Asymmetrical Information

Okay, I'll start it off. In my experience, which includes a relative (white) adopting a little girl (black), I can attest to the fact that a lot of government social workers (minorities themselves) firmly believe that children of a particular race should only be adopted by a member of that race. Racist? Certainly, but not in the sense that the liberal classes would have you believe.

"presumably, if the mother doesn't want the baby, she wouldn't mind terminating her rights, which would remove any barriers to adoption into a good home."

What do you think about the mother selling her rights to another person? In other words, she agrees (and contracts) with another person that, in exchange for X amount of money, she agrees not to terminate and to give up her guardianship to the other person?

"I can attest to the fact that a lot of government social workers (minorities themselves) firmly believe that children of a particular race should only be adopted by a member of that race."

I think John Stossel did a report on this some time ago; it might be in the archives at ABCnews.com.

I read the same comments thread that you did at Calpundit, and I believe you mistook a couple of offhanded cracks at a commenter that the bulk of Calpundit's commenters both disagree with and are irritated by for an argument that anyone is likely to independently make in favor of abortion rights. The rhetorical purpose of the comments you are responding to was to exhort the commenter to go away and facilitiate some adoptions rather than continuing to post, rather than to make a serious argument.

You, and that commenter, are perfectly right that a healthy newborn of whatever race whose parents have relinquished their rights is easily adoptable. I've just never seen anyone make the argument that abortion rights are necessary because otherwise the adoption market would be glutted with newborns -- if abortion is, as some think, murder, such a glut would be an insufficient reason to allow abortions, while if abortion is a morally acceptable exercise of a woman's control over her body, than such a market glut is unnecessary to justify abortion rights.

The 'adoption market glut' justification for abortion rights is easily refuted, as you just did. That's probably why it isn't a justification that anyone relies on.

But LizardBreath, the pro-choice side is littered with people complaining that pro-lifers aren't interested in what happens to the baby once it's born. What happens to the baby once its born, if the mother doesn't want it, is that it's adopted by a nice childless couple that has been carefully vetted by an adoption agency.

On another note, Jane, six days between posts? What about our needs? Jeez.

Jane Galt:

So the commenter is probably right; if women having abortions instead carried the fetuses to term and then offered them for adoption, they could almost certainly place each and every baby, especially with our aging population of professional women whose fertility has declined.

No, the commenter is not right, as you would realize if you had given this claim even a moment's serious reflection. There are over a million abortions a year in the U.S. There have been over 40 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade. There aren't remotely enough prospective adoptive parents to adopt a million unwanted children a year, year after year, even if every one of those children was an ideal adoption candidate (newborn, white and healthy), which many or most of them certainly would not be. The idea is just ludicrous.

The disconnect that you're missing is that for some reason, arguably irrational, it is my understanding that most women who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy and want an abortion do not regard adoption as their next best option -- instead, they are likelier to raise the unwanted child themselves.

The "people complaining that pro-lifers aren't interested in what happens to the baby once it's born" are generally complaining that pro-lifers aren't interested in problems that affect poor children being raised by their biological parents, not that there aren't available adoptive homes for healthy newborns. It's an accusation of hypocrisy, in that prolifers think that preventing the suffering of living children is less important than preventing abortions, not a justification for the necessity for abortion rights.

Contributor A - I hear liberals saying that pro-lifers / conservatives / Republicans don't care about babies once their born over and over and over again. It's a common rhetorical tactic used to argue for increased spending on welfare as well as for arguing in favor of abortion.

In the abortion debate, it's usually not brought up until after a pro-lifer says that women who don't believe they can raise their own child should have the child and put it up for adoption instead of having an abortion.

The accusation of indifference to the fate of children is well-founded. Opponents of abortion rights are very often also opponents of the expansion of welfare services to poor mothers and their children.

Opposition to the expansion of welfare services is not the same as indifference to the fate of the intended recipients, as anyone smart enough to not be a liberal would understand.

Indiscriminate provision of welfare services to "poor mothers and their children" has led to a significant increase in the number of poor mothers, and a very significant decline in the social conditions around most of those poor mothers (increased crime, worse schools, etc.).

DonP, I'm not sure that's the case, for a couple of reasons.

Some number of those abortions are medical; those fetuses would still be aborted.

I don't think race is an issue, for reasons enumerated above. Black kids are disproportionately represented among kids in the system because their parents are disproportionately poor, not because they're not wanted by someone.

Women are waiting longer and longer to have babies; as their fertility declines, demand for adoption will rise.

Many families who adopt now stop at one because of hte enormous strain involved. They might well be happy to have two, three, or more kids if the restrictions weren't so onerous.

Waitlists for adoptable kids aren't new; they were common in the forties, when women married younger, and abortions were rarer, and parental mortality was lower.

I don't know what the numbers are, exactly, but you could certainly place every kid who's likely to be aborted for non-medical reasons for the next five to ten years without a hitch.

Yep. The generosity of our welfare services explains why our crime rates are higher and our primary/secondary education system is inferior to those in the European social democracies.

But as a socialist, I'm even dumber than most liberals, so I get easily confused by these things.

Anthony:

Opposition to the expansion of welfare services is not the same as indifference to the fate of the intended recipients,

Yes it is. What alternative do you propose? Private charity? Charity is clearly utterly inadequate for preventing child poverty. That is why America has one of the highest rates of child poverty amoung the industrialized democracies.

Don P - Are you serious or are you a troll? Just because someone is not in favor of government welfare does not mean that they are motivated by animus or a lack of compassion towards the poor. You cannot reliably divine someone's motives by their policy prescriptions. For example, it is possible to argue that welfare is the result of a desire to write a check to assuage guilt rather than do the hard work necessary to solve the problem.

A) Our crime rates aren't higher than all those welfare states, LizardBreath; off the top of my head, Britain's crime rate is higher than ours for almost all categories, and I believe the mediterranean states also.

B) Our crime rate has been higher than, say, Sweden's since long before the welfare state, so the welfare state is, at best, a non-variable.

C) Our education system is not inferior from lack of spending; IIRC, we spend more per child than any other country on earth.

D) You're making my point for me. By excluding adoption as an option, the pro-choice side makes the social choice set much starker, and the abortion choice much more attractive: make abortion legal and/or increase the welfare state, or force millions of children to grow up unwanted and in poverty. The implicit justification for doing so is often that adoption "isn't a viable option" for most poor and minority children. This does not seem to actually be the case, so long as the mother is willing to terminate her rights.

Don P,

If you paid every poor unwed mother $10000.00 for every baby they had, do you think poor unwed mothers would have fewer or more babies?

Do you think a system that creates poor babies born to unwed mothers is a good system?

Jim English
Chicago

I'm willing to be educated on this issue. But I've also learned, based on things that I know quite a bit about, that Jane Galt is usually extremely misleading.

So, what I'd like to know, savants, is the age distribution of children in the U.S. foster care system, by race and ethnicity. Is it the case that too few cute and cuddly black infants are available for adoption? And are black babies simply too late to market?

Or is Jane wheeling out an anecdote from her "excruciatingly thorough" research analyst friend to mislead us all?

May the relevant statistics rule the debate.

Last time I saw any numbers on this topic bandied about, the amount of couple seeking adoption dwarfed the amount available for such. I'm not sure how Jane's age analysis figures in, though.

Decon - I don't have any relevant stats to share with you, just to observations: First, in Arizona, as in other states, the media have reported on the efforts of advocacy groups to prevent adoption outside an infants ethnic group. For example, a few years back the Navajo tribal court intervened in the adoption of a Navajo infant by a California couple. Second, even after an adoption has been made, it seems it is never over. Recall the story from a few years back where the "birth father" sought to reclaim his child that had been adopted by a couple in another state? The birth mother had given up the child for adoption, had not told anyone who the natural father was, so the natural father (who had never married the mother) had never been contacted and had never given up his parental rights. The court eventually ruled that, in effect, there had been a valid adoption of the child but that, years after the adoption, the adoption could be voided by the birth father. Who wants that kind of risk and uncertainty? Not stats to be sure, but my wife and I have had several friends who have adopted children from outside our country just to avoid these kinds of legal hassles our system invites.

It's "common knowledge" that adoption is expensive, time consuming, and difficult. Such common knowledge distorts any stats you could come up with by affecting the behavior of people who might adopt a child. My wife and I considered adoption, but our local adoption agency told us we would never get a child since we had three of our own. (Three well adjusted children. You'd think such proven success as parents would make us MORE eligible not less.) If we had fought the system, could we have adopted a child? We will never know. We opted out. I suspect, and no one can prove otherwise, that many couples just don't bother adopting becuase common knowledge has it that it so difficult.

How about Adoption.com

As of September 30, 1999, there were 568,000 children in foster care.

During the second half of FY99 (4/1/99-9/30/99), 143,000 children entered foster care.

During the second half of FY99, 122,000 children exited foster care.

The median age of children entering foster care during the second half of FY99 was 8.5 years.

The median age of children exiting foster care during the second half of FY99 was 10.4 years.

. . .

On September 30, 1999, 48 percent of the 568,000 children in foster care were in family foster homes, 26 percent were in relative foster homes, 17 percent were in group homes or institutions, 3 percent were in pre-adoptive homes, and 5 percent were in other placement types.

PERMANENCY GOALS

On September 30, 1999, 42 percent of the 568,000 children in foster care had goals of reunification, 19 percent had goals of adoption, 8 percent had goals of guardianship or custody to a relative, 5 percent had goals of emancipation, 7 percent had goals of long term foster care, and 19 percent had not yet had a permanency goal established.

Of the 122,000 children who exited foster care during the first half of FY99, 59 percent were reunified, 16 percent were adopted, 12 percent went to a legal guardian or a relative, 8 percent were emancipated, and 5 percent had other outcomes.

. . .

The median age of the children in foster care on September 30, 1998 was 9.5 years. At the end of the reporting period for 1990, the median age of children in foster care was 9.0 years.

Disclosure Statement: I am the father of an adoptee and the father-in-law of another adoptee. I am also a practicing Catholic; and, I am unalterably opposed to abortion on demand. I cannot accept the logic of ending one life unnecessarily so that another life can be more convenient, or more comfortable.

I believe that every woman's choice to have sex should always be a free choice. However, I also believe that once that choice has been made, the time for choice is over until it is time to choose whether to keep the child or to place it for adoption.

I also fail to understand why, when an unmarried woman elects to have unprotected sex, gets pregnant and keeps the child, I now have the obligation to support not only the woman but also her child(ren).

I agree with those above who believe that the children now being aborted in the US could be adopted by US parents if the babies were carried to term and they were not encumbered with the potential of future custody battles.

I also believe that many fewer "unwanted" pregnancies would occur if young girls understood the lifetime economic impact of single parenthood. Some would argue that they couldn't understand the economic facts. Demonstrably, if they become single parents, they will very quickly learn the economic facts firsthand; regrettably, too late.

The sooner we reject the "sex as sport - then abort" mentality in the US, the better.

Jane Galt:

There are around 100,000 adoptions in America each year. You are proposing to increase the supply of children needing adoption by around a factor of TEN. Show me your evidence that there are even remotely enough prospective adoptive parents to absorb this additional supply.

I'm not interested in your guesses or hopes or anecdotes ("I know a couple who blah, blah, blah..."). I'm looking for evidence. Show it to me.

From http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/ressta.html

Between 1989 and 1995, 1.7% of white women relinquished their children for adoption, dropping from 19% in 1965-1972. The rate of relinquishment among black women has consistently been under 2% for unmarried births and is now less than 1%. The rate of relinquishment among Latina unmarried women has also been consistently at or under 2%. (National Center for Health Statistics, 1999).

In 1992, the last year for which total adoption statistics were available, 127,441 children of all races and nationalities were adopted in the United States (National Adoption Information Clearinghouse, 1996).

In 1995, about 232,000 married women had taken steps toward adopting a child. Only about 100,000 have applied to an agency in order to adopt

There are approximately 5 to 6 adoption seekers for every actual adoption. (National Center For Health Statistics, 1997; Hollinger, 1996).

The age at which these children were adopted was as follows:
Under 1 year: 2%
1-5 Years: 46%
6-10 Years: 37%
11-15 years: 14%
16-18 Years: 2%

The children who were adopted in FY 1999 were adopted by:

Non-relatives: 20%
Foster parents: 65%
Other relatives: 15%

Waiting time to adopt varies depending on the type of adoption and any unforeseeable circumstances that may arise. Estimates of waiting time are:

Healthy infant: 1 up to 7 years
International: 6 up to 18 months
Child waiting in foster care for an adoptive family: 4 up to 18 months

"There are around 100,000 adoptions in America each year. You are proposing to increase the supply of children needing adoption by around a factor of TEN. Show me your evidence that there are even remotely enough prospective adoptive parents to absorb this additional supply."

"Waiting time to adopt...Healthy infant: 1 up to 7 years"
"There are approximately 5 to 6 adoption seekers for every actual adoption."

Presumably, we could increase the number of adoptions by a factor of five based on the wait times and stated demand. Next, factor in the reduction in international adoptions which are likly motivated by the waiting time. Now, factor the number of people who discount adoption because of the time delay. Allow for medically necessary abortions.

It becomes very difficult to argue that we are in any danger of having too many unwanted newborns.

But as we've seen, DonP, the constraining factor is an extremely inelastic supply curve, not demand. Moreover, the pre-Rose "market" for healthy infants was also marked by shortages, indicating to me that there's considerable slack to take up unaborted infants.

We must also add that unfortunate as it is, some significant minority abortions are obtained by women who use abortion as birth control; half of the women obtaining abortions have had at least one before. If abortion were not legal and relatively cheap, these women might explore alternatives, such as more reliable birth control usage.

Again, I'm not saying that the alternative of adoption means we should outlaw abortion; I explicitly denied that in the post. I'm saying that the financial welfare of the children or mothers is not a reason to support legal abortion.

Having poked around a bit, I find no readily available data with an age/race distribution of potential adoptees.

This site has an age distribution and it has a race distribution, but not both:

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/dis/afcars/publications/afcars.htm

So the statistics are still out on this one. But, I'll eat my shoe if the statistics, once located, don't bear out the idea that black babies, of every age, are harder to place than their other counterparts.

However, Jane is clearly misleading on another count. Note her contention that "many of the couples who can't adopt here end up going to China, South America, or Africa for babies."

Africa? As this site indicates, less than 1 percent of international adoptions over a thirty year period (1971 - 2001) were from Africa:

http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/FactOverview/international.html

Don't they teach Chicago MBA's anything about data driven analysis these days?

Vince:

I'm not sure what relevance you think those numbers have to Jane Galt's claim.

The issue is whether adoption is an even remotely realistic alternative to the 1,000,000+ abortions that occur in America every year.

The same website from which you just quoted confirms the blindingly obvious answer: NO.

http://www.adoptioninstitute.org/policy/polfos.html

Demographic data and the sociopolitical factors impacting the adoption of children in foster care suggest that adoption demand will increase dramatically in the near future, far outstripping the current, already inadequate supply of adoptive families.

In other words, even on current projections the number of children needing adoption will far exceed the supply of prospective adoptive parents. And yet Jane Galt is proposing to add around one million additional children needing adoption every year.

No, decon, they've abandonned it in favour of nurturing our delicate little psyches.

As it happens, the couple I knew adopted from Africa. A lot of people adopt from Asia and Latin America.

As we've all found out, it's damn hard to get good statistics on distributions. But from what I know, from talking to friends who've adopted, reading articles on the subject, and listening to my mother, who was a social worker in pre-Roe days, healthy infants without family restrictions of any race get adopted -- though the waiting lists are longer for white children, they're still quite long for non-white infants.

DonP: we're talking about two different populations; the population of familes that want to adopt infants and toddlers, and the population of families that want to adopt ten year olds whose mothers beat them. The supply of the latter is already inadequate; the supply of the former is not, as a moment's reflection on the meaning of a 7 year waiting list would have told you. It is true that almost no one wants to adopt older children, but none of the women who carry their pregnancies to term will be delivering ten year old children, so that's not really germane to the discussion at hand.

Jane wrote: "B) Our crime rate has been higher than, say, Sweden's since long before the welfare state, so the welfare state is, at best, a non-variable."

Think you'll find Finland's murder rate at the turn of the 1900's was one of the highest recorded. (Source: Your employer).

"Women are waiting longer and longer to have babies; as their fertility declines, demand for adoption will rise."

Nope. Declining fertility with age is a overwhelmingly a function of egg quality. We're

Comment got cut off, so here's the remainder:

"Women are waiting longer and longer to have babies; as their fertility declines, demand for adoption will rise."

Nope. Declining fertility with age is a overwhelmingly a function of egg quality. We're

How do you rationalize this disconnect:

(A) There are only 100,000 adoptions a year, so that means that only 100,000 couples/families/individuals want to adopt.

with

(B) Substantial evidence posted in this thread that people have to wait years to adopt, more people want to adopt than ever get to adopt, and that there is a thriving black market for children from outside the US?

It would seem to me to be a staggering disconnect- how can your position be true if people are waiting years to adopt?

The answer is first that there isn't a shortage of people wanting to adopt, but rather a significant barrier to adoption in terms of legal channels, cash, and political battles which have little (if nothing) to do with weeding out the bad from the good adopters but does drastically reduce the subset of the willing down to the very desperate and determined.

The dilemma to be solved would necessarily require action on both fronts, and lowering the barriers to demand on the adoption side would seem the logical thing to start with. Boost demand, and then most of the arguments about "not enough people to support it" vanish.

Of course, most of these rather vehement denunciations of Jane are red herrings, since Jane in the post made no positive prescriptions or threats to abortion rights (to prohibit them by force)...

Argggh. Damn server did it again.

Anyway. We're less than 5 years from ovum freezing being feasible. When that happens, the snooze alarm will be hit on the biological clock -as egg quality is the primary cause of female infertility. You'll be able to harvest and freeze eggs in your 20's for later use in your late 30s, 40s or 50s.

bill carone:

What do you think about the mother selling her rights to another person? In other words, she agrees (and contracts) with another person that, in exchange for X amount of money, she agrees not to terminate and to give up her guardianship to the other person?

BAD idea, IMO. An in-utero bonding process frequently takes place between mother and child later in the pregnancy (which could explain why many poor mothers who carry to term do not choose adoption, and also does further violence to blanket assertions that making abortion a more difficult option would increase the adoption pool by ten times).

We've already seen a few nasty post-adoptive paternity suits, some of which others here have mentioned (rare, thankfully, but still nasty) where birth parent(s) attempted to recover a child they previously ceded to adoption.

Giving the mother an opportunity to contract out the fetus -- which she would presumably do early in the pregnancy for reasons of financial security (what if I carry the baby to term and then there is no one willing to pay?) -- could have very negative results should she have a change of heart later.

Tom:

Anyway. We're less than 5 years from ovum freezing being feasible. When that happens, the snooze alarm will be hit on the biological clock -as egg quality is the primary cause of female infertility. You'll be able to harvest and freeze eggs in your 20's for later use in your late 30s, 40s or 50s.

Well, assuming hormone therapy can do something about that common late-40s/early-50s event by which the monthly friend is ended. After that she can donate to an egg bank or frame them behind a fresnel lens, maybe...

