posted
Here's the whole reason there's any abortion talk in this thread:
quote:I submit that our nation is divided mainly because people like simplistic arguments. Like this one.
When you go looking for the complexities of any issue, you almost always find them. And then, I think, you are intellectually bound to include them in your thinking and planning.
Here's my principle problem with your analysis:
quote:And this division does NOT exist because two sides have simplistic arguments. Both sides have very complex, nuanced positions that happen to be utterly incompatible. The whole issue was brought up, after all, as a counterexample to your proposition that simplistic views lead to division and understanding the complexities leads to less division. It just ain't so.
posted
By the way, Dag, I'm pro-life too. I just don't think we should legislate it.
If the number of abortions were to climb dramatically, I might change my mind. But for now, I think we have a better way to achieve a positive result and, frankly, the acrimony isn't getting this nation anywhere that I want it to go.
I'd prefer an educated populace, free health care, including sex education and prenatal care, better adoption procedures, and replacing stigma with truth regarding teen pregnancies. I'd also rather see mandatory parenting classes. Oh, all sorts of things we could be doing if were weren't at loggerheads.
That's all I'm saying.
I see multiple approaches that would reduce the abortion rate NOW. Fighting to make them illegal is just entrenchment.
While both sides dig in their heels, how many abortions have happened that might not have?
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I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?
Because people still do stuff that happens to be illegal. All the time.
I think real change has to start in the hearts of people, not in their fear of authority. But that's just me. I could be all turned around on the subject.
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quote:I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?
Because people still do stuff that happens to be illegal. All the time.
I think real change has to start in the hearts of people, not in their fear of authority. But that's just me. I could be all turned around on the subject.
If someone was shooting arrows at the local school, I don't think the thought would be, "well it's a shame that they do that, we should try and change their minds about wanting to do that, but it would be such a greater shame to force them to stop". Sometimes you get people to follow you by persuasion, most of the time in fact, but sometimes the consequences are to grave, which is why we have laws at all. It would be great if we could persuade people not to commit petty theft, or not to hit each other, but we can't rely on that, because they still will steal batteries and get in fights.
The argument about abortion's importance in these matters is of course up for descension, some feel it's important enough to stop outright, some people don't think there's anything like a human life being ended. Would it be better if we could just convince everyone abortions were wrong? Absolutley, but until we do, they'll keep happening, and some of us don't think that the cost of abortion is worth leaving the choice open.
do you think a coalition of like-minded people could be built? Do you think we'd be in the majority? I believe we would be and could build such a coalition.
And I believe we could make a difference where others have failed and will continue to fail.
But then, I believe that most people do not seek out polarizing opinions. I think most people would be willing to give things a try to make something better and work cooperatively with others.
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posted
Actually, I find it interesting that you seem to think the mere possession of a "polarizing opinion" makes it impossible to work together. I think that says more about your ability to work with others, especially if you're only looking for "like-minded" people to have in your coalition.
quote:I mean, isn't it best to change people's attitudes instead of laws, at least to begin with?
Not always. It certainly wasn't best in the case of slavery, since it would have condemned entire generations of people to slavery.
Was it worth the bloodshed? I can't answer that. Would it have been better if in 1860 someone could have convinced every slave owner to free his slaves? Of course. But given that this wasn't possible, are you really prepared to say millions of people should remain in slavery while we try to convince people to give up their slaves?
Even if the war is considered not worth it, certainly it's something that should have been legislated against.
posted
Bob, I was responding specifically to Olivetta's comments, I wasn't outlining a plan of attack, sorry for the misunderstanding.
I agree with Dag, and with you, it would be great to change people's minds, let's do it! I just don't see why such efforts are mutually exclusive, or even should be, with trying to get legistlation passed to prevent abortion.
Law school will do that to people. It makes you think that courtroom logic is real logic.
Here's the deal. People who have polarizing opinions do not get to work with people who have the opposite polarizing opinion. They don't get the opportunity. If you need examples in our country, the abortion debate is as good as any.
You will no doubt point to people who switched from pro-choice to pro-life. I will then refer you to the book The True Believer and we can decide what motivates the people who cling to one movement and switch to cling to a different movement, and whether they are really allies of anyone.
