The article above suggests abortion has thinned the ranks of Democrats. I think the author has a point and there are other points that aren't in the article that could back it up.
You know, if abortion had not been legalized one wonders what the political landscape would look like today. Here's a few points to consider:
1) More Democrats would be in office -- many potential Democrats vote with the Republicans because they favor getting rid of abortion on demand.
2) Immigration would be lower since those children aborted since 1973 would be in the workforce and there would be less demand for labor from other sources. I remember growing up in the 70s and teens worked jobs now that in my community are generally held by recent immigrants.
3) As the article suggests, Democrats abort more than Republicans and we generally hold onto the political leanings of our family. So many more Democrats would be in the voting population today if they had not been terminated prior to birth.
Any opinions on this or the article above?
Posts: 232 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
michaele8, any death is tragic, and except for this coming Presidential election I will probably live my life without ever voting democratic for reasons of abortion on demand. But I am almost equally dissenfranchised by my own party, the GOP that 2/3 of which supports the death penalty unquestioningly. I truly wish the government would never allow death of any kind.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Nov 2003
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Geoff, you know exactly what I meant, I truly hope that was not an attempt at humor to make light of the fact that the government sponsors and implements the killing of people and also allows abortion to take place. Posts: 369 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
No, that was an attempt at making light of your specific word choice I'm sorry, I thought it was funny. It'll be a very sad day when our nation makes laughter illegal ...
[ July 01, 2004, 02:26 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Look, a sentence can be funny, even if it's about death and pain. Most of the funniest sentences I've ever heard were about death and pain. Almost all humor involves pain at some level or another — with the exception of the pun, which is what makes it humor's lowest form
It doesn't trivialize an issue to make a joke at someone's word choice while they're talking about it. It's not as though talking about death suddenly causes you to be surrounded by a Holy Shield of Seriousness that makes you immune to teasing. Laugh a little, and maybe that will make people want to talk to you long enough to hear what you have to say. If you're so prickly that you lash out at the slightest joke, you make yourself very easy for people to dismiss and ignore.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Don't lecture me, I wasn't "lashing out," I was simply pointing out that was you said was offensive to me. If indignance at my offense gives you the right to begin a commentary on my social skills I don't think I'd like to sustain a conversation with you.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
Becuase I'm a stodgy, old bastard? Look, I don't go out of my way to pick fights with people, and certainly in those instances I did not think they were "reasonable." I get the message, I won't trouble you anymore. I should know enough not to cross more than 2 people of the popular clique somewhere. Adieu from the "Space Cowboy."
posted
*sigh* I wasn't trying to imply that you -- or anyone -- should leave. Just maybe that you should examine why it is that you are managing to have such snarky dialogs with generally non-snarky posters.
posted
On topic however - the article states that the socio-demographic background of people considered more likely to have an abortion was found using a survey of 2000 people. (This is the survey that led to the conclusion that Democrat voters are more likely to have an abortion).
Given the article then goes on to extrapolate the argument to over 24 000 000 people, I would suspect that the sample size isn't quite big enough. Statisticians?
Edit - Rivka, appear to be? Maybe you're really asleep and this is all a dream...
posted
That article is not exactly logical. Children down't always absorb the values and political leanings of their parents or relatives, they sometimes rebel against them. I don't, for example, completely share my parent's values. Another thing is some conservatives are likely to have abortions if pressed to. Especially in the case of 15 year old daughters that might end up getting pregnant by accident. It's like saying that more liberals divorce when that may not be completely true. Then you'd have to take into consideration why and when each person would get an aboration before considering missing voters... Perhaps I am being illogical....
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The other thing to consider is that, sadly, many abortions do happen for "timing" reasons. This means that a mother who gets an abortion might have a child 5 years later. Had she not had the abortion, she likely wouldn't have had the child 5 years later.
So the net decrease in population is less than the total number of abortions. There are complications from abortions that cause sterility, but I'd bet the numbers don't overcome this displacement effect.
i'm just curious, where do you find all this stuff? is there some sort of fanatical-conservative, foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalist mailing list that provides you with this wealth of inflammatory source material, or do you just spend the majority of your time scouring the web in search of the most biased and slanted "news" pieces you can find?
posted
The fact is (as I've said before) if ANY candidate who became president was REALLY strongly anti-abortion, he could snuff it out and overwrite the law with an Executive Order.
But no one is going to do that because it would be political suicide. (and probably get him impeached).
So does it really matter how the president feels about it since he has little control over the law other than this?
posted
that's exactly why i don't understand people voting based on politician's supposed stance on the issue.