Jane Galt:

DonP: we're talking about two different populations; the population of familes that want to adopt infants and toddlers, and the population of families that want to adopt ten year olds whose mothers beat them. The supply of the latter is already inadequate; the supply of the former is not, as a moment's reflection on the meaning of a 7 year waiting list would have told you. It is true that almost no one wants to adopt older children, but none of the women who carry their pregnancies to term will be delivering ten year old children, so that's not really germane to the discussion at hand.

Wrong yet again. For someone who claims to be a professional journalist, your reading comprehension skills are appalling. Your term "7 year waiting list" is presumably a reference to the statistic that the estimated wait time for a "healthy infant" is 1 to 7 years. A moment's reflection should have told you that this does not mean that the adoptive demand for newborns exceeds the supply, but only that the adoptive demand for healthy newborns exceeds the supply. With reference to your claim that adoption is a realistic alternative to abortion, this fact is meaningless for the following reasons, amoung others:

1. Many newborns are not healthy. For well-understood reasons, babies born to women who didn't want them are particularly prone to suffer from health or developmental problems. Women who have abortions are disproportionately poor, unmarried, uneducated, lacking in health insurance, abusers of drugs or alcohol, and so on.

2. If adoption is to replace abortion, the supply of children needing adoption will increase by around a factor of 10. You still have not produced a shred of evidence to support your claim that the demand for even ideal adoption candidates (let alone all newborns, or all children) is even remotely large enough to absorb this supply.

3. Giving a child up for adoption is a profound emotional trial. As LizardBreath already noted, many of the women who choose or are forced to complete an unwanted pregnancy will choose initially to try and raise their child themselves rather than give it up for adoption, but will later find that they cannot cope with the responsibility of a child. The child will then likely become a candidate for adoption, but because of its age and other factors will be much harder to place with adoptive parents than it would have been as a newborn.

"Well, assuming hormone therapy can do something about that common late-40s/early-50s event by which the monthly friend is ended. After that she can donate to an egg bank or frame them behind a fresnel lens, maybe..."

Already done.

http://library.uchc.edu/bhn/cite/nyt/5718donoreggs.html

Whoever doubts that people really do make the "pro-lifers don't care after birth" argument, I have at least one data point. Go to http://answerguy.blogspot.com and find the comments widget for the most recent abortion post there (probably around January 22, you may need to check the archives).

And please excuse my own response comments there, which in hindsight were asinine.

Brian Doss:

It would seem to me to be a staggering disconnect- how can your position be true if people are waiting years to adopt?

It is obvious. Most people who want to adopt a child don't want to adopt most of the children who need to be adopted.

Let's pretend that we live in the idealized world of your imagination. Let's pretend that every child who would be born in America if it weren't for abortion would be an ideal candidate for adoption. Let's pretend that all these children would be healthy, even though we know that many of them would not be. Let's also pretend that all these children would be able-bodied, even though we know that many of them would suffer from some kind of disability. Let's also pretend that all these children would be developmentally normal, even though we know that many of them would suffer from developmental problems. Let's also pretend that these children would perfectly satisfy the racial demands of potential adoptive parents, even though we know that many adoption candidates are rejected because of their race. And let's further pretend that all these children become candidates for adoption shortly after they are born, even though we know that many or most adopted children become candidates for adoption only months or years after they were born.

In other words, let's pretend that the situation would be the most favorable possible for your claim that adoption is a realistic alternative to abortion, even though we know that's not true.

Now show me your evidence that there are even remotely enough adoptive parents even under these idealized circumstances, let alone under the circumstances of the real world. Just to remind you, we're talking about more than a million children a year. Year after year. More than a million new children needing adoption each and every year. This is, of course, in addition to all the children who are already candidates for adoption.

Show me your evidence.

anony:

and also does further violence to blanket assertions that making abortion a more difficult option would increase the adoption pool by ten times

No one made that assertion. Jane Galt made the absurd assertion that there are enough adoptive parents for all the children who would be born if they weren't instead aborted as fetuses. That would require around 10 times more adoptions per year than currently take place, in a country where there are already far more children waiting to be adopted than there are people willing to adopt them.

DonP, when presented with evidence, you make ludicrous worst-case generalisations to protect your selective misquoting of the data provided. No doubt, some such infants would have health problems; you're assuming all of them will. You also make absurdly self-contradicting statements; we will simultaneously need to find adoptive homes for every child not adopted, but also the mothers will be reluctant to give them up. I have told you why I think that most infants could be found adoptive homes; you torture the data and then demand I provide conclusive proof of a hypothetical. Prove you're not a serial killer, DonP; if you can't offer me conclusive proof, I won't continue the discussion, since I don't talk to serial killers.

Jane Galt:

DonP, when presented with evidence,

You haven't provided any evidence to support the ludicrous claim that I am challenging. All you've provided is evidence that the current demand to adopt "healthy infants" exceeds the supply of them. I asked you for evidence that the demand to adopt children is even remotely sufficient for the supply of them that would be created if all American pregnancies that currently end in abortion were to end in childbirth instead. I'm still waiting for a shred of evidence to support your claim. I assume you have none, which is presumably why you keep trying to change the subject.

No doubt, some such infants would have health problems; you're assuming all of them will.

I never made any such assumption. I specifically said that "many" children would have health problems. Are you under the impression that "many" means the same thing as "all?"

You also make absurdly self-contradicting statements; we will simultaneously need to find adoptive homes for every child not adopted,

I never said that either. You said: "if women having abortions instead carried the fetuses to term and then offered them for adoption, they could almost certainly place each and every baby" [emphasis added]. I am still waiting for even a shred of evidence that they could place even a majority of those babies, let alone "each and every" one of them. Where is it?

And while I'm at it, here's another Jane Galt absurdity:

The practical reasons for abortion have been declining steadily for a century . . . an out of wedlock baby today is a minor embarassment to most women, where a century ago it was socially, professionally, and romantically the end of her life.

You have this exactly backwards. The practical reasons for abortion have been steadily increasing for a century precisely because the ability of women to make choices about the course of their lives, including whether, when and how many children to have, has been steadily increasing. An unwanted child a hundred years ago was far less of an obstacle to a woman's career precisely because very few women even had a career back then anyway. Women were expected almost without exception to have children, to raise children, to satisfy the role of wife, mother and homemaker. Today, women have vastly greater freedom to choose a different course for their lives, which is likely to include fewer children or no children at all.

Some data:

The US birth rate for 2002 was 13.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/03news/lowbirth.htm

The US abortion rate is 16 births per 1000 women aged 15-44.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/surv_abort.htm

6% of abortions are for medical reasons. (various sites, both pro-life and pro-choice; none I can find disagree)

In other words, you're asserting that adding 15 points to the birth rate (the non-medical abortion rate), when the birth rate is currently at 13.9 - more than a doubling of the number of children per year - wouldn't overwhelm adoption demand. I have a *little* bit of a hard time believing this. 10 or 20 percent, sure, but 107%?

Some adoption data:

http://statistics.adoption.com/persons_seeking_to_adopt.php

Doesn't fit with enough demand, either.

Good stuff Jason. In particular the statistic that "about 2 million women ages 15 to 44 (3.5%) had ever sought to adopt a child. Of these, 1.3 million did not adopt and are no longer seeking. 620,000 have adopted one or more children. 204,000 are currently seeking to adopt."

So women who've been deterred are about 2:1 with those that have succeeded. That would triple the sustainable adoption rate.

It's worth pointing out, though, that if abortion were successfully banned (which is, in itself, hard to imagine), then there would be fewer pregnancies as women tighten up on unsafe sex because they know the safety net has been yanked away.

In any case, the most extreme anti-abortion scenario I can imagine would be a de-Federalization of the legislative authority and its return to the several states; this would result in a patchwork of abortion bans with a large number of states where abortion would still be legal, at least in the first trimester (where the vast majority of abortions happen). These states would be the liberal states, where most Americans live. Women in other states would fairly easily fly to the prochoice states to abort - a $200 flight to a $500 procedure. Only the poorest women, in the most conservative states, would bear children they would not otherwise; and that would only increase the number of adoptibles marginally.

You make a good point with your hypothetical, Leonard. Which states do you think would actually get a ban passed?

I think you'd get Utah and maybe South Carolina and that's it.

Something doesn't make sense about those numbers, Jason. If the two numbers you give are comparable, than there are more abortions in this country than there are live births. Except that your second source says that there are only 254 abortions for every 1000 births. Your first source also says that there were 4,019,280 births in the US. While I've heard conflicting stats on the number of abortions, it's usually between 1M and 1.5M a year, which fits with the 25% stat in the second article. I'm confused.

Figures don't lie, but liars can figure...

Not accusing Jason of lying, but when his stats say there are more abortions than live births in the USA, I think there must be something wrong with his sources.

Don P,

"You have this exactly backwards. The practical reasons for abortion have been steadily increasing for a century precisely because the ability of women to make choices about the course of their lives, including whether, when and how many children to have, has been steadily increasing."

OK you miserable turd, where are your statistics to back this up? Where is your chart from the CDC including the reasons cited for having abortions. Talk about blah, blah, blah.

This is just one assertion you make without citation. With one exception, you have not backed up any of your assertions with a citation. Meanwhile, you have badgered and insulted the host for not citing statistics to back up a hypothetical discussion about whether healthy black children go unadopted due to racsim. A subject you have not bothered to address.

Jim English
Chicago

But I'm not advocating that we ban abortion. I value the mother's right not to have the state telling her what to do with her body pretty damn highly . . . though I recognize, more than most of my acquaintances on either side of the debate, how close a call it is between those two things.

DonP, your logic is grotesque -- the idea that women now have better reasons to terminate their pregnancies because better ends justify worse means . . . well, words fail me. Moreover, the risk to the life and health of the mother, economic wellbeing of herself and her children, her social network and her romantic opportunities from an unwanted child, were far, far higher a hundred years ago than now; it is the conceit of the upper middle class that making partner at a top law firm or MD at a bank, something that perhaps a couple hundred women do every year (and which at any rate largely happen to women outside their prime child-bearing years) are more valuable opportunities than continuing to eat regularly.

Klug - I googled a bit but surprisingly I can't find opinion poll data on pro-life/pro-choice sentiment by state.

However, look at this page for some helpful info on current laws in the states.

Three states have laws declaring that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, abortion is to be prohibited (IL, KY, LA). Moreover, five states have laws declaring their intent to ban abortion to the fullest extent permitted by the Constitution (AR, MO, NE, ND, PA), and three other states have declarations stating their policy to protect the unborn as persons under state law (LA, UT). Three states have resolutions in opposition to the Freedom of Choice Act, a proposed federal law that would codify Roe v. Wade (LA, ND, WV).

My own experience is this:

My wife and I were unable to have children, so we looked into adoption. The reasons why we didn't choose to adopt domestically are manifold:

1) Believe it or not, in Florida the HHS (or equivalent) organization actively discourages adoption, and actively encourages fostering. They're very up-front about it, too. It's very, very difficult to adopt through the state, here.

2) There are babies available through private agencies, but (at the time) there was quite a lot of media coverage about genetic parents' rights and contacting their kids or even trying to reacquire them years later. We didn't want any part of that. The last time we looked at domestic adoption, the birth mother gets to know everything about you; your income, name, address, you name it.

3) Given all of that, we chose to go outside the country. Given that the United States government is a beaurocratic jungle to get through for citizens, we thought it'd be swell to use that as a shield against the possibility of birth parents contacting us against our wishes.

For a wide number of reasons, we chose China. We now have two children who don't look anything like us, and are the center of our lives. They are our family. It doesn't matter where they're from; it matters that they're ours, and we're theirs.

Pregnant women who were willing to give up their babies for adoption would see them snapped up. The waiting list for newborns is always a long one, and (in Florida at least) the list for older children is nonexistent. We're still skittish about the birth-parents recontacting, and it seems as if a great deal of the older children available in-state are termination-of-custody cases, so one or more birth parents are still out there. We recently began (and terminated) an attempt to adopt a termination-of-custody case, and bailed out because the state wouldn't get around to terminating custody for at least eighteen months after they removed the baby from his carseat, his birth father passed out drunk and draped across him. Not the first offense, either. So, we'd have had to foster him for eighteen months in hopes that the state would do the right thing. Sorry, no. I'll never, ever put much at stake in that sort of bet.

Anyway, my two cents.

Oh, and Don P:

Some people will choose to adopt an unhealthy baby now rather than wait several years for a healthy one. Our first Chinese baby was "special needs", which frequently means that there's something wrong with the child, and they don't have the resources to figure out what. In the case of our first child, it turned out to be cerebral palsy. And we have no regrets whatever, aside from the regret that it had to happen to such a wonderful little girl.

And, in our case, entering a seven-year queue for a baby was never, ever an option for us. To bend the unemployment argument back around, some have elected simply to never enter the market. I've had a lot of people tell me this is, for them, a deterrent to even trying. I doubt there's any sort of data to evaluate whether this is a valid idea or not, though.

Klug and Leonard,

I don't know where to look for this info, but it seems to me that a good indicator would be to see what states had legal abortion back when Roe v. Wade was decided.

Mike Wendt:

Good luck! Our girls are age 7 and (nearly) 3, and from Wuhan and Changsha, respectively. And the end product is really, really worth the paperwork, the worrying and the waiting.

The U.S. birthrate is given as 14.5 births per 1000, age 15-44. However, this doesn't seem to match with the number of women in that bracket, and the number of births.

According to the 2000 census, there were just under four million children under the age of 1, which indicates four million births in the preceding year. If you compute the number of women ages 15-44 (which is what the birth rate is based upon), the total comes to roughly 60 million. If the birth rate is 0.0145 (as given in some sources), the number of children born would be only 870,000. Obviously, there's something I've failed to understand here.

Of course, population growth rate doesn't equal birthrate. But unless immigration of newborns is really, really booming, it's close.

I have no doubt that if abortion were made illegal and if all those babies normally aborted were put up for adoption many of those children would be easily adopted.

And if wishes were candy canes we would all be fat and happy.

1. Even if made illigal, healthy, pro-choice, economically and educationally upper-class women would still be able to get an abortion. Wanna bet me on that. My GYN would do it. Or my best friend, who is an ER doctor, or her friend, who is an OB/GYN. So that removes a small portion of your adoption pool right there.

2. In the 1930s through the 1960s (and I have no idea where to find statistics on this, so I could be wrong)I don't recall hearing about how there were a lack of healthy children to adopt. There was a huge excess if I recall. What makes you think that this won't happen again?

3. Some percentage of all those babies given up for adoption will not be 100% and will not be adoptable. So are we advocating burdoning the welfare system or the state with taking care of these children for the rest of there lives. These lost children with mental or physical disabilities, children born to drug addicts or just born with problems. And how about the children whose parents took care of them for those first, years and then had to give them up, or the kids who are taken away from their parents because they were beaten, raped, mentally abused, locked in a basement, starved or caged? What about them? And yes Jane, I would say that growing up unloved with little hope for your future might in fact be a very good reason to be aborted from the start. Sometimes the kindest thing to do is to allow someone to avoid pain and suffering. I'm also pro-euthenasia.

4. From an article my Grandmother wrote for Contemporary OB/GYN about 15 years ago (and I doubt this has changed) women aged 13-15 are much more likely to have complications from pregnancy than from abortions and it is always safer to have an abortion in the first timester than it is to carry a baby to term. Therefore couldn't you argue that if any women gets pregnant and aborts in her first trimester this is being done to potentially save the life of the mother and that anyone who is 15 or under can have an abortion at any time to protect their own life?

5. Probably it should also be considered that many of the women who get pregnant and who would have abortions would keep their babies as opposed to giving them to "stragers" for adoption. Please discuss the social and economic impact of this on society as a whole.

I think you're making the issue much to simplistic.

Since I completely disagree with the supposition that life, in general, is precious and that abortion is in any way wrong, I see the adoption problem as one of economics and emotions. I find you thesis full of holes and unrealistic. Once again theory does not translate into practice.

On the other hand, if you use the total population, the 0.0145 birthrate gives you just under 4 million, which is spot on. Why do they even bother with the 15-44 age restriction, I wonder?

Slarti-

Thanks. Don't want to turn this into a support group or anything, but thanks.

Amidst all the statistics-bandying about Don P's assertions, I hope it at least registered with some of you than Slarti's and my anecdotal reports are indeed illustrative of significant contributors to the problem of insufficient demand for orphans (does that put in pure enough economic terms?), those being the bureaucracy here and the inability to be sure that the birth parents are out of the picture.

Mike:

No intent to do that to Jane. Feel free to comment on my blog if you want to chat.

Now, re: birthrate:

On the other hand, if you use the total population, the 0.0145 birthrate gives you just under 4 million, which is spot on. Why do they even bother with the 15-44 age restriction, I wonder?

Jane, DonP:

Good debate.

I agree with Jane that there is a large pent up demand for adopting newborn babies and that would take care of at least part the new babies resulting from banning abortion.

But I think DonP has a point that the numbers are out of whack. There is a 7 year waiting list but banning abortion would multiply available babies by TEN. That means that the waiting list would disappear overnight and there would still be a lot of babies to ?spare?. And the next year you?d have another million babies but no longer any adoption queue.

I realize this is a very static analysis but I think that was Jane?s point all along.

I just don?t see with the numbers provided here that there is anywhere near a demand to adopt one million babies every year.

Being a conservative by nature, it's always dismayed me that it's almost a plank in the Republican platform that the very things that might tend to reduce the need for abortions (sex education, availability of contraceptives, etc) are actively frowned upon. I think this is an unintended consequence of Christian morality, but the reality of things is that people are going to have sex, even when they think they shouldn't, and the more they know about reproduction and contraception, the less likely that sexual adventure is going to result in unwanted progeny.

For my kids, sex education is and will be a continual process. As a seven-year-old, my daughter doesn't yet need to know about contraception, but she does know about pregnancy and childbirth. We'll fill in the rest of the details sometime in the next few years and well before fertility is a possibility. Pretending sex won't occur because you view out-of-wedlock sex as being sinful just lacks smarts. While it may (or may not) be true that deeply religious people tend to sin less frequently in that respect, they still do. And the rest of humanity will suffer from policies born out of the hopefulness of those who fancy themselves to be favored by God.

Jane, above in this string you recently posted "But I'm not advocating that we ban abortion. I value the mother's right not to have the state telling her what to do with her body pretty damn highly . . . though I recognize, more than most of my acquaintances on either side of the debate, how close a call it is between those two things."

Funny, but I certainly had the impression over several months that you were against abortion at any time for any reason other than possibly the immediate and one-hundred-percent predicted mortality of mother (and thus infant).

Now me, I'm squeamish and disapprove of third-trimester abortion-on-demand, yet I do think them permissible for lesser medical reasons than fatality - eg anencephalic (did I get that right? Those bodies with only enough central nervous system to [almost] sustain life, no more) and some others.

First-trimester, lightly discourage it and insist on at least a couple of hours discussing options. When I say "lightly", I mean that any counsellor should not try to completely dismiss abortion as one of the available options - no browbeating, breast-beating, holier-than-thou types acceptable. No other restrictions.

Second-trimester, I am still thinking about. More restrictive in some way, but not coercive.

