The people who want to ban abortion also want to ban IUDs, ECs and hormonal contraceptives. They may succeed in banning abortion but will they stop abortions from occuring? Those women with money will get safe abortions by travelling elsewhere, those who have no money will either self induce or have children they do not want. The result? More poverty, more childabuse and many more billion$ spent on welfare and prisons, in the long run American society will pay the price for the pro life folly. Forcing women to bear children they do not want is a fools errant.

Poland banned abortion in 1993 and contraception is difficult to obtain. Yet Poland’s birthrate is one of the lowest in Europe 1.3%. In China where abortion and contraception are mandated by the state the birth rate is 1.7 %. In China, IUDs are designed to be tamperproof -with no string – yet Chinese women have figured out how to remove them so that they can have another child. If Chinese women can figure out how to remove “tamperproof” IUDs, I can’t see why American women should not be able to figure out how to obtain abortions when no doctor will be willing to perform one. What is needed is a good grasp of anotomy, hygenic conditions…

Pro-choice “aid”: “99% effective”* birth control. Pills, Condoms, Seminars, GADGETS!

*rate not adjusted for incompetence of users, lack of mentioning that almost all unwanted pregnancies are caused by a failure of birth control, making it equally responsible for 90% of all unwanted pregnancies that PP says it wants to avoid. (the remaining 10% being caused by rapes etc.)

Its been 30+ years people, the contraception programs are out there, but at 1,370,000 abortions per annum, thats 3750 unwanted pregnancies a day, and 3,375(90%) caused by BC failure.

Furthermore there was an article about Ivy League schools having “sex ed” that included a panel of porn stars and lessons on how to strip. This is “comprehensive sex ed”? Sounds more like tittilation(excuse the pun) than education. Teenagers have no need to be told they have “options”, what they need is a authoritarian “don’t do it or your life is ****ed”. Sex ed should be run like philosophy, not wood shop(also excuse the pun).

Pro-life “aid”: Crisis Pregnancy Centers offering material and emotional support and assistance in trying to get your life back together.

Its funny how everyone bashes the pro-lifers for “not helping women” and then disasters like Katrina strike and nobody is complaining about those evil, selfish, medieval pro-lifers and their coming out en-masse in charity. Take a look at the soup kitchens in the neighborhood, who runs them? Certainly not the enclave of rich NARAL ladies.

Jannia: The overwhleming majority of pro-lifers follow the adage “save two lives where one would otherwise be killed, save one where two would otherwise die”. Therefore, your implication that pro-lifers hate abortions done for true medical neccesity is unfounded. The line on rape is debated for precisely the reason that while rape is a crime, to kill a child who had no control over his father is not the automatic answer. “Rapist’s offspring”, do tell me, if the child were born, is the rapist going to come out of the shadow’s and claim his baby? Probably not. The sins of the father DO NOT belong to the son, and the offspring is EQUALLY the woman’s, who, btw. would be the one who ends up influencing the child’s life were she to give birth.

But I suppose pro-choicers just prefer the knee-jerk reaction that comes with categorizing rape babies as “the rapist’s offspring”.

I find it ironic you say you support 100% effective contraception, but then go about giving methods that cause nearly 100% of the unwanted pregnancies by NOT being 100% effective.

You then state aboriton is the lesser of the two evils. Obviously the other evil must be the natural biological state of remaining pregnant, since parenting is not the only option available after birth. The LEAST of all evils is not having sex untill you are ready to deal with the biologically established realites of it. But then, that would cut into the government funds allocated for providing pills and rubbers.

If the pro-choice groups spent half the funding on promoting the ideals you expressed Jannia, they would have gone somewhere by now. (I also find your paid meternity leave comment ridiculous. Pro-lifers are the one’s who “like pregnancy” remember? What do you care about maternity leave, you’ve got the choice of abortion already established.) As it stands we have the PDA(Pregnancy Discrimination Act) and the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act).

Pro-choice is no longer about choice, it is about abortion. It has strayed far from the feminist ideals of Susan B. Anthony and has instead embraced the eugenics goals of Margaret Sanger.

Most pro-choicers take choice seriously. We want women to have as many choices as possible, and that includes fixing a system in which having a child can effectively destroy their lives. Most of us think abortion is simply the lesser of two evils, and we’d be much happier in a world where everyone had access to 100% effective birth control, there were no rapes or foetal deformities, and every conception was intentional. And a lot of us work towards that goal, by supporting things like paid maternity leave, paid daycare, universal access to and education about birth control. All things, oddly enough, that many (many is not all, I realize there are exceptions) anti-choicers are also against.

