Asymmetrical Information

A certain view of sex ed for kids would look at your last paragraph and say, is there a lesson there? Hellloooo? Anybody home?

Abstinence education, as far as I know does not teach safe sex. However, if it taught safe sex and then abstinence, or vice versa, I wonder if it wouldn't make a difference. Since from your last graph, lack of abstinence education doesn't seem to.

How about, "If you have to do it, this is the way to reduce BUT NOT ELIMINATE your chances of getting pregnant or diseased. But it's 'way better not to in the first place."

Years ago, I read an essay which I am in no position to find that made the point that much of the sex ed debate is fueled by the fading warriors of the sexual revolution who want to see the movement carry on. There is no reason, they think, not to have everybody screwing like minks. If you think about this, some aspects of sex ed make a bit more sense.
Not, of course, that they would ever admit it.

But, went on the essayist, when the condom is promoted as the sovereign and the kids are told, or cleverly allowed to believe, that it works every time, then we have a cynical, deliberate sacrifice of kids' health on the altar of....what?

Hard to think of a reason other than that suggested by the unknown essayist.

I should say that when a course of action seems likely, very likely, to lead to a certain result, and that the result may well not be desireable to most people, and the proponents say they are trying to achieve some other, benign, result, it's safe to bet they actually want the result which will likely result, know they can't sell it, so they lie.

In other words, it's a good idea not to believe their professed motivation.

"Sceptical," Jane? Methinks you've been drinking too much of the English water.

You're on thin ice here... next thing we know, you'll be writing about "centres" and "flavours" all willy-nilly.

speaking as someone who has been very close to going through an abortion 3x (well my partner at the time, but you get the point), despite being very responsible in terms of birth control and not having any economic issues (which would obviously be apparent given my comments all over the place over the years), sometimes you get screwed by the low percentage cases.

no program or class is going to cut 95% of abortions without serious legislation. while I absolutely don't like restrictive abortion laws, I respect those who want them, and am disgusted by those who argue for few to no restrictions on abortion (I've got an anaphylactic allergy to lefties). between the issues with condoms (and getting kids to buy the right ones for their body size... but you can't really bring that up in class, or really anywhere, in how certain guys need to buy trojan magnums, and others can get away with extra snug thins, especially the ethnic distribution of these issues).

a very, very useful thing to do would be to highlight to everyone how unsuccessful birth control can be even if you're smart and careful, how much a baby can screw up your life, how men have absolutely no control post-ejaculation so they need to control themselves to control their future, and the desperate need to make decisions quickly, so that one can handle problems quickly cheaply and easily.

I had a rather full sex ed course, usual upper middle class hs (to upper upper upper middle class), with close friends running the sex ed clinic as students. they still went light on the actual risks of pregnancy, how best to avoid it, how to deal with it, etc.

the current nymag, while being a paean to abortion providers, does highlight lots of issues surrounding abortions that the writer can't touch, being an upper middle class lefty. I can't understand them either, as whenever I've run into a situation, its been the first and second month, and we've always had procedures scheduled within 7 weeks of possible conception before things resolved themselves.

I wonder what the effect would be of making the parents of a teenage boy who got a girl pregnant responsible for child support should their son be unable to pay. I think there would be a lot of resistance to this idea, but would it not be an appropriate incentive to induce parents to pressure not only their daughters but also their sons to delay sex until they are older? I wonder if this might reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy.

When you say that New York City has an "extremely high" teen pregnancy rate, is that compared to other cities, or compared to state and national data? Cities generally have more teen pregnancy for a variety of reasons. I have not found any good city-level data for teen pregnancy, but I would guess that New York City is actually better than average among large American cities.

Also, if the argument is that a lot of teens are licentious and careless, then life would be much better if Plan B were available over the counter.

Eliminate welfare and that will greatly reduce teenage pregnancies. I have better uses for my tax dollars than paying other peoples child support.
Let the grandparents support them.
Here is a novel concept, use two methods of contraception simultaneously like the pill and a contraceptive sponge or the pill and a condom. the odds that both will fail if used properly is essentially zero. now is that too difficult?

