quote:Every 4th Wed I'm terrified that I won't get my period the next day.
Wow. You're more regular than anyone I've ever met.
It's the birth control, I was completely irregular before I went on it. It's pretty comforting, because apparently it means the hormones are working really well.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:I think we can all agree that the stigma associated with premarital and unwanted pregnancy is one of the largest reasons there are so many abortions today
I don't agree. I don't know all the reasons people have abortions, but I absolutely do not think or have reason to think that the majority are because of any stigma attached to having illegitmate children. Most women having abortions are in their twenties, and almost a third of the children born in the US are born to women who are not married.
Can I ask a question? I am trying to think how to put this. It seems like you are saying the scary part would be telling your parents that you are pregnant if that happened. I'm guessing that your parents know that you're sexually active. Would they be suprised if you told them you were pregnant?
quote:I don't know all the reasons people have abortions, but I absolutely do not think or have reason to think that the majority are because of any stigma attached to having children.
You misread her quote. Specifically, she is arguing that the stigma associated with premarital pregnancy is one of the largest reasons -- not some generalized stigma about having children in general.
And having known a lot of people who've had abortions, I'm inclined to agree with blacwolve on this; that is absolutely one of the biggest motivators.
The other biggie, which is cited less often, is financial readiness; I'd wager that it's a distant second.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I didn't misread the quote - I left out a word in my response.
I understood what she meant. I don't believe that the stigma is the reason that the pregnancy is unwanted. I don't know all the reasons, but I have to imagine to nine months of physical hardship followed by a lifetime of dedication and sacrfice as your life now belongs, at least in part, to the child might have more to do with it.
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quote:I don't know all the reasons, but I have to imagine to nine months of physical hardship followed by a lifetime of dedication and sacrfice as your life now belongs, at least in part, to the child might have more to do with it.
As I've said, if the people I know who've had abortions can be trusted, this is less of a concern than the stigma. I've never heard anyone mention "physical hardship" as a factor in their choice, although of course the "lifetime of sacrifice" figures into the financial reasons I mentioned above.
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posted
Does that mean all the rhetoric touting the physical hardship and the commitment as reasons to support abortion are obfuscating the real reason, which is being pregnant out of wedlock is embarrassing?
Either that isn't the primary reason, or the pro-abortion rhetoric is highly disingenuous.
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quote:Does that mean all the rhetoric touting the physical hardship and the commitment as reasons to support abortion are obfuscating the real reason, which is being pregnant out of wedlock is embarrassing?
Yes, I think so. I'm dealing with anecdotal evidence, myself, but that's certainly been the case in my circles. Embarassment and finances have been the two big reasons I've seen. The other rationale that I occasionally hear mentioned in the same breath as finance (but which is distinct from finance) is the "I haven't finished my education/started my career yet, and thus don't want to settle down with a baby at this point in my life."
As far as I'm concerned, the third is more of an argument for adoption than a rationale for abortion, though.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I still don't believe it, but if it is true, then the pro-choice movement just bottomed out in terms of credibility, because I can see why other reasons are invented and touted. "It's embarassing" is not a motto to rally around.
I guess I still don't understand why being pregnant would be embarassing when being sexually active isn't. The stigma of sex outside of marriage has clearly fallen away.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Carrying a baby to term is terribly inconvenient. There's no social program or social engineering that can change that.
Telling everyone who asks that you're giving your baby up for adoption can't be a walk in the park either. Not to mention wondering for the rest of your life what happened to the beautiful little baby you gave up.
But that's better than wondering what would have happened to the baby you killed.
I think inconvenience is the bigger reason than stigma. There's stigma in having an abortion as well, though it's easier to hide.
Tom: Did the women you know not concider adoption? Did they think their two choices were "Keep" or "Kill?"
posted
It's worth noting that those reasons might be perfectly good ones even if they aren't the ones actually appreciated most frequently. I wouldn't base your opinion of the "honesty" of an entire movement on my observations.
The fact as I see it is that adoption accounts for almost all the rationales for abortion except three: the stigma of unwanted pregnancy; the high financial costs of pregnancy; and the actual physical risks associated with pregnancy and labor. While I'm sure the last is a factor in some womens' decisions, I've never heard it advanced myself by any of the young women I know who've chosen abortion.
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quote:Did the women you know not concider adoption?
Actually, all of the women I know considered adoption. In most cases, the deciding factor was that they would be unable to conceal their pregnancy if they went with adoption, whereas concealing an abortion is comparatively simpler.
Of course, in all those cases, the question of whether or not they were sexually active was also not a "settled" issue. In other words, their parents were most likely -- but not certainly -- aware, but certainly disapproved. The desire to avoid an "I told you so" was enormous.
And frankly, I think that's not unrealistic. As bizarre as this sounds, I think more parents would disown and/or abuse their daughter for becoming a parent at 20 than discovering, five or ten years later, that their daughter had an abortion at 20. In my own specific case, I'm pretty confident that Christy's parents would certainly have cut all ties to us (and written me off completely) if they'd known of her pregnancy; now that we've been married for six years, though, I think finding out about an abortion in her past would actually be less traumatic.
