefits to women matter. Larger "negative" shifts don't, and they aren't even that negative--they serve the anti-warming extinction rebellion, for one thing.
"[Consider a] world clearly shadowed by the effects of family breakdown and social atomization, with loneliness and despair stalking young and old alike"
These are features, not bugs, of prog policy.
"the most educated and impassioned and articulate, the most self-consciously devoted to the idea of progress — committing and recommitting themselves to the view that nothing is so important as to continue ensuring that hundreds of thousands of unborn lives can be ended in utero every year"
Right. As they have for decades. "Unborn lives"! What's he trying to do, shame women? Appeal to prog conscience?
Why does every writer and contributor to the NYT resemble nothing so much as a character from a Woody Allen movie? It was occasionally fun seeing them in the movie theater, but you don't want to walk out to the sidewalk and run into them for real.
- Krumhorn
"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
- Mother Teresa
The leftists are continuing the "Roe Effect." That's a net positive.
Pregnancy is like the draft, but for women to do their part for the society that offers them benefits. That's probably how abortion will be outlawed eventually.
I found this paragraph from Douthat's essay interesting:
“By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother,” Akerlof and Yellen concluded, “the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.” This shift, they suggested, could not be undone; any social conservatism appears in their analysis as a probably futile effort to “turn the technological clock backwards.” But the new female freedom came at a cost to women who wanted fidelity and children and didn’t want to have abortions; for them, the post-sexual revolution world was less supportive, its norms now reset to work against expectations of monogamy, commitment and support.
With all due respect to Mr. Douthat, I think his piece is badly titled. Instead of "Does American Society Need Abortion?" it should read "Does American Society Need An Abortion?"
To which I submit the answer is resoundingly "Yes." This issue has badly miscarried and is poisoning everything.
Number of people persuaded by Ross doughnut = 0
As usual.
Making a strong, clear, point that goes to the core of an issue is simply beyond him, unless its attacking someone to his right. How many people are pro-choice or not, based on economics?
It's too late. The generation after mine is headed for demographic hell. Everyone knows that the unhappiest women of all are past age forty, looking at their lives, and asking where are my children? They are where you left them. If you can face it you might find serenity with it still. More likely you'll turn the bitterness outward and do as much damage to wiser people as you can with what time you have left.
As for the rest of us, Schumer may have said the only true thing he's ever said when he pointed out that the country needs fertile families. The future belongs to those who show up for it goes the cliche. Ours has one foot in the grave with or without newcomers pouring in.
— the most educated and impassioned and articulate, the most self-consciously devoted to the idea of progress —
This is the problem right here.
Douthat knows he is a part of a propaganda organ at some level.
What he is doing at the NYT's is reinforcing to it's readers that no matter how badly their policies fail they are still smarter and better than everyone else.
Especially Trump supporters.
That is what keeps middle aged women reading it.
When the dominant culture teaches us that our society is beset with systemic racism, that our meaning is dependent upon the extent of our victimization, that our sexuality is uncoupled from our biology, that our existence as a species is a blight upon the earth, is it any wonder that our future generations just aren't generating?
Lefties ruin everything!
Abortion kills... it kills the unborn... it kills morality... it kills your soul...and it kills the future.. FOR THE FUTURE IS THE CHILDREN!!
Don't kill the future just for one's 'convenience.'
I used to care. I have children around age 30. Neither pursuing a stable enough relationship to justify reproducing. I spent decades fighting against the dual tides of "don't breed" and "open borders". But where I live (DPRCalif., and one educated in Mass.) that was a waste of effort. So long, suckers! Sorry I screwed up!
One can hope that one day, more people will be personally responsible for their actions and results of same. And understand the impacts to them, theirs and future generations.
And recognize that they have a soul, life is precious and there are more important and rewarding things than buying luxury homes, new cars and materialism, in general.
“Fewer unwanted children raises in poverty.” “But all children should be wanted.”
One of my issues with the pro-abortion/choice side of the debate. The “wanted” aspect. Defining whether or not the thing in utero is a life based on whether or not it is wanted by the woman carrying it. If it’s wanted, the fetus is a child, a “life”. If it’s not wanted, it’s a clump of cells, not a “life.” I don’t see how that makes sense. Whether it is wanted or not should have no impact on defining what it is.