This probably doesn't have much to do with abortion rates, but how much of teen pregnancy is the daughters of welfare families getting pregnant? Welfare has created incentives for this; if you want to get out from under Mama's thumb and have your own welfare account and apartment, just have a baby.

"Sceptical," Jane? Methinks you've been drinking too much of the English water.

I'm certain I saw her write 'programme' in a recent post. She's got it bad.

Studies have shown that the most effective programs against teen pregnancy combine information with a range of activities that presume a future for young girls. In other words, if teens think that the best and most likely life for them lies in getting pregnant, then they will be more likely to become pregnant. If they are presented with activities that expose them to a larger world, and a way of envisaging that they might be a part of it (that other possible lives are genuinely available to them), they are less likely to get pregnant. This result seems to be eminently plausible and gets us away from talk of people being "lazy" -- contraception failure is a possibility even when people are scrupulous -- and I think "lazy" is a bit harsh when you're talking about the need to take a pill every day at the same time, at task at which even very responsibility might slip.

The contraception-pushers make the silly mistake of assuming that teenage girls:

1. Don't want to get pregnant
2. Have the strength of will and character and the intelligence to suggest, much less to insist that their men wear condoms.

Isn't it true that abortions occur disproportionately among higher-IQ and more prosperous teenagers? If true, that shoots down Levitt's "abortion reduces crime" nonsense.

Indeed, alot of the teen girls getting pregnant (and =not= having abortions) is because they really, really want a baby. It makes you feel like an adult, you get govt assistance under your own name (as opposed to having to go through your mother), and you've got a cute little kid who will look up to you (for a while). Oh, and it shows you like a particular guy right now. Who will probably not stick around.

But hey, it's a more interesting life than being a run-of-the-mill teenager, who's treated like a kid.

Bingo, meep. In the past two years I've witnessed a somewhat affluent family with three teen-age daughters as they each became pregnant in succession. They became pregnant because they wanted to.

At the risk of being controversial, I see unwanted early pregnancy as akin to skin cancer from being in the sun too often without suitable protection. Both are theoretically caused by "carelessness", although circumstances may have made it very likely to occur eventually. Both involve a condition that the possessor would like to have alleviated. Both involve the removal of non-sentient groups of cells.

Both are best addressed by prevention - yet only in one case do a substantial number of people feel that we should force people to "face the consequences of their actions" if they fail to prevent.

(Obviously a clump of cells does not equal "person" in my book.)

I find it maddening that conservatives who oppose abortion also oppose teaching girls how not to get pregnant.

I am one of those (rare?) Catholics who, besides opposing abortion, actually believes that to use birth control is to commit a sin. But I would never "oppose teaching girls how not to get pregnant." I would simply say that teaching girls and boys about birth control makes it more likely that some of them will get pregnant.

Paradoxical, I know. But from my perspective, giving a kid birth control is like giving him a license to speed; it makes "accidents" more likely and not less likely. It gives the impression that having sex outside of marriage is normal, which in turn means a large number of kids will have sex, which, given the real-world failure rate of birth control, means that a fair number of girls are likely to get pregnant. The old days of no birth control, no welfare, and instant expulsion of pregnant girls from high school had a lot of negative aspects. But fewer girls got pregnant, which (along with laws banning them) made abortions more rare.

Tom West,

If curing skin cancer in one person required murdering another person, I suspect a lot of people would insist that sun-worshippers "face the consequences of their actions." But it doesn't, so they don't.

You're not being controversial, you're just using a bad analogy.

You had a good Planned Parenthood center Jane. At the one in Philly, a staff of 8-10 people make a room full of beneficiaries wait 2-3 hours before they will meet with them and give out birth control pills. OTOH, you can just take condoms from the University of Pennsylvania health office.

"I used them for my annual exams, and they literally forced a big paper bag full of condoms into my hands despite multiple attempts to demur."

Kramer: Come on, Elaine, here, take half a bag.
Elaine: Half a bag? What am I, a hooker?

The teens may be getting pregnant deliberately but the older ones just have their heads in their asses. They get knocked up because they're partying, drinking, drifting, escaping..and maybe hoping the latest fling turns into something. Not because they don't know about contraception. Plus, they heard the Pill might be bad for you.