As to the abort-vs-adopt business, for those willing, fine. And some easier way of doing it, and more certainty of a "finalized" adoption actually being final, would help. But poor as the effect of our laws may seem, their intent is largely good. Of course, we all have heard of that famous road surfaced with all good intention...

"2) There are babies available through private agencies, but (at the time) there was quite a lot of media coverage about genetic parents' rights and contacting their kids or even trying to reacquire them years later. We didn't want any part of that. The last time we looked at domestic adoption, the birth mother gets to know everything about you; your income, name, address, you name it."

Just out of curiosity, would you object to any contact? Contact with the child after he turns 18?

I wonder what the optimum rule is for encouraging potential birth mothers to relinquish rather than abort while not chasing away potential adoptive parents. Would leaving open the possibility of contact, either during childhood or after, lead more pregnant women to choose adoption? Is it really that important to some, many, or most adoptive parents that their children never contact their birth parents?

I'm also adoptive parent of 3 kids. From overseas. We tried to adopt domestically but the hassles of severing paternal rights (which of the three named potential fathers should be served with which writs?) proved insurmountable.

I'd suggest that adopting a second kid older than the one you have at present poses some risks. I develop that line of thought in my own journal.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/p_o_u_n_c_e_r/

The Clinton adminstration made a large tax credit available to adoptive parents as an experiment; which has been made "permanent" in the more recent Bush tax cut. About $10K is available to offset the expenses of adoption -- bringing the net costs down to a very doable figure. If you can afford a new car but are willing to buy a used one instead, you can afford to adopt.

Don P, do your calculations, such as they are, take into account that some of the people on the waiting list MIGHT be willing to adopt more than one child? Do you suppose that if the tax credit or other financial support were higher, or better publicized, that more parents might avail themselves of the option? Do you suppose if abortion were to remain legal, but were socially discouraged -- in the same sort of way that we permitted-but-discouraged smoking cigarettes before Bloomberg -- that the "supply" of newborns would still overwhelm the "demands" of parents?

Just out of curiosity, would you object to any contact?

No. Just the kind that comes without asking for permission. Certainly, after she's reached 18 it will then be in the adoptee's hands.

In the case of my kids, though, the likelihood of contact with birth parents is remote in the extreme. They were both abandoned near birth, and there's little information available on either end that could be used to trace them. There are a few downsides to this, but being a parent is much, much more than just contributing genetic material.

It seems most of the commenters realize the non-static nature of the numbers contributing to this issue. Pouncer's point about the tax credit is on point as well - increasing the credit further would encourage more couples to adopt and probably still be cost-effective.

Slartibartfast's latest comment reminds me that in China it's actually illegal to give up your child, so parents with unwanted (girls) usually breast-feed for a couple months, then abandon them to an orphanage. This is essentially a wink-and-nod system, but the important thing is that the legal bond is absolutely cut. That's very attractive.

A last issue that confounds domestic adoption is that most of us want healthy, normal children. Black, yellow, striped, but healthy. Concerns over whether a domestic child was abandoned because mom was on crack or an alcoholic stop a LOT of people from considering this as an option. A system that vetted incoming children and their mothers would go a long way toward encouraging more people to adopt domestically. But how to uncouple the birth parents' rights once and for all, with our legal system the way it is? It's a testament to how big an issue this is that thousands of people go to Russia for children where the first thing they tell you is that fetal alcohol syndrome is a problem there. So even if they're willing to face a health risk above and beyond the unavoidable unknowns, they are often not willing to goof around with the legal issues.

The claim that anybody opposed to abortion must take care of any excess children sounds familiar. It sounds like the claim that opposing Saddam means the US must take care of Iraq and the claim that anybody pro-immigration must take care of immigrants on welfare.

Jason wrote:

"The US birth rate for 2002 was 13.9 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/03news/lowbirth.htm

The US abortion rate is 16 births per 1000 women aged 15-44.

http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/surv_abort.htm"

Jason, your first figure is misquoted; it's 13.9 births per 1,000 persons, not per 1,000 women agen 15-44. The abortion rate (~0.8 million) is around 20% that of the birth rate (~4 million). As reluctant as I am to say it, this makes Jane's point not unreasonable.

On adoption, here's a story about a friend of a friend:

Decide they want to get pregnant. Wife is in late 30s.

Try fertility drugs. Unsuccessful.

Try IVF. Unsuccessful.

Try IVF with an egg donor. Unsuccessful.

Decide to adopt from a foreign country (Georgia). Go through the all the hoops and expenses. Visit Georgia, see the child. Are two days away from signing the adoption papers; then the whole of the adoption agency gets arrested.

Come back from Georgia, devastated.

Couple gets pregnant two months later. No IVF, no fertility drugs.

Couple goes back to Georgia, adopts the georgian child. Which is good, because the child had fallen sick and was in a hospital that couldn't afford antibiotics. He spends a month in Stanford children's hospital (on and off). He's doing OK now I heard, though still low weight for his age.

There's a Hallmark movie in that story.

A question, and apologies if it has been addressed amid some of the flammage above that I admittedly skipped over: Are we talking here about ALL children available for adoption, or only children born in the U.S. available for adoption? Because it seems that talking only about the latter would distort the picture considerably. Purely on the anecdotal evidence, it looks like a fair number of people -- indeed, including at least a few of the adoptive parents who have posted on this thread -- adopted their children from overseas. If we're going to have a serious discussion about what kind of impact placing one million extra newborns into the adoption market is going to have, it seems as though we should consider all of the children currently available to U.S. parents for adoption, not just those born on these shores or currently residing in U.S. foster care or other facilities.

There's a flip side to that question of course, and that is -- how many non-U.S. parents adopt U.S. children?

Anyhow, it's entirely possible that someone addressed this above, and I simply missed it in my scanning. If that's the case, a nudge in the right direction would be appreciated.

Jane, thanks for opening up a very delicate topic. As an adoptee and an adopter, I have had first hand experience with both sides of the abortion/adoption dabate. My parents adopted both my sister and I, as infants, within 2 years of each other. When my wife and I adopted our son through a private adoption, we were on the waiting list with a local Catholic social service agency. The waiting period was 5 years, and once we adopted, we were dropped from the list. We would have liked to adopt at least one other child, but at 40, we are now to old for a domestic adoption. I believe there is a large pent-up demand for infant adoption that is not reflected in the current statistics. Most adoptive couples I've spoken with would have liked to adopt more than one child, and other childless families have been discouraged from adopting domestically by the limitations on participation and the cost. Where I live, the most popular private adoption attorney charges approximately $25,000 for an infant adoption.

Jane -

like a stopped clock, Don P is on occasion, close to right once in while. His claim that American women today face more negative consequences from an "unwanted" child than did women of one hundred years ago bears examination. Your catalog of the consequences to a woman of one hundred years ago is more correctly a catalog of the consequences of single motherhood which is not the same as bearing an unwanted child.

Plenty of married women with husbands who were functional providers had children they didn't really want to have; their life prospects would generally only change for the worse in degree, not in kind. These days, when having a career outside the household is an option for most women, and the prospect of divorce is significant, a married woman having an unwanted child does find more options foreclosed.

In response to GT, Don P and others -

Jane has not said that she thinks banning abortion would result in ~1m new babies/year. I thought she had said that, but she has not. She has not said exactly what she thinks might happen.

Jane has mentioned that she thinks there would be somewhat fewer abortions just based on fewer women using abortion as their safety net.

As Kate and others have pointed out, even a full abortion ban at the Federal level would not stop all abortion. Illegal ones would continue (I could line one up in a matter of days; cost might be more of an issue on the black market, but that's just money; what's 6 months of your life worth?). Flying or driving to Canada or elsewhere is now easier and cheaper than it has ever been. A round trip to Toronto would cost me $240 as I write this. Surely, if America banned abortion the Canadian market would expand to take up the slack.

And as I previously stated, I think a full abortion ban at the Federal level is not going to happen. The most that is likely is a Supreme Court which (correctly, IMO) views abortion as a 10th amendment power "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution". Defederalizing abortion would probably result in abortion bans (or de-facto bans) in many states, but surely not in NY, MD, VT, CA, and WA. Add one state in the South and one in the Midwest and just about everyone is within a day's drive of an abortion.

Winging it completely, I'd guess that the worst case scenario would end up in a few hundred thousand more births per year; and most of those, the women (and/or their families) will end up keeping. Perhaps 200000 extra babies, of which only 100000 will end up as adoptable.

On the demand side, there's demand for at least 200000 extra adoptions per year. I don't think 1 million is likely, but there I think there is probably a lot of untapped demand that would appear if adoption were cheap and easy. Perhaps 400000 per year.

Anthony,

All that is true; but how many abortions are performed on married women? I don't know the answer, but I would expect it to be a small percentage.

Michelle Dulak,

While this is a wholely unscientific bit of anicdotal evidence I know six people in my life who have had abortions. Two were when I was a teenager and so were they, Two were in committed relationships at the time of the pregnancy, but they were not yet ready for marriage and children (one of the women ended up leaving her boyfirend for other reasons about a year later and one of the women ended up married to her boyfriend and they now have a child) and two were married, one had never wanted children and she ended up getting an abortion AND her tubes tied and the other was married, had two children and had just bought a house and gone back to work and didn't want a third baby.

With the execption of one of the teenagers, who was in her fourth month, they were all fisrt trimester abortions.

I think that this unscientific evidence shows that there is a wide variety of reasons why women in virtually all demographics get abortions.

Kate,

I think that this unscientific evidence shows that there is a wide variety of reasons why women in virtually all demographics get abortions.

I'm sure you're right. My point, in response to Anthony, was that comparing the consequences of bearing an unwanted child to married women now and married women a century ago is somewhat beside the point if (as I suspect) most women who abort aren't married.

I remain amazed that there are still a million abortions a year in this country, given that (1) we are constantly being told that abortions are getting harder and harder to obtain; and (2) it has never in the history of humanity been easier for a woman to avoid becoming pregnant. Can anyone suggest an explanation?

Given how dangerous childbirth was for mothers 100 years ago, compared to today, an unwanted pregnacy in 1904 carried considerably more risk.

Good thread here, but I would just like to add one point.

Speaking as a pro-life conservative, it seems to me that economic consequences relating to abortion are not at all important in determining whether abortion is acceptable or not.

If we as a society decide that life begins at conception and that abortion is the killing of a unique human being, then arguments about welfare or poverty increases only cheapen human life.

To say that abortion is wrong, but that I don't want to pay more taxes to end it or suffer the company of more poor people is a terrible statement to make.

The related statement that it is better to abort people than to raise them as children in a ugly situation is incredibly arrogant and cold-hearted. Having a hard life is not a good thing, but certainly it is preferable to death? And, why should we have the right to decide that someone is better off dead?

From an article my Grandmother wrote for Contemporary OB/GYN about 15 years ago (and I doubt this has changed) women aged 13-15 are much more likely to have complications from pregnancy than from abortions and it is always safer to have an abortion in the first timester than it is to carry a baby to term. Therefore couldn't you argue that if any women gets pregnant and aborts in her first trimester this is being done to potentially save the life of the mother and that anyone who is 15 or under can have an abortion at any time to protect their own life?

According to ex-abortion doctor Caroll Everett, it was (at the time of her practice) probably NOT safer to have an abortion that carry a pregnancy to term. But rarely would deaths associated with abortion be reported as such, for a number of reasons -- non-obvious cause of death to name one; the political machinery, to name another.

To give a random example, suppose the abortionist was clumsy or just in a hurry (not all that improbable, especially at a dedicated clinic -- what does ANY good worker do when his/her income is based on sales?), and nicked the uterine wall. That wound subsequently infects and, given the blood saturation of the uterus at the time, the infection enters the bloodstream. A couple days later, the woman dies of septicemia. That death is going to be, shall we say, a bit less obvious than a maternal death caused directly by carrying a pregnancy to term; and in the event an investigation/autopsy is even carried out, what doctor (save for a vocally prolife one) would want to risk his medical reputation to say the death was caused by an abortion?

So there is potentially a huge reporting dillemma in assessing whether abortion is truly a (physically) "safer" alternative.

Another problem is that the abortion process unnaturally screws with the maternal hormone cycle and the organs of reproduction, hence can increase the possibility of future miscarriage. So, a woman who chooses to abort an unwanted pregnancy now may find it more difficult to maintain a wanted pregnancy later.

Still a third issue to consider is that a not-insignificant proportion of women who abort report a trauma experience common enough to have its own name, PASS (post-abortive stress syndrome). Oddly enough some women who have aborted rape pregnancies have reported PASS symptoms far outlasting the rape trauma, so apparently in extreme form it can be quite severe.

But I think DonP has a point that the numbers are out of whack. There is a 7 year waiting list but banning abortion would multiply available babies by TEN. That means that the waiting list would disappear overnight and there would still be a lot of babies to ?spare?. And the next year you?d have another million babies but no longer any adoption queue.

Wrong on two counts, I believe. Jane Galt brought up one counterpoint: If abortion were to be more stigmatized that it is now, odds are good that rational people currently using abortion as an ex-post-coitus birth control would take other forms of birth control more seriously, resulting in a drop in the numbers of unwanted pregnancies.

Second counterpoint is the in-utero bonding process I brought up earlier. Some "unwanted" pregnancies may become wanted later in the process.

The final impact of these two possibilities, and bearing in mind that Jane Galt nowhere proposed eliminating abortion, is quite uncertain -- although I think we can fairly assert that the the actual increase in the number of adoption candidates would be considerably less than ten times the present.

Being a conservative by nature, it's always dismayed me that it's almost a plank in the Republican platform that the very things that might tend to reduce the need for abortions (sex education, availability of contraceptives, etc) are actively frowned upon. I think this is an unintended consequence of Christian morality, but the reality of things is that people are going to have sex, even when they think they shouldn't, and the more they know about reproduction and contraception, the less likely that sexual adventure is going to result in unwanted progeny.

The reality of things, at least as relates to public education, is that people have MORE sex when "aggressive" sex education programs with contraceptive promotion are implemented, and LESS when strong abstinence curricula are implemented. I don't have the relevant cites handy at the moment but AFAIK this has been demonstrated quite consistently.

And is it really so surprising? We are, after all, talking about authority figures making presentations to children -- sure, they may be reaching their late teens in the case of high school, but they're also only just beginning to reach full cognitive maturation.

The body has achieved basic sexual capability and the hormone overdose may be saying Go for it! Mate like dogs!, but many of the people in the target audience are still not truly ready to evaluate the emotional complications and consequences of their actions the same way as, say, a person in their early twenties, who has had more time to learn who they are and what they really want from life. (There are, of course, always exceptions both ways.)

The "some will have sex anyway" argument is weak. By way of hyperbole some people will also rob banks in spite of criminal statutes to the contrary, but that doesn't justify abridging or revoking the relevant laws, because the consequencs of doing so are considered to be worse.

Michelle -

I'm not sure why there are still so many abortions when it is as easy to avoid getting pregnant, though I have a few hypotheses based on anecdotal evidence:

Most other forms of birth control are unpleasant for some fraction of people. Many women experience undesireable side effects from The Pill (any version) or other chemical alternatives. IUDs are scary, and do have bad side effects in some number of women.

Not all forms of birth control are terribly reliable: Condoms don't fit all men well, and some are particularly prone to breakage, especially Avanti polyurethane condoms.

Society doesn't encourage personal responsibility in any field; there's almost always some sort of fallback no matter how you screw up. Abortion is the fallback for sex, but there are fallbacks which are more-or-less available for financial screwups, job screwups, etc.

Something that I'm still not sure I believe, but apparently girls and young women in very Catholic environments are more likely to have abortions as their primary means of birth control due to an odd mindset. Taking the pill is a continuing sin, and being prepared with condoms shows an intention to sin (by having extramarital sex), while having an abortion is a one-time sin, rather than a continuing sin, and possibly forgiveable.

Lastly, while the number of abortions appears to be remaining constant, the population is growing, so the rate seems to be declining, at least slowly. (Anyone have statistics to the contrary?)

Anony-mouse,

You say:

"The reality of things, at least as relates to public education, is that people have MORE sex when "aggressive" sex education programs with contraceptive promotion are implemented, and LESS when strong abstinence curricula are implemented. I don't have the relevant cites handy at the moment but AFAIK this has been demonstrated quite consistently."

Um, are you sure? I recently ... I think it was something I was listening to on NPR... I can't remember...but I am sure it was in the past month or two, where the exact opposite numbers were thrown about. In schools where condoms were accessable and all birth-control options were discussed the prenancy rates were HALF that of schools that only had an abstanance program in place.

Nathan,

You said:

"If we as a society decide that life begins at conception and that abortion is the killing of a unique human being, then arguments about welfare or poverty increases only cheapen human life.

To say that abortion is wrong, but that I don't want to pay more taxes to end it or suffer the company of more poor people is a terrible statement to make.

The related statement that it is better to abort people than to raise them as children in a ugly situation is incredibly arrogant and cold-hearted. Having a hard life is not a good thing, but certainly it is preferable to death? And, why should we have the right to decide that someone is better off dead?"

Many of us don't think life begins at conception. We think you're wrong. But because you have "faith" that you are right you essentially force your religious, moral and social beliefs on my body. Goody. If it's not a person, it's not a person and therefore I have no guilt about discussing the socio-economic ramifications to keeping abortion or preventing it.

I think most people, except the most wacked-out die-hards, who are pro-choice would say that they have no problems with first trimester abortions, second trimester abortions are a grey area and third trimester abortions are awful unless there is a serious problem (and I don't simply mean danger to the life of the mother.) But, and here is the difference, we're willing to let people follow their own moral compass. You, on the other hand, thinks life begins at conception and there is nothing I can do to change your belief in that.

So since I am not bound by the confines of a faith in something I have no proof of, I think I will continue to argue the social and economic implications of abortion v. adoption.

Good post.

James

anony-mouse:

I don't necessarily disagree with your counterpoints.

But they share a common flaw.

They are both part of a 'dynamic' analysis. And once we go down that route this whole debate ends since nobody has a clue as to what will happen. It becomes a war of who can come up with the better sounding scenario.

That's why I (and Jane in her original post) stuck to a simply static analysis. Jane made the point, correctly, that there is a pent-up demand for adopting babies.

DonP made the point, correctly, that the numbers show that if all the women that have abortions had the babies and gave them up for adoption they would overwhelm demand.

That's all.

Prohibiting abortion wouldn't increase the adoption supply anywhere near ten-fold. A mother generally has a different attitude toward her own newborn infant, even if, when having previously considered an abortion, she accepted the pro-choice premise that her first-trimester fetus was the moral equivalent of a wart.

As a commentor noted above, the relinquishment rate is currently between 1% and 2%, and even pre-Roe was only 19%. So the net increase would likely be in the neighborhood of 10,000 - 200,000.

I am also a practicing Catholic; and, I am unalterably opposed to abortion on demand . . . also fail to understand why, when an unmarried woman elects to have unprotected sex, gets pregnant and keeps the child, I now have the obligation to support not only the woman but also her child(ren).

I seem to recall Jesus saying something in re: children having to do with millstones, and suffering, and something, but I may have been drunk at the time.