That doesn't mean I think we necessarily made the right decisions, but I don't think our assessment of parental response was off-kilter.
posted
*shrug* You tell me. I hesitate to say that there's NO stigma for sex. There's most definitely a stigma; it just flares up when pregnancy or disease rear their heads.
I think it may be because most objections to premarital sex are based on potential negative consequences, so actually running afoul of one of those negative consequences is seen as an opportunity to bring the full hammer of parental disapproval down. But I'm speculating, here.
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posted
I think that's weird. It makes no sense to me to have a greater stigma attached to pregnancy than is attached to the sex in the first place.
If I were in that situation in my early twenties, I think my dad would have been much, much more upset about me living with someone than getting pregnant. I mean, he would have been dissapointed for me if I did, but the living with someone was something I chose to do. The getting pregnant - especially if the father flaked out - would have been something done to me, and so I would have gotten sympathy, short-term help, and a plan. It was when I contemplated dating someone who most like would have preferred to live with me than marry me that my dad threatened to cut me off if it happened. If I'd gotten pregnant, he undoubtedly would have said I Told You So, but would not have become angrier than he would have been already.
Finding out later that I'd had an abortion would be tremendously more traumatic.
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posted
kat, it isn't that there isn't a stigma attached to sex, it is that sex is comparatively easier to keep secret.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Hmm....I think that's a very Victorian method of morality. In California in the 1800s, a man could be arrested for flagrant adultery. A man was arrested and tried for adultery, but was found not guilty when he proved that he had done his best to keep it a secret. Secret things are winked at and tolerated, and the crime is talking about it in public.
It's part of the reason for the campaign against polygamy. The shocking part wasn't having sex with someone other than one's wife - it was aknowledging that person as a wife and giving her social status that was the problem. There were laws passed saying that anyone living in "unlawful cohabitation" could not vote, and in order to vote, they had to sign a statement swearing they were innocent. A married man with a mistress hesitated to sign it, explaning he had a mistress, but was told that that was fine - as long as he didn't flaunt her, it was okay.
Maybe that's the stigma attached to pregnancy. Having sex is permissable as long as there is plausible deniability.
I think that's wack. That's not Puritan - that's Victorian.
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quote:If I were in that situation in my early twenties, I think my dad would have been much, much more upset about me living with someone than getting pregnant.
That'd be a more logical approach, certainly. But I don't think it's the more common one.
Thinking about it more critically, I think part of the issue is that the parental reaction to things like "I'm going to live with Tom, Daddy, and there's nothing you can do about it" is modified by statements like "We're responsible. We know what we're doing. We love each other." And so forth. And so when you then have to come back to your parents and say "Okay, so we weren't quite so responsible after all," that whole rationale you used to amelioriate the initial stigma swings back with a vengeance.
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posted
I think that's because most of America hasn't recovered from the Victorian era yet.
Maybe it's weird to me because instead of having secret mistresses, my great-great grandfather had extra wives. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Can I ask a question? I am trying to think how to put this. It seems like you are saying the scary part would be telling your parents that you are pregnant if that happened. I'm guessing that your parents know that you're sexually active. Would they be suprised if you told them you were pregnant?
My parents don't know I'm sexuality active. How they can not know is beyond me, because they know I'm on birth control. When I went on birth control my mom sent me an email begging me to use condoms instead. But two weeks ago she told me that my boyfriend might be getting tired of waiting. So either she's completely oblivious, or she's in pretty deep denial.
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quote:If I were in that situation in my early twenties, I think my dad would have been much, much more upset about me living with someone than getting pregnant.
That'd be a more logical approach, certainly. But I don't think it's the more common one.
Thinking about it more critically, I think part of the issue is that the parental reaction to things like "I'm going to live with Tom, Daddy, and there's nothing you can do about it" is modified by statements like "We're responsible. We know what we're doing. We love each other." And so forth. And so when you then have to come back to your parents and say "Okay, so we weren't quite so responsible after all," that whole rationale you used to amelioriate the initial stigma swings back with a vengeance.
It seems to me that abortion has the same problems that declaring Bankruptcy has. It is too easy and it is a way to make all the consequences of your bad choices disappear. Hey I understand that sometimes the situation is just beyond your control and you can't help it, but usually that is not the case. There used to be a stigma attached to not paying back debts. That stigma is more or less gone today. Is debt and bankruptcy at an all time low?
posted
Bankrupcy filings are public. The analagy does not work.
Yes, sometimes parents know their children are sexually active. But sometimes they don't. And many families seem to operate on a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. The parents might suspect, but they don't know, unless something (like a pregnancy) rubs their face in it. And even if the parents know, usually Grandpa and Great-Aunt Helen and a host of other relatives don't.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: Bankrupcy filings are public. The analagy does not work.
Yes, sometimes parents know their children are sexually active. But sometimes they don't. And many families seem to operate on a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" philosophy. The parents might suspect, but they don't know, unless something (like a pregnancy) rubs their face in it. And even if the parents know, usually Grandpa and Great-Aunt Helen and a host of other relatives don't.
