Abortamentalists

This is the sort of Orwellian crap you couldn't make up if you tried.

A British woman who had an abortion 10 years ago and was later sterilized did so because she believes pregnancy is bad for the environment, the London Daily Mail reported Sunday.

A woman aborts her child as a way to "save the planet".

Really.

Are we supposed to applaud this act as some sort of sacrificial good by this "martyr"? Should I rejoice that she is so giving and thoughtful for keeping another human from sucking up all our air, taking up our space, and eating all the Oreos?

Insane rationalizations such as this are what make evangelicals so rabid in their defense of life. As soon as you think it can't get worse, it does.

Great. The planet will be saved.

Who will save us from ourselves?

Outrage For Ban, But Not For Abortion

I did it again.

Once again I entered a thread over at BlogHer regarding abortion and the latest ruling by the Supreme Court. Of course, the two main posts regarding the ruling were from a pro-choice perspective, and the commenters echoed the same opinions. I still am perplexed about why there are hardly any conservative contributing editors in the news category on the site. I can think of only one, but she only posts once in a while.

Of course, I have wondered the same thing aloud before in my post on abortion that also referenced BlogHer. I was reassured that there really are more conservative members on BlogHer, and yet I never see them post on anything that is remotely controversial. Is it out of fear that they say nothing? Is it simply a desire to avoid an argument? I'm not sure. So, there's nothing new there.

Why do I get roped into these discussions?

Mainly because I read all the viewpoints and rhetoric of the opposition and see no one offering logical, thought-out responses to them. I get tired of the one-sidedness of it all.

My question remains to those who are so outraged about the ban on partial birth abortion that was upheld by the supreme court. Is there ever a time, place or procedure that should be unacceptable for abortion? Are there ever circumstances in which abortion is viewed as wrong by the pro-choice community?

They keep telling me that they don't take abortion lightly, that they wish it didn't have to happen. They say that, but when pressed further refuse to agree that some abortion methods are too ghastly to perform.

The procedure which has been banned involves giving birth to a late-term baby until its head is still in the birth canal and then crushing its skull before the birth is finished. Another method covered by this ban involves dilating the cervix and literally dismembering the baby for removal. Their nervous systems are fully developed.

We don't even put down animals in such a brutal fashion. Why is it OK to end a human life in this manner?

It is like being for euthanasia and end-of-life decisions, but letting doctors club someone to death, or hack them up with a machete.

Yes, that's graphic wording and imagery, but unfortunately, it is truthful imagery.

Wake up people!

Freak-O-Nomics...the review

This past Christmas, while trying to figure out what to buy for my father-in-law, which is always something akin to having a root canal with no anaesthesia, I decided to get him a book. I had been contemplating the book Marley and Me by John Grogan because my father-in-law has a soft spot for retrievers. I thought he would enjoy an entire book about a man and his dog. But, at the last moment, I chose to get him Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Through a turn of events, too boring to record here, I eventually wound up with two copies. I miscellaneously gave the second one to my oldest brother.

Before I actually wrapped the books, I leafed through a few chapters and was interested, but also felt bad about reading a gift before I gave it someone, and more truthfully, I just didn't have time to read it. I don't know if they read it yet, although my brother seemed interested, or perhaps was just feigning interest. I really need to call him because the first chapter is a comparison between school teachers and sumo wrestlers and the various ways they can game the system. My brother was a teacher and is now a school principal. I wasn't sure if he was going to be offended or interested...probably interested....I hope. :-)

Anyway...(and yes, I realize that merely typing the word "anyway" as a segue shows a lack of writing skill and the creativity needed to flow from one paragraph to the next seamlessly...but....anyway)

I picked up the book from the library this past weekend and read it from cover to cover in one night. I found it simultaneously thought provoking and disturbing. If you haven't read the book, it would be too much for me to go into sufficient detail to convey all of the writers' points.

One chapter deals with the theory that crime has been on a steady decline since the Nineties as a result of legalized abortion. Basically, the premise is that the majority of the children who would have been born to low-education, low socio-economic mothers would have made up a burgeoning criminal class which, up until that point in history, had been growing and causing crime rates to skyrocket. The elimination of these children created a void of would-be criminals whose lack of presence began to be felt at about the same time that they would have become teenagers. So, approximately thirteen years after Roe v. Wade, the crime rate begins to drop.

"Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states." -Freakonomics-Levitt and Dubner-pp 141

Earlier in the book, we are told that just after abortion had been legalized, conceptions rose by 30% while the birth rate declined by 6%. (Freakonomics, 139) So, my question would be: if the birth rate declined by only 6%, are we to believe that this 6% percent of the population would have been responsible for 30% of the crime rate listed above? I would be curious to know what percentage of the population contributes to the overall crime rate and if this holds up. That is also assuming that the entire 6% drop would be solely made up of poor, uneducated women who felt they couldn't provide for their children. Surely, some of the 6% drop would have come from a new, overall acceptance of abortion by the average woman during that time period. So, how much of that 6% fits the statistics?

I don't doubt that abortion has had some effect on criminality, but I do wonder how much of an impact it has had. I read the chapter on this subject several times and never found out by what percentage the overall crime rate had declined. There were plenty of comparisons of early legalizers to late legalizers, but no overall numbers. I thought that there should be.

Also, the authors are careful to note that a stricter justice system, and more criminals in prison, also contributed to the lower crime rate.( Freakonomics 123) So, considering these various factors, how much of the argument is hype and interesting discussion, and how much is tangible? I am still thinking this one through. Maybe I will e-mail Levitt and ask him to clarify! :-) Of course it would be funny if he actually did.

BTW...I am pro-life, so I have some bias in this regard, and even if it were true that abortion does lead to a lower crime rate, that in itself is not a justification for abortion. Less crime does not equate to more goodness.

A Heavy Departure

I occasionally comment at BlogHer on various posts. Although I know that most of the bloggers there are of the liberal variety, I usually choose to ignore their political speech and participate in an objective manner. I usually wind up being the only opposing viewpoint.

Today, I read a post titled Is Christmas About Reproductive Rights? I responded there briefly, but didn't have time to fully put together all the thoughts that I had about the subject. I was very frustrated by the answers of most of the commenters who only seemed able to pat each other on the back and not seriously consider what was being said. It was disturbing to me, not because of what the blogger had written, but because no one had an issue with the way she portrayed the opposition. It is one thing when someone says something extremely offensive, and quite another when everyone else high-fives them for it.

Anyway, it got me thinking.

Abortion does not add value to the life of children; it steals any intrinsic value life has and makes it arbitrary. Abortion advocates state that pro-life people don't care about the children they are trying to save. They say that those children are denied education, social services, and the esteem afforded to children of traditional families. It simply isn't true.

Abortion devalues children. In a society where a baby is a problem to be eliminated, an obstacle to overcome, and a nuisance that happened too early in the life of a woman, abortion becomes the "easy fix." It is not pro-life people that are the cause of neglect, child abuse, and the general lack of love for children. Children are abused and neglected by people who are absorbed with themselves and their problems. The inability to empathize, the sense that children are "lesser" beings and somehow not worthy of consideration, in comparison to the "needs" of the parent, and the lack of value placed on life, in general, are the sources of these problems.

People always want to debate about when life really begins. Is it at fertilization? implantation? after the first trimester? I find this interesting in an age that has developed such a precise record of life's beginnings. Every obstetrician's office is full of color photos of pregnancy at every stage. Everyone knows that the whole process begins when the sperm and egg unite; yet, we close our eyes to this very plain fact and complicate the process with ponderings, what-ifs and philosophical meanderings.

It is this very adamant denial that conception possesses any meaning, in and of itself, that lies at the heart of most abortion advocates. They will state over and over, "it's just a mass of cells, not a person." It's a humorous statement when viewed through the scientific fact that that is all any human is: billions of cooperating, fascinating cells. All our thoughts, memories, sensations, and urges rise from this mass of cells that we reside in. What is the threshold at which a being has enough cells to be considered human? Where is the tipping point at which we can say, "Today, you have value. Yesterday, there wasn't quite enough of you to be of worth."

It is very simple to ignore the bald facts that are readily available to anyone who chooses to search them out. If we begin to see things as they really are, then what regret and horror would await our society?