The reality of things, at least as relates to public education, is that people have MORE sex when "aggressive" sex education programs with contraceptive promotion are implemented, and LESS when strong abstinence curricula are implemented.

Perhaps -- although I think you're mistaken, and I believe recent statistics show exactly the opposite effect from what you claim -- but would you rather have more teens having sex with fewer getting pregnant, or fewer having sex with a greater proportion becoming pregnant?

Here's a report (PDF file) that suggests that abstinence-only programs are not nearly so effective as you claim, and seems to conclude that a combination of abstinence encouragement along with contraceptive education is the most effective. Here's testimony by Rep. Henry Waxman that claims that the Bush Administration is massaging the data. Googling "abstinence only effectiveness" brings up a lot of data, none of which appears to offer hard data that it actually works.

Raving:

Prohibiting abortion wouldn't increase the adoption supply anywhere near ten-fold. A mother generally has a different attitude toward her own newborn infant, even if, when having previously considered an abortion, ...

This is irrelvant. Jane Galt's argument is that adoption is a realistic alternative to abortion. The argument is based on the premise that the child will be given up for adoption. Obviously, in cases where the child is not given up for adoption, adoption is not an alternative at all, and her argument fails for that reason.

As I said earlier, an unwanted child born from an unwanted pregnancy that the woman would rather have aborted is at substantially higher risk of harm from neglect or abuse by its mother than a wanted child. The risk applies both during pregnancy and after. So encouraging--let alone compelling--women to complete unwanted pregnancies and raise the child themselves would produce many more abused and neglected children.

GT: Fair enough. But in this case I think the static analysis hands us a meaningless figure, given the ramifications. And I, neither, wish to pursue the dynamic analysis because there are too many unknowns.

Kate: That could indeed be the case. However, there are other issues to consider besides pregnancy itself, such as STDs, a number of which can be transmitted through or in spite of common contraceptive devices; and also the emotional consequences of engaging in sexual liasion before a person is cognitively prepared to evaluate the choice. IMO neither of these is well served in aggressive sex-ed curricula.

Phil: Thanks for the additional data. I should note that while I personally view abstinence-only as the soundest choice ideologically, an abstienence promotion + contraception education is probably the more realistic. The so-called "comprehensive sex education" programs are my primary target of criticism: if an authority figure saturates hormone-charged youths with the sights, sounds, and paraphanelia of sexuality -- while placing little or no empahsis on the negative consequences that can and do occur and are always avoided by abstaining -- can much good come of it?

"As I said earlier, an unwanted child born from an unwanted pregnancy that the woman would rather have aborted is at substantially higher risk of harm from neglect or abuse by its mother than a wanted child."

Got any stats on how women who were forced into carrying an orginally unwanted pregnancy to term (by parents, religion, lack of access etc.) actually feel about their children once born? Do the vast majority hate them or love them? How do the kids feel about being alive? (just kidding -- of course I know that's all irrelevant).

There's a lot of child abuse out there as it is, despite abortion on demand. What percent of those were unwanted pregnancies (in which the mother just somehow forgot to abort)?

Kate,

Sorry to hear your life is worthless.

"Kate,

Sorry to hear your life is worthless."

This sort of comment is garbage.

Getting back to the original issue... the fact of the matter is, we can trivially conceive children beyond the point of zero aggregate societal utility. Therefore, it IS legitimate to argue in terms of comparative value of children. An aborted child should not be evaluated purely in terms of what that particular life would have been, because the existence of that child will likely discourage the conception and birth of another child at least indirectly. A fair comparison would have to take into account the value of that other potential child's life! Another potential child that could very well be more wanted, etcetera.

I agree with Steven Pinker when he says that there isn't an answer to be "discovered" to the abortion problem; instead we need to decide on a somewhat arbitrary line. And I am convinced the arbitrary line should be after conception because I don't believe there is any fundamental distinction between the potential of an aborted embryo and the "opportunity cost" potential of a child that would have existed if the first embryo was aborted. Third trimester, there's a distinction because there's a functioning human nervous system that's being destroyed (and yes, I'm implicitly stating where I'd draw the arbitrary line), but first trimester? It's just potential.

Third trimester, there's a distinction because there's a functioning human nervous system that's being destroyed

Forms and begins preliminary function (brain waves) towards the end of the first trimester, IIRC.

I still like the Dilbert solution:

Catberts Center for Reproductive Liscensing:

Catbert: "So you want to have a kid---well you'll have to take a test to see if you would make responsible parents. Here it is.

When your child starts crying do you:

a: Feed it
b: rock the child in your arms
c: slap it

Couple: duhh... c: slap it

Catbert: Wrong...you can't have a child....and you will have to leave a few body parts at the front desk..Good bye." (all paraphrased. I don't have a copy of the actual cartoon)

Whose life is it anyway -- and why stop at birth?

When I was educated (many years ago) at University, I (being an engineer) took a (required) survey course of/in Western Literature -- "Comp Lit" in those days of yesteryear.

One of the things I was taught in our readings of Homer's The Odyssey was that the ancient Greeks operated in what was called a "Shame" culture -- as opposed to our modern "Guilt" society -- the difference being that back then an individual was worried about bringing shame to his "house" whereas we would worry about breaking a "moral" code and feeling guilty about it.

Nowadays -- what with our "victims" culture -- we depend on secular laws (and their comparative existance and/or lack of enforcement) to determine right from wrong. Our society confers (or discovers -- take your pick) equal rights for all citizens -- even before they "come of age".

Oh, yeah, parents still have some rights -- but they're diminishing.

So, let's put the abortion discussion into this context.

If parents had the right (dare I say -- the responsibility) to kill their rotten children up until the day they reach majority, would the world be a better place?

For sure, this would end the abortion debate (why stop at birth?). And it would make almost ALL children better hehaved (Your parents REALLY CAN KILL YOU!)

Remember the movie, Taras Bulba -- when Yul caps Tony Curtis for consortin' with the pretty Polish girl?

The "some will have sex anyway" argument is weak. By way of hyperbole some people will also rob banks in spite of criminal statutes to the contrary, but that doesn't justify abridging or revoking the relevant laws, because the consequencs of doing so are considered to be worse.

Well, that would be a decent comparison if we were even contemplating making robbing banks legal but morally frowned upon. But that's not the case. I could also turn it around, and say that maybe people would rob banks less often if nobody talked about it, and if guns were difficult to obtain. But let's not go there.

Look: I'm not saying that we should have sex education without any sort of moral evaluation, or even without any commentary about emotional issues. I'm saying that pretending that kids won't have sex if you don't talk about it does not work. It didn't work a century ago, and it sure as hell won't work today. Today's kids are going to figure things out on their own without adult guidance if you don't teach them in schools or at home. And of course, any sex education has to include thorough discussion of risk factors, including STDs and that contraception is never 100% effective. Personally, I'd think that STDs would be a big deterrent, but it's been a while since the teenage hormones were on the rampage.

Just to be clear, my personal view is that kids shouldn't be having sex. But it's also my personal view that legislating morality doesn't work. Morality is personal, and should be addressed in person, not as part of some local ordinance. Telling people that they can't do something you believe is immoral will have exactly zero impact on their morality. If you're truly a Christian (not saying you are, anony-mouse; this addresses the religious right) then it's far more useful to discuss and possibly convert than to make it illegal for people to do things you regard to be sinful, and get only resentment in return.

My views on the whole abortion thing a retty fundamentalist : from humanist side. We pass through this universe but once so there had better be a damn good reason for curtailing someone else's visit.
Rather more to the point about adoption is something that is mentioned by Jane, race. One of the things that has me howling with rage at the Social Services in the UK ( where I'm from ) is that mixed race adoptions simply do not happen. The attitude appears to be that it is better for a child to suffer through life in a children's home ( and for a description of that read Rod Liddle in www.spectator.co.uk a couple of weeks back ) than to be part of a family that does not share the same racial make up of the child.

Raving:

There's a lot of child abuse out there as it is, despite abortion on demand.

Then why do you want to create even more child abuse by bringing even more children into the world that are not wanted by their mothers, or anyone else?

Anony:

Wrong on two counts, I believe. Jane Galt brought up one counterpoint: If abortion were to be more stigmatized that it is now, odds are good that rational people currently using abortion as an ex-post-coitus birth control would take other forms of birth control more seriously, resulting in a drop in the numbers of unwanted pregnancies.

Sorry, but this bait-and-switch isn't going to work. The ludicrous, absurd, ridiculous claim that Jane Galt made in her post was that it is "almost certain" that "each and every" additional child that would be born if it weren't for abortion would be adopted.

The effect of increased stigmatization of abortion on abortion rates is a different issue. Increased stigmatization of abortion probably would reduce the rate of abortion. But it would have other effects as well. What type and magnitude of stigmatization are you proposing?

Anony:
According to ex-abortion doctor Caroll Everett, it was (at the time of her practice) probably NOT safer to have an abortion that carry a pregnancy to term.

When was “the time of her practice?” 1800? Abortion is one of the safest surgical procedures available. The risk of death from completing a pregnancy and giving birth to a child is about ten times higher than the risk of death from having an abortion. Health and safety considerations overwhelmingly favor abortion over completion of a pregnancy.

Still a third issue to consider is that a not-insignificant proportion of women who abort report a trauma experience common enough to have its own name, PASS (post-abortive stress syndrome).

There is no credible evidence that abortion poses a significant risk of emotional or psychological trauma for most women. The risks to a woman’s mental health from completing an unwanted pregnancy, and especially from being compelled to complete the pregnancy, are far greater. “Post-Abortion Syndrome” is a non-existent medical condition dreamed up by anti-abortion fanatics as a tool in their relentless war to criminalize abortion.

Michelle Dulak:

I remain amazed that there are still a million abortions a year in this country, given that (1) we are constantly being told that abortions are getting harder and harder to obtain; and (2) it has never in the history of humanity been easier for a woman to avoid becoming pregnant. Can anyone suggest an explanation?

Abortions are not getting harder and harder to obtain. They're getting easier and easier. The real (inflation-adjusted) cost of abortion has been declining for decades. Women are also increasingly financially independent from husbands and boyfriends, and so are increasingly able to fund the costs of abortion (including, if necessary, travel costs) themselves. The advent of medical abortion through drugs such as RU486 and the "morning-after" pill, which were virtually unknown in America as recently as a decade ago, are also dramatically increasing access to abortion.

Abortion remains common in America primarily because of intense opposition--often by the same groups and people who oppose abortion--to programs and policies designed to increase the use of contraception. The Catholic Church is an obvious example.

Don P:
The ludicrous, absurd, ridiculous claim that Jane Galt made

Geez, looks like somebody woke up on the wrong side of the Internet this morning. Jane's answered all your ravings, and still you steam, certain that she is secretly one of Those People Who Want To Turn Back The Clock.

Looks like you need refresher courses in logic AND how to treat a lady, son.

the argument comes down in the end to a question of whether you value the mother's right to control her own body, or the fetus's right to get born, more highly.

Exactly. And by any libertarian definition, affirmative rights over one's own body must trump presumptive claims on another's, even in cases where there was no choice.

As an aside, I really like the "forget personal information" button. While I don't actually want to use it, it is good to know that, should I desire it, I can forget personal information on demand.

Then why do you want to create even more child abuse by bringing even more children into the world that are not wanted by their mothers, or anyone else?

That's a good case for mandatory sterilization, but I don't think it's quite complete. Do go on.

Don P, do your calculations, such as they are, take into account that some of the people on the waiting list MIGHT be willing to adopt more than one child?

Yes. Show me the evidence that there are a million additional people each and every year willing to adopt a child? Or 500,000 additional people each and every year willing to adopt two children? Or 800,000 additional people each and every year willing to adopt one child and 100,000 people each and every year willing to adopt two children?

However you slice it, there isn't the slightest evidence that the demand for children to adopt is even remotely large enough to absorb an additional 1,000,000+ children needing adoption every year, year after year. As the report I cited earlier states there aren't even enough adoptive parents now. The number of children in foster care is already increasing every year.

slarti:

That's a good case for mandatory sterilization

It is? Explain how you think this is a "good case" for mandatory sterilization. Mandatory sterilization of whom? All women? Some women? Which ones?

I agree with Steven Pinker when he says that there isn't an answer to be "discovered" to the abortion problem;

Yes. One of the silliest arguments made by abortion opponents--and one that unwittingly reveals the fundamentally religious nature of their opposition--is the claim that a fetus (or embryo or fertilized egg) either "is" or "might be" a person, and that we should therefore err on the side of caution and protect these persons or possible-persons from being killed.

The unstated, and unsubstantiated, assumption behind this argument is that "personhood" is some kind of objective quality that may be discoverable, rather than a subjective quality that we choose to attribute to some things and not others.

instead we need to decide on a somewhat arbitrary line.

Well, we already have drawn it. The line is birth.

It is? Explain how you think this is a "good case" for mandatory sterilization. Mandatory sterilization of whom? All women? Some women? Which ones?

Hey, this is your point; you run with it. Or did I misunderstand your statement that women who are forced to bring their fetus to term will be more inclined to abuse them?

Ok, I'm yanking your chain. You made a statement with zero evidence to support it, and I made fun of you for it. Probably wasn't very funny, but neither are the glib, unevidenced assertions.

Don P:

Abortions are not getting harder and harder to obtain. They're getting easier and easier.

I believe you, but if you presented that argument to NOW or NARAL they'd throw fits. They are the ones constantly reiterating that there are fewer and fewer doctors trained in performing abortions, fewer clinics handling them, x number of counties that don't have a single abortion provider, &c.

The advent of medical abortion

Is surgery not "medical"?

through drugs such as RU486 and the "morning-after" pill, which were virtually unknown in America as recently as a decade ago, are also dramatically increasing access to abortion.

But the supporters of the "morning-after pill" vehemently deny that it's an abortifacient at all. It depends whether you count the destruction of fertilized but unimplanted ova as "abortion." I am pretty sure they aren't counted in the stats.

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortion reduces the rate of child abuse.

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that birth is the appropriate dividing line for non-personhood/personhood. Nor does Don P. have any evidence that personhood is merely a subjective quality. But if it is, then in Don P.'s case, I'd draw the line thus: Anyone who composes more than 100 posts on the internet in defense of abortion is not a "person." Ergo, Don P. is not a person. Wait, I guess I like this sort of reasoning.

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortions are getting easier to obtain; if that were true, then why would all the pro-choice organizations be putting out propaganda about how it's so difficult to get abortions these days? (Easy answer: They are perfectly willing to lie, as they so often do.)

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortion is safe. He might be able to quote statistics, but there is absolutely no reason to think that they are even remotely accurate. No one really keeps track of all the women killed or injured by abortion, and another poster already explained why statistics can't be trusted. (Clue: Any time a state proposes to make abortion clinics obey the same health/safety regulations that apply to real doctors or vets, the pro-aborts raise all kinds of hell and claim that it would interfere with the right to abortion if they had to conduct safe operations. Most intelligent people would think it's suspicious if someone claims that there's no way they can run their business in accordance with safety regulations.)

Michelle Dulak:

I believe you, but if you presented that argument to NOW or NARAL they'd throw fits.

No they wouldn't. NOW and NARAL are, amoung other things, political lobbying organizations. Like all political lobbyists, they exaggerate the strength of their opposition.

Is surgery not "medical"?

Abortions performed by an invasive physical method such as vacuum aspiration are generally referred to as "surgical abortions." Abortions performed using drugs such as RU486 are generally referred to as "medical abortions."

But the supporters of the "morning-after pill" vehemently deny that it's an abortifacient at all.

It isn't an abortifacient under the definition of conception used by the American Medical Association and other medical athorities (implantation of the fertilized egg in the wall of the uterus). It may or may not act as an abortifacient under the definition of conception used by most abortion opponents (fertilization).

It depends whether you count the destruction of fertilized but unimplanted ova as "abortion." I am pretty sure they aren't counted in the stats.

They're not. Which means that, under the "fertilization" definition of conception, the abortion rate is actually even higher than even the official figure of 1,000,000+ per year.

Joe M:

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortions are getting easier to obtain

Yes I do. I just gave you the evidence:

1. The inflation-adjusted cost of abortion has declined.

2. Indirect costs associated with having an abortion--primarily travel and lodging expenses for women unable to obtain an abortion locally--have also declined. (This is also, by the way, why the abortion ban in Ireland is essentially irrelevant. Irish women who want an abortion just travel to Britain for it. The recent advent of low-cost airlines has made this easier than ever.)

3. Women are increasingly financially independent, meaning that they are less likely to have to depend on someone else to pay for their abortion.

4. New abortion technologies, primarily RU486 and the morning-after pill, are increasing the availability of abortion services. Unlike surgical abortion, medical abortion does not require specialized medical equipment or clinics. The drugs can be administered in any doctor's office and follow-up can be performed at any major medical facility, including those that do not provide surgical abortion services.

You're right, Joseph, I quoted the wrong rate. The raw numbers are 4 million births and ~850,000 abortions; it'd be equivalent to a 21% increase in the birth rate, so I suppose it's theoretically possible. Another way of thinking about it is that in the long-run steady state there'll be 1 woman who can't have a kid but wants one for every 4 that have a kid, which seems rather high on its face.

However, can I just point out that asserting enormous behavioral changes ("less people will get accidentally pregnant") isn't very statistically conservative? I don't even see how the evidence supports it; people weren't careful about getting knocked up before birth control and legal abortion, and if the lack of those wasn't a disincentive, I don't know what is.

Joe M:

Nor does Don P. have any evidence that personhood is merely a subjective quality.

Don P doesn't need any such evidence. If Joe M is claiming that personhood is an objective characteristic then Joe M needs to provide evidence to substantiate that claim. What conceivable experiment or observation could verify or falsify the presence of "personhood" in a fetus (or anything else)?

Joe M:

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortion reduces the rate of child abuse.

Wrong yet again. See, for example, this paper by John Donohue and Steven Levitt.

As Levitt says in his summary of this study:

"The theoretical justification for our argument rests on two simple assumptions: 1) Legalized abortion leads to fewer "unwanted" babies being born, and 2) unwanted babies are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect and are therefore at an increased risk for criminal involvement later in life. The first assumption, that abortion reduces the number of unwanted children, is true virtually by definition. The second assumption, that unwanted children are at increased risk for criminal involvement, is supported by three decades of academic research."

Jason McCullough: women were pretty damn careful about getting knocked up by a man who wouldn't marry them before abortion and birth control were legal. Clearly, they didn't succeed all the time. But while I've heard that a full 1/3rd of marriages in 1950 involved a pregnant bride, there is rich anecdotal and statistical evidence to show that most married women had only ever had sex with one man: the one they were married to. There wasn't anything like a 25% rate of women having getting pregnant out of wedlock. Moreover, we have much better methods of birth control at our disposal now than we did in 1950, or even 1973.

Don P,

If there is serious dispute over whether the "morning-after pill" is an abortifacient, as you agree, then it's at least a little tendentious to call it an "abortion technology" in your response to Joe M. You verify my understanding that these "abortions" aren't called such in the stats.

I would be surprised if inflation-adjusted travel and lodging costs within the US have declined as you say, though I'm willing to stand corrected. You would have to factor in the number of facilities available, and their locations; also that RU-486 (as I understand it) involves two visits, a day or two apart, so that it's not just a matter of driving some distance if there's no local clinic, but of coming back or putting up in a motel for a day or two.