But implying that pro-lifers care about women is hilarous. “We realize that you find children revolting and that you haven’t had sex volontarily in a decade, and that you were raped by some stranger who broke into your house, that you’ve got medical conditions that make pregnancy debilitating and that you’re going to lose your job because it doesn’t provide maternity leave (and even if it did it would be for 12 weeks rather than the 24 you need), but your life will be so much better now that you’re being forced to carry your rapist’s offspring. You’re fulfilling your natural role! Aren’t we wonderful for preventing you from being able not to even though it’s what you want!”

My stance in a nutshell:

1st trimester: On demand
2nd trimester: Health of mother, serious foetal abnormality
3rd trimester: Foetal death, foetus that will not survive anyway (ie anencephaly).

So pro-choicers don’t care about women, eh? And they also just don’t want to deal with the causes of abortion?

Oh, of course. That’s why all these liberal groups are always ignoring issues of women’s rights, sex education and birth control. You’re right. You caught us. We just think it’s entertaining to kill babies.

Thank you for saying what I wanted to say.

Casey,

I hope you realize your self-righteousness and damnations do nothing to win over those you disagree with but instead just make them angry and more convinced that you’re wrong. Clearly you are passionate about this issue. As are many. But the issue is not black and white and trying to force it to conform to such a simplistic dichotomy succeeds only in silencing debate and ensuring the trenches stay exactly where they are.

Some pro-lifers are crazy, this is true. But it is possible to be pro-life and compassionate.

The same interest groups that want to overturn Roe also want to keep Plan B out of pharmacies and focus sex education solely on abstinence. I believe there are sincere pro-lifers out there, but the people who speak for them are not sincere about saving lives, they are sincere about controlling women’s sexual behavior. And I don’t see Concerned Women for America, et al, all in knots about poverty, either.

We keep talking a bout those poor women who NEED abortions.

Yeah, taking 300 bucks instead of fixing poverty helps the poor.

Abortion is simply the maintenence of the status quo. Pro-choicers don’t care about women, they just don’t want to deal with the causes of abortion and so they fight as hard as they can to try and keep it legal, lest they actually have to do something other then say: “Poor? Pregnant? Tough, get an aboriton and don’t bug me about fixing poverty”.

If and only if the anti-choice crowd ever gets around to adequately supporting viable programs for universal access to and education about birth control, indigent pregnant mothers, unwanted children, daycare for poor parents, universal health care, school lunches for the poor (and schools themselves, for that matter), food stamps, and welfare, only then will there be the remotest possibility that abortion will ever be made unnecessary.

Unfortunately all the money they could have used for those ideas has gone to tax breaks for the rich and corporations, and into funding a horribly mismanaged and overpriced war that never should have started in the first place.

What I should have said is:

Not everyone who considers themselves pro-life is standing on the corner with six-foot tall photos of aborted fetuses. I consider myself pro-life in that I honestly think that abortion should eventually be made illegal. However, just making the act illegal doesn’t do anything. Abortions will still happen, it’s just that they will be made much more dangerous to the mother. I don’t see how such a society is better than the one we have.

Instead, I want us to really attack the societal causes of the issue. What can we offer in terms of prenatal care, child care, adoption programs, food and diaper assistance, education opportunities, favorable laws for pregnant women, and so on.

Will carrying a baby to term affect your college classwork? Fine. Let’s work on that. Will it deny you career opportunities? Fine, let’s work on that too. Can you not afford the doctor visits? The preschool? Is the father a deadbeat loser? Let’s remove all of these barriers that keep pregnant women from advancing and succeeding in life.

I think that advocating for such changes can hardly be considered misogynistic.

There. We’ll pretend that’s what I meant to say first.

Pretty broad brush there. You know, I was going to comment on Alan’s original post on how much I appreciated that someone else thought that we should look at the societal issues surrounding abortion rather than simply making it illegal. I want abortion to be irrelevant. But, CaseyL apparently thinks that I don’t exist, so I guess I’ll be quiet now.

“Damn you smug, self-righteous, compassionless, hypocritical, misogynistic jackasses to Hell.”

I’ll see you there. Wanna be roomies?

Bernie,
The money from one anti-Alito add would pay to feed 100 babies for a year? How many babies could we feed with the money to fund the Iraq war? Answer: It doesn’t matter because that money would NEVER be allocated to feed new babies. If conservatives would start funding all these programs you mentioned NOW, I might be less skeptical. Conservatives are notorious for cutting funding for social programs, so I believe there is NO WAY IN HELL that they would suddenly be interested in helping indigent mothers care for all their unwanted children if abortion became illegal.

Does no one really understand that the issue of abortion is just a tool that is used to stir the emotions of the conservative constituency? Everyone knows that if Roe was overturned, things would be a mess. Everyone knows that if Roe was overturned, conservatives would not allocate one more penny to help mothers or their children. That idea is absurd. If Roe were overturned, another emotion-provoking issue would simply spring up to take it’s place – I’m guessing that anything dealing with homosexuality would be the new abortion.

