Imagine all the good these protesters could do if they just spend 50% of their time at homeless womens’ shelters or orphanages. Or, if they’re so pro-life, imagine if they spent just a little of their time ending pointless wars. Is the loss of an innocent adult life worth nothing compared to that of a 12 week fetus?

And for those of you who are on the fence about this issue: if they succeed in making it a law a full, legal “person” exists from the time of conception, there will be changes you did not expect. Hormone birth control can work partly by preventing egg implantation; expect to be charged for “abortion” for using it. All pregnancies that end in miscarriages should be investigated to see if the woman was at fault. Imagine a woman who goes to jail for manslaughter because she was so stressed out her body rejected an 8 week old embryo? Would women have to quit their jobs and stay home during the whole pregnancy out of fear the “person” might be hurt? Would they have to prove to bartenders they’re not pregnancy when ordering a mixed drink?

Also understand that those most in favor of banning abortion do so because their religion told them to. Christian religion also tells us to “go forth and multiply”, not to “waste seed”, and to use sex to procreate. In other words, no birth control or masturbation. If you think I’m exaggerating, check the stance of the Catholic church. Aren’t we just as guilty of killing the “lives” of all those eggs kept from meeting sperm by a condom? What really is the difference between two haploid cells about to meet vs a blob of diploid cells resulting from the meeting?

In some cases, such as teenage pregnancies in which the mother is not fully capable of sustaining herself and a child, forcing her to have the child would in no way benefit the child and it would also likely be harmful to the mother’s health.

The argument that a child can be put up for adoption may sound reasonable but the fact is that even when adoption works out, such things can have a negative psychological effect on children. Quality should be upheld over quantity; the quality of the mother’s life needs to be supported if a child could not be properly cared for. Abortion is a very ugly thing but it is sometimes the path to the greater good.

One of the things that bugs me most personally is people who are selectively passionate about issues that encompass more than they are willing to admit. For example, shouldn’t all pro-life people be adamantly anti-war? After all, war kills conscious, sentient people who may be just as innocent as an unborn child.

The fact is that a child who is saved from an abortion may not be welcomed into the world. The best thing we can do is pause and consider that, regardless of when the fetus is considered “alive,” is make a judgment based on the situation, not be absolutely against abortion.

Go over to Malkin’s blog, or DailyKos.

You’ll find plenty of unsubstantiated pontification going on over there ;)

I do see that the author has a good point, all though I’m extremely pro-life.

Beyond the point about current law, people talk about how today’s teenagers know that there is a great moral argument to be had over abortion rights. It’s true, there is. Just as there is a great moral argument to be had over war and governance. But I would ask those older than this 20 year old to not put words in the mouths of myself, nor my friends. You see, we are old enough to realize that a “chance to live” is not always the moral thing to do. What if a mother gets pregnant while on a medication that will cause debilitating and painful birth defects to the unborn child? Is it more merciful to carry out the pregnancy and hope against all fact that this once those things won’t happen, or to put a child through a painful and quite possibly short life? Or is it more merciful to terminate a pregnancy?

I say leave choices about abortion to the mothers. They understand the choice they make, they understand that they might regret making this decision. But honestly, there are times when the termination of a fetus, of a potential human life might just be the merciful, the moral thing to do.

The worst thing the Republican party could do would be to ban those 3 things. It would close those issues and they don’t want those issues closed. They need those issues in order to manipulate the masses to vote Republican.

The Republican party exists to further the issues of rich white males. But there are not enough of them to win elections. So they have to manipulate the masses in whatever way works. Gays, guns, abortions, the flag, drugs, immigrants, prayer in school. These are all hot button issues that the Republicans will never fully resolve because they need the voter turnout that these issues drive in every 2 years. (You may see window dressings on some of these issues, but not much more.)

You might note that Faux News has turned against Sarah Palin somewhat. This is because although the Republican party needs the fringe to win elections, they don’t want fringe people actually getting too too much real power.

This is one of the major reasons the Republican party continues to demagogue this issue. For the people who control the Republican party (AKA the rich), abortion law won’t apply to them.

I conclude that you have failed to support anything like a “severe increase.”

Define severe. How many women have to die unnecessarily for it to be a severe increase?

…simply acknowledge that we don’t really know what would happen here in America and can really only speculate.

I never claimed psychic powers, it’s fairly obvious that I’m speculating based on the trends studied around the world.