It disgusts me how many news organisations, religious institutions and politicians assume that all aspects of and subjects related to pregnancy and women's reproductive systems should be up for debate by men. Leave it to the New York Times to have a male writing an opinion piece article focusing on how hypothetical economic impacts might or might not be affected by said regulation or lack thereof with respect to those reproductive systems.
My opinion is that unless and until men become able to have their own lives endangered via being forced to carry an early stillbirth to term themselves, or are capable of being forced to give birth after being impregnated by a rapist, then perhaps their opinions should be not be considered relevant, and they should simply STFU.
"Fewer unwanted children raises in poverty."
But somehow, in this highly successful culling of the breed, they missed Readering.
Did Douthat stop having babies once he had the boy?
Seriously?
He has what? 4 girls and one boy?
Why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and have a big family, like 10 children? He can afford them, and he values them, and he's still having sex with a fertile woman...
Why did he stop reproducing himself? Practice what you preach, bub. Or else... STFU.
*...they should simply STFU*
There is one human species. It's future is the business of everyone. Time will make a certain end of one side in this debate. Splitting the species to set its parts in opposition is something like resigning from the human race. It's been called suicidal. The truth is, it's only one generation removed from it.
Jupiter @ 4:12: "...they missed Rendering."
You are very very naughty.
Panty Buns said:
"unless and until men become able to have their own lives endangered via being forced to carry an early stillbirth to term themselves, or are capable of being forced to give birth after being impregnated by a rapist, then perhaps their opinions should be not be considered relevant, and they should simply STFU."
I keep hearing this nonsensical argument. By that logic, women would have no legitimate basis to express moral views on exclusively male behaviors. That logic is based upon the fallacy that moral knowledge requires direct experience by the person expressing a moral view. If that were so, the domain of moral discourse allowed to each of us would be absurdly narrow.
"Rendering" --> "Readering"
Apologies.
Panty Buns seems nice.
Periodic reminder that Roe was 7-2 with Republican Court. Choice the mainstream Protestant position then. Some form of choice a mainstream American position today. But AA attracts overwhelming prolife commenters for some reason. I understand the arguments. Mom joined the Right to Life Party. Heard enough RC sermons. Be interested to see a poll some time here. Choice silent majority here or commenters match readership?
Oh, dear Panty Buns, no woman yet is an island entire of herself.
You, in your rage, do not give voice to that child, and should look inward rather more carefully.
As for me, I have birthed and raised three children, with my sixth will-be-much loved 6th grandchild due next year. I thank God for all of them.
Readering said...
Douthat links to Donohue and Levitt, but he glosses over their research conclusion. Crime age populations declined after Roe and with it came a significant drop in crime. Fewer unwanted children raises in poverty.
Good to know the Eugenics movement is still alive and strong.
Gusty Winds said:
"I think a more appropriate question would be "Does American Society Need a Lobotomy?""
In my view, it would be a hell of a lot more on-point to ask the question "Has American Society Had a Lobotomy?"
Answer being an emphatic "YES!!!!"
One that was self-inflicted, and performed by the "elites" of our society.
Raw fact is this: Abortion is an enabler for dysfunctional behavior. You have casual sex, you get casual pregnancies, which you then "correct" for with casual abortions.
Everybody wants to make believe that they can have the casual sex lives of 18th Century libertine rakes like Casanova. That wasn't true then, and it ain't true now. It wasn't true in the 1960s, but the Hugh Hefner fantasy was sold to all and sundry. Bastard really should have been lynched by a mob of outraged young women, but they all fell in line with his whole "casual sex" theme without realizing they were being sold a bill of goods. Just like a lot of young men were...
Still amazes me how many women fell for that whole bill of goods... The real work of civilization with regards to the sexes is this: It's a key and critical job of young women to capture and domesticate young men, breaking them to the yoke of society. You don't do that, and what do you wind up with? The American inner city, with all the dysfunction and social dysphoria. That's where license gets you; you sell your sex cheaply enough, and then the whole surrounding matrix caves in on you.