The amount paid for 1 nationally run anti-Alito add could fly 500 women to have an abortion somewhere legal if needed. The amount paid for 1 nationally run Pro-Alito add could feed 100 new babies for a year. Stop contributing money to these groups and instead fund scientists working on improveing birth control, streamline adoption procedures, aid to new mothers, ect. End abortion the way we ended trepanning.

You are correct. I did not express that thought as clearly as I could have. I didn’t mean it would definitely be heard by SCOTUS only that it will almost surely be appealed to them. My comment that I am less than possitive that this will work for South Dakota was meant to convey that I don’t think this will be a silver-bullet case that kills Roe. But it is a great opportunity for conjecture.

I’ve always thought Roe will die by a thousands cuts not one fatal blow.

In 1991, the people of Washington State passed Initiative 120, which put abortion rights in the state legal code. The initiative was designed specifically in case Roe was overturned. If SCOTUS does leave post-Roe abortion policy up to the states, RCW 9.02 will keep abortion legal here.

The point has been made, but bears repeating: In a post-Roe America, abortion will still be an option for anyone who can afford to go to Canada, or any state in which abortion is legal. It was that way before Roe ( in 1972, when I was in high school, I contributed to a fund to send a pregnant classmate to NY, which at that time had the most liberal abortion laws in the country) and it will be that way after Roe. The only people anti-Roe will affect are the people who most need legal abortion: the ones who can’t afford to go out and find it wherever it might be, or who don’t dare tell their parents. Those are the girls and women who’ll suffer the consequences.

I have no sympathy or support whatsoever with the anti-choice crowd. Their Odes to the Fetus are scientific bunkum. They are as hostile to birth control as they are to abortion; and as hostile to programs to help involuntary mothers raise their unwanted children as they are to birth control. Their inability to understand the deep cruelty of demanding a girl or woman carry a rapist’s child to term is loathesome – as is their emphasis on punishing the involuntary mother, with nary a word about the father’s role or responsibility. The more they talk, the more it becomes obvious the real agenda of the anti-choice brigades is to punish women for their sexuality. (This is particularly grotesque in cases where the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.)

I’m old enough to remember the pre-Roe days. The terror, the despair of being pregnant when you didn’t want to be, when an involuntary pregnancy would blight your life entirely, when it might actually endanger your health and life to carry it to term, when you had no idea if the “doctor” you were referred to for an illegal abortion knew what s/he was doing, was even a doctor at all, when the risks of bleeding to death, death by septicemia, death by massive infection, were so dire but you would risk them anyway, that’s how much you didn’t want to be pregnant…

… damn you all to Hell who want to see those days return. Damn you smug, self-righteous, compassionless, hypocritical, misogynistic jackasses to Hell.

Abortion will happen. It will probably be surprisingly safe. There will be an active underground as there is with gun owners and pot smokers, a new law to alienate millions from society and to be enforced hypocritically.

Oy gevalt. With all respect, Alan, it almost certainly will not end up in the Supreme Court. Here is what will happen:

1. The governor will sign the bill.
2. However, the law will never go into effect, because any of a variety of groups will file suit in federal court to block the law’s enforcement.
3. The judge will issue an order blocking the law — as he/she must, because under current law, it is clearly unconstitutional.
4. South Dakota will appeal this order.
5. The appeals court will also block the law, because it is clearly unconstitutional. See step 3.
6. South Dakota will appeal to the Supreme Court.
7. The Supreme Court will turn the case down. Believe it or not, they do not hear every single case dealing with abortion that has ever been brought. The reason they usually accept cases is because the law is unclear, and they want to clarify it. Here, the law is clear — South Dakota’s law is unconstitutional.

8. End of story.

I’m certainly not suggesting that it’s beyond the realm of possibility that someday, the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade. But to suggest that they will do it all at once, and will do it with this case, is simply preposterous. The Justices are not revolutionaries; they make changes gradually.

If the Supreme Court upholds the ban on PBA, that will be the law (although it would have to be decided if federal preempts state law). If Congress passes any more federal laws, the Supreme Court can decide if those laws are constitutional (if/when they take that case), and then there will be a federal vs. state battle to decide whether the federal abortion laws preempt state laws. That may be a question under the Commerce Clause. If it is determined that abortion falls under Congress’ power to regulate commerce, then the federal law will be supreme and will preempt state law. I’m sure there are other ways to argue that federal preempts state, but the Commerce Clause is the first I thought of. The point: It will be a LONG and VERY UGLY MESS!!!!!