Could it be that there is a deep-seated desire to *procreate* that just won't listen to reason?

If curing skin cancer in one person required murdering another person ...

Look, if you *really* thought that abortion was murder you'd be trying to overthrow the government for allowing it. (At least assuming that if the government sanctioned the murder of *other* groups of innocents, you'd be willing to take up arms to stop it.)

If you don't believe it's murder, why call it that?

Yes Tom, and people who think that the death penalty is government-sanctioned murder are no doubt planning armed revolt even as I type this. Make sure you wear your tinfoil hat or they'll know you're on to them.

(Obviously a clump of cells does not equal "person" in my book.)

Then nothing is a person, because any biological oranism can be dismissed as a "clump of cells" regardless of any other available metric available for understanding what else it might also be. In other words, a more specific metric is needed.

Of course, a more specific metric is also more likely to interfere with the cheap convenience associated with that mode of arguing.

I wonder what the effect would be of making the parents of a teenage boy who got a girl pregnant responsible for child support should their son be unable to pay.

An increase in pregnancies, since the girls would know that any baby they got stuck with would be better-provided-for.

It looks to me like we're breeding several strains of birth-control-resistant humans.

Not much of a surprise if you think about it. After the invention of birth control, each generation is descended from people who, for one reason or another, didn't use it.

Unfortunately, this selection process is currently selecting for carelessness, stupidity, and hopelessness and against the capability to pursue a career more interesting than childcare.

What to do? Shortening childhood will allow more smart women to combine a good career and several children into one lifetime without driving themselves nuts; it will also reduce the overall cost of childrearing for everyone, which will selectively reduce the cost as experienced by those who aren't getting their expenses subsidized.

Other than that, I don't have any good ideas.

The girls in my class who got knocked up did it by a combination of pretending they were not the type to have sex unless they were really, really totally in love - thus without the need for a plan because nice girls don't do that with some guy they just met from another school who's so cute - and having a vague idea that a sudden baby would be a shortcut to their own giant home in Plano.

I am not aware of any of them going the full nine months, or much past 8 weeks.

Does anyone know if the point behind the patch is to help the frantic mothers of air-head teens protect their little darlings?

The girls in my class who got knocked up did it by a combination of pretending they were not the type to have sex unless they were really, really totally in love - thus without the need for a plan because nice girls don't do that with some guy they just met from another school who's so cute - and having a vague idea that a sudden baby would be a shortcut to their own giant home in Plano.

Heh. Were they Richardson girls, sterilized? Those Garland hussies? Irving tramps? Surely these ladies of the prom didn't come from Dallas proper. Ours are as sweet and innocent and virtuous as peach ice cream. ;-)

(I sure hope the Plano you're talking about is the same one I am, or else that above paragraph isn't going to make any sense whatsoever...)

people who think that the death penalty is government-sanctioned murder

Between 1973-1998, there were at least 32.5 million abortions. There have been 1,000 executions since it was legalized. In an abortion, if you believe it is murder, the "victims" are complete innocents.

Are you saying that if a million Americans a year were legally executed without repercussion, you'd simply fight it in the courts? I certainly doubt it.

The abortion = murder is simply rhetoric that even its voicers don't believe.

In other words, a more specific metric is needed (than a clump of cells).

Agreed. Let me say that simply the potential to become another human being does not make, in my mind, something a person. I don't think that uniting a bunch of eggs and sperm in a test tube has created a bunch of people that have rights.

Tom,

Sorry buddy, but you've constructed a classical logical fallacy -- the non sequitur. In other words, your conclusion doesn't naturally follow from your premises.

To summarize your argument:

Premises
1. DRB believes abortion is murder.
2. The government allows abortions to happen (note: not even the government performs abortions, merely that it allows them to happen).
Conclusion
3. Therefore, DRB must be planning the armed overthrow of the government.

Do you understand in even the smallest way how 3 doesn't naturally follow from 1 and 2? People can believe all kinds of things without, of necessity, having to plan the armed overthrow of their government as a result.

In your original argument your conclusion at least followed from your premise. To summarize:

Premise
1. Getting pregnant is basically like getting cancer.
Conclusion
2. Therefore, people shouldn't object to abortions because they don't object to cancer treatments.