The dat from Brazil is certainly instructive, but making direct conclusions from a nation like Brazil is IMo somewhat inapt. Because we’re a very different place, and abortion would remain legal in about 1/2 to 2/3 of states.

Pro-lifers won’t stop at RvW. If that happens they’ll move on to federal legislation
What makes us different from Brazil and the rest of the world is that (so far) we have a secular government that enforces the “Creator-endowed rights of man” rather than “God’s Law”.
Are you seriously telling me you don’t think poor women in rural Mississippi or Kansas are going to be stuck with coat-hanger abortions? I hope you are correct.

For someone who claims to be earnestly seeking a resolution to the abortion issue, you’re astonishingly disrespectful of pro-life views. As a pretty pro-choice guy, it vexes me to see someone pretend to be centrist while also being so disparaging and self-righteous and pedantic. As someone who has spent much time talking with pro-life folks, I at least understand that any claim to moral high ground rests with the heartfelt desire to end the terminations of nascent innocenthuman lives.

My earnest resolution is to make abortion legal, federally and permanently. You can call me names for that but it’s the only logical, humane, effective resolution. I am the father of a little girl and I, too, have a heartfelt desire “to end the terminations of nascent innocent human lives”. That is why I want to focus all this wasted energy and money on civil solutions rather than “government solutions”.

I am not disrespectful of pro-life views, I am pro-life! This is why I feel abortion needs to be legal.

I am disrespectful of willful ignorance and hypocrisy. I don’t believe you can’t see the difference. Any solution that increases the termination of non-nascent innocent human lives under the guise of “pro-life” is hypocrisy. It’s willfully ignorant to struggle “on principle” for something that WON’T WORK and WILL MAKE THINGS WORSE.

I suppose I wasn’t clear enough, my ludicrous claim that “everyone would be happy” was intended to mean:

“if we got off our asses and actually worked to reduce abortions” instead of wasting our time fighting about legality. I don’t happen to agree that the claim is absurd on its face. People who truly have a “heartfelt desire to end the terminations of nascent innocent human lives” would be happier to see a reduction in abortion than a meaningless law.

But you Jacob, did not lay out much of use. I conclude that you have failed to support anything like a “severe increase.”

A much better “fact” than studies and comparisons to different countries is to simply acknowledge that we don’t really know what would happen here in America and can really only speculate.

I still think the best guess is that while we might see a small decrease due to increased difficulty of access, interstate abortion tourism would probably keep the numbers essentially the same. I REALLY don’t believe that we’d see nearly as many “back alley” abortions here as in places like Brazil. The dat from Brazil is certainly instructive, but making direct conclusions from a nation like Brazil is IMo somewhat inapt. Because we’re a very different place, and abortion would remain legal in about 1/2 to 2/3 of states.

it’s disingenuous for opponents of legal abortion to claim a moral high ground

For someone who claims to be earnestly seeking a resolution to the abortion issue, you’re astonishingly disrespectul of pro-life views. As a pretty pro-choice guy, it vexes me to see someone pretend to be centrist while also being so disparaging and self-righteous and pedantic. As someone who has spent much time talking with pro-life folks, I at least understand that any claim to moral high ground rests with the heartfelt desire to end the terminations of nascent innocenthuman lives.

I do not share the moral calculus of these folks, but I have every reason to believe such folks are generally sincere, not disingenuous. The approach you have adopted here stands a pretty much zero chance of shedding beneficial light on such a contentious issue.

I wish you better luck next time.

In conclusion,. please note that you started all this with a post that made a ludicrous claim– that everyone would be happy if an amendment were passed guaranteeing the right to an abortion. This is demonstrably false. Absurd on its face, even. Notwthstanding the fact that you tossed in the consolation prize that congress could if they wanted,direct money towards abortion prevention.

And so I conclude:

In the face of such evidence, it’s disingenuous for opponents of legal abortion to claim a moral high ground campaigning for policy that will not reduce abortions and will severely increase the risk to women’s health. A sincere proponent of life would do better to focus their energy in more productive arenas.

Why? Because you don’t like it? Your follow-on to pre-1973 abortion rates is a complete non-sequitur. Factcheck quite rightly says it is impossible to know the accuracy of the pre-1973 data, nor is it 1973 — there are several widely-available drugs on the market (and black market) today that can be used for induced abortions, no clinic or coathanger required for the desperate, just a major health gamble. Jacob’s claim of 300,000 dead a year is clearly excessive (though 300K extra hospitalizations for abortion-related complications is quite possible) but Boxer’s estimate of 5000 is quite plausible, given the experiences of other countries where abortion is illegal and yet more common than it is in the US.