Sorry not to have understood the "surgical"/"medical" distinction, which I'd never heard before.

You're quite right that NARAL &c. exaggerate for effect, but I'm still astonished at the continued high abortion rate. Why would anyone go through this when it's so simple to avoid?

Joe M:

Don P. has absolutely no evidence that abortion is safe.

More nonsense. As you can see from this CDC report: Pregnancy-Related Mortality Surveillance --- United States, 1991--1999, a woman is at more than ten times the risk of dying from continuing a pregnancy than from terminating it. The mortality rate from abortion is around 1 per 100,000. The mortality rate from pregnancy is around 10 per 100,000.

Don P. says, "What conceivable experiment or observation could verify or falsify the presence of "personhood" in a fetus (or anything else)?"

Hmm. What objective evidence or experiments could reveal that Don P. is a person? None that I can think of. In fact, all the available evidence indicates that "Don P." is nothing more than a computer program designed to hunt down any discussion of abortion on the internet, and then to bombard the discussion non-stop with a flurry of rabidly pro-abortion postings. Even if "Don P." is not a computer program, I'd be wary of deeming anyone a "person" who is so eager to argue in favor of killing babies. I therefore conclude that "Don P." (or Fredo or whatever) is not a "person."

Don P. replies just as expected, and he has abolutely no answer for:

1) the obvious point that these statistics are totally underinflated, because abortionists have no incentive to report on the deaths/injuries that they cause; or

2) the obvious point that if abortionists were really doing their work safely, they wouldn't scream like stuck pigs every time a state government tries to make them abide by the same health/safety regulations that apply to other health clinics.

Michelle Dulak:

If there is serious dispute over whether the "morning-after pill" is an abortifacient, as you agree, then it's at least a little tendentious to call it an "abortion technology" in your response to Joe M.

Huh? I'm using the anti-abortionists' own claim that conception=fertilization. If they wish to concede that a birth control method that causes the fertilized egg to be destroyed is not a form of abortion, fine. I await the concession. Of course, it will be impossible for them to maintain their claim that "life begins at fertilization" or "a baby begins to exist at fertilization" if they do make that concession.

I'm still astonished at the continued high abortion rate. Why would anyone go through this when it's so simple to avoid?

Obviously, yes. Around 1,000,000 women do every year in America alone. As I said, if you want to reduce the rate of abortion, work to increase the rate of use of contraception. That means fighting the forces that are working against the use of contraception, including the Catholic Church.

Joe M:

Hmm. What objective evidence or experiments could reveal that Don P. is a person? None that I can think of.

Thank you for making my argument for me. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that I am a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that you are a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that a zygote/fetus/embryo is a person. That is why "personhood" is a subjective attribution rather than an objective characteristic. We have chosen to attribute personhood at birth, and no conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that attribution to be incorrect.

Joe M:

You're now grasping at straws to try and protect your faith-based belief, contradicted by all the evidence, that abortion is unsafe.

The obvious rejoinder to your silly speculation is that pediatricians and hospital maternity units have no incentive to report pregnancy as a cause of death for women under their care, either. It would be very bad for business, and the amount of money at stake dwarfs the amount involved in abortion.

What is this "we", kemosabe? Half the population of the country thinks it begins considerably before then . . . how long before being the question at hand. The only "point" you've made is that being pro-choice seems to be a matter of whim rather than a matter of morality . . and as such, you have no basis for insisting that your whim to set it at birth should have any bearing on what the rest of us do, or legislate.

Jane Galt:

Jason McCullough: women were pretty damn careful about getting knocked up by a man who wouldn't marry them before abortion and birth control were legal. Clearly, they didn't succeed all the time. But while I've heard that a full 1/3rd of marriages in 1950 involved a pregnant bride, there is rich anecdotal and statistical evidence to show that most married women had only ever had sex with one man: the one they were married to. There wasn't anything like a 25% rate of women having getting pregnant out of wedlock. Moreover, we have much better methods of birth control at our disposal now than we did in 1950, or even 1973.

Yes. Thankfully, we now live in a society in which women have much more sexual freedom, much more financial freedom, much better access to contraception, and much better access to abortion.

Jane Galt:

What is this "we", kemosabe?

The consensus of the population as reflected in our laws and culture, Miss Thing.

Half the population of the country thinks it begins considerably before then

No they don't. Virtually no one treats fetuses, even very mature ones, as the moral equivalent of babies or other persons. The popularity of the rape and incest exception, for example, is one clear illustration of the cognitive dissonance afflicting anti-abortionists on the question of fetal personhood.

The only "point" you've made is that being pro-choice seems to be a matter of whim rather than a matter of morality . . and as such, you have no basis for insisting that your whim to set it at birth should have any bearing on what the rest of us do, or legislate.

My moral beliefs are no more or less "whims" than yours or anyone else's. All moral claims are based on unprovable premises.

Don P,

The point about the "morning-after pill" is that you answered a question about the continued high abortion rate by citing "new abortion technologies" and including this one, even though it isn't included in the abortion statistics. Whether you or I or anyone thinks it's an abortifacient isn't the point, because it doesn't contribute to that million-plus number that we were talking about.

I wrote,

Why would anyone go through this when it's so simple to avoid?

You responded,

Obviously, yes.

The semantic disconnect is left to the reader to disentangle.

Don, I repeat: it has never in human history been easier for women to avoid getting pregnant. It is bizarre that so many women are still getting pregnant when they don't want to. I mean, a million abortions a year? I don't know the percentage of the US population consisting of fertile women, but it has to be well under 100 million. So at least one woman in a hundred yearly who might get pregnant does get pregnant and aborts. Don't you find that sort of staggering?

Don P,

Must add this:

Virtually no one treats fetuses, even very mature ones, as the moral equivalent of babies or other persons.

We have a high-profile double murder case going on out here in CA just now — a man accused of killing his wife . . . and their unborn son. And, yes, the fetus counts as a second victim under CA law.

For my part, I think it's morally incoherent to treat a viable fetus as though it were less valuable than a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age. How to reconcile the competing needs of woman and fetus is a separate (and difficult) question.

Jane, you argued that having to carry the child to would create an incentive against accidental pregnancy. Your response didn't deal with my point at all, other than pointing out we have better birth control now. My point was that there's on its face, everyone's casual knowledge of the historical evidence doesn't support the statement that "incentives reduce accidental pregnancy rates." If you have statistical evidence that shows this in the general form or your specifics, by all means, provide it, but you're currently just engaging in the shoot-from-the-hip statistical analysis you criticize others so frequently for.

And your two numbers.....
"1/3rd of all marriages in 1950 involved a pregnant bride"
"There wasn't anything like a 25% rate of women having getting pregnant out of wedlock."

.....kind of disagree with each other.

"So at least one woman in a hundred yearly who might get pregnant does get pregnant and aborts. Don't you find that sort of staggering?"

Michelle, you find a 1% annual accident rate "shocking"? This is sex we're talking about here, not train wrecks. I'd be amazed if it was that low.

Jason,

I don't think it's even that low myself; I doubt that there are 100 million fertile women in the US. But — how many times need it be said? — it is very, very easy not to get pregnant. I can walk into any supermarket or drugstore and pick up one means of birth control.

Foolproof? No. But here it gets interesting. Catholics arguing against condoms claim that they fail all the time — claiming failure rates as high as 7%. Against them, it's claimed that condoms are in fact very reliable. Well, which is it? Isn't it a little silly to argue that women need abortions because they can't get affordable, reliable birth control, when it's cheaply available in the average drugstore? Or if it isn't in fact reliable, oughtn't the people denouncing it to acknowledge that the Catholics were right when they said it wasn't reliable?

Michelle Dulak:

The point about the "morning-after pill" is that you answered a question about the continued high abortion rate by citing "new abortion technologies" and including this one, even though it isn't included in the abortion statistics.

So what? Joe M and others of his ilk think that the morning-after pill is an abortion technology, so from their perspective it makes abortion even easier. And if it is approved for sale over-the-counter, as it is widely expected to be, it will make abortion--as they see it--even easier still. A woman will be able to walk into her local Walgreens and buy a pack of "baby killing pills" no question asked.

Don, I repeat: it has never in human history been easier for women to avoid getting pregnant. It is bizarre that so many women are still getting pregnant when they don't want to.

It's not "bizarre." It means that there is a lot of room for increased use of contraception. Again, if you want more women to use more contraception, fight the forces that are against contraception use, such as the Catholic Church, and support the forces that are trying to increase contraception use, such as Planned Parenthood.

So at least one woman in a hundred yearly who might get pregnant does get pregnant and aborts. Don't you find that sort of staggering?

No. What's "staggering" about it? It is estimated that over 40% of American women will have at least one abortion during their life.

Michelle Dulak:

We have a high-profile double murder case going on out here in CA just now — a man accused of killing his wife . . . and their unborn son. And, yes, the fetus counts as a second victim under CA law.

So what? If the woman killed the fetus herself, she'd be exercizing her constitutional right to abortion. That fact proves that California law does not treat fetuses as persons. If she killed her born child, she would be subject to prosecution for manslaughter or murder.

For my part, I think it's morally incoherent to treat a viable fetus as though it were less valuable than a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age.

I don't know why you think it's "morally incoherent." A fetus is not the same thing as a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age.

Michelle Dulak:

You make no sense. You keep whining about the lack of use of contraception. The Catholic Church is against all contraception. Even if condoms are only 93% successful, that’s a lot better than 0%. If you wish women to use more contraception, as you keep suggesting they should, you should be condemning the Catholic Church’s position, not equivocating about it.

slarti:

Hey, this is your point; you run with it.

No it isn't. You are the one who said it's a good argument for mandatory sterilization, not me. If you really think this is true, explain why you think it's a good argument for mandatory sterilization, and then I'll critique your argument.

Don P,

What's "staggering" about it? It is estimated that over 40% of American women will have at least one abortion during their life.

That you take that so calmly is really disturbing. Do you really have no problem with abortion at any stage? (I see you draw the line at birth, above.)

So what? If the woman killed the fetus herself, she'd be exercizing her constitutional right to abortion. That fact proves that California law does not treat fetuses as persons. If she killed her born child, she would be subject to prosecution for manslaughter or murder.

You are forgetting, Don, that Roe v. Wade doesn't permit any state to prevent a pregnant woman from killing her fetus. "California law" can't do anything in this area. The most it can do is prosecute anyone else killing a fetus.

A fetus is not the same thing as a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age.

The differences would be . . . ? (1) one's no longer inside womb; (2) . . . ? Really, I think that's it.

Michelle Dulak:

Do you really have no problem with abortion at any stage? (I see you draw the line at birth, above.)

I "have a problem" with some abortions. I also believe that in the vast majority of cases the moral question is intractable. I'm not surprised, let alone "staggered," that in a country of nearly 300 million people, with a poverty rate higher than that in virtually all other industrialized democracies, and no system of universal health coverage, there are around a million abortions a year.

And abortion, by definition, cannot happen after birth. The line is drawn by the meaning of the word.

DonP, it is a very small minority of the population -- of which I concede you are a member -- that believes that otherwise viable fetuses should be legally aborted. Viability, as I'm sure you know, begins well before birth.

Jason, I meant to say something more nuanced, along the lines of "the rate of unintended pregnancies fathered by a man with whom the mother did not intend to wed and reproduce in the near future" . . . the number of women having sex with men they didn't intend to marry in the near future was unequivocally lower in the forties, if only because women married at an average age of 20. But also, if you look at the Kinseys from the 50's, I believe you'll see that most women in fact reported having sex with only one man: the man they married. Whether first intercourse was pre- or post-marital, very few women engaged in intercourse much before the age at which they were ready to marry and parent, whereas most women today do.

And yes, my statistics are jackleg, but I'm trying to qualify them as such; I'm not running a research service here. If anyone can come up with hard numbers that refute me, I'm happy to see them. But so far, the actual statistics produced have tended to support my arguments.

And the statistics on birth control were intended to point out that the numbers should be the opposite of what they are; given that we have so many effective birth control options today, demand for abortion should be lower, not higher, than it was in the fifties, but although the numbers on abortion and out-of-wedlock birth are notoriously unreliable, I think it's pretty safe to say that 50 years ago the number of "disaster" pregnancies -- the kind that would, if carried to term, dramatically alter people's lives (rather than accelerating an already highly likely outcome of marriage and children) was much lower than it is today. With the rich array of birth control available -- and hawked to every child in America extensively in their schools, you can't argue we haven't made every effort to inform people -- that shouldn't be. But I digress.

Michelle Dulak:

You are forgetting, Don, that Roe v. Wade doesn't permit any state to prevent a pregnant woman from killing her fetus. "California law" can't do anything in this area. The most it can do is prosecute anyone else killing a fetus.

I’m not forgetting anything. Federal law supercedes California state law. The controlling law in California, as everywhere else in the nation, is Roe v. Wade. Under that law, a fetus is not even remotely equivalent to a person. And even if California were free to criminalize abortion generally, it almost certainly would not do so. Californians don't think fetuses are the same thing as babies, either.

The differences would be . . . ? (1) one's no longer inside womb;

A fetus is completely and uniquely dependent on a physical connection to its mother’s body to sustain its life. Our law and culture recognize, and have always recognized, a huge moral difference between a fetus and a baby.

Jane Galt:

DonP, it is a very small minority of the population -- of which I concede you are a member -- that believes that otherwise viable fetuses should be legally aborted.

No it isn’t. The “health and life of the mother” exception is widely supported. In practical terms, this exception means that virtually all abortions, including abortions of viable fetuses, are legal, since virtually all abortions can be justified on health grounds of some kind. Prosecutions of abortion providers for aborting viable fetuses in violation of state laws banning such abortions are extremely rare, if they happen at all. I’ve never heard of even a single example, despite the fact that there are around 10,000 third-trimester abortions in America every year.

The de facto law is abortion on demand. It’s not going to change. Get used to it.

Michelle:

Contraceptives generally work well for most people. But they do, sometimes, fail. See table 2d in this publication for numbers. It gives both a "low %" number for failure and a "high %". The "low %" refers to people using the contraceptive method correctly.

According to the alan guttmacher institute, using condoms correctly has a 6% failure rate (per year). If you plan on being not-pregnant for 20 years fucking with condoms, your chance to make it is only 1.0-0.06)^20 -- 30%.

As a reader of blogs, and additionally without any obvious inability to write, you are not an average person. Rather it is likely that you are smart - high IQ - "cognitively able".

But there are a lot of dumb people in the world. Dumb women (or their partners) might want to control fertility, just the same as anyone else.

Additionally, for a lot of people circumstances change. Let's say you love a guy, think you'll get married, and you get pregnant. Then you catch him in bed with another woman. That's not contraceptive failure, but you still might want an abortion.

Or, you're not on a full-service birth control method and you get raped.

There's lots of reasons why all sorts of people need abortions if they are to control their fertility.

"A fetus is completely and uniquely dependent on a physical connection to its mother’s body to sustain its life."

Not anymore.

We get it Don P. You believe in abortion. Now if you could just learn to believe in citing sources to back up your assertions. In your ~50 posts I believe you cited three links. Most of what you said may be true. Unfortunately, due to your emotional entanglement with the issue, your disdain for the other participants in the debate and your lack of documentation, I am inclined to believe it is all simply your opinion. Either produce the data or quit wasting your time.

Jim English

Jim English:

Not anymore.

Yes anymore. A fetus is completely and uniquely dependent on a physical connection to its mother’s body to sustain its life.

Now if you could just learn to believe in citing sources to back up your assertions.

I have cited sources to back up my assertions.

I am inclined to believe it is all simply your opinion.

You're inclined to believe that link to a paper by two Stanford economists arguing that abortion reduces child abuse and crime, and a link to the federal Centers for Disease Control report showing that abortion is much safer than pregnancy are just "my opinion," are you? It's hard to know what to make of this bizarre expression of belief. Do you think I somehow faked the websites?

Jane Galt:

We get it. You think there should be more use of contraception and less use of abortion. But waving an angry finger at women and telling them what you think they should do isn't likely to get you very far. What concrete public policy proposals do you offer to further your goal?

Don P, if Californians are willing to treat the killing of a viable fetus as murder, I suspect that they are looking at it as something like a "baby," and are prevented from treating it entirely as one only by Roe. (By the way, you refer to a woman bearing a fetus as a "mother" in one of your recent posts. Um, mother of what, exactly? — given that you insist there's no child here.)

Leonard, I haven't the time to tackle your whole post — leaving soon for dinner — but how bright do you have to be to use a condom correctly? We are not talking rocket science here — I mean, not except in the sense that Rocket Science would be a terrific name for a porn flick. (Has anyone used that yet?)

But your 6% failure rate per year stat does surprise me. When I have seen a number that high quoted, it has almost always been from a conservative Christian source.

Michelle Dulak:

Don P, if Californians are willing to treat the killing of a viable fetus as murder, I suspect that they are looking at it as something like a "baby,"

Californians are not willing to treat the killing of a viable fetus as murder. Abortion of even viable fetuses, let alone non-viable ones, has never been treated as even remotely equivalent to the crime of murder. I doubt that even you would support such a law. Women who kill their children, on the other hand, are subject to prosecution for murder in all 50 states.

By the way, you refer to a woman bearing a fetus as a "mother" in one of your recent posts. Um, mother of what, exactly?

The fetus.

Leonard, I haven't the time to tackle your whole post — leaving soon for dinner — but how bright do you have to be to use a condom correctly? We are not talking rocket science here — I mean, not except in the sense that Rocket Science would be a terrific name for a porn flick. (Has anyone used that yet?)

What policy proposals do you offer to increase the use of contraception and decrease the rate of abortion? And since you're so gung-ho about contraception, why aren't you condemning the Catholic Church, which opposes all contraception?

Michele, I was only half-serious in suggesting that contraceptive failure was due to stupidity. It's due to all sorts of things, which you probably don't imagine (and I probably don't either). But it's there.

I have had a condom fail on me. They can break. Fortunately no pregnancy resulted, but having it happen even once makes you realize the role that chance plays in the world.

BTW, as far as I know AGI is a liberal source, if it's biased in any direction. It's not conservative by any measure.

Don P.: No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that I am a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that you are a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that a zygote/fetus/embryo is a person. That is why "personhood" is a subjective attribution rather than an objective characteristic. We have chosen to attribute personhood at birth, and no conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that attribution to be incorrect.

Well, then, it would be perfectly moral if the rest of us voted that you are not a person, and had you killed. You might not prefer that outcome based on your sheerly subjective preferences, but you would have no argument whatsoever against it. We would be acting just as morally under your own standards as anyone who votes for abortion.

Don P:
The obvious rejoinder to your silly speculation is that pediatricians and hospital maternity units have no incentive to report pregnancy as a cause of death for women under their care, either. It would be very bad for business, and the amount of money at stake dwarfs the amount involved in abortion.

Baloney. We have good statistics on most other causes of deaths, because real doctors don't go running to court claiming that the United States Constitution Has Been Violated every time someone passes a health or safety regulation.
That's yet another point to which you have no answer whatsoever. Why do abortionists always act as if they would go out of business if they had to abide by health/safety regulations? What have they got to hide?

