This is bugging me – yesterday I wandered into that minefield called abortion rights, and while I’m not unhappy about what I wrote, a little exchange at the end is stuck in my craw. The person who goes by the name “Rightsaidfred” (wasn’t he the guy that sang “I’m Too Sexy?”) wanted to know, if Roe v Wade is overturned, how I would react.
If, by chance, the powers that be ruled differently, will you go along with that ruling?
Of course.
Why does that bug me? I’ll never have an abortion, my life will not be turned upside down by one night’s foolishness, I am safe from the moralizing of the Religious Right. Yes, we are a society of laws, and yes, we get thrown in jail if we don’t go along, but might does not make right. It merely empowers some people to lord over others.
So all of us men can get together and decide that abortion is wrong, thereby consigning it to back alleys. For me to say “of course” I’d go along with the Supreme’s ruling that half of us have fewer rights than the other half. I’m in the privileged half.
Abortion is a human rights issue. No, I don’t like the procedure, I’d like to see morning-after pills sold in vending machines and alongside aspirin at WalMart. But in the end, it is about domination of women. It should come as no surprise that yesterday’s debate was between two men. We’re entitled to our opinions, but our right to an opinion stops at the womb of the woman standing next to us.
Piece of Mindful 
>>>>This is bugging me
See, you need a better religion to gain piece of mind. I suggest you try the Jehovah Witnesses.
>>>>Abortion is a human rights issue…our right to an opinion stops at the womb of the woman standing next to us.
There is also the issue of demographic survival. The birthrate effects many things in society, so it affects all of us. Abortions affect birthrates. Therefore abortion affects all of us. We’ve all got some skin in the game. So be it if some of us are theoreticians, and some are the handymen.
To paraphrase Stalin: you might not be interested in abortion, but abortion is interested in you.
LikeLike
You are presuming to know that the number of abortions, legal and otherwise, will be reduced after RVW is overturned.
The wealthy, by the way, always have and will always have access to safe abortion. The effect of RVW has been democratic.
LikeLike
>>>>You are presuming to know that the number of abortions…
I assume that the number of abortions will be less if RVW is overturned. I suppose they could go down in number, but that is unlikely.
LikeLike
Not sure what you’re saying.
LikeLike
I can’t resist the low hanging fruit.
You seem to be arguing that a higher birthrate among people who do not want their babies is a good thing. Did you know that fewer abortions also lead to higher crime rates?
LikeLike
Nonsense. Have a nice day.
LikeLike
I mistyped in my last post. If RVW is overturned, there would be fewer abortions. It is possible there would be more, but unlikely.
Michelle has a point, popularized in the book Freakonomics.
Almost all parents nurture their children. Those born in the top four socioeconomic quintiles are, in general, productive.
LikeLike
Sorry Michelle – I thought you were the other guy and I was losing patience with him.
I’d be interested in your definition of “productive”, as your world would quickly crumble around you without the work done by the lower “quintiles”. That’s self-aggrandizing and self-serving in the extreme.
Fewer abortions after overturning RvW? Seems a no-brainer, except that abortion has always been with us and always will be, and these lower quintiles you talk about are the least able to support additional children. You’re a ruthless overlord.
LikeLike
I have had the experience of stepping into the abortion debate online and found it impossible to have a rational “conversation” with someone who is staunchly Pro-Life because at some point reason is left behind. It’s difficult to make a point with someone who bases their arguments solely on the fact that making abortion illegal is doing right in the eyes of the Lord. And when you bring up the point that criminalizing abortion, yet supporting the death penalty is a contradiction in the support for human life, you get answers like “abortion and the death penality exist in different moral planes”. Different Moral Planes!? Jeez-Louise… Who is feeding them this shite!
I feel more comfortable letting God be the judge than the State.
Oh… and when McCain and Palin say that they disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade because they believe it should be an issue decided by the states, that’s a cop-out answer meant to satisfy the Right and unify their two positions on abortion.
LikeLike
>>>>You’re a ruthless overlord.
BWAHAHAHAHA
>>>>I’d be interested in your definition of “productive”, as your world would quickly crumble around you without the work done by the lower “quintiles”.
I was responding to Michelle’s query about fewer abortions leading to a higher crime rate, thus a higher cost to society.
The bottom fifth of society generally costs us more via transfer payments and crime than they return in economic activity. So a callous calculation would urge an abortion policy that shrinks that end of the bell curve
LikeLike
You’d better start citing. Run, run quickly to heritage or wherever you get your data.
LikeLike
More probably, Stormfront …
LikeLike
>>>>You’d better start citing.
It seems to me left wing sites are less quantitative than right wing sites.
How equal are we in earning power? How equal are we in use of public services? What holds surprisingly strongly in these cases is the 80-20 rule, i.e. 20% of the people earn 80% of the money. If you iterate this down, and in practice, the bottom 20% comes in at less than 2%.
On the other end, 20% of the people use 80% of public services, and these users often are not the poor, but they tend to use a disproportionate amount.
20% of the people commit 80% of the crime, and these tend to be in the first quintile.
So a few qualitative examples show us that Michelle has a point, in that decreasing abortions in the first socio-economic quintile might be a bad deal economically.
LikeLike
That’s tortured logic.
LikeLike