Also, even today, are abortions totally “safe”? Women still die from the procedure today

They also die from complications of pregnancy, and at MUCH higher rates than they do from legal abortion. Legal clinical abortion is unequivocally safer for a woman than carrying or attempting to carry a pregnancy to term. By a full order of magnitude and some change. (For those not familiar with the jargon, that means carrying a pregnancy to term carries a “death risk” for the woman of more than ten times that of legal clinical abortion.)

IF one naively assumes that all pregnancies that would have otherwise ended in legal abortion would be attempted to carry to term if abortion were outlawed, and if in fact no illegal abortions at all were performed, we’d STILL have a roughly 20-25% increase in maternal mortality simply from the increased mortality risk of carrying those pregnancies to term. P_robably even higher, as a good portion of abortions in America are indeed performed for reasons of maternal health risk, such as history of eclampsia.

That’s the best-case scenario, but it’s a highly unlikely one. We know from the experience of many other nations that the law would not be obeyed, and that many women would still procure/induce abortions in one form or another. There is no evidence that laws against abortion reduce the actual incidence of abortion in the modern age. Illegal abortion whether by drug or instrument carries a much higher risk of maternal death or injury than legal abortion AND a significantly higher death/injury risk than carrying to term. Both are shown clearly in Latin America, where abortion is almost entirely illegal, and yet abortion rates are actually higher than they are in the U.S. Our abortion prevalance is roughly 24% of all pregnancies, in Latin America it’s roughly 33% of all pregnancies.

A look at Brazil is informative. Brazil has 2/3rds of our population, abortion is almost entirely illegal, IS prosecuted, and yet they have just as many abortions per year as we do. They also have 250,000 hospital admissions a year for complications from illegal abortions. And those are just the women that open themselves to potential prosecution by going to the hospital — there’s no way to know how many women just tough it out at home and maybe die because they fear prosecution. The penalty is one to three years in a Brazilian prison, and no, the woman is not exempted from prosecution.

When Roe v. Wade is overturned in a few years, this will not automatically make abortion illegal in the 50 states and U.S. territories. Things would simply revert to how they were pre-1973. Some states permitted abortion, while some prohibited the practice. The conversation would then return to the state level where, arguably, it should have stayed. Incidentally, it would appear that more and more believe that the so-called gay “marriage” issue should be decided in the same manner.

Your argument about overturning Roe v. Wade not decreasing the number of abortion victims is silly. Factcheck.org has criticized both Dem and GOP claims on this issue, so it seems pretty non-partisan. Google: abortion rates before 1973. Its’ pretty eye-opening stuff. Bottom line: It’s unlikely that more than 1,000 women ever died annually prior to Roe v. Wade. That’s not to say that 1,000 deaths don’t matter. They absolutely do, but how can this be balanced with the many millions of unborn that have been killed since then? Also, even today, are abortions totally “safe”? Women still die from the procedure today, even though the law has changed.

As for the number of pre-born victims, it would certainly decline, simply because when something is illegal, society discourages the practice, so people look for alternatives. Adoptions would rise as abortions become rare.

The best way to make abortions “rare” is to outlaw them, at least in most circumstances, which poll after poll shows to be the American consensus. As it currently stands, no one in this debate would call abortions rare, since right now we’re up to around 40 million abortions since 1973. “Rare” is a nice sounding talking point for pro-abortion politicians, but nothing else.

This debate is not going away. It’s not baby boomers that are keeping it going now. It’s teenagers, who have an innate sense for the moral nature of this argument, and the immoral nature of abortion. Look for Roe v. Wade to be overturned before 2015.

We’re not going to outlaw abortion. Ain’t happening.

Could we at least vote on it first?

I cited this article titled “Abortion rates same whether legal or not”. It references a study done by:

Gilda Sedgh of the Guttmacher Institute in the United States and colleagues from the World Health Organization. It was published in an edition of The Lancet medical journal devoted to maternal health.

The numbers in my comment were arbitrary but

You seem to be suggesting that making abortion illegal would have no effect whatsoever on the abortion rate.

This is, in fact, true. Again, the only difference is the dramatically increased risk to womens health.

You’re a piece of work Jimmy. I’ll call it whatever you want to call it, nothing changes the fact that people who are fighting to make abortion illegal are wasting everyone’s time and working against any effort to actually reduce abortion rates.