Anyway, there is lots of information out there on women killed by legal abortion, but whose deaths weren't reported in any official state statistics. Consider this article:
http://nichole.simonweb.com/~afterabortion/PAR/V8/n2/abortiondeaths.html

A long quote:

The Cover-Up
Why U.S. Abortion Mortality Statistics Are Meaningless

David C. Reardon, Ph.D.

On March 1, 1989, Erica Richardson, a 16-year-old Maryland resident, bled to death from a punctured uterus only hours after undergoing an abortion. During the next five months, two adult women, Gladys Estanislao and Debra Gray, also died from abortion complications. They too were residents of Maryland.

Shockingly, none of these three women was even granted that smallest of recognitions--becoming a statistic. The official statistics issued by Maryland public health officials showed that there were no deaths from abortion in 1989. Indeed, Maryland only reported a single abortion-related death for the entire decade of 1980 to 1989.(1)

There was actually a fourth maternal death related to a 1989 abortion in Maryland. In this case, Susanne Logan fell into a coma during her abortion and awoke four months later as a quadriplegic, unable to talk. She survived for three years, dying in 1992. Since Susanne's death was not an immediate result of her abortion, it has not been counted in any of the official abortion mortality statistics.(2)

These are four deaths that occurred in one small state that reported no abortion deaths for 1989. For that same year, the Abortion Surveillance Unit of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported only 12 deaths for the entire country. But, as we will see, the CDC doesn't look very hard.

Don P.: No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that I am a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that you are a person. No conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that a zygote/fetus/embryo is a person. That is why "personhood" is a subjective attribution rather than an objective characteristic. We have chosen to attribute personhood at birth, and no conceivable experiment or observation could demonstrate that attribution to be incorrect.

Well, then, it would be perfectly moral if the rest of us voted that you are not a person, and had you killed. You might not prefer that outcome based on your sheerly subjective preferences, but you would have no argument whatsoever against it. We would be acting just as morally under your own standards as anyone who votes for abortion.

Don P:
The obvious rejoinder to your silly speculation is that pediatricians and hospital maternity units have no incentive to report pregnancy as a cause of death for women under their care, either. It would be very bad for business, and the amount of money at stake dwarfs the amount involved in abortion.

Baloney. We have good statistics on most other causes of deaths, because real doctors don't go running to court claiming that the United States Constitution Has Been Violated every time someone passes a health or safety regulation.
That's yet another point to which you have no answer whatsoever. Why do abortionists always act as if they would go out of business if they had to abide by health/safety regulations? What have they got to hide?

Anyway, there is lots of information out there on women killed by legal abortion, but whose deaths weren't reported in any official state statistics. Consider this article:
http://nichole.simonweb.com/~afterabortion/PAR/V8/n2/abortiondeaths.html

A long quote:

The Cover-Up
Why U.S. Abortion Mortality Statistics Are Meaningless

David C. Reardon, Ph.D.

On March 1, 1989, Erica Richardson, a 16-year-old Maryland resident, bled to death from a punctured uterus only hours after undergoing an abortion. During the next five months, two adult women, Gladys Estanislao and Debra Gray, also died from abortion complications. They too were residents of Maryland.

Shockingly, none of these three women was even granted that smallest of recognitions--becoming a statistic. The official statistics issued by Maryland public health officials showed that there were no deaths from abortion in 1989. Indeed, Maryland only reported a single abortion-related death for the entire decade of 1980 to 1989.(1)

There was actually a fourth maternal death related to a 1989 abortion in Maryland. In this case, Susanne Logan fell into a coma during her abortion and awoke four months later as a quadriplegic, unable to talk. She survived for three years, dying in 1992. Since Susanne's death was not an immediate result of her abortion, it has not been counted in any of the official abortion mortality statistics.(2)

These are four deaths that occurred in one small state that reported no abortion deaths for 1989. For that same year, the Abortion Surveillance Unit of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported only 12 deaths for the entire country. But, as we will see, the CDC doesn't look very hard.

Sorry for the multiple postings. Just trying to get through Don P.'s self-imposed skull thickness.

Another article with which Don P. might educate himself, if he's interested in anything beyond support for pro-abort propaganda. This is part of an article by an emergency room physician:
http://nichole.simonweb.com/~afterabortion/PAR/V8/n2/berning.html

I recently took care of a woman who almost died because she'd had an abortion. A few days before I saw her, she'd had an abortion because of a positive pregnancy test. Now, after an abortion, the clinic will examine the remains which have been scraped from the uterus to take inventory of fetal parts in order to ensure that the entire pregnancy was totally eliminated. This clinic noted that there were no fetal parts, which meant that the pregnancy had not been in the uterus.

This situation is known as an ectopic pregnancy, where the pregnancy is not in the womb, but in the fallopian tube. An ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening condition; the ectopic must be removed or it will grow to a size that will rupture the fallopian tube and result in massive internal bleeding that can kill the mother.

In any legitimate medical facility, a woman with an ectopic pregnancy would have an immediate ultrasound to assess the ectopic, be admitted to the hospital, and have surgery before it could rupture and potentially take her life. In this abortion facility, the woman was sent home and told to call her doctor. Unfortunately, time was not on her side -- before she ever had the chance, her ectopic pregnancy ruptured, she was rushed to the ER by ambulance, and taken immediately to the operating room.

Had this quality of care been provided by any other medical provider--family physician, obstetrician, or emergency physician--it would be considered grossly negligent. By an abortion provider, it does not even cause a stir. In fact it goes unnoted and unreported.

A few years ago, a young woman about twenty years old came to the ER because she was feeling very sick. She'd become increasingly ill ever since the abortion she'd had about a week earlier. I had her admitted to the hospital from the ER with a severe pneumonia. The following days revealed that the pneumonia was just a part of the problem--she had overwhelming sepsis, which is infection throughout her entire body which had, at its source, the abortion.

This woman died. The admitting physician never reported the incident as abortion-related, nor did she inform the abortion provider of the results of his "care." He was still practicing, without the slightest idea that his intervention had led to his patient's death.

The medical diagnosis reads "severe pain"--the real cause is abortion. The record reads "vaginal bleeding"--the real cause is abortion. The operative note says "ruptured ectopic pregnancy and internal hemorrhage"--the real cause is abortion. The autopsy states "cause of death--overwhelming sepsis"--the real cause is abortion.

There is no other practice of medicine where people can suffer and die from complications of your intervention without your being in some way professionally accountable, involved in their care, and at the very least, made aware of it--except abortion.

"Jason, I meant to say something more nuanced, along the lines of "the rate of unintended pregnancies fathered by a man with whom the mother did not intend to wed and reproduce in the near future" . . . the number of women having sex with men they didn't intend to marry in the near future was unequivocally lower in the forties, if only because women married at an average age of 20. But also, if you look at the Kinseys from the 50's, I believe you'll see that most women in fact reported having sex with only one man: the man they married. Whether first intercourse was pre- or post-marital, very few women engaged in intercourse much before the age at which they were ready to marry and parent, whereas most women today do."

That doesn't sound obvious, either. Can you really say that women were only having sex with men they didn't mind marrying? Could just as easily be "you had to marry the guy if you got knocked up, regardless of whether you liked him or not"; I don't know how to detangle the causation there. And what do numbers on number of sex partners have to do with the accidental pregnancy rate? How does having sex with two men over two years increase the accident rate above that of one man for two years?

I totally don't see how the statistics provided support the above or "all abortions could be adopted", but whatever, I guess.

DonP, you’ve made some good points, but also some tenuous and questionable ones:

“Then why do you want to create even more child abuse by bringing even more children into the world that are not wanted by their mothers, or anyone else?”

Please tell me you are not suggesting that abortion is a solution for child abuse.

“That is why "personhood" is a subjective attribution rather than an objective characteristic”

This is not true. People are demonstrably different than any other entities, living or non-living. The combination of characteristics that make up a person (human) are the objective characteristics needed. I will not be mistaken for a flower, nor will another person subjectively think of me as a turtle [and let us be reasonable here: someone with a mental disability may mistake me for a hat, for example, but that does not invalidate my personhood]. To claim something is subjective is to claim that there is no clear way of distinguishing it from something else, or that there can be reasonable and contradictory views of what something is. I do not see that being true for personhood.

“The consensus of the population as reflected in our laws and culture, Miss Thing.”

It does not take a consensus of the population to pass a law in this country, only a slim majority of politicians in most cases. A consensus does not exist on abortion especially, because there is clearly not widespread agreement, no matter what the law says. If there were consensus, abortion would not be the hot topic that it is.

“Half the population of the country thinks it begins considerably before then” [Galt]

“No they don't. Virtually no one treats fetuses, even very mature ones, as the moral equivalent of babies or other persons.”

Let’s see some evidence. I’d say everyone on the pro-life side of the debate does in fact treat fetuses as the moral equivalent of babies or other persons.

“The popularity of the rape and incest exception, for example, is one clear illustration of the cognitive dissonance afflicting anti-abortionists on the question of fetal personhood.”

Perhaps, but I suspect it has more to do with an attempt at political compromise than cognitive dissonance.

“All moral claims are based on unprovable premises.”

If unprovable are they therefore equally valid? Is moral equivalence in the eye of the beholder then? If my morality favors murdering other adults who get in my way on the highway, too bad for them I guess. No one can tell me I’m wrong because an opposing moral claim is based on an unprovable premise. That is commonsensically ridiculous.

“I don't know why you think it's "morally incoherent." A fetus is not the same thing as a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age.”

In your opinion, of course. So you think there is a clear difference between the humanity of a pre-mature baby born on, for example, the 210th day after conception and a living fetus on the 210th day after conception? If so, you believe this difference is significant enough to justify ending the existence of the latter, but not the former? If so, I love to hear a thoughtful reasoning of that position; just please don’t say, “that’s what R. v. W says” because that is a cop out. I want to hear your reasoning.

“Californians don't think fetuses are the same thing as babies, either.”

For someone who dislikes assertions without evidence, this seems like a pretty silly thing to say. You seem to imply that because a law exists in CA, it represents the view of all Californians. You must mean “many Californians” or “a majority of the legislature of CA” because I am willing to bet there are many Californians who do think fetuses are the same thing as babies from a practical perspective.

“Our law and culture recognize, and have always recognized, a huge moral difference between a fetus and a baby.”

Part of our culture Don, only part of it. We are not a Borg.

This is also rather hyperbolic: "Huge moral difference?" Come on, that flies in the face of the entire abortion debate!

You also seem to base your position on a reference to law and culture quite a bit. The latter is pretty tenuous because culture is not monolithic. As to the law, how do you defend your views on issues when the law is contrary? You must have a deeper basis for your position than what the law happens to say.

“Yes anymore. A fetus is completely and uniquely dependent on a physical connection to its mother’s body to sustain its life.”

This is incorrect. A fetus can be removed from the womb before coming to term and survive either on its own or via life support until it can survive on its own. This is essentially what happens with a preemie. I’m already anticipating that you will say “then it’s no longer a fetus” but I hope you have a stronger point than that.

Don P:

Sorry, but this bait-and-switch isn't going to work. The ludicrous, absurd, ridiculous claim that Jane Galt made in her post was that it is "almost certain" that "each and every" additional child that would be born if it weren't for abortion would be adopted.

I'm well aware you understand the concept of bait-and-switch -- you just did it. I addressed the 10x claim; you did not respond to it, and instead tried to divert. Let's back up slightly and make sure you understand this. I presented reasonable assertions that the circumstances under discussion could not conceivably (haha) lead to such a sharp increase in adoption needs, and yet that figure is the very basis of your claim that Jane Galt's alleged assertion is -- how was that again? -- "ludicrous, absurd", and "ridiculous."

Now if you wish to acknowledge that this is a static assertion (as GT noted), and hence will translate only problematically to the dynamic real world, then fine, but in that case the proper thing to do is to relax the rhetorical intensity; at this point it only damages your credibility.

New business. Your repeated assertions that abortion is a safe procedure are thoroughly transparent and based on only the most shallow possible analysis -- your own. To wit:

I listed reasons why the accuracy of statistical reporting for abortion deaths is likely suspect. I know you saw that post, because you included a clip of my reference to Carol Everett in one of your voluminous replies. (FYI, Everett was part-owner in a clinic chain in a middle-class neighborhood in the 1980s, not the 1800s as you sardonically suggested.) Other posters have now presented additional evidence suggesting that the reporting rate aspires to something less than commendable accuracy. But even without those, your citation attempt has no obvious relevancy to your claim.

Specifically, I read portions of the linked CDC survey and skimmed the remainder; the word "abortion" appears all of twice in the document (excluding the tables, which recapitulate the data provided in the text). While it is true that the number of deaths containing abortion-related causes (spontaneous and induced) was significantly lower than the number of deaths found to have occurred for all other reasons, that in itself says nothing about the comparative safety of abortion. As other poster's citations suggest, the CDC's ability to determine when a death is linked to an aborted pregnancy is questionable at best, and since the methodology suggests a majority of the data was derived from death certificates, any abortion-related death not explicitly indicated as such (for any of the reasons that have previously been posited) would be unaccounted in the reckoning.

This may or may not be a flaw in the report itself; the report is not an attempt to address the abortion issue or the exact reliability of death certificates, so the results would be purely incidental to the quality of the source material. It is, however, possible evidence of a flaw in your cognitive capabilities that you uncritically presented this as supporint your strong abortion safety assertions.

Let's pull up one more related quote of yours (in response to Joe M. this time) for the entertainment value it will provide:

The obvious rejoinder to your silly speculation is that pediatricians and hospital maternity units have no incentive to report pregnancy as a cause of death for women under their care, either. It would be very bad for business, and the amount of money at stake dwarfs the amount involved in abortion.

No, see, the difference is that a death by pregnancy is very obviously a death by pregnancy. There are no major activist groups that will raise protest about "interfering with the right to choose" if a pregnancy death is properly reported as such, and there are rarely obfuscating circumstances that will make the death more difficult to associate with the pregnancy. It is also not especially bad for business per se since people regularly die from normal medical causes -- unless of course the hospital actively botched its duties to the patient, but that's ALWAYS bad for business and typically results in a flury of legal activity.

Simply amazing how you keep shoveling fertilizer into the fan, hoping something will land and stick at an appropriate place. If only those hints of knowledge you display periodically would coalesce in the body of a mature debater, because this is just getting ridiculous. Ludicrous and absurd, too.

Don P.

Wow, Stanford economists! I'm impressed. I will be interested in looking at the ststistics that demonstrate that there was less abuse of non-existant children. Oh, that's right, if they are dead, they can't be abused. Unfortunately, it cannot be deomonstrated that they would have been abused had they lived.

I gave you credit for three citations. Can we assume that everything that follows is just your opinion.

"There aren't remotely enough prospective adoptive parents to adopt a million unwanted children a year, year after year, even if every one of those children was an ideal adoption candidate (newborn, white and healthy), which many or most of them certainly would not be."

"The accusation of indifference to the fate of children is well-founded."

"Charity is clearly utterly inadequate for preventing child poverty. That is why America has one of the highest rates of child poverty amoung the industrialized democracies."

"For well-understood reasons, babies born to women who didn't want them are particularly prone to suffer from health or developmental problems. Women who have abortions are disproportionately poor, unmarried, uneducated, lacking in health insurance, abusers of drugs or alcohol, and so on."

"You have this exactly backwards. The practical reasons for abortion have been steadily increasing for a century precisely because the ability of women to make choices about the course of their lives, including whether, when and how many children to have, has been steadily increasing."

"There is no credible evidence that abortion poses a significant risk of emotional or psychological trauma for most women. The risks to a woman’s mental health from completing an unwanted pregnancy, and especially from being compelled to complete the pregnancy, are far greater."

"Abortion remains common in America primarily because of intense opposition--often by the same groups and people who oppose abortion--to programs and policies designed to increase the use of contraception."

"No they wouldn't. NOW and NARAL are, amoung other things, political lobbying organizations. Like all political lobbyists, they exaggerate the strength of their opposition."

"A fetus is not the same thing as a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age."

"I'm not surprised, let alone "staggered," that in a country of nearly 300 million people, with a poverty rate higher than that in virtually all other industrialized democracies...."

I actually gave up toward the end. I think I have made my point. I stand by my earlier posrt. Put up or shut up.

Note: I am a pro-choice conservative who is not a social conservative. I believe in limited government and therefore believe abortion is a matter for a woman, her partner, her doctor and her god. But ultimately, it is the woman's choice for she will suffer any consequences of the decision. I just don't care for being lectured to by anyone. Particularly when that anyone fails to show me the respect of providing documentation to back up their lecture. Good luck with the obsession Don P.

Over and out.

Jim English
Chicago

Don P,

Just another quick rejoinder — not much time here —

Californians are not willing to treat the killing of a viable fetus as murder.

Are they not? Tell it to Scott Peterson. Or his lawyers, rather.

Abortion of even viable fetuses, let alone non-viable ones, has never been treated as even remotely equivalent to the crime of murder. I doubt that even you would support such a law. Women who kill their children, on the other hand, are subject to prosecution for murder in all 50 states.

I am not certain that no state has ever had such a law, actually; but even if it had had one, Roe would have invalidated it. And there have been cases in which women have allowed their newborn children to die by refusing simple but necessary surgery (cf. the "Baby Doe" case in the early 80s, where a Down Syndrome infant was allowed to starve to death because an internal blockage that prevented it receiving nourishment wasn't corrected), or by tossing them into dumpsters, or the like, without inevitably facing murder charges.

Re "mother of what?", I just find it irritating that some people insist on calling a pregnant woman a mother without acknowledging that a mother generally implies a child. If bearing a fetus constitutes motherhood, is a woman with four abortions (or for that matter four miscarriages) a "mother of four"? Really, now.

And I'm not "gung-ho about contraception"; I just realize, as you evidently don't, that it's easily available and very cheap. I have heard it claimed that most Catholics use contraception of one kind or another. (Indeed, I rather think I've seen you claim something of the sort yourself, though not in this thread.) I am really having difficulty seeing any sort of problem here, even from your perspective — unless, of course, it be that the families with the most kids are likely to be conservative Catholics.

There is no credible evidence that abortion poses a significant risk of emotional or psychological trauma for most women. The risks to a woman’s mental health from completing an unwanted pregnancy, and especially from being compelled to complete the pregnancy, are far greater.

Oh yes, I meant to hit this one last night, but in shorter prose. The correct response to the first assertion is "ignorant nonsense." (If that sounds like a cop-out, re-read the thread. It is also among the reasons that the membership rosters in prolife organizations contain significant numbers of post-abortive women.) The correct response to the second is "do you have anything other than your just-so view to back this up?"

Hey Dog,

> This sort of comment is garbage.

Not at all.

Now, if Kate wants to demonstrate that this is a silly reductio, then let her make an actual argument explaining why, though she completely disagrees with the supposition that life is precious, her own life somehow is valuable. So far, it appears she hasn't. Or feel free to make the argument in her behalf, if you can.

Jane,

> Half the population of the country thinks it begins considerably before then . .

Michelle beat me to the punch on this, so let me just at the the chilling thing about this whole line boils down to this: you (the fetus) live or die solely at the whim of your mother. If she wants you, and someone causes a miscarriage, then it's murder. But if she doesn't, too bad for you! Do we really think going back to the old Roman standard is a good thing?