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Is it really possible to have so little respect for human life that you categorize fetuses in terms of whether they're going to be Democrats or Republicans 18 years and 6-9 months from now? That's exactly what you have to do to make a statement like that Democrats are losing voters to abortion.
How can anyone call themselves pro-life when they place so little value on humanity? This sort of "how can we exploit as many people as possible?" attitude is what turns me off from many conservative causes that I might otherwise agree with, like tort reform.
Ok, now that I've witnessed political rhetoric dropping to new depths of immorality, I should probably get back to work...
I'm not overly fond of the article, but I find this statement amazing. By all means, lets not look at one of the possible effects of a social policy that was implemented without voter input in the vast majority of states.
Claiming the high ground on "exploiting life" while supporting a policy that has resulted in 40 million dead, mostly for purely elective reasons, is pure hypocrisy. Helping fund birth control and abortions for people you don't want voting isn't something that's been done on the pro-life side.
I'm not even going to go into numbers on medically necessary abortions, but they don't drop the number of elective abortions below 39 million. Nor would all the medically necessary abortions result in a dead mother.
Dagonee *And don't even get me started on the hypocrisy of refusing to use someone's own preferred label and leaving the word "abortion" entirely out of the new, preferred labels. Either let people label themselves as they see fit or make accurate labels. You can't have it both ways.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I'd need to research it. If I recall correctly, abortions in real numbers have held steady or dropped very slightly, which means the number of abortions per pregnancy has probably dropped.
Again, the statistics I know are at least 5 years old.
quote:Because it's not a matter of life and death to you
that's true, but it doesn't really invalidate my point. I'm not sure of the statistics (you probably are much more familiar with them), so this is conjecture. How many abortions has bush been able to stop in the US, really? And how much more religious could a president get? You have your perfect candidate in office, he had a good two years of almost unconditional support as well as control of both houses of congress, yet all he really managed to do was enact a partial-birth abortion ban which (i believe) has been ruled unconstitutional (although my memory here could be off). He's cut funding to 3rd-world programs that support abortion, but i would argue these policies have created more problems than they've solved.
so what has been accomplished?
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
also, if you're going to rate politicians based on the lives they end, either directly or as a result of policy, i have to say that bush's lack of inaction regarding the AIDS epidemic is horrendous. how many people in 3rd world countries die of malnutrition from poverty imposed by our faming subsidies, how many more children will die here in the US as a result of relaxed environmental controls, how many iraqi civilians have died from the war?
some of these are stretching, i know...
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I agree (edit: that Bush has not stopped many abortions), but court appointments are critical; and if court appointments have their desired effect, then pro-life candidates in state legislatures and Congress will be critical, either to pass laws or, hopefully, a Constitutional amendment.
Dagonee Edit: Iraqi civillian deaths are less than 20,000, right? Against those, you have to credit lives that would have been lost if Sadaam were still in power and about 5 days worth of abortions in the U.S.
posted
still, i can't help but seeing this as a choice between which you would prefer: to legislate against killing fetuses and legislating against abandoning them once they're born. look at no child left behind: Bush might be very interested in keeping kids from being killed before they're born, but he clearly has little interest in what happend to them afterwards, or he would have funded the program. the same pattern seems to be true at all levels of education, funding for social programs (which ostensibly are intended to keep children from being punished for the economic situation of their parents), environmental controls, labor laws, etc etc etc.
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
i guess it just reminds me of the classical excuse which the chrisitan theocracy has peddled since the middle ages: don't worry about how we're opressing you right now, because heaven everlasting is your reward for you subservience.
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:gov't funding is the best way to make sure kids have enough
here's the problems with the privitazation/charity argument: such organizations are not inherently democratic. There are plenty of charities which are completely egalitarian, but they are egalitarian by choice, as a result of beliefs which happen to support that view. the only truly democratic institution in our society is the government, and if we assume that our goal is to give all members of our society (roughly) equal opportunities, only a democratic institution can be expected to do so. The whole point of social programs (regardless of their source) is to help those who are the most disadvantaged, and these are precisely the people who are being neglected by existing social institutions.
what is the point of having a government if not to secure the rights of individuals? maybe the difference is that i consider the chance to develop one's abilites to their fullest a "right", while others consider it a cute ideal.
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:And we were doing so well being nice in this conversation
i wasn't talking about the current church leadership, i was referring to the church of the middle ages when they held practically absolute control, before the scientific revolution.
it wasn't meant to be an insult of snarky comment, i apologize for the implication
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Theory: since most Pro-abortion people are democrats, and since most people follow the beliefs of their parents, then Abortion is zapping the democratic party of followers.
Wow. Talk about grabbing at straws.