But let us go back to the obvious point of my post -- to anyone who hasn't been warped by law school "training" -- people who are not polarized on this issue DO have the opportunity (or shall we say MORE opportunities) to work cooperatively and see where they can make a difference in the thing we can actually measure -- the frequency and rate of abortions.
And if we ARE the majority, then the polarizing influences really are the fringe. And if they are the fringe, then the become less important the better we do our job in the middle.
So, the polarizers become the margins of a smaller and smaller issue -- of less and less concern to the great mass of Americans who see progress as a job well done.
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quote:You keep saying this, yet you have utterly failed to back it up with evidence, theoretical reasoning, or any other form of proof.
Will you work with me? Give us 10 years of doing it my way. Work to convince your fellows that we should not work on the legality issue for the next 10 years while we try other things. And in the meantime, we will work with pro-choice people to work with us.
If you'll do that, and really do it, I think we can get somewhere.
If you can't do that, then we'll just have to work for a solution without your help because your insistence on solving the legality issue (and you too Hobbes) means that you can't work with the opposition.
So, take that step???
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Law school will do that to people. It makes you think that courtroom logic is real logic.
WTF is this supposed to mean?
I've worked with people on opposite sides of very polarizing issues many times in my life. I know many, many, many people who have done so.
Further, it's not necessarily about working with people who's opinions are polar opposite, is it? Unless the so-called non-polarized middle is rejecting working with people out of hand merely because they have "polarizing opinions," then it's really not an issue, is it?
quote:Will you work with me? Give us 10 years of doing it my way. Work to convince your fellows that we should not work on the legality issue for the next 10 years while we try other things. And in the meantime, we will work with pro-choice people to work with us.
If you'll do that, and really do it, I think we can get somewhere.
If you can't do that, then we'll just have to work for a solution without your help because your insistence on solving the legality issue (and you too Hobbes) means that you can't work with the opposition.
So, take that step???
Why can't someone work with you on issues they agree with you on, and with other people on issues they agree with other people on?
posted
Bob, the reason no one will garuntee you 10 years of not working on legality is that 10 years means over 10 million abortions. What if what you suggest doesn't work?
I'm also curious why you think that wanting legal restrictions on abortion makes it impossible for me to work with anyone else on abortion at all? I mean is simply having a view on where to go with the issue equivelant to being polorizied on the issue? Or have I shown myself to be to dedicated to my belief to ever listen to anyone else? If so I'm truely sorry, I do try to always hear what people are trying to tell me.
quote:If someone was shooting arrows at the local school, I don't think the thought would be, "well it's a shame that they do that, we should try and change their minds about wanting to do that, but it would be such a greater shame to force them to stop". Sometimes you get people to follow you by persuasion, most of the time in fact, but sometimes the consequences are to grave, which is why we have laws at all. It would be great if we could persuade people not to commit petty theft, or not to hit each other, but we can't rely on that, because they still will steal batteries and get in fights.
But the case of abortion is different from the case of some one shooting children or stealing batteries because all the evidence that the "crime" has been committed is inside the woman's body.
Think hard about this. In order to prove that an abortion took place you have to first prove that the woman was pregnant. Then you have to prove that the pregnancy ended. Then you have to prove that the pregnancy did not end due to spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) but was in fact voluntary. Then, if you allow abortions for any exception (such as to save the life of the woman), you have to prove that those exception were not valid.
How could you prove any of those things without forcing the woman (or her body) to testify against herself? How are you going to even begin to know who to prosecute unless you start searching the medical records of all women of child bearing age to find out who has been pregnant? And what if the woman never went to the doctor to have her pregnancy officially diagnosed but instead went straight to some back street abortionist? Maybe we should require all women who by over the counter pregnancy tests to deliver the results to the police, but what if they just wait until they've missed their periods enough times to be pretty sure they are pregnant. Maybe we could start requiring all women to prove they have their periods every month. If they happen to skip a month, we could require them all to see a doctor for a pregnancy test and then require that their pregnancy be monitored by a pro-life approved doctor until the baby is born.