I haven't been screamed at lately, so how about a nice post on abortion to kick things off?

Well, Jane, if you wanted the attention, you sure got your fill! :)

I find it redundant to argue the arguments here, so I'm going to focus on aspects that have been skipped.

"...if women having abortions instead carried the fetuses to term and then offered them for adoption, they could almost certainly place each and every baby, especially with our aging population of professional women whose fertility has declined.”

If more states would open adoption to gay and lesbian families, there would be greater success in placing all children who need to be adopted. Though, it appears to me that the pro-life movement wants to be able to define everything with regard to their personal desires and morals without regard to anyone else’s feelings. Newsflash, folks…the definition of the American family has changed. I know of gay and lesbian couples who make far better parents than many, many more heterosexuals out there! And, they’re not producing more babies with which to argue over either.

Before I mention my next “idea,” I need to state that I believe life and death is determined by breath. If a child can breathe one breath on its own, life has begun. In my state, that is also the determination whether the child gets a birth certificate. Having worked in the OB unit of my local hospital, if a child was born at 20 weeks and took one breath, there was a birth certificate, even if the child died seconds later. What is done before that time, in my opinion, is the sole responsibility of she who is carrying that child.

Now, let’s talk supply and demand. If you abolish abortion, thus making adoption more prevalent to the tune of 1 million plus babies more in the initial year, supply and demand will kick into play. There would HAVE to be changes in the U.S. law to ensure adoption of surplus babies. Babies would then become more easily adoptable locally, and less people would adopt outside of the U.S.

No, I don’t want that to happen, but I do have to play devil’s advocate on occasion.

"I need to state that I believe life and death is determined by breath. If a child can breathe one breath on its own, life has begun."

By this standard an adult on a ventilator is dead. I don't think this standard holds water.

"By this standard an adult on a ventilator is dead."

No, they're not dead. Nor would a baby on ventilator be dead. Artificial breathing by the use of a machine is still breathing. It's still the capacity for air to pass through the lungs.

A fetus doesn't produce surfactant until about 34 weeks of pregnancy and usually has enough surfactant by 37 weeks to completely breathe on it's own.

Prior to 34 weeks, if there is not enough surfactant, the baby's lungs will collapse causing death, or varied respiratory distress.

If the baby can be keep alive by a respirator, that baby is still alive.

If that baby had never taken a breath and revival cannot be made, that baby would not be alive.

A disagreement on one point, Jane:

". . . an out of wedlock baby today is a minor embarassment to most women, where a century ago it was socially, professionally, and romantically the end of her life."

You are correct as to "socially" and "romantically," but wrong as to "professionally": For the time period you're talking about, this was a career-launcher.

Point One: It's a shame that prospective parents must jump through hoops in the adoption process, while any moron in America has a right to go out and make a baby....
Point Two: Having an out of wedlock baby is a minor embarrassment today?? Hardly! Many of these moronic children having children are indeed PROUD!
Point Three: Generally -- and the current administration more specifically -- are miserly to America's poor children. Years ago I read statistics that indicated states who took a collective pro-life stance spent far less on welfare and child welfare programs.

Point One: It's a shame that prospective parents must jump through hoops in the adoption process, while any moron in America has a right to go out and make a baby....
Point Two: Having an out of wedlock baby is a minor embarrassment today?? Hardly! Many of these moronic children having children are indeed PROUD!
Point Three: Generally -- and the current administration more specifically -- those who are prolife are miserly to America's poor children. Years ago I read statistics that indicated states who took a collective pro-life stance spent far less on welfare and child welfare programs.

Prior to 34 weeks, if there is not enough surfactant, the baby's lungs will collapse causing death, or varied respiratory distress.

If the baby can be keep alive by a respirator, that baby is still alive.

Huh? That's approximately eight months' gestation. A few premature babies survive as young as 22-24 weeks and at week 25 survival rate increases notably. Those babies are less than alive, somehow?

Besides, what makes your standard any less arbitrary than someone who wants to argue for, say, the presence of brain waves or heartbeat, which usually start sometime after the 10th week IIRC?

At least the "life begins at conception" crew, even aside from religious persuasions, have one key evidence in their favor -- conception is the point when a unique set of chromosomes form and that cell will, unless otherwise diverted by natural or artificial processes, result in a live birth ~9 months later. It is about as close to an objective standard as one can get.

Prior to 34 weeks, if there is not enough surfactant, the baby's lungs will collapse causing death, or varied respiratory distress.

If the baby can be keep alive by a respirator, that baby is still alive.

Huh? That's approximately eight months' gestation. A few premature babies survive as young as 22-24 weeks and at week 25 survival rate increases notably. Those babies are less than alive, somehow?

Besides, what makes your standard any less arbitrary than someone who wants to argue for, say, the presence of brain waves or heartbeat, which usually start sometime after the 10th week IIRC?

At least the "life begins at conception" crew, even aside from religious persuasions, have one key evidence in their favor -- conception is the point when a unique set of chromosomes form and that cell will, unless otherwise diverted by natural or artificial processes, result in a live birth ~9 months later. It is about as close to an objective standard as one can get.

Well, now *I* done it, although I'm pretty sure I didn't click twice...could be this old mouse with a sticky button, or could be that I just need sleep. Goodnight.

By excluding adoption as an option, the pro-choice side makes the social choice set much starker, and the abortion choice much more attractive: make abortion legal and/or increase the welfare state, or force millions of children to grow up unwanted and in poverty.

Precisely. According to statistics on about.com (http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm), 88% of abortions occur during the first 6 to 12 weeks of pregnancy, while
47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. Of the 1.3 million abortions conducted each year, only 2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health -- the rape/incest population we hear so much about doesn't even make the list of reasons given. Overwhelmingly, the reasons given include things like "not ready to have a child" and "child will disrupt career/education."

I think it has been pretty well proven at this point that the vast majority of abortions performed in this country are done so as a substitute for birth control, and that is what I find morally repugnant. Women should absolutely be free to choose when and whether to have sex -- in that respect, I am "pro-choice." Having made that decision, however, a pregnancy is no longer a choice but a forseeable consequence of volitional behavior. With abundant and affordable birth control freely available today, I believe that, with very few exceptions, any woman who gets an abortion is exhibiting, at best, a staggering level of irresponsibility at the expense of another human life. I am, therefore, passionately against abortion on demand.

Lastly, to Don P., you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I am an adoptive mother of an American-born child unrelated to me. Adoption in this country is absurdly complicated and the legal, social and financial "deck" is stacked against anyone who wants to adopt a child of any age or any race. Your arguments would be insulting to those of us who have engaged in the process, except for the fact that they are clearly the result of a profound ignorance. The tragedy is that, in large part because of the attitudes of deep thinkers like yourself, millions of children have died in abortion clinics in the last decade while education programs promoting abstinence and personal responsibility have been shot down as being too draconian and behind the times, and adoptive parents like myself, who have wished passionately to make homes for the children who so desperately need them, are forced to the sidelines while the bureaucracies grind on and the children languish in foster care. Abortion is not the answer.

By excluding adoption as an option, the pro-choice side makes the social choice set much starker, and the abortion choice much more attractive: make abortion legal and/or increase the welfare state, or force millions of children to grow up unwanted and in poverty.

Precisely. According to statistics on about.com (http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm), 88% of abortions occur during the first 6 to 12 weeks of pregnancy, while
47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. Of the 1.3 million abortions conducted each year, only 2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health -- the rape/incest population we hear so much about doesn't even make the list of reasons given. Overwhelmingly, the reasons given include things like "not ready to have a child" and "child will disrupt career/education."

I think it has been pretty well proven at this point that the vast majority of abortions performed in this country are done so as a substitute for birth control, and that is what I find morally repugnant. Women should absolutely be free to choose when and whether to have sex -- in that respect, I am "pro-choice." Having made that decision, however, a pregnancy is no longer a choice but a forseeable consequence of volitional behavior. With abundant and affordable birth control freely available today, I believe that, with very few exceptions, any woman who gets an abortion is exhibiting, at best, a staggering level of irresponsibility at the expense of another human life. I am, therefore, passionately against abortion on demand.

Lastly, to Don P., you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I am an adoptive mother of an American-born child unrelated to me. Adoption in this country is absurdly complicated and the legal, social and financial "deck" is stacked against anyone who wants to adopt a child of any age or any race. Your arguments would be insulting to those of us who have engaged in the process, except for the fact that they are clearly the result of a profound ignorance. The tragedy is that, in large part because of the attitudes of deep thinkers like yourself, millions of children have died in abortion clinics in the last decade while education programs promoting abstinence and personal responsibility have been shot down as being too draconian and behind the times, and adoptive parents like myself, who have wished passionately to make homes for the children who so desperately need them, are forced to the sidelines while the bureaucracies grind on and the children languish in foster care. Abortion is not the answer.

By excluding adoption as an option, the pro-choice side makes the social choice set much starker, and the abortion choice much more attractive: make abortion legal and/or increase the welfare state, or force millions of children to grow up unwanted and in poverty.

Precisely. According to statistics on about.com (http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/aaabortionstats.htm), 88% of abortions occur during the first 6 to 12 weeks of pregnancy, while
47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. Of the 1.3 million abortions conducted each year, only 2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health -- the rape/incest population we hear so much about doesn't even make the list of reasons given. Overwhelmingly, the reasons given include things like "not ready to have a child" and "child will disrupt career/education."

I think it has been pretty well proven at this point that the vast majority of abortions performed in this country are done so as a substitute for birth control, and that is what I find morally repugnant. Women should absolutely be free to choose when and whether to have sex -- in that respect, I am "pro-choice." Having made that decision, however, a pregnancy is no longer a choice but a forseeable consequence of volitional behavior. With abundant and affordable birth control freely available today, I believe that, with very few exceptions, any woman who gets an abortion is exhibiting, at best, a staggering level of irresponsibility at the expense of another human life. I am, therefore, passionately against abortion on demand.

Lastly, to Don P., you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I am an adoptive mother of an American-born child unrelated to me. Adoption in this country is absurdly complicated and the legal, social and financial "deck" is stacked against anyone who wants to adopt a child of any age or any race. Your arguments would be insulting to those of us who have engaged in the process, except for the fact that they are clearly the result of a profound ignorance. The tragedy is that, in large part because of the attitudes of deep thinkers like yourself, millions of children have died in abortion clinics in the last decade while education programs promoting abstinence and personal responsibility have been shot down as being too draconian and behind the times, and adoptive parents like myself, who have wished passionately to make homes for the children who so desperately need them, are forced to the sidelines while the bureaucracies grind on and the children languish in foster care. Abortion is not the answer.

Good grief. Three times??? So sorry!

Oh dear, anony-mouse, I think you missed the point of my post. I wanted to avoid having to banter like this, but it always seems to happen when the word “abortion” enters any discussion.

First, yes, at about 8 months gestation the baby has enough lung surfactant to breathe on its own without help. Before then, almost always, you will see the baby being offered anything from oxygen to full respiratory aid to help them breathe. Second, I wasn’t quantifying life, I was qualifying life. Third, I was stating what I believe, not making a platform. Fourth, I was doing that because mentioning the abolition of abortion in economic terms (supply and demand) looks a bit cold-hearted without the background of my belief. Although, you seemingly think me cold-hearted anyway, in which you are entirely entitled. Finally, without the help of the mother, a set of human chromosomes can’t come out and survive on their own.

Point One: It's a shame that prospective parents must jump through hoops in the adoption process, while any moron in America has a right to go out and make a baby....

Oh, applause! Here's one of the things that discouraged us from adopting domestically:

In the state of Florida, even if you already have children and have demonstrated to the satisfaction of the social worker (required for all adoptions, not just domestic ones) that you've provided a safe and healthy environment for them...you STILL have to attend something like 40 hours of training in how to be a parent.

I have more than a few doubts that the State has a lot to offer in the domain of parental training that I haven't already gotten on the job.

Linda –

First you said:

"I need to state that I believe life and death is determined by breath. If a child can breathe one breath on its own, life has begun."

Then you said:

”If the baby can be keep alive by a respirator, that baby is still alive.”

”If that baby had never taken a breath and revival cannot be made, that baby would not be alive.”

So if a baby has never taken a breath, but is on a respirator, life has begun? I just want to be clear because this seems to contradict your first statement (since the baby has not taken one breath on its own).

If life has begun with the baby on a respirator, this means a 28-month-into-term preemie on a respirator is alive while a 30-month-into-term fetus is not (for example). How do you reconcile that? It seems logically inconsistent, if not heartless.

Gosh, it seems so simple to me. Perhaps I'm being unclear.

Baby - breathing on own or by artificial means (outside of the womb, or capacity to be outside of the womb with aforementioned possibilities) - alive

Fetus - not capable of breathing on own or by artificial means - not alive.

Here's some examples:
A child is born at 20 weeks, comes out of the womb and takes a breath right before dying. The child was alive and will get a birth certificate, and death certificate.

A child is born, doesn't take a breath on its own, but can be revived (thus taking a breath), and remains on a respirator. That child will get a birth certificate and the rest of its life will be damn complicated and expensive. But, alive.

A child is born, doesn't take a breath, cannot be revived, is NOT alive.

28 & 30 month preemie & fetus...whew, those are long pregnancies. :) I know you meant weeks.

OK, does the 30 week old likely have the capability of breathing once born? Yes. That baby will likely be alive. But it's unknown yet.

I've watched a woman give birth to 40 week old still birth. Her baby could have been perfectly alive at 30 weeks if born, but was dead at 40 weeks.

Fact, yes. Sad, very. Heartless, no.

And, I'll say it again, this is just my belief. I'm not asking anyone here to believe that way. I, regrettably now, used it as a premise to the following paragraph. In hindsight, I would have preferred people to ream me for the "supply and Demand" comment.

P.S.

I didn't think this needed to be stated, but just for the record, I mean breathing air. Until the child leaves the womb, it is breathing amniotic fluid.

Thanks for the clarification Linda.

It seems that you determine life on whether or not the child/fetus has a mother as a host or not. If the mother is the host, it's not alive, but if the respirator (and other life support) is the host, the child is alive.

No need to reply and I know you’re not asking anyone to believe what you believe, but again, I think this is logically inconsistent and I’m asking you to think about it deeper. Does it make sense that we should consider a 28-week term preemie alive, but a 30-week term fetus dead (if it’s not alive, what is it?!). I realize you are basing the difference completely on taking a breath (or an assisted breath) but if you think about the scenario I outline, doesn’t it seem absurd? Forget what happens with birth certificates, this isn’t about the arbitrary rules of the state. Think about the 30-week fetus. It’s dead, until it’s born? Meanwhile the 28-week preemie is alive. Does that really make sense? If you’re a pregnant mother with a 30-week fetus, is it dead to you? I don’t think breathing is much of a test of being alive. It’s a partial test, but not a definitive test.

David,

You make some very valid points. Admittedly, I never wanted to go into to this much depth about my beliefs here, but you've been really civil about this, so allow me to continue.

I'm wondering if I should just email you about this, but I feel like exploring my learning curve today, I suppose.

I never said that the 30 week fetus was dead. But, the fetus has not yet been exposed to the external environment. Until that time, the fetus is dependent on the mother and her life. So, it's not dead, but it is dependent.

I think that these definitions are important with regard to my feelings on abortion. I believe that the youngest reported birth who lived, is 18 weeks...which is well into the second trimester. I do NOT condone second trimester abortions, but I am supportive of women who have chosen first trimester abortions if they have exhausted all of the alternative options. In the first trimester, there is NO possible way for the embryo/fetus to sustain life outside of the mother.

I'll go on to say that I find women who neglect birth control and end up having multiple abortions as a result, abhorrent. A mistake once, and possibly even twice is one thing. A mistake made 3+ times is a completely different story. And, they make aging women, like myself, who are trying to conceive, very, very angry.

This might sound heartless, and if it does, I'm sorry. But, until the child can breathe, it's a well functioning set of cells. Even the cells that make up our adult bodies depend on cellular respiration to survive. I'm just taking respiration to the organism level. In terms of being a person, you have to be able to breathe. Until then, you are part of another organism.

I will use a personal story to further illustrate my thoughts: In my last pregnancy, I began bleeding at 13 weeks....heavily. I thought sure I was losing my pregancy and was despondent that what was growing within me might not continue on to be my child. I really didn't connect to my pregnancy until my 20 week ultrasound because despite how far medicine has come, there is absolutely nothing doctors can do to save that embryo/fetus until you have reached 20 weeks.

So, I ask you...If there is no hope of saving something prior to 20 weeks (and in very, very few cases, before then), is that a life, or a potential life?

I bookmarked the topic and my last response is not coming up here, so I'm going to post it again. Forgive me if this ends up being a duplicate.
**************************************

David,

You make some very valid points. Admittedly, I never wanted to go into to this much depth about my beliefs here, but you've been really civil about this, so allow me to continue.

I'm wondering if I should just email you about this, but I feel like exploring my learning curve today, I suppose.

I never said that the 30 week fetus was dead. But, the fetus has not yet been exposed to the external environment. Until that time, the fetus is dependent on the mother and her life. So, it's not dead, but it is dependent.

I think that these definitions are important with regard to my feelings on abortion. I believe that the youngest reported birth who lived, is 18 weeks...which is well into the second trimester. I do NOT condone second trimester abortions, but I am supportive of women who have chosen first trimester abortions if they have exhausted all of the alternative options. In the first trimester, there is NO possible way for the embryo/fetus to sustain life outside of the mother.

I'll go on to say that I find women who neglect birth control and end up having multiple abortions as a result, abhorrent. A mistake once, and possibly even twice is one thing. A mistake made 3+ times is a completely different story. And, they make aging women, like myself, who are trying to conceive, very, very angry.

This might sound heartless, and if it does, I'm sorry. But, until the child can breathe, it's a well functioning set of cells. Even the cells that make up our adult bodies depend on cellular respiration to survive. I'm just taking respiration to the organism level. In terms of being a person, you have to be able to breathe. Until then, you are part of another organism.

I will use a personal story to further illustrate my thoughts: In my last pregnancy, I began bleeding at 13 weeks....heavily. I thought sure I was losing my pregancy and was despondent that what was growing within me might not continue on to be my child. I really didn't connect to my pregnancy until my 20 week ultrasound because despite how far medicine has come, there is absolutely nothing doctors can do to save that embryo/fetus until you have reached 20 weeks.

So, I ask you...If there is no hope of saving something prior to 20 weeks (and in very, very few cases, before then), is that a life, or a potential life?

Linda,

Just to clarify,

[U]ntil the child can breathe, it's a well functioning set of cells.

Do you mean "until it can breathe," or "until it has taken an actual breath"? Because there's a yawning gap between the two ideas. A six-month preemie can breathe. A six-month fetus could breathe if prematurely born. But a six-month fetus still in utero isn't currently breathing in the sense you mean. So what is the status of the six-month fetus? or, for that matter, the nine-month fetus, which also hasn't taken a breath?

I'm not trying to attack you, just wondering whether it's ability to breathe (if only on a respirator) or actually having taken a breath that you take to be significant.

I think that this is just splitting hairs, to be honest. But, here goes.

