Real questions about pro choice

[Sephus]

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Well that does explain why every country thinks God is on their side when it comes to war, but wait a sec... That's not possible is it? Some of these authorities must not have been put in place by God, huh? Is there any reason to think the American government was put in place by God?

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no, they all were. it says so right there.

[txag007]

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Is there any reason to think the American government was put in place by God?


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Yes.

EDIT: I'm not talking about Bush (although I strongly believe everything expressed in Romans 13). I'm talking about the system of government in place in the United States.

[Sephus]

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Is there any reason to think the American government was put in place by God?


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Yes.

EDIT: I'm not talking about Bush (although I strongly believe everything expressed in Romans 13). I'm talking about the system of government in place in the United States.

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fwiw txag, while technically you answered his question, i don't think a one word answer is going to be enlightening to lestat.

seems like there's an "if so, what is it" implied in his question. he would probably rather you didn't answer at all if you're just going to force him to ask a follow up.

[txag007]

Don't worry. I fully intend to answer the question. I just can't do it right now, and so I was planning on answering it in reply to his follow up. I'll do it later today hopefully.

[Jetboy2]

"My argument is this: It is not possible to determine when *exactly* life begins, scientifically, anyway. [If you disagree with this point, please explain]."

True. Life began several billion years ago on Earth. Maybe before that elsewhere in the universe.

Human life is irrelevant. We're here now; we'll be gone at some point. Here today, gone tomorrow.

I don't really care about fetuses.... As a human, what happens to a fetus "post-birth" seems more important to me. When a fetus is aborted, it's gone. When a fetus is born into the world, then it becomes important.

Rate these fetuses:

1. Nice white woman fetus in Europe, North America; vs dark skinned woman fetus in Bolivia, Zimbabwe.

2. Crack momma fetus vs Texas cheerleader fetus.

3. I can go on....

Personally I don't give a rip about the fetus. The important thing is what will and should occur for an actual child that will result.

JB

[Hoi Polloi]

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Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The only way to ensure the third is to ensure the first two.

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Really? At risk of sounding counter-counterintuitive, I think the exact opposite: if abortions were both unsafe and illegal, I believe they would become more rare.

I just did a quick search and found that in the US in 1998 there were about 4,000,000 births and about 1.3 million abortions. Based on those figures, safe and legal abortions are more common than hitting a flush on the river, not exactly a statistical anomaly.

But even more to the point, do you honestly think that number would increase if the procedure were to be outlawed and/or could somehow be rendered more dangerous? Please explain your reasoning.

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Abortion went down in the 90s and up since BushCo came in. More funding, more education, more awareness, equals more choices, equals better choices. Making things illegal doesn't make them go away. While the correlation is not a direct one, I do think it is pretty easy to show that if a procedure is safe and legal, and there is education about sexuality and a diminishment of stigmatization then outcomes where abortion is necessary will be dramatically reduced.

[Hoi Polloi]

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Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The only way to ensure the third is to ensure the first two.

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Really? At risk of sounding counter-counterintuitive, I think the exact opposite: if abortions were both unsafe and illegal, I believe they would become more rare.

I just did a quick search and found that in the US in 1998 there were about 4,000,000 births and about 1.3 million abortions. Based on those figures, safe and legal abortions are more common than hitting a flush on the river, not exactly a statistical anomaly.

But even more to the point, do you honestly think that number would increase if the procedure were to be outlawed and/or could somehow be rendered more dangerous? Please explain your reasoning.

[/ QUOTE ]

Abortion went down in the 90s and up since BushCo came in. More funding, more education, more awareness, equals more choices, equals better choices. Making things illegal doesn't make them go away. While the correlation is not a direct one, I do think it is pretty easy to show that if a procedure is safe and legal, and there is education about sexuality and a diminishment of stigmatization then outcomes where abortion is necessary will be dramatically reduced.

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I also think jogger makes a mistake in thinking I meant this as a causal chain or a syllogism. These are 3 things I think we want to be able to say about abortion in our society.

[jogger08152]

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Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The only way to ensure the third is to ensure the first two.

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Really? At risk of sounding counter-counterintuitive, I think the exact opposite: if abortions were both unsafe and illegal, I believe they would become more rare.

I just did a quick search and found that in the US in 1998 there were about 4,000,000 births and about 1.3 million abortions. Based on those figures, safe and legal abortions are more common than hitting a flush on the river, not exactly a statistical anomaly.