But seriously, describe for me an anti-abortion law that could possibly be enforced without violating the rights of women (and not just the women who have abortions but many, many women)? And if the laws aren't effectively enforced, then all we've done is forced the practice underground where it become even more gruesome.
This is a serious question. I'd like a serious answer.
I detest abortion. The mere thought of it is abhorent to me, but considering all the problems that would arise from attempting to enforce laws against it I think it is a far wiser course to work on alternative methods to stopping it like reducing poverty, valuing chastity, making birth control readily available and so on.
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posted
The slavery issue is not a good enough analogy for abortion rights. THere are vague similarities -- a moral issue confounded with a socio-political one.
But really, the two are more different than similar. The entrenchment in the South was largely an economic one. There was no easily workable solution to the problem of the wealthy minority fearing the loss of their status and livelihood were slavery to end suddenly. The economy couldn't absorb it.
It didn't.
In many ways, the South never fully recovered from that economic devastation of a sudden end to slavery. They were right to be worried, even if they were morally wrong.
I don't think you can couch the abortion issue in any such terms that would not stretch the analogy past the breaking point.
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quote:Why can't someone work with you on issues they agree with you on, and with other people on issues they agree with other people on?
It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.
It's just trust, or lack thereof.
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Well for starters, how about strict regulation of the medical end of this? My "favorite" comprimise is to consider life to begin by the same qualifications used to test for the end of life. Not allowing doctors to preform abortions past that point would be a fine starting for me.
quote:Bob, the reason no one will garuntee you 10 years of not working on legality is that 10 years means over 10 million abortions. What if what you suggest doesn't work?
How many of those abortions will happen because you didn't work cooperatively to find alternatives to the law change when you saw that it wasn't going to happen in 10 years time?
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quote:It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.
It's just trust, or lack thereof.
If that's the case, then there won't be trust anyway, because people will suspect spying.
posted
I rarely pipe in on these threads, but I feel that lines are being crossed here, and Bob and Dag should take deep breaths. Both of you mean a lot to me, but I think you are both hitting below the belt.
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quote:It's a trust issue. No one from the opposing side will work with you if they know that you are leaving this meeting to go to one where you fight to make abortion illegal.
It's just trust, or lack thereof.
I'm trying hard to stay above board on this discussion Bob, and so I hope you take this the right way, but it's hard for me to really understand how you can have such little faith in people that you think they can't work together on things they agree with because they know there's things they don't agree with, and yet have enough faith in people to believe that arguing the effects of abortion will stop it.
The solution doesn't work. It makes things riskier and puts doctors and women in jail, but it doesn't stop abortion.
It shifts the problem to somewhere where you don't have to look at it statistically.
That's not a victory.
It's true, any method we pursue I'm sure will never result in a full stop of abortion, but I find it very likely that making abortion illegal will drasstically reduce the number of cases of it. Will it still go on? Will women try to have create their own abortions, sadly yes, they will. But that doesn't negate the fact that, in my opinion, the abortion rate would fall through the floor.
quote:'m trying hard to stay above board on this discussion Bob, and so I hope you take this the right way, but it's hard for me to really understand how you can have such little faith in people that you think they can't work together on things they agree with because they know there's things they don't agree with, and yet have enough faith in people to believe that arguing the effects of abortion will stop it. :confsued:
I don't have faith in polarizers. I think it's been amply proven that the legality issue is polarizing and both sides are entrenched. We are seeing little to no progress on abortion with this way of doing things.
I'm not making this up, am I? Is there a party I haven't been invited to where pro-choice polemicists and anti-abortion polemicists have shared scones and decided what the next logical course of action should be?
If you've all been doing this all along, I'd sure have more faith in you.
But so far, that's not been what I see.
So, I think you set yourselves at the margins. It's not me doing it. And you complain because I won't include you in the solutions because you have to radicalize it after the fact.
My point is that we'll solve it without you because you aren't willing to work at a solution that doesn't include your ultimate goal in the mix.
If you are, then let's give it a shot. I'm game.
All you have to do is stop ticking the other side off long enough to engage in dialogue. Of course, they have to do the same -- stop ticking you off long enough to work on the practical stuff we can do now.