In this case, I'm heartened to see that at least your conclusion did follow from your premise. The problem with your original argument is that your premise is dubious at best (a less charitable word for your premise would be "creepy").

Okay, a government sanctioning the direct murder of a million innocent victims would be enough to make *me* decide to do something violent about it. (For example, I'd like to think that if my government sanctioned the liquidation of Jews, I'd take up arms against the government.) Maybe this isn't a valid assumption for you.

Let's put it another way: If abortion is murder - do you consider it should be punished the same way other murders are?

Or does "murder" in the context of abortion mean something less terrible than "murder" as used in the criminal justice system. If so, I consider the use of the word a rhetorical device. "Murder" has a very distinct meaning in most people's minds (and it correlates very highly with how the justice system uses it), and if the user is intent on using the term with intent of bringing to forth that meaning *but doesn't believe it themselves*, then I consider it a form of hypocritical rhetoric.

Or let me put it a third way. Do you believe that a legitimate government has the right to sanction the murder of classes of human beings?

By the way, I equated an *unwanted* pregnancy with skin cancer. One *huge* difference.

Thanks for clarifying Tom. I assumed there were a number of unstated premises you must have built into your second argument. You've confirmed at least one, which I'll add to my summary of your argument:

Premise
1. DRB believes abortion is murder.
2. The government allows abortions to happen (note: not even the government performs abortions, merely that it allows them to happen).
3. Everyone, and especially DRB, has the same beliefs and thought processes as Tom West does.

Conclusion
4. Therefore, DRB must be planning the armed overthrow of the government.

Remind me never to cut you off in traffic, Tom.

And let me restate your other argument:

Premise
1. *Unwanted* pregnancy is basically like getting cancer.
Conclusion
2. People shouldn't object to abortion because they don't object to cancer treatments.

Oh yeah, *huge* difference. Not creepy at all, once you put it that way.

Uh, just in case, you *do* know we're just having a friendly chat here on the internet, right Tom? No need to get angry or get any guns or nothing, right? 'Cause you're scaring me a little.

"An increase in pregnancies, since the girls would know that any baby they got stuck with would be better-provided-for."

-Dan

Or since boys are free not to have sex or to use a condom each and every time whether girls said were on the pill or not, would it cause boys to be more careful and boys' parents to pressure them to be more careful? We focus so much on keeping girls from having sex because they and their families are the ones who bare the burden of teenage pregnancy, so they are the ones with the greatest incentive to avoid pregnancy. What if the other individual involved in the act and that person's family were made to bare some of the burden? It is parents I think who exert the greatest influence over whether a daughter has sex at that age. I think that if parents had as strong an incentive to insure that their sons did not have sex, I think they would use a similar influence with their sons as they do with their daughters.

Let me say that simply the potential to become another human being does not make, in my mind, something a person.

Again, a rhetorical sleight-of-hand for weak minds. About the only objective criterion available, are (1) that the unborn (from union to zygote to fetus to birth) has a complete set of human DNA and that set is not the mother's; and (2) the unborn controls its own life processes and development.

Any other criterion for defining basic humanity is subjective, meaning, your life has only as much worth as the majority cares to value it. Are you sure you want to go down that path? It's actually quite relevant to your close encounter with Godwin, earlier in the thread.

Okay, forget what I'd do. Are you willing to answer the following question. (I strongly suspect that you can't or won't answer it.)

Do you believe that a legitimate government has the right to sanction the murder of classes of human beings who have harmed no one?

'Cause you're scaring me a little.

Don't be silly. I'm not the one who claims to believe that there is the mass murder of a million innocent human beings a year sanctioned by my government. *That's* scary.

Any other criterion for defining basic humanity is subjective, meaning, your life has only as much worth as the majority cares to value it. Are you sure you want to go down that path?

A good point, and one I agree with. If you *have* to have an absolutely indelible line with no grey whatsoever, then I'll agree that conception and birth are the only absolute points (until birth, the baby is utterly dependent on a specific human being for life - this could possibly be considered a disqualification for human-being-hood for some people).