Raw fact is, you need to form functional families while women are still fertile and in good enough general health to have enough babies to enable replacement-rate reproduction. That means that while her brothers and husbands are out building careers, they should be having their kids and building the next generation. That's not my personal preference, but that is what the biology says about it all. You watch enough 40-somethings try to start families, and you suddenly realize the wisdom of doing all that in your twenties. I've got a friend who spent six years on fertility and in-vitro attempts, to no avail. Her doctor eventually told her that she should have had her kids when she was in her twenties, and her husband eventually left her for a far younger woman who was still fertile enough to give him the kids he'd wanted while she was "building her career".
I don't say these things because I think women have a lesser role, or that any of this is deserved in any way. But, I do recognize reality when it reaches out and bites me in the ass, which it has for so many others. The way we're managing things is dysfunctional as hell, in the medium- and long-term. Personally? I'm sure there are lot of women who had some really good casual sex in their twenties, who really enjoyed that at the time. Unfortunately, they and society are going to pay a huge price for making that happen.
The biggest thing that pisses me off about all these bright lights that led us down the collective primrose path is that none of them take responsibility for all the implications of what they did. They wanted consequence-free casual sex, so they changed the rules to get it. The price? Lots and lots of misery, for lots and lots of people.
Sure Panty Buns. Don’t you people ever get tired of repeating that garbage argument?
When a man doesn’t have his child - his genetic material - growing inside of the pregnant woman, subject to her deciding whether to liquefy or dismember it, and when he can choose whether or not he wants to pay child support for two decades, maybe then he’ll “STFU” about abortion.
Signed, a woman who has given birth five times and who adopted a child someone else wanted to abort but could not (is that enough credentials to speak on the matter)?
Whether it is wanted or not should have no impact on defining what it is.
It happens on everything.
This is why it is an issue for legislatures and not the court.
It's interesting how quickly people have realized that the demographic inversion is coming and how it has changed their world view.
I think it's fair to say that neither side in this debate cares much about logic.
I would have liked to think that the American people, given a chance, would make a similar choice to pretty much every civilized country: abortion allowed for a while, then not allowed.
No one in power seems to be interested in giving the American people a choice.
"I think a more appropriate question would be "Does American Society Need a Lobotomy?"
Watching what we elected President in 2020, I think the real question is, "Can we reverse our lobotomy?"
Panty Buns said...
My opinion is that unless and until men become able to have their own lives endangered via being forced to carry an early stillbirth to term themselves, or are capable of being forced to give birth after being impregnated by a rapist, then perhaps their opinions should be not be considered relevant, and they should simply STFU.
*************
Now lecture the ghosts of the men who died at Normandy how they fucked up by protecting their women and children.
It’s nice that Douthat got the NYT to print an article suggesting that maybe abortion isn’t wonderful. But as an argument, it’s so high-falutin and sterile that it’s hard to imagine someone pausing and thinking over what he is saying.
There is no mystery in sex and conception. A woman, and man, have four choices: to fuck or not to fuck, prevent conception, offer adoption, elect compassion, and an equal right to self-defense through reconciliation.
Human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical, political, and fair weather causes is a wicked solution, a final solution, to a hard problem: keep women affordable, available, and taxable, and the "burden" of evidence aborted, perhaps cannibalized, then her carbon pollutants sequestered in darkness, in sanctuary states.
The Pro-Choice ethical religion denies women and men's dignity and agency, and facilitates progress of human life as negotiable commodities.
He’s paraphrasing Cromwell: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
JSM
Once we can monetize babies, getting old is going to very scary. Old people are nothing but overhead. Economically speaking.
Readering assures us that most of the dead babies were going to be criminals anyway, so its all good.
Wow.
effinayright mentions the ghosts of Normandy. My mother's big brother, much loved in his family and freinds, was shot down Jan 6, 1943 in the pacific theatre. On my father's side, two cousins lost at Normandy. My high school friends and the Viet Nam Vets I worked with who've died from combat, PTSD and Agent Orange poisoning are not around to joke with and talk to.
As I age, the quiet times often bring me to ask who might they have become.