But seriously, I hear you saying that you can't do it. THat you can't take a 10 year break on fighting the legal issue in order to see what we can accomplish now.
So that means if my idea is going to work, I would have to do it without you. Because you can't stop the things that undermine the current effort.
That's the problem.
And if you don't see it, then you truly do not understand the opposition.
quote:You will no doubt point to people who switched from pro-choice to pro-life. I will then refer you to the book The True Believer and we can decide what motivates the people who cling to one movement and switch to cling to a different movement, and whether they are really allies of anyone.
*polite cough* Bob, would you do me the courtesy of speculating on my motivation for moving from pro-choice activism to a pro-life stance (moderated by the consideration, of course, that I consider most pro-life activism counterproductive)?
BTW, is it true that in all those threads in which I've backed you up, you had in the back of your mind some deep suspicions about me -- because you knew, after our conversations, that I would eventually go back to making abortion illegal on my own time?
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quote:It's true, any method we pursue I'm sure will never result in a full stop of abortion, but I find it very likely that making abortion illegal will drasstically reduce the number of cases of it. Will it still go on? Will women try to have create their own abortions, sadly yes, they will. But that doesn't negate the fact that, in my opinion, the abortion rate would fall through the floor.
The MEASURED abortion rate would fall through the floor.
You would have no way of knowing what the real abortion rate would be. But that's okay, because the numbers would be a salve to the morality of nation.
What a crock!
It's deliberately cooking the books, in my opinion.
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posted
Bob, for most of my life I was the opposition, and like most pro-choice people I found abortion to be ... disgusting at best. If someone came to me with a plan of a group that would try to stop abortions, without any legal action then, I would be compeltely in favor, as I'm sure most people on the pro-choice side would be. I can't imagine myself caring that half the people left the meeting to and then tried to make abortion legal, just as I wouldn't care now that half of the people left this meeting and tried to make (or keep) abortion legal. I really don't understand why this would cause such a conflict as to make it impossible to work together.
quote:The MEASURED abortion rate would fall through the floor.
You would have no way of knowing what the real abortion rate would be. But that's okay, because the numbers would be a salve to the morality of nation.
What a crock!
It's deliberately cooking the books, in my opinion.
I've tried to be very understanding Bob, and presume that you do have the best motivations at heart, just disagreement over the best way to accomplish them. I very much resent the implication that I only ccare about keeping my moral concsience clean, not about other's lifes.
I was talking mass psychology again. Specific cases are not judgeable. You do what you do. Others do what they do.
And, by the way, the True Believer description applies to people who are radical adherents to one philosophy and "nearly instantaneoulsly" become radical adherents to the philosophy they once despised.
Sorry if this answer isn't good enough for you, as I'm sure it is not. I don't have a better one for you.
I'm mostly suspicious of you for your post count and your collection of dice with more than six sides.
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quote:I've tried to be very understanding Bob, and presume that you do have the best motivations at heart, just disagreement over the best way to accomplish them. I very much resent the implication that I only ccare about keeping my moral concsience clean, not about other's lifes.
I didn't mean that to be as offensive as it sounded. It is the result that matters to me. The fact that I believe that the abortion rate will go down as an artifact of our inability to measure it once abortions become illegal makes it VERY offensive to me when people claim that those statistics will be meaningful, as you did.
I didn't mean to impugn your moral sense. But it will be entirely debatable whether the true abortion rate is affected by any law you'd care to pass.
It will, however, serve as a rallying point for people who see this as a moral victory. Look,look the numbers are dropping!
But why? What's not being measured?
What have you forgotten?
Is there a gotcha in this victory?
I think that's worth worrying about before anyone makes abortion illegal.
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quote:Well for starters, how about strict regulation of the medical end of this?
How would you regulate the medical end? To prosecute a doctor for performing an abortion, you would have to prove that an abortion took place. Which takes us back to the full list of questions I gave before?
And if you force all the competent doctors away from abortions, what will stop the back street bozo with minimal medical training from doing them.