However, given that absolutely *everything* else in life is judged by how the majority cares to value it, including when to terminate a born life, I'm more than willing to accept majority rule on the issue of when humanity begins (unless it reaches a point of such utter unethical abhorrence that I can no longer consider it legitimate, majority or not).

Personally, I believe that being human is more a scale than a binary state, and I suspect that's how the majority consider it in practice, if not in theory. Most of us don't consider a miscarriage as the same tragic loss of human life as the death of a fully sentient human being. Most of us can consider turning off life support of a brain dead person as something other than murder. Most of use would consider that a crime that caused someone to lapse into brain death would essentially be murder, because the crime had destroyed most of the "humanity" of the person.

For me, the line between the loss caused by an abortion (which grows greater over time) eventually outweighs the cost to the mother in being forced to bear an undesired child. Although to be clear, I consider that cost very high indeed. As a male, I'm not certain I could consider a worse punishment than being forced to gestate an unwanted creature growing within me. (I can also imagine few joys greater than carrying a desired pregancy - at least until the morning sickness :-))

Nevertheless, the lines (for me) do cross before birth. Exactly where is a whole different discussion.

close encounter with Godwin

Sorry, I was using a widely known historical precendent as shorthand for "completely innocent people who were murdered with no possible justification".

Tom, "legitimate governments" (whatever that means) "sanction" (whatever that means) the murder of thousands and even millions of people all over the world and all the time through their inactions. That does not mean that an appropriate response is a plot for the armed overthrow of every government in the world. That kind of talk is deeply scary, especially coming from someone who started this debate with the argument that a fetus = cancer.

Now I applaud your efforts to try to turn the abortion debate from the question, "Is abortion murder?" to the question, "Are abortion opponents hypocrites if they don't plot the armed overthrow of the government?" But I must warn you that it's a risky gambit, because it only works if you find someone stupid enough to agree to change the terms of the debate in that fashion. It would be akin to finding someone who would agree to debate the question, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Now the risky part of the gambit is that if you can't find that kind of patsy, your attempts to shift the terms of the debate start to make you look like a psycho with a flawed thought process.

I would add that the gambit is particularly risky for you in this thread. You started the debate with the creepy assertion that getting pregnant was like getting cancer. This already made you seem a bit "off", so when you started to fantasize about armed revolt against the government it appeared even more disturbing than it would normally be. My suggestion for future debates: when you lead off with pregancy = cancer, don't double-down with this particular gambit.

Tom,

If the government were insisting that women have abortions--packing them onto trains to take them to "abortion camps," etc., then I think you could count on armed revolt, people attacking the trains or shooting the police who come to arrest pregnant women and the like.

The government is merely failing to prevent abortions. That may well be a terrible thing to do, but it isn't clear at whom an armed revolt should be directed. What are these hypothetical rebels supposed to do, attack the local law library and overturn precedent by stabbing copies of the U.S. Reports with their bayonets?

For me, the line between the loss caused by an abortion (which grows greater over time) eventually outweighs the cost to the mother in being forced to bear an undesired child.

That's a reasonable argument as face value, but carried to its final end what it really does is divorce freedom from responsibility. History is littered with the bones of societies which lost vitality and died after deciding that their primary right was unlimited personal gratification with no corresponding accountability.

The government is merely failing to prevent abortions./i>

But if you truly believe abortion to be murder, how is the government permitting abortions not equivalent to the government saying "we will not investigate or punish the death of any member of [insert racial group here], nor will it be considered a crime."

Agreed that it's not the same as the government actively doing the killing, but it's pretty close to the mark. Certainly any government that was willing to permit a million of its citizens to be legally murdered each year would not be worthy of anything but the worst contempt. Yet strangely, I suspect most of those who call abortion murder harbor a high respect for the United States.

Once again - my claim is that most people who claim abortion is murder are using it as a rhetorical device and don't believe it themselves. Such hypocrisy is unbecoming from those who would consider themselves moral people for opposing abortion.

As for DRB, it is clear from your initial quote If curing skin cancer in one person required murdering another person that you meant murder in the "pick up a gun and blow somebody's brains out". Now murder is this sort of nebulous "every government murders millions through inaction" that sounds like global warming.