I can not imagine how a woman who killed her own child avoids being haunted to her grave.
Blogger Václav Patrik Šulik said...
I found this paragraph from Douthat's essay interesting:
“By making the birth of the child the physical choice of the mother,” Akerlof and Yellen concluded, “the sexual revolution has made marriage and child support a social choice of the father.” This shift, they suggested, could not be undone; any social conservatism appears in their analysis as a probably futile effort to “turn the technological clock backwards.” But the new female freedom came at a cost to women who wanted fidelity and children and didn’t want to have abortions; for them, the post-sexual revolution world was less supportive, its norms now reset to work against expectations of monogamy, commitment and support.
Yes, especially considering the authors. This goes to what I've often said, which is that what is made optional eventually becomes obligatory. Like euthanasia--once it's an option, than of course if an elderly or ill person refuses, it's selfish.
Panty Buns said: "My opinion is that unless and until men become able to have their own lives endangered via being forced to carry an early stillbirth to term themselves,..."
What do you mean by this? A stillbirth is by definition a birth where the fetus/child is no longer inside of its mother. If you meant was that an embryo or fetus has died in utero and the woman is "forced" to carry it to term, that still makes zero sense. A dead fetus doesn't grow to a term nine-month-old fetus, it's dead. Secondly, a woman's body will miscarry if a fetus dies. Finally---and most importantly---no abortion limiting law ever would have prohibited medical intervention to remove a fetus that has died.
"... or are capable of being forced to give birth after being impregnated by a rapist..."
Do you think that our society gives a woman in such a situation real facts to help her make her own decision to abort, or do you think that the woman gets mainly a strong message that of COURSE she would never want to choose to continue the pregnancy after rape?
A rape victim deserves support no matter what her decision, and compassionate support would include letting her know that many victims choose to have the baby because they know that the baby is innocent. That there are women who are haunted for the rest of their lives by their decision to abort a blameless child.
I know a young woman whose biological father raped her biological mother, and her mother chose to continue the pregnancy. There were no easy choices. Her mother raised her daughter for a while, and loved her, but ultimately could not deal with the rape. Out of love, she contacted adoption agencies and surrendered her daughter. My friend adopted her and her daughter is the delight of her life; there's now the most beautiful grandson you have ever seen. It's good that these people are in the world.
What a dumb article.
abortion allowed for a while, then not allowed.
Six weeks to baby meets granny in legal state, if not in process. However, generally, the performance of human rites should be discouraged. Unfortunately, unlike slavery, demos-cracy is aborted in darkness ("murder"). So, we have a 1-2 compromise, in the spirit of the 3/5 compromise, in order to mitigate progress. Baby steps.
My dad’s feet have been rotting from Agent Orange since 1967 but booo fucking hoooo a woman had to give birth.
My opinion is that unless and until women become subject to the draft and being forced to go fight and perhaps be killed or maimed, then perhaps their opinions and votes should be not be considered relevant, and they should simply STFU.
Raw fact is this: Abortion is an enabler for dysfunctional behavior. You have casual sex, you get casual pregnancies, which you then "correct" for with casual abortions.
History will call these times something like "The Age of Self-Indulgence".
We are watching the destruction of the greatest civilization man has ever known.
I have friends who have chosen to remain childless - and that's fine for them. But they're aging, and now worried because they have no one to help them, even a little. Parents die. Siblings pass away. Friends die. But they're still here.
I had a friend who was forced into an abortion by her husband. She was profoundly unhappy after that, and always seemed broken in several ways, from anorexia to a refusal to mature. She wanted to stay a little girl - and... well, she died in her early 40s from cancer.
My wife has a friend who tried for a long time to have a child, starting in her mid-30s. Fertility treatments, in vitro - nothing took. But twenty+ years later, she's the favorite aunt in the family, loved by all the kids, so she sublimated that drive to something else.
I've got an 'adopted daughter' - she's almost 30, been on birth control for the last ten years or so. She recently married - and I'm hoping like anything that her system hasn't been totally screwed up. She and her husband both want kids so... we'll see.