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posted
Frankly, Bob, if my taking a ten year break is contingent on your success in encouraging people to work with you, this thread is enough to make me skeptical.
posted
{stepping gingerly into the room} To be honest, I think people of opposing positions can work together, as long as they have a firm base they can agree on.
Here, the base would be: reduce the number of abortions, increase the number of wantedbabies.
They could work on programs that the people involved could agree on -- counseling, better sex ed, reduction and streamlining of adoption policies wherever possible, encouragement of abstinence and safe sex, education programs for parents so they can teach their children accurately, whatever -- and then they could pursue their own agendas separately.
I could work with a pro-life advocate as long as we agreed to set our various dogmas aside, respect each other's good intentions, and work on projects that advanced our agreed-upon goal.
[ October 25, 2004, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote:And I have gotten somewhere: two. That's two people, one of whom worked as a pro-choice activist in college, who are now pro-life at least in part through my efforts. No, it's not a huge number. But it's two.
It's only progress if your goal is to turn people into pro-life activists. That isn't my goal. My goal is to reduce the number of abortions. In the ~31 years since Roe vs. Wade, how many abortions have you and other pro-life activists stopped?
From my observation, the activities of those who are pushing to make abortion illegal have radicalized the opposition. Every possible public policy that aimed at making abortion more difficult, is met with radical opposition not because people feel strongly about the particular action but because they know that behind every abortion bill are a bunch of pro-life activists who want to make abortion illegal.
Because of that, I believe that pro-life activists bare some resposibility for the fact that the abortion rate has not dropped more significantly. If the extreme pro-life groups had abandoned the goal of making abortion illegal and instead worked toward other methods of reducing the number of abortions, they could have brought a much larger group on board and built a realistic plan for stopping most abortions.
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quote:My goal is to reduce the number of abortions. In the ~31 years since Roe vs. Wade, how many abortions have you and other pro-life activists stopped?
Me? 2 that I know of. And I've at least contributed to moving several people from the "I would consider abortion in X situation" to "I wouldn't get an abortion, even though I don't want to make it illegal." I don't know how many ended up not getting abortions because of that.
The two people I know I've helped convince to become pro-life didn't become activists, and that was never my goal.
Dagonee Edit: The two people are who became pro-life are different from the two people I helped convinced not to have abortions.
quote:I can and have described such a system, but don't have time to write it up right now.
I'm very interested to see what you have to propose. In the years I have been following this issue, I have yet to see any proposal that doesn't require that the law enforcement be given free access to the medical records of women of childbearing age. If you have such a plan, I'm very interested to see how it works.
All the plans I've seen, think its acceptable for law enforcemtn to be given free access to women's medical records as long as it is only the doctors who are prosecuted and no the women. I don't. If you want me to elaborate on why, I will.
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posted
No, I think it's pretty clear why you would oppose that, since I oppose it as well.
I will say that the system would necessitate release of medical records, but only upon probable cause (or something stronger) that the law had been violated and never without a judicial order that the patient has due process (notice and hearing) to oppose.
I'll elaborate on the whole process in the other post, but free access to medical records is not part of it.
Was it your stand on the legal issues or your moral and ethical points that pursuaded these women not to have abortions? Would you have been any less effective if you had said nothing about the legal issues?
I am also pro-life. I also work toward stopping abortions. I simply don't think that trying to pass laws against abortion is more likely to violate women's human rights than it is to stop abortions.
(BTW, I don't think that having an abortion is a "human right". I do think that keeping your medical records secret is.)
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posted
No, I didn't bring up my views on legalization because they weren't relevant to the situation.
And there was actually less moral and ethical discussion than practical discussion (how to get medical care, how to finish school, how to tell their parents, etc.).
quote:I will say that the system would necessitate release of medical records, but only upon probable cause (or something stronger) that the law had been violated and never without a judicial order that the patient has due process (notice and hearing) to oppose.
But have could you provide evidence for "probable cause" without the medical records? Without medical records, there is no reliable evidence that a woman was pregnant. Anything but medical records (except perhaps the 1st hand testimony of the women involved), is heresay. This is the entire problem with abortion -- all the evidence comes from the body of the woman. ALL.
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