Sorry, but your initial use of the term murder was a cheap rhetorical device that annoyed me enough to call you on it.

But if you truly believe abortion to be murder, how is the government permitting abortions not equivalent to the government saying "we will not investigate or punish the death of any member of [insert racial group here], nor will it be considered a crime."

Interestingly, history proves that it took considerably more than exactly that kind of thing to bring about a civil war in the States. And when it finally occurred, the results were ugly. Attempting to buck the authority of a strong, popularly-appointed government is not something to be taken as flippantly as you suggested.

Once again - my claim is that most people who claim abortion is murder are using it as a rhetorical device and don't believe it themselves.

Mainly because YOU don't believe it, have declared a priori that there is only one possible proof to the contrary, and evidently lack the imagination to realize that other people may balance the issue with a considerably deifferent set of weights. Refusing to engage in armed overthrow of a government that sanctions abortion does not automatically confer hypocrisy. Particularly not a government that is open to the possibility of peaceful change.

Or do you suppose the ONLY means for opposing death is more death? (i.e., note that I do consider it a means, but ideally one of last/latter resort; even when it proves necessary, it is an inevitable bringer-of-grief for both sides.)

Before wielding around charges of hypocrisy and moral failure, you might want to cast a less-jaundiced eye on the structure of your own positions.

Interestingly, history proves that it took considerably more than exactly that kind of thing to bring about a civil war in the States. And when it finally occurred, the results were ugly

So are 30 *million* murders.

However, perhaps you are right. I really cannot imagine living in an environment where I believed the government was currently sanctioning mass murder. Knowing that I was almost certainly dealing with premeditated murderers every day *who will never face justice for their crimes*. The scale would make almost everything else shrink ito insignificance.

The genocide in Rwanda would have nothing on my government. It only looked the other way while 800,000 died. My government permitted 30,000,000 to be murdered.

Yes, it is colored by my jaundiced eye. I cannot conceive of managing to maintain civil discourse with people who were cold-bloodedly allowing the murder of so many innocents right in front of me. If I believed that hundreds of people a day were being dragged to death chambers by citizens and executed while the government gave its legal approval, I'm not certain I could just say 'well, that's democracy, with luck in a few years we can prevent this'.

The fact that you can is a testament to... something.

Knowing that I was almost certainly dealing with premeditated murderers every day *who will never face justice for their crimes*.

1. Actually, that answers itself neatly by the fact that many abortion opponents also believe quite firmly in the existence of God, to whom living and dead must ultimately answer; and a fairly large chunk of those likewise believe that God has issued a message of love, through Jesus Christ.

2. That being the case, then mass murderers, government leaders who sanctioned them, and in fact all mankind with them, have something much more dreadful to face than faltering, humanly-implemented justice. If human justice fails, God's justice will not.

3. Given (1) and (2), a law of love is the commission men are to follow. All are ultimately in the same boat before God, so the opportunity to repent is available to all mankind, before each ends his natural existence on earth.

4. If those people adhering to any combination of (1) through (3) are deluding themselves, then law of the jungle is the only principle defensible to a final end, so it doesn't matter what they think and "hypocrisy" itself is just another abstract construct. (So is "innocence," as you used it in your response to DRB's death-penalty opponents analogy.) Unplanned preganancy? No problem; it's a choice between your life, or the offspring who will have a legally-protected life in nine-ish months, and for the present time you happen to be the stronger entity, so medicate, salinate, or dialate away.

Of course, under that philosophy only a small redefinition of humanity-valuation is necessary by the stronger parties to justify a post-natal abortion, or euthanasia, or a policy of eugenics, or even a massive genocide. All that is needed is a suitable motivation and an opportunity. Consequent also of that philosophy is that your life right now has no inherent value; it is merely protected statutorily, for the time being, by a legal prisoner's dillemma writ large. Enjoy.

The fact that you can is a testament to... something.

Shallow analysis, shallow conclusions. Hopefully, merely a careless person, and not a shallow one, to go along with it. Given that you (as do I) enjoy incredible levels of physical peace and freedom living under our mutual current government, consider yourself fortunate that the not-insignificant number of persons who consider abortion murder, do not correspondingly share your narrow definition of hypocrisy.

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