To be on a respirator, you have to have the capability to breathe. From about 20 weeks on, this is possible, but the closer you are to 20 weeks or less, the capability to breathe is much less probable. There’s not a yawning gap. Simply, can the baby breathe if born? Possibly. Though, it’s only a theory until the actual trial. While in utero, the embryo/fetus is breathing amniotic fluid.

If a fetus at 20 weeks met with the external environment, life would be almost impossible. However, if there were one breath, even if it meant a breath by revival, the baby has life until it ceases to breathe.

My baby at 6, 13, 20 and finally 28 weeks, was alive in the sense that all organic material is alive. He was not a life of his own until he came out and breathed. Until then, he was part of me…dependent on me. And, had he been born at 13 weeks, when I was bleeding so heavily, he would not have breathed, and would not have had life. He needed the correct amount of lung surfactant to be able to have functioning lungs, either by his own means or with help.

I think that you’re getting caught up in the language, and honestly, that’s where my learning curve took the hit. I certainly could have been a lot clearer initially. Hopefully I’m understood, even if I’m not agreed with, since I have beleaguered this to death now.

I need to put all of this in an MS-Word doc for the next discussion of the like. :)

David Andersen:

People are demonstrably different than any other entities, living or non-living. The combination of characteristics that make up a person (human) are the objective characteristics needed. I will not be mistaken for a flower, nor will another person subjectively think of me as a turtle [and let us be reasonable here: someone with a mental disability may mistake me for a hat, for example, but that does not invalidate my personhood]. To claim something is subjective is to claim that there is no clear way of distinguishing it from something else, or that there can be reasonable and contradictory views of what something is. I do not see that being true for personhood.

You’re confusing objective physical characteristics, that we can discover through experiment and observation, with the abstract concept of personhood, that we cannot discover. Personhood is a quality that we may attribute to an entity, not something that we can discover in it. Whether a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus qualifies as a person depends on what objective characteristics you choose to require for the status of personhood. Most people do not believe that a fetus possesses the characteristics necessary to be considered a person. Fetuses have never been considered persons in our law and culture.

A consensus does not exist on abortion especially, because there is clearly not widespread agreement, no matter what the law says. If there were consensus, abortion would not be the hot topic that it is.

Sorry, but a consensus does exist that there is a broad right to abortion. If that were not the case, Roe would have been overturned long ago, and states would have enacted broad legal restrictions on abortion. The only issues that are really in play are peripheral matters like “partial birth” abortion, mandatory waiting periods or notification requirements, and the like.

Let’s see some evidence. I’d say everyone on the pro-life side of the debate does in fact treat fetuses as the moral equivalent of babies or other persons.

Nonsense. The evidence is legion. If pro-lifers really believed that fetus = baby, they wouldn’t support a rape-and-incest exception to restrictive abortion laws. If pro-lifers really believed that fetus = baby, they would seek to punish women who kill their fetuses for the same crime as women who kill their babies (i.e., murder). If pro-lifers really believed that fetus = baby, they would treat the natural death of a fetus as the equivalent of natural infant mortality.

Perhaps, but I suspect it has more to do with an attempt at political compromise than cognitive dissonance.

This claim is silly. There are people who want to make abortion illegal regardless of whether the woman was raped. There are people who want abortion to remain legal regardless of whether the woman was raped. And there are people who want abortion to be legal if the woman was raped and illegal otherwise. The only reason people in the first group need to compromise on rape is because the last group is so large. They wouldn't need to compromise if there weren't so many people who want it to be legal to "kill" an "unborn baby" only if the "baby" resulted from rape.

Linda, I don't imagine anyone else is actually reading this now, but I'm not "caught up in language"; I'm still trying to understand you.

I can't tell whether you are saying that, say, an 8-month fetus is alive, because it has the capacity to breathe if born; or whether on the contrary it is not alive, because at the moment it's only breathing amniotic fluid.

David Andersen:

If my morality favors murdering other adults who get in my way on the highway, too bad for them I guess. No one can tell me I’m wrong because an opposing moral claim is based on an unprovable premise. That is commonsensically ridiculous.

Of course they can tell you you’re wrong. But they can’t demonstrate that you are wrong. The only reason that murder is illegal is because there is a broad consensus that murder is wrong. That is obviously very different from being able to prove that murder is wrong. There’s no such thing as proof of moral claims. It would be like trying to prove that Bach is more beautiful than Beethoven, or that chocolate ice cream tastes better than vanilla. These things are subjective preferences, not objective facts.

In your opinion, of course.

No, not just “in my opinion.” A fetus is demonstrably not the same thing as a prematurely-born infant of the same gestational age. That's why we have different words for them. I just pointed out one blindingly obvious difference.

So you think there is a clear difference between the humanity of a pre-mature baby born on, for example, the 210th day after conception and a living fetus on the 210th day after conception?

Yes, of course there is. The fetus is completely and uniquely dependent on a physical connection to its mother’s body to sustain its life. The baby is not. That is a difference, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

If so, you believe this difference is significant enough to justify ending the existence of the latter, but not the former?

Well, it would depend on the circumstances. But in some cases, yes.

If so, I love to hear a thoughtful reasoning of that position

Well, one obvious example would be a situation in which it is necessary to end the fetus’s life to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman on whose body its life is dependent.

This is incorrect. A fetus can be removed from the womb before coming to term and survive either on its own or via life support until it can survive on its own. This is essentially what happens with a preemie. I’m already anticipating that you will say “then it’s no longer a fetus” but I hope you have a stronger point than that.

If it is delivered alive, it is no longer a fetus, by definition. It’s a baby. You’ll have to elaborate on why you don’t think this fact is strong enough to support the statement of mine you contest.

Anony:

I presented reasonable assertions that the circumstances under discussion could not conceivably (haha) lead to such a sharp increase in adoption needs, and yet that figure is the very basis of your claim that Jane Galt's alleged assertion is -- how was that again? -- "ludicrous, absurd", and "ridiculous."

We’ve been over this already. Jane Galt’s premise is that the babies would be given up for adoption by their mothers. If they would not be given up for adoption, then her premise is false and her argument collapses for that reason. If they would be given up for adoption, then as I already told you, the adoption rate would need to increase from its current rate by around a factor of 10 to absorb the additional supply of children needing adoption. There is no credible evidence that the supply of prospective adoptive parents is even remotely large enough to absorb that many children.

As for your stupid argument about abortion safety, all health care statistics are subject to some margin of error. This includes statistics of mortality caused by pregnancy and childbirth. There is no reason to believe that mortalities caused by abortion are significantly undercounted as compared to mortalities caused by pregnancy and birth. The article I linked to includes a discussion of the limitations of the data. The discrepancy in mortality rates between the two causes is so great (a factor of 10), and the finding so consistent across multiple independent health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, that no plausible reporting error could account for it. You are simply grasping at straws because the numbers so overwhelmingly favor abortion over completion of a pregnancy.

Anony:

No, see, the difference is that a death by pregnancy is very obviously a death by pregnancy.

This claim is also nonsense. In many cases it may be very difficult to establish that pregnancy or childbirth was the cause of a woman’s death. The grueling, 9-month-long physical demands that pregnancy imposes on a woman’s body may trigger or exacerbate some medical problem to cause a woman’s death that would otherwise have been avoided. Examples include heart disease and hypertension, two of the biggest killers. In many cases, the death may not occur until long after the woman has completed the pregnancy and delivered the child. In others, the death may occur during pregnancy and be attributed to some other cause when in fact it was the pregnancy that caused it.

Michelle Dulak:

Are they not? Tell it to Scott Peterson. Or his lawyers, rather.

Correct. They’re not. That’s why Californians do not treat any abortion, even very late-term abortions, as murder. I have no idea what relevance you think Scott Peterson has to this fact.

I am not certain that no state has ever had such a law, actually

I am. If you still dispute this, produce a counterexample. It’ll only take one.

And there have been cases in which women have allowed their newborn children to die by refusing simple but necessary surgery (cf. the "Baby Doe" case in the early 80s, where a Down Syndrome infant was allowed to starve to death because an internal blockage that prevented it receiving nourishment wasn't corrected), or by tossing them into dumpsters, or the like, without inevitably facing murder charges.

Yes, of course. If it is clear that the woman’s mental state was severely disordered, prosecutors may choose to charge her with some lesser crime than murder instead, such as manslaughter. But such cases are rare. Even the woman in Texas who drowned her children a year or so ago was charged with murder, despite strong early evidence that she was mentally ill. In general, a woman who kills her baby will be prosecuted for the crime of murder just as, in general, any person who intentionally kills an innocent person will be prosecuted for that crime. Extensive psychiatric evidence would need to be presented at her trial to relieve her of criminal responsibility for her act.

And I'm not "gung-ho about contraception"

Yes you are. You keep going on and on and on about how women who have abortions should use contraception instead. You’ve been banging that drum in post after post. And yet you are utterly silent regarding the Catholic Church, which is the single biggest institutional obstacle in the world to the use of contraception. What this tells me is that your real motive here is not to promote contraception but to beat up on women facing an unwanted pregnancy for what you deem to be irresponsible behavior.

I have heard it claimed that most Catholics use contraception of one kind or another.

The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is an intrinsic evil. The Catholic Church does everything in its power to try to persuade people not to use contraception. The Catholic Church is politically active in trying to prevent the provision of contraception to women in the third world. And yet you, who keeps going on and on about contraception, haven’t offered a single word of criticism of the Catholic Church. As I said, that betrays your real motives here.

Anony:

At least the "life begins at conception" crew, even aside from religious persuasions, have one key evidence in their favor -- conception is the point when a unique set of chromosomes form and that cell will, unless otherwise diverted by natural or artificial processes, result in a live birth ~9 months later. It is about as close to an objective standard as one can get.

Another stupid argument. When a couple has sex, that act will also result, 9 months later, in a live birth “unless otherwise diverted by natural or artificial processes.” Do you consider that fact a persuasive argument against contraception? No? Then it’s not a persuasive argument against abortion, either. There is nothing sacred about fertilization. It doesn’t even produce a complete “blueprint” of a baby (contrary to the claims of many abortion opponents). The set of chromosomes produced by fertilization is only a partial blueprint of a human person; the rest of the information comes from the 9-month process of gestation. Moreover, in other methods of reproduction, such as cloning, there is no fertilization. The complete set of chromosomes is already present in the donor nucleus. If fertilization is the defining moral event in the creation of a new person, how do you fit that inconvenient fact into your argument? You can't. It doesn't work.

Michelle,

I certainly want you to understand and I apologize if I have been unclear.

An embryo or fetus in utero is indeed alive, like all organic matter. It is not a life until there is breath (air).

Breath is possible for a baby with mature lungs, or by respiration of a baby with enough lung surfactant to enable lungs capable of breath, as in preemies.

This might help. An 8 month fetus in utero compared with an 8 month birthed healthy baby, are both alive, but only one has a life that is independent from its mother. This is in contrast to a 4 month fetus in utero and a 4 month birthed baby, in which both would not have a life, but one would be alive with the potential for a life.

You know what; maybe I’M caught up in the language. I’m making it very hard for people to distinguish what I feel is a difference of two distinctly different things. So, let me use a dictionary definition of both to the extent I am using them.

Alive - not dead
Life - the period from birth to death

There’s a leap of recognizing that for life to occur, there has to be birth. The birth of an embryo through an 18 - 20 week old fetus would likely not produce life.

Tsk tsk, Don P...oh my.

We’ve been over this already. Jane Galt’s premise is that the babies would be given up for adoption by their mothers. If they would not be given up for adoption, then her premise is false and her argument collapses for that reason. If they would be given up for adoption, then as I already told you, the adoption rate would need to increase from its current rate by around a factor of 10 to absorb the additional supply of children needing adoption. There is no credible evidence that the supply of prospective adoptive parents is even remotely large enough to absorb that many children.

We have indeed been over this already, and you were sadly lacking in reading comprehension skills the first time around, so I have relatively low expectations for the continuance of this exchange. But I also have an excess of time on my hands and am obtaining modest levels of entertainment from this, so here goes. The quote from Jane Galt's post onto which you have latched is this:

"So the commenter" -- [referring back to an earlier statement that "What interested me was a side debate in the comments over whether or not one of the pro-life commenters could, as he claimed 'get any number of kids adopted in this country' "] -- "is probably right; if women having abortions instead carried the fetuses to term and then offered them for adoption, they could almost certainly place each and every baby, especially with our aging population of professional women whose fertility has declined."

First, note the qualifier "probably" -- it denotes a limited amount of uncertainty, i.e., the person asserting the claim is willing to acknowledge that s/he is not prepared to make an absolute statement, but is convinced the evidence is reasonably favorable. This stands in stark contrast to your own responses to the matter, which have made a couple obvious errors:

1. You have repeatedly characterized Jane Galt's assertion as an absolute statement, when it was not. Consequently it does not "collapse" if the actual rate of children in need of adoption is less than 10x; it just becomes correct for a somewhat different reason than the one offered. You have damaged your credibility by being unwilling to make that distinction in your posts on the matter.

2. You have repeatedly asserted a 10x adoption pool as an absolute consequence, when it is not. You have damaged your credibility by trying to make this claim a centerpiece of your arguments. You failed to even qualify this appropriately with evidence (something with which you have been very handy in demanding from other people, oddly enough) until forced. Here is your first response in the thread, ninth post or so down, in which you pulled the same quote as above --

No, the commenter is not right, as you would realize if you had given this claim even a moment's serious reflection. There are over a million abortions a year in the U.S. There have been over 40 million abortions in America since Roe v. Wade. There aren't remotely enough prospective adoptive parents to adopt a million unwanted children a year, year after year, even if every one of those children was an ideal adoption candidate (newborn, white and healthy), which many or most of them certainly would not be. The idea is just ludicrous.

3. Your follow-up qualifications, such as they were, primarily ignored the further Jane Galt point arguing that the current adoption rate is artificially deflated, and loosely positing that this represents a possible source for additional candidates should the much larger pool become available.

In short, you asserted without evidence as quoted above, and then presented weak evidence and misleading arguments when pressed for explanation. Then you dismissed the counterevidence by dimissing its credibility with just-so fallacies.

I think what we have in you here is the living definition of an insidiously dishonest debater.

This claim is also nonsense. In many cases it may be very difficult to establish that pregnancy or childbirth was the cause of a woman’s death. The grueling, 9-month-long physical demands that pregnancy imposes on a woman’s body may trigger or exacerbate some medical problem to cause a woman’s death that would otherwise have been avoided. Examples include heart disease and hypertension, two of the biggest killers. In many cases, the death may not occur until long after the woman has completed the pregnancy and delivered the child. In others, the death may occur during pregnancy and be attributed to some other cause when in fact it was the pregnancy that caused it.

Well, I can see you're still thoroughly enamored with your own cleverness. Arguing for death from pregnancy-exacerbated causes a long time after the fact of the pregnancy, as a direct comparison to immediate death from pregnancy or abortion, is merely flailing. Also, the CDC link you referenced was merely citing deaths that occurred within 1 year of pregnancy, so it doesn't appear that THEY had too much difficulty figuring it out. OTOH a woman suffering injury leading to death during a first-trimester abortion could very likely leave no pregnancy paper trail at all, so my point stands; pregnancy-related deaths are far easier to detect than abortion-related deaths and far more likely to be reported as such.

Finally, recall the reason for my response: you were attempting to show that a pregnancy death is somehow comparably non-obvious and that a hospital has a theoretically analogous incentive to cheat on reporting, and have supplied no serious evidence for either. Just another attempt to justify a weak argument with evidence obtained by proctology.

Let's try one more and see if your reasoning skills improve:

Another stupid argument. When a couple has sex, that act will also result, 9 months later, in a live birth “unless otherwise diverted by natural or artificial processes.” Do you consider that fact a persuasive argument against contraception? No? Then it’s not a persuasive argument against abortion, either. There is nothing sacred about fertilization. It doesn’t even produce a complete “blueprint” of a baby (contrary to the claims of many abortion opponents). The set of chromosomes produced by fertilization is only a partial blueprint of a human person; the rest of the information comes from the 9-month process of gestation. Moreover, in other methods of reproduction, such as cloning, there is no fertilization. The complete set of chromosomes is already present in the donor nucleus. If fertilization is the defining moral event in the creation of a new person, how do you fit that inconvenient fact into your argument? You can't. It doesn't work.

I'll take that as a "no." In fact it is here I can safely assert that you don't even understand the things YOU are talking about, let alone statements made by others. I daresay the other posters here can also recognize that, but since you and I both prefer claims backed by evidence, I'll go ahead and pick up the pieces of your misfire in loose order:

(a) my use of the phrase "diverted by natural or articial processes" was clearly delimited by the understanding that this referred to the embryo, which contains a completed chromosomal set. Your use of the phrase in the analogy to sexual intercourse is far broader and, as a direct comparison to my claim, dishonest.

(b) Contraception prevents the complete chromosomal set from forming, therefore it is a different argument. Your attempt to draw a direct comparison without acknowledging this difference and its implications is also dishonest.

(c) I am well aware of what a blueprint is, having created several myself -- using, no less, the old yellowback paper and UV+developer process by which a literally blue diagram is generated. Those details aside, it appears you don't understand what a blueprint is. Properly prepared, it is a set of instructional diagrams containing all necessary information for someone else to build the device or structure therein described. This is hardly an inept analogy since the completed chromosomal set only sees its advent when, upon fertilization, the sperm bursts and its half-set of genetic material recombines with the half-set of genetic material in the egg, and voila, the complete chromosmal set for defining a new human is formed, and the embryo immediately commences execution of those instructions. Indeed, if the zygote divides before organ and feature specialization has set in, identical twins will form, which physically at least are identical down to every major physical detail save for fingerprints. Don't they have high school biology where you come from?

(d) The fact that successful cloning is dependent on obtaining a complete set of the chromosomal material only illustrates that the material set IS uniquely important as a basis for life, and your attempt to present it as an argumentive problem -- and even further, characterize it as an inconvenient fact(!) -- is laughable. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, my dear Don P.

Now, are you going to go back into hiding until the next abortion debate pops up, or are you going to continue spouting off like a fourth grader trying to insist that merry-go-round (a more apt analogous device than you may realize) is rightfully his and all others present should get off and accept his "factual" claims thereto?

Don P - I don't understand why you think that Michelle has to vocally oppose the Catholic Church's position on contraception. Michelle believes that contraceptive use is good, and should be encouraged, but believes that abortions are morally fraught, and that many other people agree with her about that. Why does the opinion of the Catholic Church in particular matter, especially when it's not an opinion shared by most of its communicants?

Michelle - aside from the crack that the most common contraceptive failure is failure to use it, I can think of a number of ways one can fail to use a condom in accordance with the instructions given, aside from physical failure of the condom. Also, not all condom failures completely negate the effectiveness of a condom, but most do reduce it. Even a catastrophic failure of the condom, if noticed in time, may only slightly increase the risk of pregnancy, and other failure modes may also only slightly increase the risk of pregnancy.

Adoption is a service for children (who for whatever reason cannot live with their birth families). To talk openly and approvingly of an adoption 'market' is just too disgusting for words. None of you people should ever be allowed within ten yards of a vulnerable child!

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