I was going to disagree with your statement that bankruptcies are public, but decided to ask you what you meant by "public."
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I think I have just forgotten the direction of the thread, but I do not see how the fact they are public effects the idea that "Not paying back debts had a stigma, that stigma is now gone, and yet the problem is probably worse today."
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posted
The objection to the analogy actually reinforced the point - bankruptcies are even public, and the lessening of the stigma against them has done nothing to lower the incidence of them.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Nope, still missed the point. Abortion avoids the stigma entirely because nobody has to know.
Whether this is a good thing, or a particularly consistent system of morality aside, abortion is an attractive choice to many scared young people because you don't have to tell mom & dad, you don't have to see the look on grandma's face, you don't have to worry about whether your classmates are laughing behind your back, etc. The social stigma comes into play only so far as the person has internalized it.
Whereas with bankruptcy the public shame element, which is the "enforcement" arm of social stigma, is present.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think you're still missing the point. Nobody knowing is only advantageous if there is a stigma. If there is no stigma, then it doesn't matter if anyone knows. He is not talking about the stigma of abortion, but the stigma of pregnancy. The contention (which I can hardly believe) is that if the stigma of pregnancy is removed, then abortion rates go down.
People not knowing = people knowing and not caring
I suppose what I'm having hard time believing that all the rhetoric and passion of pro-abortion activists is inspired by a desire to help people save face.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Ah -- you're conflating pro-choice activists and the reasons they think abortion should be legal with the reasons individuals actually have abortions. Those are not necessarily the same.
Which is also the reason many pro-choice people are in favor of working to reduce the number of abortions and object to being called "pro-abortion." Because they recognize that a large number of current abortions are for reasons like "saving face." But they also recognize situations where the decision is much more complicated and the reasons far less trivial and think it should be legal and the choice of the people involved*.
*and are operating from the belief that the fetus is potential person, not yet one of the people involved.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I liked all of your post except the condescending tone of the first sentence.
I think separating the reasons people have abortions with the reasons abortions should be legal is splitting hairs morally. If the first is true, then for all the justifications for abortion, people have them because pregnancy is embarrassing. Whether or not that is the intent, then keeping abortion legal is abetting that. That may be an acceptable compromise, but ignoring the reasons people have them and emphasizing in the abortion debate the outlying reasons people should be able to have them makes the rhetoric disingenuous.
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posted
The first sentence wasn't meant to be condescending, it was a lightbulb moment for me -- "A ha, I think I see the difference (or one of them) here."
If one of the reasons you have for believing abortion should be legal is that you believe the responsibility for weighing the decision and deciding when it is morally justifiable belongs to the individual, then you are forced to deal with the probability that some individuals will make decisions you would not consider morally justifiable. It is morally consistent to work to reduce the number of people making what you consider the wrong decision while still believing that it is their decision to make.
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posted
If both pro-life and pro-choice believe that "saving face" is a lousy reason to get an abortion, why don't we make abortion records public? If the records were made public, people who need abortions for reasons most people support will still be able to get them, and the motivation to have an abortion just to keep Aunt Helen from knowing (about premarital sex or pregnancy) goes away. Of course, medical privacy is pretty ensconced as a core individual right, so such a solution would never fly.
Posts: 2926 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I think that in order to say that it is up to the person pregnant to decide what happens next, then it is necessary to believe that abortion isn't harming anything and that the moral ambiguity of the decision comes from the avoidance of consequences. If the abortion does harm something, then standing aside is consenting to harm.
Not acknowledging the convenience and face-saving reasons allegedly for which the majority of abortions are performed damages the credibility of people advocating for abortion to be readily available. It is interesting to be to note that the contention that it is a prominent reason came in this thread from someone who does not support abortion.
I think one of two things are happening: 1. That's not a reason which occurs often enough to be statistically signifigant. 2. It's the elephant in the room that abortion-should-be-available advocates ignore deliberately.
If that's the reason, then no amount of support for single mothers and readily-available child care and whatever else pro-life advocates are accused of failing to do while advocating to make abortion less of a convenient option would make a difference in the abortion. They'd still be good things to do, but the central goal - fewer fetuses/children dying - would not be lessened signifigantly.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:I think that in order to say that it is up to the person pregnant to decide what happens next, then it is necessary to believe that abortion isn't harming anything and that the moral ambiguity of the decision comes from the avoidance of consequences.
I disagree.
In a somewhat seperate disagreement, if abortion wasn't harming anything, then why would the avoidence of consequences be morally ambiguous?
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posted
I wrote the above because of a belief that we are responsible for the help/protection we do not give but could have when we see harm occuring. Not solely and not as much as the person inflicting the hurt, but consenting and aiding it when we could instead try to stop it seems iffy.
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posted
There is a whole specturm of beliefs between "nothing is harmed" and "from the moment of conception the fetus is a full person with rights equal to those of the mother." The majority of people, IMO, are somewhere between those two.
How much harm has to be happening before one is morally compelled to step in? Certainly if one believes that abortion is equivalent to murder, one is compelled. But not everyone does. However not everyone who doesn't would say nothing is harmed, either.
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