Two hundred years from now, if we last that long as a literate, history-recording civilization, the concept of birth control pills and abortions for population control may be looked up with the same shudder of horror that we now look upon 17th century medical and sanitation practices - in the "How could they not KNOW what they were doing to themselves?" sense.
Jerry said:
"Two hundred years from now, if we last that long as a literate, history-recording civilization, the concept of birth control pills and abortions for population control may be looked up with the same shudder of horror that we now look upon 17th century medical and sanitation practices - in the "How could they not KNOW what they were doing to themselves?" sense."
I'm convinced that the "Roman lead" of modern times will be seen to be all the biologically active chemicals we pump into the environment. The fertility rate is dropping not only because of the cultural issues we've created, but because of all the estrogen-mimicking things we've put into our daily lives. The BPAs and all the rest will be seen, with suitable horror, as the equivalent of the Romans making grape syrup in lead pots, because they liked the flavor.
The things going into the destruction of our civilization aren't just the obvious things that the activists decry; the really important stuff ain't having any attention paid to it, at all. There are things coming up on us in the rear-view mirror that are going to be incredibly hard to deal with, and without a working informational "immune system" of an actual free press, most of won't have the slightest warning about it.
Here's THE ANSWER...
https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2022/12/14/the-real-life-matrix-ectolife-artificial-womb-facility-to-engineer-grow-babies-in-factory-n1653718
Crime age populations declined after Roe and with it came a significant drop in crime.
"Death penalty works!" liberals say, "As long as you kill them while they're young!"
When was abortion eliminated? I thought it was available in many, many places, including NY and CA. Could someone please explain?
Patrick Henry was right! said...
When was abortion eliminated? I thought it was available in many, many places, including NY and CA. Could someone please explain?
12/15/22, 8:10 AM
It wasn't, but progressives have to hyperventilate about EVERYTHING. They want abortion up to the day of birth, no questions asked. Without that, they claim we are FORCING them to have children, even though there are MANY ways to not worry about it. They don't do personal responsibility very well. They want taxpayers and the Government to pay for everything in their lives.
Much of the discussion assumes that it is none of the husband's business--but these may be his children in a marriage that he wants and that he considers a crime to abort. A moral issue.
It is also claimed that women are stuck with carrying a nonviable fetus or product of rape--99% of abortions are NOT these cases. That is not why abortion is chosen by women. It is convenience.
Bumble Bee said:
"Here's THE ANSWER...
https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2022/12/14/the-real-life-matrix-ectolife-artificial-womb-facility-to-engineer-grow-babies-in-factory-n1653718 "
Let me clue you in to something: There's a hell of a lot more to what goes on in a pregnancy than the average researcher is even able to imagine, and our level of knowledge is nowhere near complete enough to be able to make this work at this stage of the game.
Right now, a natural pregnancy includes a ton of environmental inputs and signals that something like an artificial womb is going to have to simulate. There will have to be thousands of iterations of "experimental births" carried to term, with all the ethical issues that implies. What if it turns out that the child turns out to actually require the sensory input it gets in the womb as it grows? How about all the motion? The day-to-day hormonal shifts? The signals from diet and everything else? How do you propose to mimic the bacterial input?
It's purest hubris to think that any of this is even close enough to some sort of semi-final form for us to be able to use it in a timely manner, dealing with the incipient crisis we have coming upon us.
I guarantee you that the development of the "artificial womb" is going to require a lot more effort and sacrifice than even the most optimistic would care to undertake. There's so much of what we don't know, and which will only become apparent once we try making it work.
I'm sure that there will be some benefits to it all, but the fact is, we don't know what the hell is actually going on in a lot of aspects of a pregnancy, particularly with the neural development and all the complex back-and-forth signaling between parent and child. There will be a price in human misery for developing this stuff that nobody is even talking about, because it's all going to be trial-and-error. It may well turn out that there are critical neural developments that are only triggered by specific events that we don't even notice, right now.
Hell, given the way you can trace out distinct neural development patterns based on the languages heard by a child in the womb, who's to say that having that fetus listening to nothing but passing lab workers and the hum of the machinery isn't going to result in children with distinctive mental issues stemming from the lack of human participation in the effort?
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