But even more to the point, do you honestly think that number would increase if the procedure were to be outlawed and/or could somehow be rendered more dangerous? Please explain your reasoning.

[/ QUOTE ]

Abortion went down in the 90s and up since BushCo came in. More funding, more education, more awareness, equals more choices, equals better choices. Making things illegal doesn't make them go away. While the correlation is not a direct one, I do think it is pretty easy to show that if a procedure is safe and legal, and there is education about sexuality and a diminishment of stigmatization then outcomes where abortion is necessary will be dramatically reduced.

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I also think jogger makes a mistake in thinking I meant this as a causal chain or a syllogism.

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I can't speak to what you meant, only what you said. You said, "Abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The only way to ensure the third is to ensure the first two."

Written as a syllogism, your argument runs thus:
P1: If abortion is safe and legal, it will be rare.
P2: Abortion should be rare.
C: Abortion should remain safe and legal.

Your argument is valid but unsound, because your first premise is untrue.

[brashbrother]

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[b]<font color="blue">They all say that with condom usage, a chance for getting pregannt even with perfect use lies around 3% in one year's time.</font> [b]


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You realize the qualifier "in one year's time" (which you omitted from all previous posts) changes the nature of your claim considerably, right?

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Lol. Play poker much? Think for a minute. Each sexual encounter does not have a 3% chance of pregnancy. Some of them have a 0% chance. (e.g. having sex a full 2 weeks after ovulation). Others have a higher chance, maybe close to 10-20% (I actually don't know these numbers, but guessing it must be pretty high e.g. having sex an hour after ovulation). By necessity, the 3% number assumes a group of random sexual encounters, over the course of time. One year, two years, however many it takes to get a significant number of encounters, you have to have this in order to establish a trend. Simple math. I assumed someone on a poker website might understand this...or are you one of those guys who bets his 3 6 offsuit since "3s are running tonight?"

FYI, If someone is keeping track of ovulation, and still using a condom, then that is actually TWO forms of prevention, the other one being the "calendar" method or "rhythm" method. If able to keep track of this, then sure, the pregnancy rate can only go down as opposed to condoms alone.

If you had read carefully the websites I referenced, instead of just looking to discredit stats I mentioned, you might have already noticed this. The numbers refer to women who use condoms only for birth control, and gives the failure rate. It does not say that the condoms failed, or that the women were in a double-blind placebo controlled study, just that hey, in retrospect, women who use condoms alone seem to have some failures. I am guessing, but I assume the two sets of numbers (3% failure vs. 12-15% failure) were for women who claimed "perfect" use vs. women who admitted the occasional slip up.

It defies me to understand why this is so important to discern. Fact is, we gots unwanted pregnancies all over the place. We gots women-folk who sometimes use abortion as birth control. I personally think this is bad.

My reason is that I think it is wrong to stop a human life (yes, I define a human life as starting with conception) based on personal convenience. I know it is a gray area, so I was curious to see what the Pro-Aborters had to say as to why a certain week of pregnancy made it OK/not OK for them.

I think the condom use debate occurred because some posters indicated that a woman should not be "burdened" by something she had not chosen to have happen to her. I mentioned that any sane person should realize that pregnancy is a risk with nearly all forms of non-surgical birth control. (And even sometimes the chance is there despite surgery...stupid doctors.) So in effect, she had made her choice to entertain the possibility of a child when she decided to have sex.

As I have said in other posts, I am not trying to whitewash this opinion across all comers, specifically the rape/incest. I do feel those are so rare that exceptions could and should be made case by case, and any policy we have should not rest on that slim possibility as its reasoning. And, as before, cases where the Mom's life is at risk are not part of this debate.

[jogger08152]

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Each sexual encounter does not have a 3% chance of pregnancy.

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It's good of you to say so.

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Simple math.

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I found it so. I do not think you did.

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I assumed someone on a poker website might understand this...or are you one of those guys who bets his 3 6 offsuit since "3s are running tonight?"

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For you to condescend to me after posting the mathematical and factual errors and omissions that you have in this thread is just silly.

Before you recognized that your 3% figure is essentially a guesstimate of the probability of becoming pregnant after an unknown but large number of sexual encounters, you were wrong but basically civil. Now you've come around and are finally on the right track as far as the argument, but you seem angry about it. That's unnecessary and probably also unhelpful to you. Just thank me for the correction and move on.

Best regards,
Jogger