How's this:
If there were an abundance of democratic followers, which allowed liberals to control the government, then the liberals would pass laws orchestrating Sexual Education Classes in all schools, hence teaching kids the dangers of unprotected sex, which would decrease the numbers of teen pregnancies, and hence decrease the number of future Democratic voters as well.
Basically, it would be best if Democrats just realized the truth and promoted as much teen pregnancy as they could.
Democratic To-do: 1) Sign up minorities to vote, and to vote often. 2) Donate all the cash you can to the Democratic party. 3) Go knock up a teen or two.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Until the pro-life movement is universally against this sort of anti-life behavior, they can't claim any sort of moral high ground.
Universally. You mean the entire movement has to completely purge itself of crazies before its ideas have merit? That's hardly fair. The fact that some people think this issue is worth killing a doctor over doesn't make my more reasonable opinion invalid. I don't think it's worth killing a doctor. I have a different stance on the issue than the crazies do. So when you're discussing this with me, you don't have to drag all those other people into it.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Kerinin, I suspect most conservatives would be happy to fund those programs to help out children if the money existed. It does not. More than likely, it never will. It would have to be taken from other social programs already existing, or taxes would have to be raised massively--leaving no net benefit. Preventing someone else from doing harm is relatively easy; doing additional good yourself can be all but impossible.
And I would say that the purpose of government is to protect us from attack--either from criminals or from other governments. That's why actions involving military or police force are so much more effective than social programs; the government is inherently an instrument of force and coercion, only worth having because the alternative is worse.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:First of all, the simple fact is that one can't be dead unless one was alive to start with. I'd be interested to see statistics on the number of abortions performed on fetuses that were developed enough to be able to survive outside of the mother, but if it were high, many people who are currently pro-choice wouldn't be.
Except the viability of a premature baby is incredibly dependent on the technology available to treat it. The state of our medical technology shouldn't be the criteria used to define life.
quote:From an anti-choice perspective, what's the difference between an abortion and murdering a doctor? By any moral or medical definition, a doctor is a viable human being, regardless of what kind of medicine he or she chooses to perform. Until the pro-life movement is universally against this sort of anti-life behavior, they can't claim any sort of moral high ground.
quote:Similiarly the pro-choice movement can't claim any sort of moral high ground until they are universally against abortions as a form of birth control where less severe methods of contraception would have been much more effective. Accidents happen, but if you're going to have sex, you need to be responsible about it.
Now, if I believe that abortion in some cases is wrong, why am I so against placing any governmental restrictions on it? The slippery slope theory; those who are in favor of abortion restrictions have a tendency to state the issue as all-or-nothing, and once you give up anything to that mentality, you've given up everything.
It is precisely elective abortions that are the target of most pro-lifers. Since these make up over 98% of all abortions in the U.S., you're allowing great wrong in order to avoid having a real political battle.
I'm interested to know what the rationale is for condemning one abortion of a child and excusing an abortion of another child at the exact same developmental phase based solely upon actions outside the scope of the children's control. I've never heard a coherent moral explanation of this.
you must be kidding. i could (maybe) take this argument if we were talking about specific policy suggestions and the statement was made about the current financial status of the government (which may have been your intent). but if you're saying that it "never will" i'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. there are countless ways an economy can be structured, modified, and contourted. are you saying that and country with rates of taxation higher than ours is doomed to failure? look at countries such as Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, or Belgium, all of which have higher per hour production than we do. What this means is that they produce more GDP per hour worked than we do. We might produce more per capita, but we have to work more time to do so. Furthermore, while all of those countries listed have lower per capita GDP than the US, they also ALL have substantially lower wealth distributions than the US, which means that the majority of the population may very well have a better standard of life that we do. What else makes these countries similar? they all charge a LOT more taxes than we do, spend a LOT more on social programs that we do, and are all doing pretty well economically. so i'm sorry, but i don't agree with your statement about "no net benefit".
quote:And I would say that the purpose of government is to protect us from attack
that's nice; most of the world disagrees with you. in the history of democracy no government has been formed solely for this purpose, for the simple reason that most people (the foundation of the government's mandate in a democracy) believe that the government has a responsibility to do more than simply keep the other guys out. While we might argue over exactly which "rights" deserve protection by the government, surely we can agree that there are more than the right to not be killed by another government's army?
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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yes, but not SOLELY for that purpose. Mabus was arguing that the only function of government is to protect from attack (as i understood him). the constitution was written to give the government broad powers over trade, taxation, as well as with a bill of rights ensuring various privlidges outside the scope of the right to be protected from either attack or oppression
Posts: 380 | Registered: Mar 2003
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